Belphœbe

Waverley

Benjamin — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:45:25 +0000

With an aching heart, as may well be imagined, Edward viewed this wreck of a mansion so respected. But his anxiety to learn the fate of the proprietors, and his fears as to what that fate might be, increased with every step. When he entered upon the terrace, new scenes of desolation were visible. The balustrade was broken down, the walls destroyed, the borders overgrown with weeds, and the fruit-trees cut down or grubbed up.

Sir Walter Scott, Waverley

Unfinished Tales

Benjamin — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:21:03 +0000

‘Great heart!’ said Turambar. ‘Happy was the choice that took you for a helper!’ But even as he spoke, a great stone hurtled from above and smote Hunthor on the head, and he fell into the water, and so ended; not the least valient in the House of Haleth. Then Turambar cried: ‘Alas! It is ill to walk in my shadow! Why did I seek aid? For now you are alone, O Master of Doom, as you should have known it must be. Now conquer alone!’

Then he summoned to him all his will, and all his hatred of the Dragon and his Master, and it seemed that suddenly he found a strength of heart and body that he had not known before; and he climbed the cliff, from stone to stone, and root to root, until he seized at last a tender tree that grew a little beneath the lip of the chasm, and though its top was blasted, it held still fast by its roots. And even as he steadied himself in a fork of its boughs, the midmost parts of the Dragon came above him, and swayed down with their weight almost upon his head, ere Glaurung could heave them up. Pale and wrinkled was their underside, and all dank with a grey slime, to which clung all manner of dropping filth; and it stank of death. Then Turambar drew the Black Sword of Beleg and stabbed upwards with all the might of his arm, and of his hate, and the deadly blade, long and greedy, went into the belly even to its hilts.

J. R. R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales (Narn i Chîn Húrin)

The Betrothed

Benjamin — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:19:30 +0000

‘The bakery! Let’s go to the bakery!’ was the cry.

In the street called the Corsia de’ Servi, there is still today a bakery which bears the same name that it did then. In Tuscan it would be called the ‘Forno delle Grucce’; but in the Milanese dialect its name is made up of such strange, uncouth and barbarous sounds that our alphabet has no symbols to represent them. The crowd hurried off in that direction. The shop people were questioning the delivery boy, who had returned without his basket, looking very frightened and tousled.

The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

The Story of Language

Benjamin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:51:28 +0000

Historical linguists usually make much of place names, and rightly. When a given territory changes hands, the spoken language of the former inhabitants may completely give way to that of the newcomers, but the place names normally remain as a perennial monument to the people who first lived there, though they may change to the point where they are practically unrecognizable, like the Celtic or pre-Celtic Eboracum that ultimately became York.

Mario Pei, The Story of Language

Don Quixote

Benjamin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:08:29 +0000

“Surely these must be poetry, and not books of knighthood,” said the priest, and opening one he saw that it was La Diana by Jorge de Montemayor. Supposing that all the rest were of the same kind, he said “These don’t deserve to be burned like the rest, because they do not and will not cause harm as the books of knighthood have done; moreover they are only books of amusement, and do not prejudice anyone else.”

“Oh, sir!” said Don Quixote’s niece, “you may very well burn them with the rest of the books, because it’s likely that, once my uncle is cured of his knight-illness, he will read them and then decide to become a shepherd, and wander the forests and meadows singing and playing an instrument; and what would be worse, he might become a poet, which they say is an incurable and contagious disease.”

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha

(This passage translated from the Spanish by Benjamin Bruce)

The Song of Hiawatha

Benjamin — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:09:33 +0000

Most beloved by Hiawatha
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers.
Beautiful and childlike was he,
Brave as man is, soft as woman,
Pliant as a wand of willow,
Stately as a deer with antlers.

When he sang, the village listened;
All the warriors gathered round him,
All the women came to hear him;
Now he stirred their souls to passion,
Now he melted them to pity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha

Paradise Lost

Benjamin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:28:12 +0000

All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air
With orient colors waving; with them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To highth of noblest temper heroes old…

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Word Power Made Easy

Benjamin — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:46:25 +0000

These revisions seemed eminently sensible to no less a personage than the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. So delighted was he with the new garb in which these 300 words could be clothed that he immediately ordered that all government documents be printed in simplified spelling. And the result? Such a howl went up from the good citizens of the republic, from the nation’s editors and school-teachers and businessmen, that the issue was finally debated in the halls of Congress.

Norman Lewis, Word Power Made Easy

The Silmarillion

Benjamin — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:59:16 +0000

But Ungoliant had grown great, and he less by the power that had gone out of him; and she rose against him, and her cloud closed about him, and she enmeshed him in a web clinging thongs to strangle him. Then Morgoth sent forth a terrible cry, that echoed in the mountains. Therefore that region was called Lammoth; for the echoes of his voice dwelt there ever after, so that any who cried aloud in that land awoke them, and all the waste between the hills and the sea was filled with a clamour as of voices of anguish.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

The Phoenix and the Carpet

Benjamin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:45:19 +0000

The children had seen the Phoenix egg hatched in the flames in their own nursery grate, and had heard from it how the carpet on their own nursery floor was really the wishing carpet, which would take them anywhere they chose. The carpet had transported them to bed just at the right moment, and the Phoenix had gone to roost on the cornice supporting the window curtains of the boys’ room.

E. Nesbit, The Phoenix and the Carpet