the huge, unrecorded hum of implication

Some of the charm of the past consists of the quiet -- the great distracting buzz of implication has stopped and we are left only with what has been fully phrased and precisely stated. And part of the melancholy of the past comes from our knowledge that the huge, unrecorded hum of implication was once there and left no trace -- we feel that because it is evanescent it is especially human. We feel, too, that the truth of the great preserved monuments of the past does not fully appear without it.

Lionel Trilling, Manners, Morals and the Novel, from The Liberal Imagination (1950))

The fact that there is a word for silence is an aesthetic creation.

(Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry, from Seven Nights, tr Eliot Weinberger (1984))

in animals

Though the Senses know not from what Places or Parts, Cold comes, or what it Causes, yet they know that we have here at this time Cold with all its Potent Strength, as an Army of Flakes of Snow, with Ammunition of Hail for Bullets and Wind for Powder, also huge Ships of Ice, which Float in the Main Sea, and stop up all the Narrow Rivers; also Cold and its Army Shooting forth the Piercing Darts, which fly so Thick and Fast, and are so Sharp, as they enter into every Pore of the Flesh of all Animal Creatures, whereby many Animals are Wounded with Numbness and Die Insensibly although Mankind bring what strength they can get against Cold, as an Army of Furs, where every Hair stands out like a Squadron of Pikes, to resist Cold's Assault; and Ammunition of Coals serves for Bullets, and Ashes for Powder, with great Loggs for Cannons, Billets for Muskets and Carbines, Brush. Faggots for Pistols, where the Bellows as Firelocks, makes them fly up in a Flame; also great Pieces of Beef for Ships for Men of War, with Cabbages for Sails, Sausages for Tacklings, Carrots for Guns, and Marrow-Bones for Masts, Ballasted with Pepper, and Pitch'd or Tarr'd with Mustard, the Card and Needle being Brewis* and Neat's Tongues, the Steers-men Cooks, besides many Pinnaces of Pork, Mutton, and Veal, and Flying Boats, which are Turkies, Capons, Geese, and the like, all which Swim in a Large Sea of Wine, Beer, and Ale, yet for all this we are Beaten into the Chimney-corner, and there we sit Shaking and Trembling like a Company of Cowards, that dare not stir from their Shelter; and many in the Sea-fight have been Drowned, from whence some have been taken up Dead-Drunk, then carried and Buried in a Feather-bed, where, after a Long Sleep, they may have a Resurrection, but how they will be Judged at that time they Rise, whether Damned with Censure or Saved by Excuse, I cannot tell.

(Margaret Cavendish, Sociable Letters (1664))

So slight
that in animals and limbs
- what more that in reputation and disrepute -
like a worm and trampled down
and like me
              and soon
burnedthrough
So slight
             and as all
so slight and
                perishable

(Gunnar Björling, from You Go the Words, tr Fredrik Hertzberg (2007). The dates I'm giving for translated works are the dates of the published translations, not the originals. This long poem was completed in Swedish in 1955. I read You Go just after or before Inger Christensen's Alphabet and was surprised a little bit later when Christensen cropped up at Biblibio and Wuthering Expectations. She is not a household name in the English-writing world but there she was anyway, like a sprig of mushroom in the grass.)

* brewis could mean either broth or bread soaked in broth, according to the Collins English Dictionary. "C16: from Old French broez, from broet, diminutive of breu broth."

from the describable qualities of things

Slow execution was typically associated with lasting artistic value in classical art theory. Thus Zeuxis explained that he painted "slowly so that my paintings will live for a long time," and Apelles mocked the artist who completed a painting in a single day saying, "you need not tell me … the work itself shows it." In the Renaissance too mistrust of rapid execution remained paramount. For example, Vasari himself was strongly criticized for completing his frescoes in the Cancellaria at Rome too quickly. Michelangelo's withering comment on being told that they had been finished in a hundred days ("e si vedi") directly echoed that of Apelles. However, the same theoretical tradition certainly championed works showing the kind of lightness of touch which merely suggested quickness of execution. […] And yet this modern lightness of touch was not to be confused with mere time-saving.

(Tom Nichols, Tintoretto: Tradition and Identity (1999))

We involve ourselves in endless perplexities in trying to deduce excellence and beauty, unity and necessity, from the describable qualities of things, we repeat the rationalistic fiction of turning the notions which we abstract from the observation of facts into the powers that give those facts character and being.

(George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (1896))

so tiny that they are like the sound of a tinkling bell

The sky is pure and cool, lying wide open to all the stars. There is a great flock of worlds up in that endless meadow, tiny, teeming worlds, so tiny that they are like the sound of a tinkling bell; as I look at them, I can hear thousands of tiny bells.

(Knut Hamsun, tr. Paula Wiking, Look Back on Happiness)

O up in height, O snatcht up, O swiftly going,
Common to beechwood, breathing was loving, the yet
Unknown Crickley Cliffs trumpeted, set music on glowing
In my mind. White Cotswold, wine scarlet woods and leaf wreckage wet.

(Ivor Gurney, Old Thought, from the Collected Poems)

The world is not to be cheated of a grain; not so much as a breath of its air is to be drawn surreptitiously.

(John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive)

olive trees bearing splendid fruit

In particular, it is recorded of Sir William James, that he regarded this emperor with feelings of abhorrence so personal and deadly, as to refuse him his customary titular honours whenever he had occasion to mention him by name. Yet it was the whole Roman people that conferred upon him his title of Augustus. But Sir William, ascribing no force to the acts of a people who had sunk so low as to exult in their chains, and to decorate with honours the very instruments of their own vassalage, would not recognise this popular creation, and spoke of him always by his family name of Octavius.

(Thomas de Quincey, The Caesars (1851))

None of the immortals or of mortal men heard
her voice, not even the olive trees bearing splendid fruit.
Only the gentle-tempered daughter of Persaios,
Hekate of the shining headband, heard from her cave,
and lord Helios, the splendid son of Hyperion heard
the maiden calling father Kronides; he sat
apart from the gods away in the temple of prayers,
accepting beautiful sacrifices from mortal men.

(Anonymous, To Demeter, from The Homeric Hymns, tr. Apostolos N. Athanassakis (1976))

the transportive leaf

[…] I could not say then that my vein entering

along the cell walls disresemble the transportive leaf:
I mean, if one speaks of mysticism, it makes good science,
which is the best part of science, that it makes mysticism

discussable without a flurry: and yet too, the discrete
annihilated, suddenly here it is blandished and available:
things go away to return, brighter for the passage


(A.R. Ammons, Sphere (1974))

Now I beseech God love me as well as I love a plain-dealing man, earth is earth, flesh is flesh, earth will to earth, and flesh unto flesh, frail earth, frail flesh, who can keep you from the work of your creation.

(Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller: or, the Life of Jack Wilton (1594))

both of them know neither the future nor the ending

The specific feature of Surrealistic writing, whether it be autobiographical or automatic, is, in fact, less the lack of knowledge of its final destination as such, than the identical position into which this lack places both the reader and the author in the face of a text whose unfolding neither the one nor the other controls, and about which both of them know neither the future nor the ending.

(Denis Hollner, tr Rosalind Krauss, Surrealistic Precipitates: Shadows Don't Cast Shadows, quoted by Krauss in Robert Rauschenberg: a Retrospective (1997))

A net is a large thing, past thy fadoming, if thou cast it from three, but if thou draw it to thee it will lie upon thy arm.

(John Donne, Sermon 14 (1620s))