Joseph Brodsky's cat

dork academia

[ravkaan]

There’s nothing quite like re-reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt and slowly but surely Bunny Corcoran and his antics, his “old man’s” and “dickie boys” become less annoying and more likable, more real and more honest in contrast to the pretentious and arrogant behavior of the rest of the creek class.

Whilst I felt almost relieved when they got rid of him on my first read through, I felt sorry for him on the second one.

[basil-isdead-deactivated2025111]

some thoughts about the secret history bc i’m tipsy

AKA, I read this book 5 years ago and it still lives in my head rent free

- I am now the same age as these people and that feels really fucking strange.

- Henry’s nickname for Bunny is annoying rabbit. And frankly the most insulting thing about that is that Henry probably couldn’t come up with a better nickname.

- Bunny listens to Art Pepper when he has sex and if my roommate ever brought someone home and then put on smooth jazz I would actually burst out laughing. I can just imagine Henry having to pretend to be asleep next to Bunny and Marion, and never being able to listen to jazz music ever again.

- The story takes place in 1983. There are people at Hampden walking around mullets and kitschy neon shirts and giant shoulder pads. Think about that for a minute okay.

- Which by extension means that the entire Greek class are boomers

- Everyone except Henry and Francis is poor, no cap. Bunny is basically fucking destitute and has holes in his clothes and shit, and Camilla had to put up with Charles’ abuse for way longer than she should have because she couldn’t afford to get away from him.

- None of them have jobs – not even Richard.

- Hampden is a grimy liberal arts school filled with weirdo gremlin people like me and I find it hilarious that the dark academia community treats it like it’s Harvard.

- They literally let in anyone. Henry didn’t even take his SAT’s, Richard was a pre-med dropout, and Bunny is borderline illiterate and the admissions board was like yeah why not.

- I went to a uni like Hampden and it is not aesthetic in the slightest. It’s the kind of environment that just makes all of your issues ten times worse by the time you leave, in addition to a hefty amount of student loan debt just to add some spice to your post-university depression episode.

- Hampden town only has one café.

- Literally. You would think the town would capitalise on all of the students but instead it’s just a bunch of low income Vermont farmers who hate everyone from the college and like… one biker bar.

- It must be impossible to get a good night’s sleep on Friday and Saturday nights bc of all of the parties. Especially because there aren’t any nightclubs or anything so all of the parties are on campus.

- Henry really listened to Julian say that dead bodies are sexy, and said “whelp seems like a good reason to kill someone”.

- Charles was literally sexually abusing his sister and the rest of the Greek class just pretended like he wasn’t.

- Richard is the worst offender of this. Camilla fucking came to him about it and even then he was still just like “Charles is such a golden retriever, look at this beautiful wholesome man.”

- Henry doesn’t need to throw bacchanal, he needs therapy.

- The entire Greek class are fucking pick-me’s who think they’re better than everyone else because they wear suits or something.

- Like they look down at everyone at Hampden as if they don’t also go to the same school as them. You aren’t special sweetie, you’re just a classist asshole.

- I am convinced that Camilla is just Donna Tartt’s self insert.

- Henry comes from a family who are probably just Missouri’s version of the Trump family but he’s held up by the dark academia community as the poster child for old money.

- Bunny’s response to literally everyone was just “that’s not very cash money of you”.

- Marion is very much giving Girl Defined/ Mrs Midwest energy. She absolutely called Francis a slur at some point.

- Julian is such a fucking predator holy fuck. Everything about him just screams red flags.

- Like how pathetic do you have to be to randomly select a bunch of teenagers to groom with your Lord Henry Wotton bullshit hot-takes in order to boost your own ego. So much so that you’ll refuse your paycheck so that the place you work for can’t interfere with your curriculum.

- Also, Julian is canonically compared to Pliny the elder and if you know anything about Pliny the elder and the kinds of things he believed then everything Julian says just becomes fucking hilarious.

- Pliny the elder is the kind of guy who would say you should take horse medicine to treat COVID okay.

- Charles literally had to be hospitalised because of his drinking problem and Richard was dumb enough to bring him even more alcohol.

- Henry 100% tried to kill Charles.

- I have a sneaking suspicion that Francis is ableist and it really doesn’t sit right with me.

- It’s been said before but I’ll put it here too. THIS BOOK IS NOT ENDORSING ANY OF THE BELIEFS THE CHARACTERS PUT FORTH. It throws out little jabs here and there about how fucked up all of the Greek class and the kind of ideas they perpetuate are, you just have to look for them. Donna Tartt is not a stupid person and if she saw half of the posts in the dark academia tag she would pop a fucking vein.

