Exchanging messages with a reader and I realized that one of the reasons I adore both asyndeton (our last WORD) and polysyndeton (today’s WORD) is because both are methods of manipulating lists, a device I am obsessed with.
WORK
“Reaching the cascade, or rather cataract, the roaring of which had a long time announced its vicinity, my soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye produced an equal activity in my mind. My thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery. Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose with renewed dignity above its cares. Grasping at immortality—it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me; I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft
—from Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
WORD(S)
polysyndeton /POL-ee-SIN-də-tahn/. noun. The use of several conjunctions—usually repeated—in succession. AKA “overly many conjunctions.” A very common biblical device and one which often adds gravity, mystery, breathlessness, or expansiveness to a phrase. From Greek polu (poly) + sundetos (bound together).
“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” (King James Bible)
“Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war—not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars.” (James Goldman)
“Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath and the ruling part.” (Marcus Aurelius)
“Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes
capons and clocks the tongues of bawds and dials the
signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun himself
a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no
reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand
the time of the day.” (William Shakespeare)“It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing ground-shudder watching it till it was gone.” (Cormac McCarthy)
WEB
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Apocalypse Then: Medieval Illuminations from the Morgan celebrating “the completion of a facsimile of the Morgan’s Las Huelgas Apocalypse—the latest dated (1220) and largest surviving manuscript of a Spanish tradition of illuminated commentaries on the Apocalypse by the monk Beatus of Liébana”
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I was initially unsure of this “cradle Christian’s” take on David Foster Wallace, but she nails how his work isn’t religious, but can be complementary to it and—most importantly—that far from being an ironic hipster, Wallace was sincere (in hindsight, perhaps overly so) → “Everybody Worships: On David Foster Wallace”
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In part thanks to the popularity of The Imitation Game, the Alan Turing notebook that had been kept a secret due to a “a deeply personal message written in the blank centre pages of the notebook” sold for over a million dollars to an anonymous buyer. More history lost to the highest bidder.
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And speaking notebooks found: “Wounded First World War soldier’s notebook of 99 years ago is discovered in drawer by relative”
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Today in 1564, William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, inaugurating the daty traditionally observed as his birthday (and St. George’s Day). Shakespeare’s actual date of birth remains unknown, but the symmetry with the date of his death—April 23, 1616—has proven irresistible to historians and aficionados alike. Treat yourself to some words from the Bard! Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets are available all over, such as at Open Source Shakespeare. If you’re a serious reader, you need printed books, and you can’t go wrong with the Arden Shakespeare series which has more supplementary materials, information and notes than most readers will ever need, along with a few necessities from other publishers such as the unconflated Quarto text of King Lear from Oxford Press. Or listen to Shakespeare’s Restless World, a podcast that explores the world of shakespeare through 20 objects from his time. Or watch some clips from the Improvised Shakespeare Company. Or learn about—and possibly support Elsinore—a “time-traveling narrative adventure game based in the world of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” Or just take in Shakespeare’s entire works one Tweet at a time.
WATCH/WITNESS
You probably don’t know what you’re looking at above…take 4.5 minutes to watch and learn the extraordinary story behind the late Paul Smith’s art.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
- Reader W. asks: “What happened to the watch/witness? We want and wonder where it went.” — I’d like to claim it was a test to see if anyone cared, but really I managed to be both too busy and too slothful to fit it in!
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