The Impressions of Horror by Season.

Rereading this passage from an old letter, I am moved to seek out examples to illustrate my former impressions.  Horror and season.  Hmm.  Horror too is a sort of lens, and it comes in many subtle variations of shade, but all pervaded by the physiological and psychological range of reactions which, in various proportions, characterize an instance of horror just as the proportions of the features on a man's face.  Here, more revulsion and what we have seen; there, more dread at what we have not; here again, a serene, as if suffocated, beauty; there now, so

I am too tired now, and too anxious at a chapter I must submit on Tuesday, to think further hereon, but I might as well put down now, that further elaboration of season and horror will require closer examination of season as an aesthetic and philosophic category.  Let's see, season alone gives us time of life, circularity of time, patterns of decay and renewal, the power of nature, man's impotence against both time and nature, inevitability, constant change, the subdivision of time, life and afterlife, orientation and disorientation.  Aesthetically, each season has very distinctive offerings, which vary by time and place, but which are generally spelt out below.

But surely not all horror makes conscious reference to season.  In the modern world, in particular, now divorced from the land, our sources of horror are not so seasonal as before.  Season plays a part, but it surely is not "intrinsically attached to season."  More attention on this point in my scarce leisure.
 

Jan., 2010:––
     With a little thought, I've come to think that horror, while omnipresent, is intrinsically attached to season.  How horror manifests itself in any given instance is largely determined by its setting, and the setting in turn changes from season to season. Indeed, I'm sure you would agree that even your own house, while physically the same in Winter as in Summer, does not feel like the same place in both seasons. Different seasons are like different lenses: while we are seeing the same horror, we see and appreciate it as the lens shows it.
     Spring is the season of primitive bestiality, where passions are high and the horror is atavistic. Man is the monster -- our monstrous subconscious makes us so. It's the season of a restless mind pulled forward by an even more restless body. It's the season of impulse and desire.
     The horror in Summer, I think, is the most abstract. You would need to read Machen to get a really good idea of it, but the horror of Summer is the horror of losing touch with reality and finding the splendorous planes of high and rich imagination. On those planes, we can, of course, very easily forget who we are and what we are about. Summer is the season of a calm body and a restless mind. On long walks in the Summer, with the thick foliage, the ample sunlight, the hot nights and the night rains, the thunderstorms -- then, a fortnight later, drought, and the interminable hum of the cicadas.
     The spirit of Fall is abstract as Spring is not. It's the horror of nostalgia, and, by extension, of memory. In Fall, we are confronted with our mortality, and we are forced to look inward to define who we are. Naturally, when we look inward, we should expect to uncover some rather horrifying revelations. And, there is always the perversity that the most morbid season should also be the most colorful, and to many sensibilities the most beautiful.
     Fall is the most used backdrop for horror; Winter is the least. I believe Winter is the season wherein the external horror is greatest: in Winter, the climate is as harsh as it will get. Consider, if you had to walk three miles through a forest and forgot your jacket, you would be killed. The same task could, in Summer, be accomplished wearing nothing at all! Cold gathers and lingers like a poisonous gas, and we wear our heaviest clothes to protect ourselves. This is the cruelest season, and it is fittingly also the starkest. But, in its starkness, there is a degree of intense beauty and matchless purity absent in all the other seasons. Winter is the season of desolation, and so inclined are we to stay inside during it, that it is often left to its own devices. Surely, any one who has gone for a long, lonesome walk on a day of heavy snow can recall the eerie effect the snow has on sound: it is all at once very intimate -- the sounds are very close and soft -- and isolating. Some times, one finds that Winter also has the strongest character. While the other seasons send their emissaries in the forms of animals and sounds and plants, Winter comes as himself, and when he finds you walking alone, he accompanies you as himself.

Suspicions.

     A student in the course for which I am T.A. turned in a suspicious paper.  She is a Chinese student, not a native speaker of English, who is quiet and retiring in class, and whose earlier paper for the course I failed, more for its want of coherent or accurate argument than for its broken English.  But she, who wrote earlier of ancient Greeks as a Mesopotamian people, and of the Maya as an ancient Near Eastern civilization, and who wrote of the storms caused by 'Typhonius', writes for me now a most polished essay, submitted days early, succinctly comparing Dumézil, Müller, and Campbell, and organized into paragraphs of such uniform length that they seem to march in formation down the page, and within these are scattered almost irritatingly glib parentheticals and asides.  There is almost a smirk behind the words, and it hardly required the skills of a philologist to feel that these were the words of a rather sardonic young poseur, with a wry smile on his lips like one of the less sympathetic characters in a Dostoevsky novel. 

