the arch-angel Gabriel
“I was one day reading Young’s Night Thoughts, and when I came to that passage which asks ‘who can paint an angel,’ I closed the book and cried, ‘Aye! who can paint an angel?’ A voice in the room answered, ‘Michael Angelo could.’ ‘And how do you know,’ I said, looking round me, but I saw nothing save a greater light than usual. ‘I know,’ said the voice, ‘for I sat to him; I am the arch-angel Gabriel.’ ‘Oho!’ I answered, ‘you are, are you; I must have better assurance than that of a wandering voice; you may be an evil spirit—there are such in the land.’ ‘You shall have good assurance,’ said the voice, ‘can an evil spirit do this?’ I looked whence the voice came, and was then aware of a shining shape, with bright wings, who diffused much light. As I looked, the shape dilated more and more: he waved his hands; the roof of my study opened; he ascended into heaven; he stood in the sun, and beckoning to me, moved the universe. An angel of evil could not have done that—It was the arch-angel Gabriel.”
—William Blake, as quoted in Major’s Cabinet Gallery of Pictures: with Historical and Critical Descriptions and Dissertations, by Allan Cunningham, 1833. From William Blake: The Critical Heritage, edited by G.E. Bentley, Jr, 1975.
descriptions of enigma
“In descriptions of enigma, the most common lexis and troping by far is that of light and dark. Down through the centuries, poets and rhetoricians and novelists and others routinely speak of enigma as “dark” or “obscure.” Johann Buchler’s 1548 Parnasstus’ Poeticus provides a list of modifiers for the Latin word aenigma. The list reads: “caecum, durum, latebrosum, tenebrosum,” that is, “blind (i.e. dark or unintelligible or concealed), hard, obscure, shadowy.”. . .
“Obscure” belongs to a whole family of synonyms that describe riddles and enigmas: veils, clouds, mists, and so on.”
—Eleanor Cook, from Enigmas and Riddles in Literature, 2006.
Aenigma.
Sermo obscurus, a riddle or darke allegorie, as: The halfe is more then the hole.
—Richard Sherry, from A Treatise of the Figures of Grammar and Rhetoric, London, 1550. As cited in a footnote in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.
“The half is often more than the whole”
“Was not their error that they forgot the solid truth of Hesiod’s saying that ‘The half is often more than the whole?’ He meant that when it is useful to get the whole, but the half is sufficient, then the modestly sufficient, the better, is more than the disproportionate, the worse.”
—Plato, from his Laws. As quoted in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.
omnes ab ovo
“The central question in biology today was posed by William Harvey nearly 350 years ago: omnes ab ovo, everything comes from the egg.”
—Horace Freeland Judson, on embryology. From The Search for Solutions, 1980.
“Egg”
“Reader, in your hand you hold
A silver case, a box of gold.
I have no door, however small,
Unless you pierce my tender wall,
And there’s no skill in healing then
Shall ever make me whole again.
Show pity, Reader, for my plight:
Let be, or else consume me quite.”
—Jay Macpherson, “Egg,” from Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming Disaster, 1981. As quoted in Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook, 2006.
an exact mirror-image likeness
“‘Yes, that is rich ore,’ Al agreed in what would prove to be an understatement. What Ed had found was an outcropping of ore six or seven inches wide and some forty to fifty feet long. In some places, this ore was so nearly pure silver that they could press a half-dollar into it, pull it out, and see an exact mirror-image likeness of the coin left behind.”
—Odie B. Faulk, on brothers Al and Ed Schieffelin. Ed was the discoverer of silver and gold on the land which they would name Tombstone, Arizona. From Tombstone: Myth and Reality, 1972.
“out-of-round”
“Actually a miner needed little excuse to come to the new camp, for many of them were vagabonds at heart. He went to see each new “elephant” (an expression of the day which had originated with P. T. Barnum’s introduction of the circus elephant; “to see the elephant” meant to satisfy one’s curiosity). He might take a job for a day, a week, a month, or longer, and then he would leave for no better reason than finding a lump in his morning oatmeal or because the morning’s hotcakes were “out-of-round.””
—Odie B. Faulk, on working conditions in Tombstone in the 1880s. from Tombstone: Myth and Reality, 1972.
The darkest hours of the night are those which immediately precede the dawn
“The darkest hours of the night are those which immediately precede the dawn. We believe the time is not far distant when our grand old camp will rise from the waves and shake her crested head aloft with pride as of yore.”
—John Clum, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph, in February, 1900. As quoted in Tombstone: Myth and Reality by Odie B. Faulk, 1972.
a luminous silver lining
“A party of distinguished arrivals were in Tombstone today, and their presence gave rise to the general hope that the dark murky clouds that have long hovered over Tombstone’s industrial atmosphere would rise and reveal a luminous silver lining. Whispers, murmurs and rumors of the opening of the Tombstone mines under a consolidated management, would, if consummated, bring about a dawn of prosperity never equalled hereabouts, and the sunshine of consequent good times would start the sluggish commercial blood into the renewed activity and vigor of halcyon days.”
—John Clum, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph, October 21, 1900. As quoted in Tombstone: Myth and Reality by Odie B. Faulk, 1972.