[lit-ideas] "Escucha los latidos de nuestro corazon"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 08:43:38 EDT
Cuando vuelva a tu lado what a difference a day made
y este solo contigo there's a rainbow above us
las cosas que te digo clouds above can't be stormy
no repitas jamas with that moment of bliss
por compasion that thrilling kiss
une tu labio al mio it's heaven when you
y estrechame en tus brazos find romance in your menu
y escucha los latidos what a difference a day made
de nuestro corazon and the difference is you.
The song, by a Mexican woman, has the line
"Escucha los latidos de nuestro corazon"
Refiguring the figurative.
1842 TENNYSON Locksley Hall 140 Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for
ever like a boy's.
I now it's not netiquette, but hey. Yesterday, J. M. Geary submitted a poem
to Lit-Ideas. One passage reads:
I feel bad. I beg forgiveness of God, but after all,
if ants had Ajax Glass Cleaner With Ammonia
I'm sure they'd do the same to me.
in a proverbial heart beat.
Since that list is rather frivolous, compared to this, I thought of sharing
a few thoughts on 'proverbial' _here_.
Indeed, I once collected the use of 'proverbial' as per the last line
quoted above. I recall I submitted my research to an online list dedicated to
such things, mentioning Susan Wilkinson's novel, "Sebastian's Pride" for the
use of it -- 'the proverbial calm after the storm', I believe the
collocation was. But I did not provide page number.
A few days later I received a letter from Susan Wilkinson asking me to
provide page reference, since, she had find my study interesting but could not
locate the phrase!
Anyway.
Re-Figuring, is what I called the thing.
For the Greeks, everything is a _figure_ ('skheme'). It was Quintilian and
others who used 'figura', and the idiom stuck.
In philosophical circles -- e.g. Donald Davidson -- we use 'figure' more
liberally: we claim that truth-conditionality _is_ just another figure -- a
_literal_ figure. Brigitte Nehrlich, who has studied this at depth, provided
me with very many quotes where the utterer needs to specify the otiosity
of his words having to be taken literally:
"She had, literally, the face like the back of a bus"
-- nonsense.
"He had, literally, no brains."
---
etc.
As opposed to the _literal_ idiom, or figure, there's the 'fig.' figure, as
used in dictionaries. E.g. the OED.
"fig."
stands for something ONLY AN IDIOT needs to have specified. consider:
'spice' -- a herb
fig. anything that adds 'spice'. e.g. the spice of life.
I NEVER read 'fig.' extensions; and I avoid like the rats the OED mania of
multiplying senses beyond necessity.
Consider the 'heart beat'. It compares to L. J. Kramer's ref. to "At the
drop of a hat".
In this case, the idiom goes like
"in the twinkling of an eye"
He, literally, farted in the twinkling of an eye
He, literally, vomited at the drop of a hat -- his own, matter of
fact.
---
The figure here is a hyperbole
"IN a heart beat"
----
The OED does not retrieve any collocation for
"in a heart beat"
or
"at a heart beat"
but three for 'heart beat':
The first under
"embryo-"
1890 GOULD New Med. Dict. 142/2
Embryocardia,..an affection of the heart, characterized by A HEART-BEAT
like that of a foetus.
The second is under
"extrasystole"
which gets defined as "A HEART-BEAT outside the normal rhythm."
Finally, under "stout"
Path. Of A HEART-BEAt: Strong.
1898 Allbutt's Syst. Med. V. 927 The deliberate rhythm, some forty in the
minute, in which each reluctant beat, stout as it was, seemed as if it might
be the last effort.
So -- what are we to do with Geary's phrase?
Well, it's all there for us to see -- under idiot-proof OED.
They have a special entry, 'heart-beat' (sic):
defined as:
(i) A beat or pulsation of the heart
(ii) fig. an emotion;
(iii) an extremely brief space of time.
The quotes they provide naturally refer to the three-fold classification:
For (ii)? -- two:
1850 MARG. FULLER Wom. 19th C. (1862) 211
Those who do not know one native heart-beat of my life.
1855 LONGFELLOW Hiaw. xxi. 218
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling
But one heart-beat in their bosoms.
For Geary's 'proverbial' -- (iii) in the OED -- there's one quote
appropriately from Harper's Magazine:
1883 Harper's Mag. Mar. 584/1
In another heart-beat the whole..valley was afloat.
This quote is interesting in that 'another' originally meant 'second'. So,
in a first heart-beat it never poured but it rained, sort of.
----
Cheers,
JL Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
"I'm Hispanic -- but I'm not a Mexican; I'm a Rican-Yorker" -- Sonia
Sotomayor
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- » [lit-ideas] "Escucha los latidos de nuestro corazon" - Jlsperanza