four plain white walls
“I smiled on the four plain white walls of my bedchamber, and hailed their familair unostentatiousness with a pleasure which had no wish to transfer itself to arabesque or rainbows. It was like returning home from an eternity spent in loneliness among the palaces of strangers.”
—Fitz Hugh Ludlow, from The Hasheesh Eater, 1857.
A comma
“A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as you should lead it.”
–Gertrude Stein, quoted in footnote to The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.
that mystic star
“I watch the glitter of that mystic star
Whose shifting tint
Matches the misty color of your eyes”
—Guillaume Apollinaire, from his Calligrammes, 1918. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.
Gigantic shadows
“The sky was full of feces and onions. I cursed the unworthy stars whose light flowed out over the earth. . . . Ships of gold, unmanned, crossed the horizon. Gigantic shadows passed across the distant sails. Several centuries separated me from these shadows. I despaired.”
—Guillaume Apollinaire, Onirocritique, 1908. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885-1918, by Roger Shattuck.
a red thread
“[H]e had read in a Chinese book about the customs of a foreign people whose heads could fly up to the trees to seize their prey, always attached by a red thread, and afterward returned to fit themselves into the bloody collar. But if a certain wind blew the thread would break and the head would fly away beyond the seas.”
—Alfred Jarry, Les jours et les nuits, 1897. Quoted in The Banquet Years: The Arts in France, 1885–1918, by Roger Shattuck.
far beyond
“The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness: they no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her; they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said out of this world. . . .”
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
like wine through water
“‘I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.’”
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
a shower of glass-drops
“Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging on silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there. Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves; shouldn’t they have been happy? We should have thought ourselves in heaven!”
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
The spectre
“The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.”
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847.
the visible and the invisible
“Even today, when I close my eyes, I do not know darkness. Now, still, my brain lights up with a vivid and continual glow the visible and the invisible procession of images—innumerable, sometimes without pattern. The images float over the Danube and over the Desna. The clouds in the sky float free and capriciously; they swim in the vast blue emptiness and meet in so many combats and duels that if I could only snatch a tiny part to put it into books or into films, I would not have lived on this earth in vain. . . .”
—Alexander Dovzhenko, from Beginnings: Sources, 1942; Cinema In Revolution, edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer and Marcel Martin, translated by David Robinson, 1973.