Monday, January 6, 2014
Cry havoc and let slip the snarks of war
We're plodding through yet another exegesis of my Snark GN … deep in the anapestic bowels of Fit the Second …
Each Fit begins with a frontispiece involving a pun of some sort — the feebler the better — and a clumsily hidden depiction of the Snark. Alert readers will remember that the Snark is I, hence, the Snark as Eye is liberally scattered throughout the book. Less alert readers can look it all up on google.
The Bellman's speech is of that particular British provenance yclept "fruity". Not so much "plummy" but rather … "peachy". If one removes the fuzzy skin thereof (the burr, so to speak) one is left with a nectarine. This fruit (spelled n-e-c-t-a-r-i-n-e but pronounced "stuffed cabbage") was the preferred nutrition of most cavemen and it was they who first domesticated the dog.
We see here a sample of that species, a young pup named Laelaps, who attends upon his master's fruity voice. And what does he hear? A sonorous mussitation which leaves no impression upon him at all, for, as Thomas Aquinas noted, dogs have no souls. Hence their proverbial high fidelity is but a marketing ploy.
A dog, a peach, a gramophone — after all these years, my own 3-piece jazz combo! At last, I can take a bath. And just in time too, my gin-driven ink-pen's almost run dry.
What enjoyable writing to read!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Martin. You are no slouch in the writing dept. either … your Encyclopaedia of Hell was the funniest book I've read since … The Magic Christian?
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