- Bunny is canonically anti-Semitic. Big yikes.

- Also I feel like he would be an avid watcher of Tucker Carlson.

- Why does no one talk about how Charles ended up in Texas? Like I’m just trying to picture him there but I can’t.

- Richard is the kind of guy who has navy blue sheets and only washes them like once every three months. And if he hadn’t been given a bed frame in his dorm he would have slept on a mattress on the floor.

[a-very-smooth-boltzmann-brain]

The fact that there are so many of us, pretentious readers and writers, in this community and still we haven't started a new literary movement or overthrown a despotic regime disappoints me.

[cat-brodsky]

Perhaps because that is what “pretentious” is: expressing unwarranted importance.

[cat-brodsky]

Poisonous flowers to grow in your garden: Foxglove

DISCLAIMER: This post is for educational purposes only. You assume moral and legal responsibility if anyone gets hurt by a plant that you grow. Make sure that your garden is not accessible by anyone who is ignorant of the danger, especially children or animals.

Foxglove (Digitalis) is a genus of about twenty biennial (lives for two years) and perennial (lives for more than two years) herbaceous plants and shrubs. Common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) is the most common garden variety, with many cultivars to consider.

They can grow rather tall - up to two metres (six feet) for the common foxglove. The leaves are oval, hairy, with a toothed margin; they start out in a rosette, with alternating distribution on the stem.

The flowering season is in early summer (late spring in warmer zones). The flowers themselves are dainty, beautiful, and deadly. They’re arranged in an elongated cluster, with each flower large enough to fit over a finger like a thimble (as you can guess by the name). They’re usually purple in colour, with the inside heavily spotted, but white, pink, or yellow cultivars also exist.

Peloric mutations, where a plant produces a flower with an abnormal number of petals and radial, star-like symmetry, are also very common in foxgloves.

A peloric D.purpurea flower.

Favoured conditions

Temperature range: Seeds germinate at soil temperature above 20C (70F). Foxgloves are hardy at zones 4-10 (look your region up on the hardiness zone map), but may wilt if it gets hotter than 30C (90F)

Light: From full sun to partial shade. Foxgloves are woodland flowers, so they can tolerate lack of sunlight.

Soil: Any texture (sand, clay, or silt), with rich (fertile) soil preferred. Some sources say they prefer acidic soil, others say neutral pH. Both are certainly acceptable.

Water: Keep the ground moist but not wet; soil needs to be well-draining. No air humidity requirements.

Growing tips

Foxgloves propagate by seed. Like any biennial, foxgloves flower in their second year, so be patient and make sure to plant seeds for two years in a row to make sure you get flower annually.

They’ll self-sustain if allowed to re-seed themself, so you can leave the plants alone. But you can also remove wilted flowers - this is called deadheading and promotes a second bloom - or you can harvest the seeds yourself.

After the first year, cut the plant down to the crown, and cover in mulch if living in a colder region. If the flower clusters get too large, or if there is harsh weather such as wind or hail, they may require staking.

Foxgloves can be grown in containers, just make sure to pick one that’s sufficiently big. All in all, this is a plant that doesn’t require much fussing over.

Toxicity

That’s what you’re here for, aren’t you? All right.

Digitalis species contain a number of cardiac glycosides, specifically, cardenolides. Digoxin and digitoxin are the most studied of those.

Pharmacology:

Cardenolides are toxic to mammals through inhibition of Na+/K+‐ATPase, also known as the sodium-potassium pump. The differing concentrations of ions outside and inside a cell are used to maintain resting potential (to put it in an overly simple way: difference in charge on the inside and the outside), which, in excitable cells such as cardiac muscle or nerve cells, is crucial to their proper functioning.

Digoxin interferes with the functioning of the Na⁺/K⁺ pump; this results in an increased Na⁺ concentration inside the cell. That, in turn, leads to an increase in Ca⁺⁺ ions (because of another ion pump). Ca⁺⁺ influences heart contractions: heart rate goes down, blood pressure goes up, stroke volume increases.

As you might imagine, there’s a number of things that can go wrong. Bradycardia (low heart rate) or arrhythmia can ensue, which can lead to a cardiac arrest. Hyperkalaemia (high K+ concentration) can induce arrhythmia, but so can hypokalaemia (low K+ concentration) - more K+-binding sites are open for digoxin, increasing the effective concentration of digoxin within the heart.

