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National Punctuation Day

September 24th was National Punctuation Day. Who knew? And what . . . no interrobang‽

Line and colour

“Strictly speaking there is neither line nor colour in nature. It is man that creates line and colour. They are twin abstractions which derive their equal status from their common origin. . . .

Line and colour both of them have the power to set one thinking and dreaming, the pleasures which spring from them are of different natures, but of a perfect equality and absolutely independent of the subject of the picture.”

—Charles Baudelaire, ‘The LIfe and Word of Eugene Delacroix’, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated by Jonathan Mayne, 1964.

“Edgar Poe loves to set his figures in action against greenish or purplish backgrounds, in which we can glimpse the phosphorescence of decay and sniff the coming storm. . . . Space is extended by opium, which also adds a magical accent to every tint, a more meaningful resonance to every sound. Sometimes magnificent vistas, flooded with colour and light, open out suddenly in the midst of his landscapes, in whose depths loom Oriental cities and fantastic edifices, vaporized by the distance over which the sun pours its showers of golden rain.”

—Charles Baudelaire, ‘Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works’, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated by Jonathan Mayne, 1964.

white bark gleaming in the sunshine

“He glanced at the row of birch-trees impassive in their yellows and greens, with their white bark gleaming in the sunshine. ‘To die . . . let me get killed tomorrow and have done with it . . . let everything else carry on, but with me gone.’ He had a clear vision of his own non-existence in this life. And suddenly those birch trees, with their light and shade, the wispy clouds and the smoke-plumes rising from the fires, everything around him seemed to have been transformed into something terribly ominous. A cold shiver ran down his back. He got quickly to his feet, strode out of the barn and went for a walk.”

—Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, 1869; translated by Anthony Briggs, 2005. (p. 855)

Foenetic speling

“Foenetic speling wil maek reeding and rieting neerly automatic for evrybody.”

—Ed Rondthaler, quoted in “Edward Rondthaler, Foenetic Speler, Dies at 104”, his New York Times obituatry. Ed was also, not incidentally, a typographer.

Ed Rondthaler

The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

a lavender-grey dog

‘The French called her Azor, the story-telling soldier called her Femgalka, but Karatayev called her Greycoat, or sometimes Floppy. She was just a lavender-grey dog, apparently quite unconcened at having no master, no name, no particular breed, not even a definite colour.”

—Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, 1869; translated by Anthony Briggs, 2005. (pp. 1120-1121)

a pink quilt

“ ‘You remember!’ Sonya went on. ‘I saw him. I told you, all of you, you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed,’ she said, emphasizing every detail by gesturing with a lifted finger, ‘and he had his eyes shut, and he was covered with a pink quilt, and he had his hands folded,’ said Sonya, with growing certainty, as she ran through the details they had just set eyes on, that she had actually seen them before. At the time she hadn’t seen anything at all; she had blurted out the first thing that came into her head. But what she had invented then now seemed as real as any other actual memory. What she had said at the the time—that he had looked round and smiled at her, and he was covered wtih something red—she remembered clearly now, and she was absolutely certain about what she had seen and said: he had been covered with a pink quilt—yes, it was pink—and his eyes had been closed.

‘Yes, it was pink,’ said Natasha, who also seemed to have an inking that it had been a pink quilt, and this little detail was the oddest thing, the real mystery behind the prophetic vision.

‘What does it mean?’ said Natasha, thinking about it.

‘I don’t know! It’s all so weird!’ said Sonya, clutching at her head.”

—Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, 1869; translated by Anthony Briggs, 2005. (p. 1064)