Lördag med Gutenberg

^{Efter att ha varit "avkopplad" i flera veckor har jag mycket att ta igen hos Gutenberg. Dags att brodera bårder på min "prettycoat" till exempel}

EMBROIDERY FOR PETTICOATS.

 och jag hur i all världen jag klarat mig så länge utan frukostmössor, är mer än jag förstår.  Det måste åtgärdas omgående!

Fig. 5 is a breakfast cap of alternate Swiss muslin insertion, the frill and fall surrounding the face; an old style reintroduced. Coques of ribbon separate it, and there are strings of the same.

Fig. 6 has also an entire frill, though falling more behind the ear. It is relieved by knots of ribbon. Either of them is suitable for a sick-room cap.

Det är från tidskriften Godey's Lady's Book,  Philadelphia V 48, January, 1854, som jag hämtat dessa kunskaper.

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

THE machine is ready to start. The symbolic beasts grow resty, curveting where they stand at their places in the great blue circle of the year. The Showman’s voice rings out. “Montez, mesdames et messieurs, montez. You, sir, must bestride the Ram. You will take the Scorpion. Yours, madame, is the Goat. As for you there, blackguard boy, you must be content with the Fishes. I have allotted you the Virgin, mademoiselle.” . . . “Polisson!” “Pardon, pardon. Evidemment, c’est le Sagittaire qu’on demande. Ohé, les dards! The rest must take what comes. The Twins shall counterpoise one another in the Scales. So, so. Now away we go, away.”

Ha, what keen air. Wind of the upper spaces. Snuff it deep, drink in the intoxication of our speed. Hark how the music swells and rings. . . . sphery music, music of every vagabond planet, every rooted star; sound of winds and seas and all the simmering millions of life. Moving, singing . . . so with a roar and a rush round we go and round, for ever whirling on a ceaseless Bank Holiday of drunken life and speed.

But I happened to look inwards among the machinery of our roundabout, and there I saw a slobbering cretin grinding at a wheel and sweating as he ground, and grinding eternally. And when I perceived that he was the author of all our speed and that the music was of his making, that everything depended on his grinding wheel, I thought I would like to get off. But we were going too fast.

 

Om Aldous Huxely har jag skrivit tidigare, men då om hans prosa. Nu hittar jag hans Leda, poesi och korta texter. Eftersom det är hans födelsedag i morgon passar det väl bra att slå ett slag för denne författare som hade en sådan fantastisk språkkänsla. Vill du läsa om Aldous Huxely kan jag rekommendera 

Aldous Huxley, An English Intellectual, en biografi av Nicholas Murray.

OH, the maggots, the maggots in his brains!

Words, words and words.

A birth of rhymes and the strangest,

The most unlikely superfœtations—

New deep thoughts begot by a jingle upon a pun,

New worlds glimpsed through the window of a word

That has ceased, somehow, to be opaque.

All the muses buzzing in his head.

Autobiography crystallised under his pen, thus:

  “When I was young enough not to know youth,

  I was a Faun whose loves were Byzantine

  Among stiff trees. Before me naked Truth

  Creaked on her intellectual legs, divine

  In being inhuman, and was never caught

  By all my speed; for she could outrun thought.

  Now I am old enough to know I am young,

  I chase more plastic beauties, but inspire

  Life in their clay, purity in their dung

  With the creative breath of my desire.

  And utter truth is now made manifest

  When on a certain sleeping face and breast

  The moonlight dreams and silver chords are strung,

  And a god’s hand touches the aching lyre.”

  He read it through: a pretty, clinquant thing,

  Like bright spontaneous bird-song in the spring,

  Instinct with instinct, full of dewy freshness.

  Yes, he had genius, if he chose to use it;

  If he chose to—but it was too much trouble,

  And he preferred reading. He lit his pipe,

  Opened his book, plunged in and soon was drowned

  In pleasant seas . . . to rise again and find

  One o’clock struck and his unshaven face

  Still like a record in a musical box,

  And Auntie Loo miles off in Bloomsbury.

Tidigare inlägg om Aldous:

Grattis Aldous!

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