Any fool can think of words that rhyme
Oct. 14th, 2004 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaToday's word from The Calendar is quotationipotent.
- Powerful in quotation.
from T. Lewis Davies' Supplemental English Glossary, 1881
On my bookshelf, I have a plain, blue hard-backed exercise book. My initials are doodled on its cover in black marker and red biro, and a bent, coming-unstuck blue Dymo label (remember them?) announces that it is a Commonplace Book. Inside the front cover, an inscription in my Mum's best italic says that it was given to me as an Easter present shortly before (I think) I was eleven.
During my childhood, I was fascinated by two big red hard-back books my mum had. One was her recipe book, the other her Commonplace Book. Both were filled with accumulated yearsworths of hand-written pages, and I loved the idea that one day the smooth, clean book I'd been given would look just like them.
Very few people seem to be familiar with the idea of a Commonplace Book, despite the popularity of John Julius Norwich's publications. A published book of someone else's commonplaces, though, can never be the same. You lose the variety leant by the use of different pens, by the days when you wrote in a hurry. You lose the texture created by writing on a page made uneven by the glue on its other side. A Commonplace Book is made by a process of slow, almost organic, evolution; it could not be bought, or created in a short space of time. I recently read The Cure For Death By Lightning which opens with a marvelous description of the narrator's mother's Commonplace Book.
Mine is still very much in its embryonic stage. It's lost the neat look of a new book, and developed the slight fatness that comes with use and from trying to hold more layers of paper than it was designed for, but it has a long way to go before it develops that proper lifetime look. The first pages are covered with wobbly, self-conscious copies of Kipling poems, written with the fountain pen I'd only recently acquired. Pictures of cute cuddly toys, and a couple of cartoons are glued in, and then there's a silence for a few years.
It picks up speed again during the time I was at university. Quotes, song lyrics, cartoons, flyers I liked, things people said - anything I thought worth remembering has been copied or pasted in. It isn't a diary; there are no entries detailing what I did or thought, but the nature of the entries - say, a picture torn from the college news sheet - often indicates what I was up to at the time.
Sadly, I still don't remember to copy things in as often as I'd like. I regularly spot a line or two in a novel which I'd like to remember, but am somewhere else at the time and can never find the line again, or forget to look. Of course, it's not something I can resolve to do. I can't set out each evening thinking "What will today's quote be?". By its nature, the thing is serendipitous, and this is why I love it.
- Powerful in quotation.
from T. Lewis Davies' Supplemental English Glossary, 1881
On my bookshelf, I have a plain, blue hard-backed exercise book. My initials are doodled on its cover in black marker and red biro, and a bent, coming-unstuck blue Dymo label (remember them?) announces that it is a Commonplace Book. Inside the front cover, an inscription in my Mum's best italic says that it was given to me as an Easter present shortly before (I think) I was eleven.
During my childhood, I was fascinated by two big red hard-back books my mum had. One was her recipe book, the other her Commonplace Book. Both were filled with accumulated yearsworths of hand-written pages, and I loved the idea that one day the smooth, clean book I'd been given would look just like them.
Very few people seem to be familiar with the idea of a Commonplace Book, despite the popularity of John Julius Norwich's publications. A published book of someone else's commonplaces, though, can never be the same. You lose the variety leant by the use of different pens, by the days when you wrote in a hurry. You lose the texture created by writing on a page made uneven by the glue on its other side. A Commonplace Book is made by a process of slow, almost organic, evolution; it could not be bought, or created in a short space of time. I recently read The Cure For Death By Lightning which opens with a marvelous description of the narrator's mother's Commonplace Book.
Mine is still very much in its embryonic stage. It's lost the neat look of a new book, and developed the slight fatness that comes with use and from trying to hold more layers of paper than it was designed for, but it has a long way to go before it develops that proper lifetime look. The first pages are covered with wobbly, self-conscious copies of Kipling poems, written with the fountain pen I'd only recently acquired. Pictures of cute cuddly toys, and a couple of cartoons are glued in, and then there's a silence for a few years.
