I really am taking what they call in kindergarten a “time
out” but something happened yesterday that was too delicious to ignore. I learned what “hectocotyliferously”
means. A word of explanation is called
for.
Seventy years ago, when Susie and I were high school girlfriend
and boyfriend, we used to read together the poems of e. e. cummings [lower case
intentional.] cummings was the son of a
Harvard professor and a graduate of Harvard.
One of our favorite poems [#201 in Susie’s copy of Collected Poems] is a hilariously cruel portrait of a Radcliffe
student. It is one of cummmings’ longest
poems, filling two pages. The opening
lines are:
" Gay " is the captivating cognomen of a Young
Woman of cambridge, mass.
to whom nobody seems to have mentioned ye olde freudian wish;
when i contemplate her uneyes safely ensconced in thick glass
you try if we are a gentleman not to think of(sh).
the world renowned investigator of paper sailors — argonauta argo
harmoniously being with his probably most brilliant pupil mated,
let us not deem it miraculous if their(so to speak) offspring has that largo appearance of somebody who was hectocotyliferously propagated.
to whom nobody seems to have mentioned ye olde freudian wish;
when i contemplate her uneyes safely ensconced in thick glass
you try if we are a gentleman not to think of(sh).
the world renowned investigator of paper sailors — argonauta argo
harmoniously being with his probably most brilliant pupil mated,
let us not deem it miraculous if their(so to speak) offspring has that largo appearance of somebody who was hectocotyliferously propagated.
Those lines have stuck in my memory for almost
three-quarters of a century, but in all that time it never occurred to me until
yesterday to find out what “hectocotyliferously” actually means. Well, Google supplied the answer and it was
worth the wait.
hec·to·cot·y·lus noun a modified arm used by
male octopuses and some other cephalopods to transfer sperm to the female.
I shall return to my self-enforced
silence.
That just made me actually laugh out loud (lol) in my work place!
ReplyDeleteThanks for that professor! Lol
Nat
Leaving this here not because it's pertinent, but because it's the easiest way to contact Professor RPW, a devoted fan of early music. Despite being a fan of the work of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, I've only just learned that he composed a divertissement for a comedy by Corneille and de Visee, La Pierre Philosophale (i.e., The Philosopher's Stone)! See, e.g., http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=190278.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the rest of you, but I miss the action on this blog. I'd gotten into the habit of checking it every morning, since the Prof often posts then, after his walk.
ReplyDeleteYeah, me too. I miss his posts. We faithful readers of this blog need to start a new "Me-too" movement. I've gotten so desperate that I've started re-reading the Prof.s', "Kant's Theory of Mental Activity".
ReplyDeleteMagritte was witty. We can agree to disagree, about what makes us think, "Oh, that's a bit Magrittean". What comes to my mind is that in the 60s, people took drugs to achieve that state. Another thing that comes to my mind is Photoshop. As for E.E. Cummings, yea, if I call this unbearably mawkish and vacuous, then it doesn't help to know that he was, from early in his career, among the most admired by writers and critics. Were all of them hornswoggled? Yes.
ReplyDeleteI miss the action in this blog myself. I've strayed into a few other blogs just because of my addiction to useless conversation, but I've discovered that this blog is my digital alma mater.
ReplyDeleteSo let see if we can get a conversation going without the thoughtful stimulation of Professor Wolff. Probably not, but it's worth a try.
Today I read this article in the Guardian about how all Democrats are beating Trump in the polls for the 2020 election.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/trump-2020-presidential-election-polling-results
Without any deep reflection or further data on the subject, I bet that Trump will lose in 2020. Trump, who is smarter than most people in this blog give him credit for, believes that Biden will be the Democratic candidate. At this point, while my candidate is Elizabeth Warren, I'd support any Democrat against Trump, even Biden. What do you people think?
I agree with you. Any Democrat against Trump. Warren is my first choice; Biden, totally apart from his problem votes and actions earlier in a long political career, is too old. Ditto for Bernie,who was my 1st choice last time. James Carville (sp?) said it best: the presidency is no job for an 80 year old. I can vouch for that.
ReplyDeleteIf Warren were the nominee, I wonder who she would pick for VP. My guess would be a somewhat conventional white male like Beto. If this analysis is correct, she wouldn't pick Cory Booker as too much of a departure from all white male at this time. Mayor Pete on a ticket with a woman also may be too much of a departure this time, but I have been impressed with him. He certainly has a promising future.
I agree about the age factor. At age 80 no one has the stamina and the endurance to be president. No problem with being Senator at age 80; in fact, in etymological terms a Senate is an assembly of the old, the idea being that age confers (in some cases) wisdom.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I prefer Warren, but I suspect that she is not going to be the nominee. If she were, Corey Booker actually might be a good choice for VP, since Warren is very white (in spite of her claims to Native-American ancestry) and Booker might get out the African-American vote. By "very white", I mean that she looks and talks and walks like a WASP, unlike Bernie, who looks and talks and walks like someone raised in multicultural Brooklyn.
I know some people here are going to scream at us for saying that we'll support any Democrat, including Biden, but the main goal is to get Trump out of the White House.
After that, we'll worry about the color of the curtains.