Woven and stratified delite

One of the things I love about the English language is how adaptable it is. Despite the stern prescriptions of high school English teachers, its punctuation, spelling, and syntax can be stretched and spun to convey a broad array of moods and meanings. English also absorbs foreign words (ie, foreign concepts) freely. In this post, I’ll present for your reading pleasure a few samples.

Menace
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.
-20th-century horror novel (from The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft)

Saga
“In the begynnyng of Arthure, aftir he was chosyn Kynge by adventure and by grace—for the moste party of the barowns knew nat he was Uther Pendragon son but as Merlyon made hit openly knowyn, but yet many kyngis and lordis hylde hym grete werre for that cause—
But well Arthur overcom hem all. The moste party dayes of hys lyff he was ruled by the counceile of Merlyon; so hit felle on a tyme Kyng Arthur seyde unto Merlion, “My barownes woll let me have no reste but nedis I must take a wyff—and I wolde none take but by thy counceile and advice.”
-start of a 16th-century tale (from Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory)

Dogfaces
“I tol’im iffie tried to fuck me over, I was gonna kick ‘is fuckin’ ass, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Soey kep’on fuckin’ me over and I kicked ‘is fuckin’ ass in fo’im, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“An so now they tellin’ me they gon’ th’ow my fuckin’ ass inna fuckin’ stoc-kade! You know what? They some kind fuckin’ me over!”
“Fuckin’ A well tol’, Bubba.”
-World War II “army creole” (from Wartime by Paul Fussell)

Piety
“O Untouchable, and forever blessed, singular and incomparable virgin Mary Mother of God, most grateful temple of God, the sacristy of the Holy Ghost, the gate of the kingdom of heaven, by whom next unto God the whole world liveth, incline O Mother of Mercy the ears of thy pity unto my unworthy supplications, and be pitiful to me a most wretched sinner, and be unto me a merciful helper in all things.”
-medieval prayer (from The Book of Hours, 1559 edition)

Description
Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported. For this reason the actual process by which coal is extracted is well worth watching, if you get the chance and are willing to take the trouble.

When you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. This is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time, it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. The time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do. At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. Most of the things one imagines in hell are if there--heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space. Everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of Davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust.
-20th-century journalism (from The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell)

Rant
Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?
No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.
-21st-century anonymous website (from "Fuck the South" by Annotated Rant)

Emotion
i go to this window

just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(and
looking up in fear

i see the new moon
thinner than a hair)

making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you, silently who are
and cling
to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing
-and all about
herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges
inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams
-20th-century poem (“i go to this window” by e. e. cummings)

Correspondence

-20th-century letter (from The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien)

Decadence
“I'm Catherine, Myrtle's sister.”
“Oh.”
“People say we look like twins, but I don't think so.”
“I'm Nick. Won't you sit down? I told that boy about the ice.”
“These servants! You really have to keep after them all the time. You live down on Long Island, too?”
“Yes, in West Egg.”
“Really? I was down at a party in West Egg about a month ago, at a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him. He's German.
“Really?”
“Really. The cousin or nephew or something of Kaiser Wilhelm. That's where all his money comes from.”
“I'm scared of him.”
“Why?”
“I'd hate him to get anything on me.”
“Oh.”
-20th-century aristocrats (from The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald)

Uptight
"You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I - I don't respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to - if I get too mellow, I - I ripen and then rot, you know."
-20th-century Woody Allen (from Annie Hall)