Like many personal blogs of its era, this blog is moribund, a casualty of what we might call "the Facebook effect." However, as of late 2015, two things are clear: (1) The Indie Web is a thing, and (2) the re-decentralization of the web is a thing. So who knows? 2016 2017 2018 (!) could be the year this blog rises from its own ashes. Stay tuned!
night by silentsailing night while infantina Isobel (who will be blushing all day to be, when she growed up one Sunday, Saint Holy and Saint Ivory, when she took the veil, the beautiful presentation nun, so barely twenty, in her pure coif, sister Isobel, and next Sunday, Mistlemas, when she looked a peach, the beautiful Samaritan, still as beautiful and still in her teens, nurse Saintette Isabelle, with stiffstarched cuffs but on Holiday, Christmas, Easter mornings when she wore a wreath, the wonderful widow of eighteen springs, Madame Isa Veuve La Belle, so sad but lucksome in her boyblue’s long black with orange blossoming weeper’s veil) for she was the only girl they loved, as she is the queenly pearl you prize, because of the way the night that first we met she is bound to be, methinks, and not in vain, the darling of my heart, sleeping in her april cot, within her singachamer, with her greengageflavoured candywhistle duetted to the crazyquilt, Isobel, she is so pretty, truth to tell, wildwood’s eyes and primarose hair, quietly, all the woods so wild, in mauves of moss and daphnedews, how all so still she lay, neath of the whitethorn, child of tree, like some losthappy leaf, like blowing flower stilled, as fain would she anon, for soon again ‘twill be, win me, woo me, wed me, ah weary me! deeply, now even calm lay sleeping; (556)This fragment is actually part of a much longer “sentence” that spans several paragraph breaks before finally hitting a full stop. There are several things going on here, but most importantly, we get images of Issy (the Wake’s young female particle) as an infant, as a beautiful little girl, as a blossoming woman, as the object of male desire. I don’t think I care to explain much more than that — the main reason I love this passage is because it is so beautiful and poetic. That is the true joy of the Wake. If it reads like gobbledegook to you, you probably won’t ever understand my obsession. If you admit that there is something interesting going on here, well, perhaps you’re susceptible to the bug, too.
Your thoughts?
© 2016 Matthew Newton, published under a Creative Commons License.