It picks up speed again during the time I was at university. Quotes, song lyrics, cartoons, flyers I liked, things people said - anything I thought worth remembering has been copied or pasted in. It isn't a diary; there are no entries detailing what I did or thought, but the nature of the entries - say, a picture torn from the college news sheet - often indicates what I was up to at the time.
Sadly, I still don't remember to copy things in as often as I'd like. I regularly spot a line or two in a novel which I'd like to remember, but am somewhere else at the time and can never find the line again, or forget to look. Of course, it's not something I can resolve to do. I can't set out each evening thinking "What will today's quote be?". By its nature, the thing is serendipitous, and this is why I love it.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 04:56 am (UTC)I think this is a fairly arbitrary definition on my part, though.
I used to keep a notebook in which I wrote stuff myself but don't seem to anymore. I should start again.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 06:17 am (UTC)It also thinks I can have commonplace (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=commonplace) as a verb, meaning "To enter in a commonplace book, or to reduce to general heads".
Eh ? General heads ? Anyone ?
OED, he say:
Date: 2004-10-14 08:05 am (UTC)a1656 HALES Gold. Rem. (1688) 352 The custom..hitherto, was commonplacing a thing at the first original very plain and simple. a1740 FELTON (J.), I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing as universal history from the historians. 1837-9 HALLAM Hist. Lit. II. II. i. 47 To commonplace all extant Latin authors. 1860 Lowndes' Bibl. Man. 1259 s.v. M. Kempe, In this work the author has commonplaced succinctly..above 1600 writers of divinity. 1887 Illust. Lond. News 12 Mar. 282 When..you come on a passage..worthy of being commonplaced, copy it legibly in your commonplace book.
absol. a1734 NORTH Lives I. 20 It was his lordship's constant practice to commonplace as he read. 1754 CHATHAM Lett. Nephew 59 In general my advice to you is, not to common-place upon paper.
2. To furnish with commonplaces or authoritative quotations. Obs.
a1714 BURNET Own Time (1823) I. 60 Then a head in divinity was to be common placed in Latin and the person was to maintain theses upon it.
3. intr. To cite, repeat, or utter commonplaces. Also, to support a thesis: see the n. 2.
1609 R. BARNERD Faithf. Shepheard 52 To take euery where occasion to common place vpon anie word. a1626 BACON To K. Jas. Wks. VI. 251 (L.) For the good that comes of particular and select committees and commissions, I need not commonplace. 1662 H. MORE Philos. Writ. Pref. Gen. (1712) 12 It being the very Text upon which my self first common-placed in our College-chappel. 1735 BYROM Rem. (1855) I. II. 635 Mr. Topham common-placed upon the resurrection of the same body or rather against it.
4. trans. To render commonplace or trite.
1847-8 H. MILLER First Impr. ii. (1857) 23 Coldly-read or fantastically-chanted prayers, commonplaced by the twice-a-day repetition of centuries.
Hence commonplacing vbl. n.
1696 Growth Deism 14 The profound Learning (so he thinks much reading and common-placing to be) of a certain Eminent Divine. 1809-12 M. EDGEWORTH Ennui vi, In the methods of indexing and common-placing.
Re: OED, he say:
Date: 2004-10-14 08:10 am (UTC)13. a. The top of a page or writing; hence, Something, as a title, written at the top of a page, section, etc.; a heading.
b. The top of a book. Cf. HEADBAND 3.
c. A headline in a newspaper.
19. a. The beginning (of a word, writing, etc.).
(I've mailed you the full "glory").
Looks like bad writing to me (where bad = uncommunicative).
Re: OED, he say:
Date: 2004-10-14 08:17 am (UTC)So, "to reduce to general heads" is probably to make what this modern age would call an executive summary, or a set of bullet points, maybe ?
Or perhaps to make something more general and ordinary, rather than just shorter. Though in practice, it's difficult to see how that would differ.
Re: OED, he say:
Date: 2004-10-14 08:23 am (UTC)I certainly seems counter-intuitive to me: surely the point of the exercise is to collect things that are not commonplace? Or is it to collect things that are worthy of note, despite having become commonplace (eg. the one good piece of poetry in a HallmarkTM card)?
Re: OED, he say:
Date: 2004-10-14 08:28 am (UTC)