Came across in Chandler this example of a sentence structure I don’t care for and seem to come across fairly frequently (The Campaigns of Napoleon, pp. 594):

Indeed, the pleasures of the chase proved considerably more eventful and certainly more dangerous for senior personnel than many a battle field.

I want this to instead read something like:

Indeed, the pleasures of the chase proved considerably more eventful and certainly more dangerous for senior personnel than the occupational perils of the battle field.

It’s not the lack of an exactly parallel structure per se that bothers me, but the logical problem that Chandler seems to want to contrast the dangers of a leisure activity (hunting) with the dangers of an occupational activity (battle) yet winds up comparing the dangers of the pleasures of a leisure activity with the dangers of an occupational activity. This seems to me not just non-parallel in form but also a little unequal in content.

But then I will think of “austere composition” and of how I must really prefer Chandler’s sentence to my own, as being more natural —

(The austere style) does not in the least shrink from using frequently harsh sound-clashings which jar on the ear ; like blocks of building stone that are laid together unworked, blocks that are not square and smooth, but preserve their natural roughness and irregularity.

And more:

its clauses (are) not parallel in structure, or sound, nor slaves to a rigid sequence, but noble, brilliant, free.

In the end, we know exactly what Chandler meant, which is the precondition for writing a post of this kind.

A cold-blooded dedication to stopping climate change means having the willingness to step away from our comfortable shibboleths, accept the criticism that comes with that, and place ourselves squarely behind a plan that has a chance of working. Building out renewable energy will get us part of the way there, but we’ve got more to do and not much time to do it.…We Need a Massive Climate War Effort—Now

A story tells that once, when they had only a bundle of straw for a bed, a poor man came to beg some straw for a bed for his sick wife. Akiva at once divided with him his scanty possession, remarking to his wife, “Thou seest, my child, there are those poorer than we!” This pretended poor man was none other than the prophet Elijah, who had come to test Akiva… Akiva

The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art. Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement…. De Profundis

A pile contained within a third of the circular table surface, surface covered with a checkered table cloth, white and light blue squares predominant. Cerulean central flowers in glass jar — green in the glass of stems half cut by water.

A lone advertisement in third adjacent and to the right of the third that contains the pile (magazine offer); a todo list written on the back of an envelope in the third adjacent and to the right of that one (“store, laundry, Dad”); two pencils around, both short, one a pale yellow and the other a US flag, its likeness, wrapped around the pencil.

The bulk of the pile being comprised of refrigerator magnets (exterior of refrigerator surface having been cleaned) — Cairo, Amsterdam, Iceland, a figure of a gnome, a figure of two cats, a bottle opener that says “Vatican”, largest the circular blue Obama/ Biden and assorted post cards [e.g., from Greece, the Lion’s Gate] and pictures [E.g., woman holding child in arms, evincing pleasure]; the pile, at its highest point, about three inches above table level; in width, the radius of the table minus two inches; the light over it, that of the middle of a gray spring morning.

“Quelle douce mort, si alors elle fût venue ! Si j’avais peu goûté les biens de la vie, j’en avais peu senti les malheurs. Mon âme paisible pouvait partir sans le sentiment cruel de l’injustice des hommes, qui empoisonne la vie et la mort.” [*]

*

How sweet death would be had it come then! Though I’d tasted few of life’s goods, I’d felt also few of its misfortunes; and my peaceful soul would have left without understanding how unjust man can be, which poisons both life and death.

While reading David Chandler’s history of the Napoleonic campaigns, I’ve been vaguely comparing (because of War and Peace and it’s associations) Napoleon and Tolstoy; and this leapt to mind with particular vehemence this morning when I learned of Napoleon’s emotional devastation on first discovering his wife Josephine’s infidelity. I can’t think, from the time when I was heavy into Tolstoy, of him having experienced a similar devastation; rather Tolstoy was the one who, in his youth at least, was devastating in these matters. Chandler writes of Napoleon’s disillusionment (pp.227):

The whole of Europe was to be affected by this destruction of Bonaparte’s personal happiness. July 25, 1798, was indeed an unfortunate turning point in the life of Bonaparte; from that day, the tyrant began to emerge ever more clearly.

Perhaps Chandler is disposed to romanticize Napoleon’s feelings for Josephine a bit, yet one wonders if there is a kind of sense to the idea of Generals being romantics and Authors being libertines, that or of us thinking of them in that way…. I come across randomly, in the evening, that Stendhal seems not to have known of Josephine’s infidelities (or Napoleon’s):

Au reste, le seul être qu’il ait jamais aimé est Joséphine et elle ne le trahit jamais.

Stendhal an admirer of Napoleon, and Tolstoy a despiser of him, and Tolstoy, though too, an admirer of Stendhal. Interesting trifecta there as (at least, I think I’ve read this) Tolstoy used the opening of La Chartreuse for one of War and Peace’s battle scenes with Pierre.

Ngrams: Napoleon,Tolstoy,Stendhal … English language, yet interest in Napoleon, while currently enjoying a resurgence, has clearly dropped to 1810 levels, if the “viewer” can be believed — while remaining higher than interest in Tolstoy has ever been. Tolstoy, Stendhal about even til the 1890’s.