     I commented on her paper that I could scarcely believe that the authors of her two papers were the same person.  Let her pause at that.  But I am very impressed and pleased with her progress.  And indeed I have graded it as an honest piece of work, though picturing in my mind the advertisements, written in Chinese only, that I had seen posted around our building offering the services of academic ghost-writers.  For it occurred to me that, no less likely than that she paid for the present paper, it could well be her genuine work: on her first paper, she, insecure and anxious, hires a ghost-writer, who, knowing nothing of Greek myth, writes nonsense and tries to cheat her.  Failing the paper, she thinks, Why am I wasting my money on this rubbish?, and sits down to write her own paper.  Am I wrong to give her the benefit of the doubt, and to deem her a sapient who learned her lesson, instead of a fool twice over?

Preparedness.

It is more comforting than I can convey in words, and has brought me a peace of mind and serenity of attitude which to my anxious and fearful disposition have since birth been foreign, to ensure that my affairs are in such an order, that I would feel not the least pang of regret if accident should befall me while I am away from my room.  The instructions in case of disease are composed and placed where they will soon be found, the letters written to my intimates are sealed therein.  There is nothing of which I should be ashamed (excepting maybe some old journals), nothing that would need to be hidden.  All is ready for my departure.  And daily, one is relieved to step out of doors with his face shaven, his bed made, and his dishes washed, that all should be in not a shameful condition if fortune dictate that they be left for another to find.  Thus arranged, there is that sense of comfort like to that when traveling with a chaperon, when one feels that everything is taken care of, and he need not fret about the baggage or the hotel room.  

Only, as all things in the mind are balanced, my now usual serenity succumbs to choking anxiety if I must step into public unshaven, or if emergency compels me to leave my bed unmade.  Surely, the world being by nature cruel, to-day, when I am most vulnerable, will be the day I am forced to retreat, and my punctilious bed-making and dish-washing and shaving will avail me naught.  But that is not so bad.  The weightiest matters are arranged, and everyone I know will hear from me what they need to hear.  Only, I imagine my last thought on seeing a 99 'bus barreling down upon me as I cross 10th Ave., would be Ach, I will never now how it all turns out with the world! 

Hypotaxis.

     No doubt others have made a more systematic and broader studies than I, but, in my own readings, one sentence stands out to me as the longest I have ever encountered, in any language.  Some years ago, I think in Spring of '11, I was reading Melville's The Confidence Man.  It is full of long and humorously winding sentences, but I remember that I brast out laughing when I came upon this one.  I have referred to it often, reading it to friends and family, until  R., my older brother, replied that it that it was not a long sentence at all, but was comprised merely of multiple sentences sewed up into the semblance of a single sentence by punctuation.  A classmate has said something similar, that the semi-colons count as "cheating".  But I insist that it is in fact a very long, authentically periodic sentence, whose meaning is not complete until the very last word (or rather, as you will see, the antepenultimate word).  I break it down below, so that it is apparent that it does indeed have a few "cheating" clauses at the beginning; but, to my mind, the core sentence, much interrupted, is this:

"...[T]hough to be good is much below being righteous, and though there is a difference between the two, ....... it is to be hoped that his goodness will not at least be considered criminal in him.

     If it will be accepted that the first two adversative clauses are not grammatically complete until the very last clause, then all the limbs and outward flourishes––that is, everything between the two "and though" clauses and the clause starting with "it is to be hoped"––, are grammatically part of the sentence, being neither strictly parenthetical nor grammatically independent clauses.  This is, in fact, a very long period, with a few short sentences prefixed as a prelude.  Perhaps I shall one day try to render it into Latin, lest Cicero should go inultus.

Not that he looked as if he were a kind of Wilberforce at all;

that superior merit, probably, was not his;

nothing in his manner bespoke him righteous, but only good,

and though to be good is much below being righteous,

and though there is a difference between the two,

yet not, it is to be hoped, so incompatible as that a righteous man can not be a good man;

though, conversely, in the pulpit it has been with much cogency urged, that a merely good man,

that is, one good merely by his nature,

is so far from there by being righteous, that nothing short of a total change and conversion can make him so;

which is something which no honest mind, well read in the history of righteousness, will care to deny;

nevertheless,

since St. Paul himself, agreeing in a sense with the pulpit distinction,

though not altogether in the pulpit deduction,

and also pretty plainly intimating which of the two qualities in question enjoys his apostolic preference;

I say,

since St. Paul has so meaningly said, that, "scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die;"

therefore,

when we repeat of this gentleman, that he was only a good man,

whatever else by severe censors may be objected to him,

it is still to be hoped that his goodness will not at least be considered criminal in him. 

The Dative.

Some locker room banter from the classics reading room:––

     Τὰ συμμαθητά συμμαθητής δε ἐγὼ δε (Several classmates and I) were recently sitting in the reading room diverting one another's attention by discussing the 'personalities' of the Latin cases. One liked Ablative: multifarious, clever, at odds with others, a rogue ever to be "the one who got away."  Another admired Accusative, so sensible, so very direct, solid, dependable, fitting, and squarely and logically engaged with those around him.  The Hellenist among us, of course, loved Genitive, even if more for its Greek than for its Latin qualities.  But Genitive, said I, mixes too much with the other parts of speech: it is noun in form, but its sympathies lie with those insubstantial adjectives.

