A Glimpse

In his later years Joseph Conrad became obsessed with the opening scene of an unwritten novel that he planned to set in an Eastern European state. “So vividly used he to describe this scene to me,” wrote his friend Richard Curle, “that at last it was as though I had been a witness to it myself”:

“In the courtyard of a royal palace, brilliantly lighted up as for a festival, soldiers are bivouacked in the snow. And inside the palace a fateful council is taking place and the destiny of the country is being decided.”

“I never learned anything more about this novel — I do not know how far Conrad had himself visualized the plot,” Curle wrote, “but as he pictured that opening scene one could almost feel the tension in the air and one almost seemed to be warming one’s hands with the soldiers around their blazing fire.”

(Richard Curle, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, 1928.)

| Literature

“A Square Poem”

This poem, by Lewis Carroll, can be read line by line in the conventional way, but the same text results when it’s scanned “downward” in columns, reading the first word of each of the six lines, then the second, and so on:

I           often     wondered    when     I         cursed

Often       feared    where       I        would     be --

Wondered    where     she'd       yield    her       love,

When        I         yield,      so       will      she.

I           would     her         will     be        pitied!

Cursed      be        love!       She      pitied    me ...
| Language · Poems

Roundup

Obscure words from the personal collection of Eric Albert, from a Word Ways article in November 1988:

agroof: face downward
amphoric: resembling the sound produced by blowing into a bottle
benedict: an apparently confirmed bachelor who marries
bort: the fragments removed from diamonds in cutting
callipygian: having shapely buttocks
charette: a period of intense group work to meet a deadline
clishmaclaver: gossip
crepitaculum: the rattle of a rattlesnake
famulus: a magician’s assistant
favonian: like the west wind; mild
formication: the feeling that ants are creeping over one’s skin
fucivorous: subsisting on seaweed
genethliacon: a birthday ode
gobemouche: one who believes everything he is told; literally, “one who swallows flies”
Grimthorpe: to restore a building badly
illth: the reverse of wealth: ill-being
kittly-benders: thin ice that bends under one’s weight
nevermas: a time or date that never comes
nixie: a piece of mail that can’t be delivered because it’s illegibly or incorrectly addressed
quavery-mavery: in an uncertain position
supermuscan: greater than that which is typical of a fly

Albert gives his sources in the article, but I find all the words above in the Oxford English Dictionary.

| Language

Close to Home

https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-755/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

In 1940, George Gamow published Mr Tompkins in Wonderland, in which a bank clerk attends a lecture on relativity and then finds that Einstein’s principles have become apparent in the ordinary street scenes before him:

A single cyclist was coming slowly down the street and, as he approached, Mr Tompkins’s eyes opened wide with astonishment. For the bicycle and the young man on it were unbelievably shortened in the direction of the motion, as if seen through a cylindrical lens. The clock on the tower struck five, and the cyclist, evidently in a hurry, stepped harder on the pedals. Mr Tompkins did not notice that he gained much in speed, but, as the result of his effort, he shortened still more and went down the street looking exactly like a picture cut out of cardboard.

In later adventures Tompkins explores cosmology and quantum physics, again in an exaggerated world in which extreme effects become observable. Gamow called this a “fantastic but scientifically correct dream.”

| Science & Math

Holorime

“A Lowlands Holiday Ends in Enjoyable Inactivity,” a poem by Miles Kington:

In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass?
Inertia, hilarious, accrues, hélas!

In certain British dialects, the two lines sound the same.

| Language

Close Enough

Writing in the New Yorker in 1949, John Davenport documented a rising language he’d observed among his countrymen. He called it Slurvian. “When Slurvians travel abroad, they go to visit farn (or forn) countries to see what the farners do that’s different from the way we Murcans do things. While in farn countries, they refer to themselves as Murcan tersts, and usually say they will be mighty glad to get back to Murca.”

bean. A living creature.
course. A group of singers.
fiscal. Pertaining to the body, as opposed to the spurt.
line. King of the beasts.
myrrh. A looking glass.
plight. Courteous.
sport. To hold up, to bear the weight of.
wreckers. Discs on which music is recorded for phonographs.

Writing in the Saturday Review in 1970, Cleveland Amory noted a similar phenomenon in the national pastime:

The pisher no longer goes inna wineup, but a stresh. The firss pish is stry one, followed by ball one. Then stry two, ball two, ball three — the full cown. The ba–er fouls one inna the stanns an the cown remains aa three an two. Finally he flies deep to the senner feeler who makes a long run anna fine runnen catch up againssa wall, beyonna warneen track.

Other dialects: Australia, Baltimore, Canada, Texas.

| Language

“Geographical Enigma”

https://archive.org/details/StrandVolume22/page/n117/mode/2up?view=theater

Charles Craik of Weston-super-Mare received this enigmatic postcard from a friend in 1901 and sent it on to the Strand:

I think it rather cleverly done, and it took me some time before I could understand its meaning.

The principal message is on the big island in the centre of the map — an invitation to meet the sender at a café, with the day. The name of the island below on the left-hand side is at once translated, ‘If so, do.’ The names of the land at the bottom of the map are meant for ‘Same time and place as before’ and ‘Don’t let anything hinder you’ respectively.

The following is a translation beginning at the top and working to the right: ‘Straights of cash. If you don’t come, all sorts of ills befall you. Come early. Let me know if you can come or not. I say, there’s a peculiar thing! You’re getting it by degrees. Can’t you see? Bay rhum. Get your hair cut! Deuced bad straights. See you later. Don’t you see? Devil take you. You are a merry cus! Good old flipper. Love to all. Oh! Tut, tut. R.S.V.P. Yours ever, Guy.’

| Humor · Oddities