“C’est par amour de la perfection que ces figures sont imparfaites…” Journals, Eugène Delacroix

“I do not know whether I have told you already,” said Don Quixote, as he took leave of Don Lorenzo, “but if so I tell you again that, if you would spare yourself fatigue and toil in reaching the inaccessible summit of the temple of fame, all you need do is turn aside from the somewhat narrow path of poetry and take the still narrower one of knight-errantry. It is wide enough, however, to make you an emperor in the twinkling of an eye.” (Don Quixote, Book 2 chapter 18. Revised Ormsby translation.)

*

-No sé si he dicho a vuesa merced otra vez, y si lo he dicho lo vuelvo a decir, que cuando vuesa merced quisiere ahorrar caminos y trabajos para llegar a la inacesible cumbre del templo de la Fama, no tiene que hacer otra cosa sino dejar a una parte la senda de la poesía, algo estrecha, y tomar la estrechísima de la andante caballería, bastante para hacerle emperador en daca las pajas. [here]

ngrams: garbage can,recycling bin,bottled water ; dump,dumpster,landfill

” L’opium est la seule substance végétale qui nous communiqué l’etat végétal. Par lui nous avons une idee de cette autre vitesse des plantes.” (Cocteau as quoted by Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave.)

This is kind of interesting: nuclear is more associated with the word ‘power’ than with the word ‘energy’ (here) and solar more associated with the word ‘energy’ than with the word ‘power’ (here), though I suppose it is in part explained by the fact that we use ‘nuclear power’ to denote both energy derived from nuclear reactions and countries possessed of nuclear armaments, while there is no corresponding tic in usage in the case of solar that I can think of.

But what might be the reason for the huge divergence in mentions of power and energy circa 1980? –power over energy with respect to nuclear and energy over power with respect to solar? The oil crisis must be involved but I can’t think of why. Wind power,wind energy occurrences are also elevated in 1980 but there isn’t the same divergence between the two. Nor does power,energy tell us much: ‘energy’ reached its apex during the crisis, while ‘power’ was drifting towards its lows.

An interesting insight of Matisse found in Danchev’s Cezanne, a Life:

“The life of the artist is often a trial to the wife of the artist as Matisse himself remarked: ‘As for me, I remain an old fool, as Madame Paul Cezanne called her husband. They tell me that Madame Pissarro said the same of her husband. These women of humble origins had served their husbands according to their lights, judging their heroes as if they were simple carpenters who had taken it into their heads to make tables with legs in the air.’ Matisse was right. Even the humble and colossal Pissarro was accused of being a pie-in-the-sky fantasist by the long-suffering stout-hearted Julie. Hortense was in good company, company not confined to women of humble origins.“

Nora Barnacle, maybe, of a similar stripe.

Grouping of the passages from La Reserche I looked into —

On Art, Writing

Pouvoir être éclaircie, elle qu’on vit dans les ténèbres
Une Patrie Inconnue
Si l’art n’est que cela, il n’est pas plus réel que la vie
Ce milieu que nous ne voyons pas
Le gisement lui-même
(Knowledge and Art)

On Behavior / General

les autruches humaines
Le ton dubitatif pour les résolutions irrévocables
Water Lily passage (stupidity multiplier)
,,,parce que nous mourons nous-mêmes
Ces hécatombes de régiments anéantis
le défilé d’une armée compacte
Une sanglante barrière
Larivière
Fanés

ngrams viewer: creeped out ; creeped out, creeps me out, creeped me out ; creepy, spooky ; creepy, spooky, scary ; creepy , spooky, scary, weird ; creepy, spooky, scary, weird, bizarre ; creepy, spooky, scary,weird, bizarre, strange; creepy man, creepy woman, creepy dude, creepy person (Maybe interesting, ngrams returns no results for creepy animals of various sorts. Creepy spider ; creepy spider, creepy insect; creepy spider, creepy insect, creepy bug. creepy, creeped out).

WOW: creepy guy is way more popular than creepy man and creepy dude: creepy dude,creepy guy,creepy man. Creepy gal ‘is not found’ but creepy boy is: creepy boy,creepy man.

“Je n’étais pas un seul homme, mais le défilé heure par heure d’une armée compacte où il y avait, selon le moment, des passionnés, des indifférents, des jaloux — des jaloux dont pas un n’était jaloux de la même femme.” [Albertine Disparue 92]

“Les changements de l’atmosphère en provoquent d’autres dans l’homme intérieur, réveillent des « moi » oubliés, contrarient l’assoupissement de l’habitude, redonnent de la force à tels souvenirs, à telles souffrances.” [Albertine Disparue 93]

Was trying to remember the exact wording and provenance of this phrase through much of today:

I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

Here. Given the current political situation, it is refreshing, too, to find a distinction made between official duty and personal wish, particularly in a case where the latter is of a more generous kind than the former.

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Written on the Wind, with its sports cars and oil rigs and derricks, reminds me very much of similar scenes from La Dolce Vita, made some four years later –the scene where Marcello and his girlfriend have a spat in the industrial park. (Oil rig replica conclusion of this movie also striking.)