     To me, though, Dative is an avis rara, multum mihi dilecta: delicate, with a very circumscribed and yet high-minded set of qualities, touching on all that is ultimate, all that is tending towards something, or has some purpose in mind in doing something.  Dative is the most cognitive of cases, as it expresses such fine things as purpose and interest; and, although only in the most intimate of relations, it may even borrow from Genitive the notion possession.  It can float about in ethereal reference.  And it was endangered, being, like all fine things, doomed to perish quickly in the carelessness neglect of the vulgus. 

Future Perfect.

     The future perfect:  It is where the past and the future meet.  It is the tense of one's future self looking on his present self as past.  It is you-now thinking of future-you as being a past-you to another future-you.

     It is the future with a sense of the past.  It entails the consciousness not only of the present and future as distinct entities conceptually, but of the potential of the present to become the past.  One cannot use it without feeling painfully conscious of how deeply embedded he is in his own future past.  It is surely the most relevant tense to a classicist, ever conscious of those poor students who, two thousand years hence, will be laboring over their textbooks of impossibly unphonetic Classical English, when our language will long since have ceased to be spoken. 

The World of the Future Perfect.

PRES.----------FUT.PERF.----------FUT.

The Future.----->  <-----The Past.

Sun Daolin as Prince Myshkin.

     I have long admired Sun Daolin, who as 蕭澗秋 in 早春二月 performs a character I esteem no less than "my captain", the insuperable Picard.  Hsiao Chian-ch'iu manages to be both high-minded and not a hypocrite (quite a rare accomplishment); the cost, as so often in such cases, is that he is an inveterate shilly-shallyer, who, by the very fact that he intends the best, causes the utmost harm and pain---far more even than the vile.  The widow Wen Sao, whom he would marry from heartfelt pity, kills herself in shame;  T'ao Lan, who admires, perhaps even loves, him, is crushed that he is more moved by pity for Wen Sao than by affection for her. 

      Hardly otherwise does the sweet Prince Myshkin ruin those around them. 

Plipio.

Per th' O.L.D.:––

plipio ~are, intr. [onomat.] (Vb. expr. the cry of the hawk.)
     acciptrum (est) ~are Suet.fr.161(p.251Re).

     Perhaps one should be ashamed if his first acquaintance with a verb is in the dictionary, and not in the texts, but I feel absolved that the word appears only once, in a fragment of Suetonius.  But when one comes across such gems as this, he is seized with the urge to run through all the conjugations, wondering, How many others have said plipiaveris ('you will have made the hawk sound').  I will run through them as fast as I can.  (I cannot, unfortunately, see how it would make sense in the passive voice, and so will use only the active.)  I count 69 distinct forms, 70 if I may say that I am about to add the fut.inf.act. (joke).

     Listing anything with Bachian or Plinian thoroughness gives one a sense of total possession. That is the only reason for this exercise I can conceive.

IND.

pres.ind.act.
plipio
plipias
plipiat
plipiamus
plipiatis
plipiant.

fut.act.
plipiabo
plipiabis
plipiabit
plipiabimus
plipiabitis
plipiabunt.

fut.perf.act./perf.subj.act.
plipiavero/plipiaverim
plipiaveris
plipiaverit
plipiaverimus
plipiaveritis
plipiaverint.

perf.ind.act.
plipiavi
plipiavisti
plipiavit
plipiavimus
plipiavitis
plipiaverunt/plipiavere.

imp.ind.act.
plipiabam
plipiabas
plipiabat
plipiabamus
plipiabatis
plipiabant.

plup.ind.act.
plipiaveram
plipiaveras
plipiaverat
plipiaveramus
plipiaveratis
plipiaverant.

SUBJ.

pres.subj.act
plipiem
plipies
plipiet
plipiemus
plipietis
plipient.

perf.subj.act
(see above)

imp.subj.act.
plipiarem
plipiares
plipiaret
plipiaretis
plipiaremus
plipiarent.

plup.subj.act.
plipiavissem
plipiavisses
plipiavisset
plipiavissemus
plipiavissetis
plipiavissent.

IMPER.

pres.imper.act.
plipia
plipiate.

fut.imper.act.
plipiato (2nd & 3rd .sg.)
plipiatote (2nd.pl)
plipianto (3rd.pl).

INF.

pres.act.inf.
plipiare.

fut.act.inf. 
plipiaturus esse.

perf.act.inf.
plipiavisse.

PART.

pres.act.
plipians.

fut.act.
plipiaturus.

GER.

gen.
plipipandi.

acc.
plipiandum.

abl.
plipiando.

SUP.

acc.
plipiatum.

abl.
plipiatu.

Avis avus avem avam avet.

     If only I could find a word avo, so that the sentence would have all the true vowels, instead of two e's. I suppose one could say Avis avus avem avam aveo, but then the last would be a trisyllable after a string of disyllables. 

(c) 2015 Marshall C. Buchanan