Thursday, August 19, 2010



Human Document






























from the Century Dictionary V & VI

Tuesday, August 17, 2010


from Odes: 13. Fearful Symmetry by Basil Bunting

from Odes: 13. Fearful Symmetry

Muzzle and jowl and beastly brow,
bilious glaring eyes, tufted ears,
recidivous criminality in the slouch,
—This is not the latest absconding bankrupt
but a ‘beautiful’ tiger imported at great expense from
Kuala Lumpur.

7 photographers, 4 black-and-white artists and an R.A.
are taking his profitable likeness;
28 reporters and an essayist
are writing him up.
Sundry ladies think he is a darling
especially at mealtimes, observing
that a firm near the docks advertises replicas
fullgrown on approval for easy cash payments.

♂Felis Tigris (Straits Settlements)(Bobo) takes exercise
up and down his cage before feeding
in a stench of excrements of great cats
indifferent to beauty or brutality.
He is said to have eaten several persons
but of course you can never be quite sure of these things.

illustration from
Laurence Chaves
The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Published by Illustrated Editions company ~ 1932


Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an Opium-Eater

short Yale alumni bio of Sanskrit scholar & Century Dictionary editor William Dwight Whitney (1827–94)
The Century Dictionary Online in DjVu

Monday, August 16, 2010








































from the Century Dictionary IV & V