shootingstar
Member
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2022
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- German
- Home Country
- Germany
- Current Location
- Germany
. . .
I read the lecture; for I had lacked both time and will to get the trash by heart - read it hurriedly, humbly, and with visible shame. Now and then I would catch in the auditorium an eye of some intelligence, now and then in the manuscript would stumble on a richer vein of Harry Miller (in my understanding this is meant ironically; Harry Miller wrote the lecture for Loudon Dodd ( = 'I') in advance without any consultation or agreement ), and my heart would fail me, and I gabbled. the audience yawned, it stirred uneasy, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last in articulate cries of "Speak up!" and "Nobody can hear!" I took to skipping, and, being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. What struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to pass without a laugh.
. . .
[Something about Harry Miller some lines above:
But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller. He had a gallant way of skirting the indecent, which in my case produced physical nausea, and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. . . . all attempts to lower his tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-Millerism ineradicable. Nay, the monster had a certain key of style, or want of style, so that certain milder passages, which I sought to introduce, discorded horribly and impoverished, if that were possible, the general effect.]
(The Wrecker by R. L. Stevenson and L. Osbourne, Chapter vi)
I have a problem with the word 'country'. What do you take 'country' to mean there? Doesn't it sound more like a figurative meaning there as in sentences like Anagrams are not in my line of country, or We are back in a familiar country again?
I read the lecture; for I had lacked both time and will to get the trash by heart - read it hurriedly, humbly, and with visible shame. Now and then I would catch in the auditorium an eye of some intelligence, now and then in the manuscript would stumble on a richer vein of Harry Miller (in my understanding this is meant ironically; Harry Miller wrote the lecture for Loudon Dodd ( = 'I') in advance without any consultation or agreement ), and my heart would fail me, and I gabbled. the audience yawned, it stirred uneasy, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last in articulate cries of "Speak up!" and "Nobody can hear!" I took to skipping, and, being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. What struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to pass without a laugh.
. . .
[Something about Harry Miller some lines above:
But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller. He had a gallant way of skirting the indecent, which in my case produced physical nausea, and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and starving genius. . . . all attempts to lower his tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-Millerism ineradicable. Nay, the monster had a certain key of style, or want of style, so that certain milder passages, which I sought to introduce, discorded horribly and impoverished, if that were possible, the general effect.]
(The Wrecker by R. L. Stevenson and L. Osbourne, Chapter vi)
I have a problem with the word 'country'. What do you take 'country' to mean there? Doesn't it sound more like a figurative meaning there as in sentences like Anagrams are not in my line of country, or We are back in a familiar country again?
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