Every part of the plant is highly toxic. Symptoms are non-specific: nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, headache, increased respiration rate, excitation, drowsiness, dizziness, apathy, confusion, and delirium. Vision disturbances can also happen - a specific interesting symptom is xanthopsia, seeing the world tinted with yellow. And, of course, cardiac disturbances - irregular heartbeat, ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, sinoatrial block and AV block. In short, the most likely cause of death from a foxglove poisoning is cardiac arrest following arrhythmia or V-fib.

Detection: Very trivial. Elevated K+ levels and a particular appearance of the EKG - both would lead to a blood test being conducted, which should reveal the presence of digoxin.

Happy Halloween.

This was going to be a post on several different plants, but foxglove alone proved far too long. I’m breaking it into a series, so watch this space for more.

[cat-brodsky]

Because this is terrible grammar.

I’m hardly an expert in old-timey English, but:

1. “Thee” is accusative/dative (think “to you”). Thou is the right word.

2. “Has’t” is short for “has it”.

3. “Madeth” is not a word.

4. Present Perfect in Middle English is a can of worms. I would settle for “Thou madest”. 

4.1 That said, if you really want Present Perfect, you want to use the past participle -  “mad, maked, ymad, ymaked”, which gives us “Thou hast maked” or even “Thou hast maad”, as per Chaucer.

[...] thou hast maad a ful gret lesing here

4.2 And in Shakespearian English, it’s “thou hast made”:

For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell

5. “Kisseth” is a verb. Kiss, a noun, is “kisses” in plural. If “kisses” is good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for thee.

A thousand kisses buys my heart from me

6. And if I want to be pedantic, I’ll suggest substituting “eternal” for “immortal”.

Thou hast made me eternal with thy kisses.

thesaurus abuse is a dangerous form of substance abuse

[mrsplacid]

vocabulary of the day: 

undaunted- resolutely courageous

[cat-brodsky]

girl are you really gonna open with 1. c3

the white king and queen are switched around

on second thought, if the white king is there, moving the c pawn is equivalent to moving the f pawn (bad and wrong)

the board is turned ninety degrees, what on earth is up with that

subscribe to r/anarchychess

[estherdedlock]

@herste wrote:

The thing I find comically ironic is that The Secret History, dark academia’s so called ‘bible’, is, to me, a cautionary tale against the whole idea of embodying the aesthetic.

As I said in my post last week, I felt such a disconnect between the Dark Academia aesthetic and The Secret History that…here I am a month later still trying to figure it out. I don’t know if Donna Tartt intended to write a cautionary tale, but I was definitely shaken by this narrative of the consequences of shutting out reality in favor of a insular, curated fantasy.

Thirty years ago, Tartt couldn’t have had any idea of what an “internet aesthetic” was, but her characters are aesthetes. Certainly Henry is an aesthete, at least in his very particular way, so this manner of living is very real to him. And Richard is so needy that his fascination with the group and the way they live is very real for him too. But for Francis, Charles, Camilla, and Bunny, isn’t it all rather an elaborate big-kids’ game of make-believe? There’s no suggestion that they actually care deeply about art, music, Greek, the classics, or any of it. They’re kids playing dress-up, only instead of sitting in a playhouse and pouring pretend tea, they’ve got cocktails and cigarettes and a deliberately anachronistic pantomime of adult sophistication in the way they dress and talk and act. 

I love how Tartt so submerges us in this make-believe that we don’t even know how far under we are until we’re drowning with the rest of them. And then when Charles says to Richard:

Those people had never seen anything like Henry in their lives. I’ll tell you the sort of thing he was worried about. Like if he was carrying around the right book, if Homer would make a better impression than Thomas Aquinas. He was like something from another planet.

It’s such a slap of ice-cold water. The little post-adolescent fantasy we’ve been living, in which Henry’s peculiarities are a welcome addition to this beautifully propped set, just falls apart in the glare of non-aesthetic daylight. Reality gets the final say.

I have to go back to Brideshead Revisited again, because it presents a strikingly similar conflict between fantasy and reality, which the narrator himself acknowledges. When Charles Ryder breaks with the Marchmain clan and leaves Brideshead for what he thinks is the last time, he reflects:

I had come to the surface, into the light of common day and the fresh sea-air, after long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and waving forests of the ocean bed. “I have left behind illusion,” I said to myself. “Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions—with the aid of my five senses.

It’s easy to imagine Richard and the whole group (except Henry and Bunny, of course) feeling the same way after their own self-imposed “captivity” in aesthetic unreality led to so many horrifying mistakes. Better to live in the light of common day than to sink into an illusion—however attractive—that prevents you from seeing things as they are. 

