--- Jason ---
Naturally, a word begins to appear everywhere, no matter how obscure it may appear.
Thus, after quintessence, squintessence, there is this, from The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker:
"I have already made very creditable connexions in this here place; where, to be sure, we have the very squintasense of satiety..."
I appreciate this for its feeling of "a squint at sense" which seems highly appropriate for a character so badly educated as to be required to take the existence of such a thing on trust.
This also dovetails with Mr Kramer's take on 'clumsiness', with the very structure of this epistolary novel being exemplary in this regard, as voice is matched against voice, with the assumption, rather naturally, that the author is at least as capable as his most capable creation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Right. Smollett tends to be a very good author, and I appreciate your commentary on 'polyphony' etc. -- i.e. the voice of the narratee in the epistolary genre as 'echoing' the narrator and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteOne also wonders as to the order of essences,
primessence -- water.
secondessence -- air
tressence ------- dust
quatressence -------- fire
quintessence ------------ ether
sextassence ------ sugar?
and so on ad infinitum.
Looks like the Big Bang Theory for Fatties; Possibly also Anorectics in Purgatory in some higher order ordering. Conversely, there's the sugar in space module: a simple sugar molecule of glycolaldehyde in a giant cloud of gas and dust near the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy. But it is a mark of the trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of that subject permits (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics), and I've run out of permissible references.
ReplyDelete