[ilds] Count Banubula tells it straight.

[Bruce Redwine]

David, back to your original point about Durrell’s Latinate vocabulary as a “revolt” against the Englishness of his era (the Auden diction).  I think there’s something to that, although his diction changes from work to work (look at the opening to Sicilian Carousel).  I also think he was strongly influenced by Renaissance English (his “Elizas” in particular), during which period occurred the greatest influx of Latin borrowings (about 12,000 according to Baugh and Cable’s History of the English Language, 3rd ed.).  Durrell’s Latinate prose is sonorous and can be likened to Thomas Browne’s, especially works like Urn Burial.

Bruce




> On May 26, 2016, at 4:06 PM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> 
> I would say there are many who have never encountered this word. Certainly the modern novelists and writers in English tend not to use such terms and my friends do at the pub would look at me strangely if I describe the dusk as crepuscular. As to the term 'harvest moon' being a Victorian code word for a normal nob, I had no idea. But thanks, I keep for the right moment and let it go. Anyway, there a writers one can read without recourse to a dictionary and writers for whom such recourse is on Occassion necessary. Durrell is one of the later and this is a good thing. Years ago I saw a French film called in English 'A Very Long Engagement. The World War One French soldiers called their trench 'Bingo Crepuscule'. At first I though it a joke name. Then I looked up Crepuscule and it made sense. Live and learn.
> 
> David 
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On 26 May 2016, at 4:59 PM, Richard Pine <pinedurrellcorfu at gmail.com <mailto:pinedurrellcorfu at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>> I'm interested that you think 'crepuscular' an obscure term. And as you use the term 'harvest moon' do you know that it was a Victorian codeword for an uncircumcised penis?
>> RP
>> 
>> On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 7:35 AM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au <mailto:dtart at bigpond.net.au>> wrote:
>> Haven't you noticed Charlock that most things in life happen just outside one's range of vision? One has to see them out of the corner of one's eye. And any one thing could effect any number of others? I mean there seem to be always a dozen perfectly appropriate explanations to every phenomenon. That is what makes our reasoning minds so unsatisfactory; and yet, they are all we've got, this shabby piece of equipment."
>> 
>> Count Banubula to Charlock in a bar (of course) p 100 Faber Hardback ed, 1968.
>> 
>> The count maybe right, indeed, this struck me as so true, the big harvest moon you just can't touch. But Charlock has the Dactyl, his Abel or enabler, I Should say.
>> This book is dotted with such Philosophic gems and obscure Latinate words like crepuscular, part, perhaps of his Mediterranean revolt against northern Saxon verbal 'Puritanism'. Stay with this book, it delivers like the sun slowly rising over a broadening landscape.
>> 
>> David Whitewine
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad

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