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THE WORDLAB WORDLETTER Episode 2
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Monday, March 1, 1999 http://www.wordlab.com
WordLab was recently reviewed on the Jerusalem Post's Digital
Isreal page [ http://www.jpost.co.il/Digital/ ]. We have also been
featured in the Writing section of the Teen Website Getting Real
[ http://www.gettingreal.com ], which boasts the excellent slogan:
"Whine . Stabilize . Evolve." WordLab is on the March...this March.
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Last week WordLab passed the 4000 mark for the total number of
unique entries, and is steadily climbing toward completing our
first 5000. How high can we go? I dunno...how high are we, anyway?
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A number of viewers have begun sending us their own neologisms,
definitions, slogans, titles and names. While we set out
originally to publish only our own material, we are now
considering creating a new feature page called Submissions, where
we would post the best of the material sent to us. Each entry on
this page would include the word or phrase, name of the person who
submitted it, and a definition or explanation if available, as
well as appropriate follow-up comments from other viewers. Right
now we are trying to gauge viewer interest in this idea, so send
me your thoughts and anything you would like to submit to
snark@wordlab.com, and we'll see what happens. If I take awhile to
reply, it's probably because I'm changing diapers on the new baby
or passed-out from sleep deprivation. But I'll be thinking of
you...
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LATMIAN HILLBILLIES
Q: In 1909 author Edith Wharton wrote of a Latmian kiss, and we
cannot find any other reference to learn what it means. Can you?
Thanks! -P.H., English teacher
WordLab: I just become a father again, and I have a million things
to do, in addition to launching an Internet Empire (ok, so some of
my time is spent daydreaming; what of it?) Yet a question like
this comes in, and what do I do? Drop everything, of course, and
pursue it.
First, for those of you who lack a dusty old edition of "Wharton
Hears A Who" by your side at all times, our Questioneer is
referring to Wharton's story "The Daunt Diana" first published in
Scribner's Magazine 46 (July 1909): 35-41. If you hate having the
end of a story told to you, stop reading right now and go out and
procure the haunted, taut Diana on your own time. At the very end
you'll encounter this finale (imagine that):
"His face shone with extraordinary sweetness as he spoke; and I
saw he'd got hold of the secret we're all after. No, the setting
isn't worthy of her, if you like. The rooms are as shabby and mean
as those we used to see him in years ago over the wine shop. I'm
not sure they're not shabbier and meaner. But she rules there at
last, she shines and hovers there above him, and there at night, I
doubt not, steals down from her cloud to give him the Latmian
kiss."
At first I thought this was a typo, and the hero's beloved was
engulfing him with a Latvian Kiss. Use your imagination. Then I
meandered into John - Mr."Ode to a Grecian Urn" himself - Keats'
Endymion, where I beheld
"Why was I not contented? Wherefore reach
At things which, but for thee, O Latmian!
Had been my dreary death? Fool! I began
To feel distemper'd longings: to desire
The utmost privilege that ocean's sire
Could grant in benediction: to be free
Of all his kingdom. Long in misery
I wasted, ere in one extremest fit
I plung'd for life or death. To interknit
One's senses with so dense a breathing stuff
Might seem a work of pain; so not enough
Can I admire how crystal-smooth it felt,
And buoyant round my limbs."
--Endymion [1818], Book III, lines 374-386
Keats wrote to his brother George in the same year of 1818, "They
will explain themselves - as all poems should do without any
comment." Another dare: comment, explain. OK Johnny, here we
go, my senses now dense with breathing stuff....
The first stop on this train of thought is "The First Hypertext
Edition of THE DICTIONARY OF PHRASE AND FABLE BY E. COBHAM BREWER
FROM THE NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 1894":
http://www.bibliomania.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/419.html
"Endymion in Greek mythology, is the setting sun with which the
moon is in love. Endymion was condemned to endless sleep and
everlasting youth, and Selene kisses him every night on the
Latmian hills.
'The moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awaked.'
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, v. 1."
An appropriate subject for a 23 year-old consumptive who would be
dead two years hence. Recycled later by none other than Lord
Alfred Douglas, as quoted by Aleister Crowley himself in "A
Galahad in Gomorrah":
"O food to my starved eyes,
(That gaze unmoved on wanton charms of girls)
Fair as the lad on Latmian hills asleep." {271}
But now we've strayed from a "Latmian kiss" to "Latmian hills."
What are these Hills of Latmia? And who is this fair Lad? Whenever
I am stumped like this, I always turn first to my trusted friend
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), and sure enough, I gleaned a hint:
"Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep."
--Isolation: To Marguerite
Now I began to get really excited, for I possessed the knowledge
that the Hills of Latmia are, or at least were at some remote
time, steep. And pine-grown, to-boot! But who lived there, and
what did they do? For an anthropological perspective, I consulted
Ephithalamion, Edmund Spenser's (1552-1599) Reflections on His
Wedding Day:
"For thou likewise didst love, though now unthought,
And for a fleece of wooll, which privily
The Latmian shepherd once unto thee brought,
His pleasures with thee wrought."
Aha! Shepherds! And where there are shepherds, sheep are sure to
follow. The plot thickens. That randy manx William Drummond of
Hawthornden (1585-1649), in his poem VIII of umpteen, gets
positively horny:
Now while the night her sable veil hath spread,
And silently her resty coach doth roll,
Rousing with her from Tethys' azure bed
Those starry nymphs which dance about the pole;
While Cynthia, in purest cypress clad,
The Latmian shepherd in a trance descries,
And whiles looks pale from height of all the skies,
Whiles dyes her beauties in a bashful red;
While sleep, in triumph, closed hath all eyes,
And birds and beasts a silence sweet do keep,
And Proteus' monstrous people in the deep,
The winds and waves, husht up, to rest entice;
I wake, muse, weep, and who my heart hath slain
See still before me to augment my pain."
Now we're getting somewhere. There are hills. Steep hills. Covered
in pine trees and rising silently from Tethys' azure bed. It's
nighttime, starry nymphs are belly-dancing to the North, and to
the South. And there are sheep about, lots and lots of sheep. And
shepherds too, passed-out from drink and revelry with the starry
nymphs. At this point you might be thinking, "I want to party with
these Cats." Only one problem remains: we've discovered the What,
and voyeured upon the Who, but we still don't know the Where. Like
the coolest rave of the decade, but we haven't been given the
secret password to find which abandoned warehouse its being held
in, or on which piney steep. Where art thou, O Latmia?
Who'd have guessed? Why, the party ended long ago, but it's
location was none other than "Bouleuterion: Birthplace of
Democracy" [ http://www.fhw.gr/projects/bouleuterion/ ].
Surf around through the glories of this Site awhile, and
eventually you will find it:
Miletus
"A city in the southern coast of Asia Minor, famous for its
great prosperity, mainly during the period from the 8th to the 4th
century BC, when it became the metropolis of the Ionians. It was
built in the Latmian Bay, near the mouth of the river Maeander."
There you have it, inquisitive reader. Wharton heard HER Who
receiving Latmian Kisses, and possibly Latvian Kisses as well,
though as yet unconfirmed, on a steep piney hill, encircled by a
Meandering Mouth, overlooking the old city of Miletus.
Ionians. Great kissers they, the Ionians. Long live the Ionians.
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