READIN

🦋 Trying to relate

A passage from Night Train to Lisbon that has me thinking about AWB's post about relating to texts -- it's an interesting sentiment and I'm trying to figure out what kind of person would hew to it. Not something I can imagine myself believing.

Spanish -- that was her territory. It was like Latin and completely different from Latin, and that bothered him. It went against his grain that words in which Latin was so present came out of contemporary mouths -- on the streeet, in the supermarket, in the café. That they were used to order Coke, to haggle and to curse. He found the idea hard to bear and brushed it aside quickly and violently whenever it came. Naturally, the Romans had also haggled and cursed. But that was different. He loved the Latin sentences because they bore the calm of everything past. Because they didn't make you say something. Because they were speech beyond talk. And because they were beautiful in their immutability. Dead languages -- people who talked about them like that had no idea, really no idea, and Gregorius could be harsh and unbending in his contempt for them. When Florence spoke Spanish on the phone, he shut the door. That offended her and he couldn't explain it to her.

posted evening of Monday, February 16th, 2009
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Jeremy:

Really curious about this book. To the point of dropping everything else.

posted evening of February 16th, 2009 by paledave

Yeah? What else have you read about it?

posted morning of February 17th, 2009 by Jeremy

A friend at work read it. When she talks books, I listen. She just banged out some Goytisolo.

I am reading Offshore/Penelope Fitzgerald. It's great.

posted evening of February 17th, 2009 by paledave

Nice -- I never read that (not sure I had heard of it before now) but Fitzgerald is the bomb.

posted evening of February 17th, 2009 by Jeremy

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