"This coffee falls into your stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin, is a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of suckers and papillae. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous linings; it acts like a food and demands digestive juices; it wrings and twists the stomach for these juices, appealing as a pythoness appeals to her god; it brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain."
On the drink [finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous, consumed on an empty stomach] mentioned above.
"I recommended this way of drinking coffee to a friend of mine, who absolutely wanted to finish a job promised for the next day: he thoughthe’d been poisoned and took to his bed, which he guarded like a married man. He was tall, blond, slender and had thinning hair; he apparently had a stomach of papier-mache."
The original is "garder le lit comme une mariee". It's hard to know as it's semi-colloquial 1830's French, but I would understand it in the sense of 'he stayed in bed like a honeymooner'.
"From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink -- for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder."
Comments
"This coffee falls into your stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin, is a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of suckers and papillae. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous linings; it acts like a food and demands digestive juices; it wrings and twists the stomach for these juices, appealing as a pythoness appeals to her god; it brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain."
That is some damn fine writing there.
You left off the better part of the story!
On the drink [finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous, consumed on an empty stomach] mentioned above.
"I recommended this way of drinking coffee to a friend of mine, who absolutely wanted to finish a job promised for the next day: he thoughthe’d been poisoned and took to his bed, which he guarded like a married man. He was tall, blond, slender and had thinning hair; he apparently had a stomach of papier-mache."
The translation is apparently inaccurate, it would be better as "and took to his bed, which he guarded like a bride".
both ways, i completely miss the meaning.
The original is "garder le lit comme une mariee". It's hard to know as it's semi-colloquial 1830's French, but I would understand it in the sense of 'he stayed in bed like a honeymooner'.
A married man's wife resides in a married man's bed
However, they may be different married men.
Also the words that follow the above:
"From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink -- for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder."
Also, possibly the start of a design document for an interesting indie game.
Jesus, what I would give to be able to compose like that.