Sunday 23 May 2010

Absonant

From a late Shakespeare play:
What you can say is most unseasonable;
Most absonant and harsh. Nay, your perfume,
Which I smell hither, cheers not my sense
Like our field-violet's breath.
Bad speaking is here materialised as actual bad breath; and both are embodied in deliberately slanting verse. The Latinism 'absonant' (glorious word) wrongfoots us, that 'field-violet' is haunted by 'feel' and 'violate', both relevant to the overall point of the speech, 'cheers' hovers akwardkly between 'makes cheerful' and 'cheers aloud'. Expertly compacted.

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