Here’s a new feature for my blog, Lines I Wished I Had Written. These are passages that captivate me as
someone that just appreciates great writing.
When I was younger I would write down such passages in the hopes that I
would absorb the skill that went into the passage. Plus I love to capture really fine
writing. Even when I read I highlight
with my trusty mechanical pencil passages that are exceptional. I either underline them or if they run an
extended length I’ll run a curvy line down the margin along that length and write
an exclamation mark beside it. And if it’s
really something special, I’ll put a couple of exclamation marks!
So why not share such passages with readers of my
blog. Actually I got the idea for this
feature from Will Duquette’s blog, Cry ‘Woof’…andlet slip the dogs of whimsy
where he has a feature “Words I’d Wish I’d Written.” I’m not sure why I prefer “Lines” over
“Words” I Wished I’d Written but I do. I
know “words” adds to the alliteration of the phrase, and so may have a snappier
sound, but “lines” suggest a passage rather than a sentence, and perhaps, at
least to me, a certain eloquence since it alludes to poetry. So there, I’m not completing stealing.
Note also, this is not the same as my feature, “Notable
Quotes.” A notable quote has a certain depth
of wisdom to it isolated from where it might come. It also might be a thought outside of a creative
work. “Lines I Wish I’d Written” strictly
come from a creative written work and are presented solely for its compositional
beauty and interest.
For my first post in this feature, I’m going to offer
the opening paragraphs from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Well, it
is the holiday season, but this came to mind because our parish last night
invited the performers from Quicksilver Radio Theater to perform the radio play
version of Dickens’ classic. As it turns
out our music director at St. Rita’s parish, Deborah Williams, has performed with the theater group and somehow was able to bring the full
cast over to our church for a performance.
Here’s the press release for the group:
QUICKSILVER
RADIO THEATER (founded
in 1995) is a group of seasoned New York performing artists, who are dedicated
to using the classic Radio Drama form (full cast, layered sound effects, and
musical score) to present stories worth telling, executed with both talent and
heart. Quicksilver’s work has aired
nationally, and been heard internationally on the World Wide Web. Quicksilver has earned awards from the National Federation
of Community Broadcasters and the National Audio Theatre. It has performed by invitation at the Museum of Television and Radio’s Annual Radio
Festival, and its shows are in the collection of the Museum.
They had just about the full cast in attendance and performed
with full sound effects and score. It
was a great treat. You can actually buy
a performance from iTunes if you look, but I was able to find a free listen at PRX(Public Radio Exchange).
You just have to sign up and it’s
free. So give it a listen. You’ll enjoy it. I took Matthew, and while he didn’t quite get
everything, Marley’s ghost with his clinking chains and woeful holler, really got his attention.
Now here are the opening lines from A Christmas Carol.
Marley was dead: to
begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial
was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.
Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose
to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is
particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the
wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not
disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat,
emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge
and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole
executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee,
his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut
up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very
day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of
Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt
that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful
can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced
that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more
remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own
ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning
out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance --
literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards,
above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and
Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and
sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing,
wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp
as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and
self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old
features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait;
made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating
voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.
He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm,
no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling
snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty.
Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and
hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect.
They often `came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, `My dear
Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?' No beggars implored him to
bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman
ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of
Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him
coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would
wag their tails as though they said, `No eye at all is better than an evil eye,
dark master!'
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way
along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its
distance, was what the knowing ones call `nuts' to Scrooge.
Excerpt
cited from The Literature Network.
Isn’t
that just a great characterization? It’s
so important to Dickens that the reader know Marley is dead that he uses such a
distinct phrase, and drills the reader with “d” consonant alliteration in those
first few paragraphs: dead, no doubt, door-nail, deadest, not disturb it, done
for, dreadfully, distinctly. I’ve always
thought that Dickens created the phrase “dead as a doornail” but as it turnsout he didn’t.
But I always associate this. It has
forever stuck in my mind from reading A
Christmas Carol.
And
notice the “s” alliterations in the paragraph the starts with “Oh.” Isn’t this a marvelous list of adjectives?
“Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching,
grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!” In rhetoric that's called synathroesmus. And then that seventh paragraph with all those
negative characteristics in parallel sequence to describe him (there’s a
rhetorical term for that too, but I can’t remember or find it) is possibly the
height of the passage. It needs to be
repeated:
External heat and cold
had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill
him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent
upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know
where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could
boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often `came down'
handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Oh
that’s a double exclamation mark!!
But then there was a minor miracle. When we left the Vet's office with her
Friday, the vet forgot to include her pain killer medication. Remember she had
a biopsy and they opened up her entire belly. The medication was on the list
but we didn't have any and the instructions said only if necessary. And then Sunday
night it dawned on me that she was in pain. It was just the way she was walking
that tipped me off. So Monday we called the vet and he looked into it and found
they had left it out and didn't get into our bag. So I got on my horse and raced
down to the vet hospital (it's like forty miles away) and picked it up and got
back and gave her two pills and then she started moving better and interested
in eating. It was like that all week.
Actually yesterday, Friday the 29th was the most promising in
that she ate over a cup of leftover turkey in the morning and over a cup at
night.
I'm really looking
forward to Advent. I need a change. Poor Brandi is dying and has only a few
days, a week at the most, to live. I'm feeling all sorts of aches of love which
is clearly a desire for Jesus. One day this week we will have to make the final
decision, and it's really going to hurt. This Advent will be like no other.
Except for my grandfather when I was young, I have never lost a loved one
during the holidays, and his passing was rather sudden. May one day Christ come for the final time and bring all
my loved ones back together in one embrace. Come Jesus, come.
Now, therefore, I
do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted
by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being
who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will
be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks
for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to
their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable
interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war;
for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since
enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to
establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and
particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious
liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and
diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various
favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us. 
