| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked
me, how to pronounce "slithy toves." The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in
"writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the
first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard
people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry. Such is Human
Perversity.
This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard works in that
poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a
portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all.
For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your
mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say
The Hunting of the Snark |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: pocket. He thought the Moreens looked at him as if he were almost
too smart, as if they ought to take care not to spoil him. If Mr.
Moreen hadn't been such a man of the world he would perhaps have
spoken of the freedom of such neckties on the part of a
subordinate. But Mr. Moreen was always enough a man of the world
to let things pass - he had certainly shown that. It was singular
how Pemberton guessed that Morgan, though saying nothing about it,
knew something had happened. But three hundred francs, especially
when one owed money, couldn't last for ever; and when the treasure
was gone - the boy knew when it had failed - Morgan did break
ground. The party had returned to Nice at the beginning of the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bailey melodrama, without some brightness of poetry and lustre of
existence, falls into the inconceivable and ranks with fairy tales.
IV
In nobler books we are moved with something like the emotions of
life; and this emotion is very variously provoked. We are so moved
when Levine labours in the field, when Andre sinks beyond emotion,
when Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the river,
when Antony, "not cowardly, puts off his helmet," when Kent has
infinite pity on the dying Lear, when, in Dostoieffky's DESPISED
AND REJECTED, the uncomplaining hero drains his cup of suffering
and virtue. These are notes that please the great heart of man.
|