But how differently things work out in these two stories. Brideshead is ultimately a parable of faith, not fantasy. When Ryder says “I have since learned that there is no such world,” (i.e. one of three dimensions), he’s not standing up for the pleasures of beauty and art, he’s professing the reality of things unseen: God, sin, redemption, forgiveness, grace. The “enchanted garden” that he first discovered at Oxford and then at Brideshead has led him to a deeper truth.

Our Hampden friends have no such comforts—their enchantment was manufactured, a collection of curated images, not the gateway to epiphany. Both books end with an epilogue that takes place years after the main events of the story, but the contrast between the final scenes couldn’t be more heartbreaking:

Brideshead Revisited:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played…a small red flame…relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle…It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our ante-room.

“You’re looking unusually cheerful to-day,” said the second-in-command.

The Secret History:

In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple…click click click…the Pyramids…the Parthenon. History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.

“I thought I’d find you here,” said a voice at my elbow.

It was Henry…There was so much I wanted to ask him…

“Are you happy here?” I said at last.

“Not particularly,” he said. “But you’re not very happy where you are, either.”

[cat-brodsky]

dear god, OP, i have nothing to add so far - this is amazingly well-put, and your posts on TSH deserve so much more attention than they’re getting right now

[snoozy-red-panda]

Why does everyone dissing dark academia tumblr talk about Donna Tartt? I'm not even sure who that is really. I just want to cry in a really grand and magnificent old library while it rains outside, okay? It's not even about learning necessarily. Yeesh

[cat-brodsky]

Donna Tartt wrote those two books (The Secret History and The Goldfinch) that every single person in the DA tag is obliged to quote at least once. (Oh yeah, and she also wrote The Little Friend, but that wasn’t aEstHeTiC enough.)

It’s usually the same three quotes - “beauty is terror”, “morbid longing for the picturesque”, and “forgive me for all the things I did but mostly for ones I did not.” Or something like that, can’t be arsed to check.

The Secret History’s pretty damn great if you ask me, I post about it from time to time - I just take issue with blind idolization and idealization of main characters, who are objectively all terrible people.

anyway, if it’s not even about learning, why call it dark academia? dare i suggest some alternate names, like “tweed and twats”? not that i have any right to judge when i write with fountain pens in public

Anyway, I have nothing against you, or against the more drama-free side of the aesthetic - a grand old library with a side of rain sounds superb right now, thank you. But it never gets old to make fun of people who proclaim themself to be more intellectual or more passionate than the general public, when, really, the whole dark academia thing starts looking terribly shallow after I read “beauty is terror” in the DA tag three times in five minutes.

[planetzuz]

uh question

so after finishing the secret history i went to read some character analyses about richard papen and like all of them just touched on like .. .how his life used to be mediocre and how disappointed he was in his life, and the fact that he’s a narrator, and the fact that he/his life was boring. but. can we talk about how seriously messed up he is?? like i guess richard wouldn’t medically qualify as a sociopath but he sure as hell reminds me of one, or someone with DEEP rooted issues to the point where he is like.. numb to literally everything. like he’s so nonchalant throughout this narration that its concerning. he has those moments of fear but it’s mostly for himself, and not for the fact that bunny was killed. i mean perhaps he’s only RECOUNTING the story in a more nonchalant tone bc he’s looking back years later and finally telling the story but god damn he’s so calm and placid throughout the book in a way that is concerningly similar to henry, my baby/fav character, who is extremely fucked up too. like no one’s really talking about how fucked up richard is and obviously all of them are fucked up but richard’s attitude/behavior is almost more eerie to me than the rest of their attitudes… anyway perhaps its just me and my bias against “i’m straight” richard lmao i did not like him throughout this book. carry on!

[cat-brodsky]

You’re right and you should say it. The most damning moment, for me, was the ending of the book which basically comes across as “Oh well, at least I got Henry’s car out of this whole mess”. To say nothing of the fact that Richard does not care one ounce about the farmer the group murdered.

Every main character in TSH is some kind of seriously messed up, and lack of empathy (especially for people that they consider beneath them - i.e. anyone who actually has to work for a living and doesn’t come from three generations of money) is a shared trait among them. Even Francis “i’m not straight” Abernathy cares more about his ruined silk scarf than about Bunny’s parents grieving the loss of their son, and is disdainful of the idea that he might be put to trial with “telephone operators” in the jury box.

[cat-brodsky]

Does using a fountain pen give you better handwring?

Clearly not. (Bonus Russian cursive).

