Wednesday, May 31, 2006

And beneath the feet of the ancients, and arched over them and over the throne and over the tetramorphic group, arrranged in symmetrical bands, barely distinguishable one from another because the artist's skill had made them all so mutually proportionate, united in their variety and varied in their unity, unique in their diversity and diverse in their apt assembly, in wondrous congruency of the parts with the delightful sweetness of hues, miracle of consonance and concord of voices among themselves dissimilar, a company arrayed like strings of the zither, consentient and conspiring continued cognition through deep and interior force suited to perform univocally in the same alternating play of the equivocal, decoration and collage of creatures beyond reduction to vicistudes and to vicissitudes reduced, work of amorous connecting sustained by law at once heavenly and worldly (bond and stable nexus of peace, love, virtue, regimen, power, origin, life, light, splendor, species, and figure), numerous and resplendent equality through the shining of the form over the proporionate parts of the material-there, all the flowers and leaves and vines and bushes and corymbs were entwined, of all the grasses that adorn the gardens of earth and heaven, violet, cystus, thyme, lily, privet, narcissus, taro, acanthus, mallow, myrrh, and Mecca balsam.

-Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

One sentence. Had to quote it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Worthy of Henry James!

Mike B. said...

I probably should have mentioned that he was describing a carved door, but I wanted to just have the description as is. I can't imagine to be able to play with words like that.

Anonymous said...

Whew. And sometimes I feel like my sentences go on too long...I have this book on my summer TBR pile, but I am a little in awe of Eco and I am a bit afraid to tackle this book.

Mike B. said...

Danielle, Eco isn't that bad. Don't be scared of him. If I can read him, anyone can. You should definitely give it a go.

Anonymous said...

Super color scheme, I like it! Good job. Go on.
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Anonymous said...

Interesting website with a lot of resources and detailed explanations.
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