Lydia Davis’s translation of Madame Bovary is marvelous. The last clause of today’s WORK is well known as a standalone quotation, but I forgot how the grandeur of that quote is diminished—yet its power in some ways heightened—by the small, human-sized tragedy it is part of…

WORK

Emma was like all other mistresses; and the charm of novelty, slipping off gradually like a piece of clothing, revealed in its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion, which always assumes the same forms and uses the same language. He could not perceive—this man of such broad experience—the difference in feelings that might underlie similarities of expression. Because licentious or venal lips had murmured the same words to him, he had little faith in their truthfulness; one had to discount, he thought, exaggerated speeches that concealed mediocre affections; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since none of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to move the stars to pity.

—Gustave Flaubert
—from Madame Bovary (translated by Lydia Davis)

WORD(S)

dayclean (day clean). noun. Daybreak, dawn. Possibly a back formation from the French Creole ju netye (literally ‘day cleaned’). See also: daylean (sundown).

“…he knew that the Cock going to crow when day clean, an’ ‘creech-owl going to know when day is cleaning an’ go away.” (Jamaican Song and Story) [defined in that book: “day clean: Day is clean when you can see to walk.”]

“At ‘fus daa’k’, ‘middle night’, and ‘day clean’ Cudjo would emerge from the watchman’s house and fire his musket.” (D. C. Heyward)

“ Dayclean: The space between the shadows of night and the first rays of sun. A time when almost anything might happen.” (Ann Hite)

WEB

1. Marian Call performs ►an updated, w00tstock appropriate, version of the Tom Lehrer classic “Elements”. Unless you’re Sheldon Cooper, you might enjoy reading the densely-linked lyrics. If none of this makes sense, for shame! Get thee to ►Lehrer’s original. And a bonus: ►Harry Pott—I mean Daniel Radcliffe—sings it, rather well.

2. Chris Ware—who a friend accurately calls obsessive and amazing—has a new graphic novella, The Last Saturday, appearing in installments in The Guardian with an interesting approach to presentation for web users and mobile devices.

3. Wikipedia page of the moment: List of Lost Films…with examples as late as the 70s! Related: the list of partially lost films (including the would-be-must-see footage of George Clooney and his giant mechanical bear co-start in Grizzly 2 ) and the British Film Institute’s “75 Most Wanted” films believed lost.

4. Sean Scheidt’s before-and-after photographs of burlesque performers.

5. Today in 1908, Lt. Thomas Etholen Selfridge becomes the first person to die in the crash of a powered airplane (the Wright Flyer piloted by Orville Wright). Wright would describe the crash in a letter to Wilbur Wright: “Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started straight for the ground. Our course for 50 feet was within a very few degrees of the perpendicular. Lt. Selfridge up to this time had not uttered a word, though he took a hasty glance behind when the propeller broke and turned once or twice to look into my face, evidently to see what I thought of the situation. But when the machine turned head first for the ground, he exclaimed ‘Oh! Oh!’ in an almost inaudible voice.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. notes the broken link to the Beverly Hillbillies theme song. — That cannot stand and so I stand corrected.

• Reader C. shares John Kenn’s terrifying Post-It note drawings and notes, “Love Gorey! I came across these last week, now seems a good time to send them to you. They’re clearly Gorey inspired.”

• Reader D. thinks that “…blet is practically a poem in a single word. I hear it and I see broken people and politicians.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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