Talk:Pages 3-7

Corydon Throsp, Rossetti, Chelsea Embankment

Is Corydon Throsp an anagram? It seems as if it surely must be, and such an obvious one too, but.... Ok, Corydon is very close to Croydon, the London borough, but so what?

Corydon is a stock name for a shepherd or herdsman. Continuing the sheep and herding theme of the nightmare/dream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corydon_(character)

Anyway, I was curious enough to do that little bit of digging on Rossetti, which isn't so hard these days with Google, wikipedia etc. Anyway, it was sad and poignant to note that:

"Rossetti's later years were darkened by his drug addiction and his increasing mental instability. He died at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England." Shades of The White Visitation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti

"Rossetti described the sonnet form as a 'moment's monument', implying that it sought to contain the feelings of a fleeting moment, and to reflect upon their meaning. The House of Life was a series of interacting monuments to these moments - an elaborate whole made from a mosaic of intensely described fragments. This was Rossetti's most substantial literary achievement."

How about that "a mosaic of intensely described fragments"?

Thought it worth quoting this, from the beginnig of the afore-mentioned 'The House of Life':

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/thslf10.txt

"A Sonnet is a moment's monument,-- Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, Of its own arduous fulness reverent: Carve it in ivory or in ebony, As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see Its flowering crest impearled and orient."

Think Pynchon would have liked that 'impearled'.

Scumbled and impasto

These are painting techniques. The OED provides the following definitions.

scumbled - In Oil Painting. To soften or render less brilliant (the colours in a portion of a picture) by overlaying with a thin coat of opaque or semi-opaque colour; to spread or ‘drive’ (a colour) thinly over a portion of a picture in order to soften hard lines or blend the tints; to produce (an effect) by this process.

impasto - Painting. The laying on of colour thickly; impasting, as a characteristic of style