March 2006 Archives

and yet and yet

| 1 Comment

So the other night I used the phrase 'and yet and yet' in conversation (and trust me, it was brilliantly and appropriately used in context, like whenever I force a phrase I like into discourse), and one of the people I was with thought maybe I was referencing Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I had to confess that I was referencing something less literary - an album by Do Make Say Think (which: great, go buy it).

Naturally, this resulted in my doing a google search on this phrase today, and surprise, surprise, it's got a nice long history, with two early usages being in a translation of a haiku by Kobayashi Issa:

The world of dew
is the world of dew,
And yet, and yet--

and this (a triple and yet!) from a letter by William Blake:

"Every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and could not assign a reason; they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the sake of study, and yet-and yet-and yet there wanted the proofs of industry in my works."

Doesn't it suck when people want proof of industry?

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from March 2006 listed from newest to oldest.

February 2006 is the previous archive.

April 2006 is the next archive.

This is marginalia.org, a weblog by Bill Stilwell. I take the occasional photo.

Pages

Powered by Movable Type 4.24-en