[swamp-world]

“Romanticize struggling students with a heart of gold who are living through poverty” ok but have yall considered: material action instead.

how does this sound: romanticize housing coops!! romanticize showing up at city hall to demand affordable housing!! romanticize food security initiatives, soup kitchens, etc. on campus and partake in them!! romanticize selflessly and unquestioningly giving people the money that they need, if you can afford it!! romanticize removing hostile architecture!! romanticize cafes that have open bathroom policies!! romanticize harm reduction policies!! romanticize communal spaces!! romanticize protesting the deportation of your immigrant coworkers outside of the court!! romanticize writing weekly letters to your representatives asking why they don’t condemn genocide!! romanticize getting late fees on your tuition because you’re partaking in a tuition strike because of rising costs of study!!

stop making the world your aesthetic to be romanticized. justice is not a pretty thing. justice is not a palatable set of pictures to be posted on your themed sideblog or tiktok. romanticizing things is not enough. in fact it actively obscures things in a lot of cases. the goal is not “romanticize this and treat it the same way that we treat wealth and beauty”, the goal is “eradicate the conditions that lead to this”. but i suppose that’s what you get when the goal is a visually pleasing outcome. “i dream of a world where too much caffeine isn’t going to hurt you and everyone speaks latin and you don’t have to sleep and capitalism and poverty don’t exist” one of these things is not like the others, barb

[cat-brodsky]

pros of eyedroppering a fountain pen:

save on cartridges

save time on finding the correct cartridge standard

use (almost) any bottled ink

no need for a converter

add some excitement to your life because you feel like you’re carrying around a bomb detonator

   cons of eyedroppering a fountain pen:

not for the faint of heart and jittery of hands

not possible with every pen

you are carrying around a bomb detonator.

     this post was made by the teal hands gang

[swamp-world]

Fountain pens are wonderful until you’re sitting in an 8am tutorial and you realize that it’s leaking all over your pants, notes, and breakfast and now not only is ink all over your hands but your face now looks like a low-grade smurf because you wiped your hand on your cheek without thinking about it

[cat-brodsky]

Och, yes. Turns out that racing a bicycle to college shakes up the contents of your backpack, and, well… Diamine China Blue looks prettier on paper than on my fingers.

At least it cleans off really well.

[swamp-world]

The irony of you reblogging this today when I have De Atraiments Heliogen Green all up my arms because, also cycling to classes

[cat-brodsky]

pros of eyedroppering a fountain pen:

save on cartridges

save time on finding the correct cartridge standard

use (almost) any bottled ink

no need for a converter

add some excitement to your life because you feel like you’re carrying around a bomb detonator

   cons of eyedroppering a fountain pen:

not for the faint of heart and jittery of hands

not possible with every pen

you are carrying around a bomb detonator.

     this post was made by the teal hands gang

[swamp-world]

Fountain pens are wonderful until you’re sitting in an 8am tutorial and you realize that it’s leaking all over your pants, notes, and breakfast and now not only is ink all over your hands but your face now looks like a low-grade smurf because you wiped your hand on your cheek without thinking about it

[cat-brodsky]

Och, yes. Turns out that racing a bicycle to college shakes up the contents of your backpack, and, well... Diamine China Blue looks prettier on paper than on my fingers.

At least it cleans off really well.

[viola-ophelia]

in defense of bunny corcoran

Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is a classic murder mystery, and Bunny is the classic victim: unpalatable enough on the surface so that his killers can  pretend not to miss him, claim that he had it coming, and spin excuses justifying what they did. It’s easy not to like him, easier than it is not to like the others, who are constantly romanticized and glorified through Richard’s narration– Bunny is loud, annoying, hedonistic, prejudiced, a money-waster, and above all, un-aesthetic. A simple scroll through his Tumblr tag reveals hundreds of anti-Bunny posts writing him off as the worst character in The Secret History. Yet as frustrating as he is, the fact that he wears all of his flaws on his sleeve actually makes him the most decent character in the novel. 

The Secret History is about deception and delusion, and the message it conveys about hidden truths is far from flattering. The story is a scathing satire of academic elitism, revealing that the things which seem the prettiest are often the ugliest on the inside. “Beauty is terror” drives a group of rational students to commit the unspeakable; “live forever” obscures the finality and significance of wasted life. The main characters are all two-faced– Richard the voyeuristic innocent, Julian the fallible immortal–  starting out with flawless facades which fall away to reveal hideous truths as the plot progresses. Camilla, the beauty, is passive; Henry, the leader, is cold; Francis, the thinker, is weak; Charles, the loyal, is vicious. Bunny is the notable exception. He has no tragic backstory or dark secret– actually, he has nothing to hide at all, because everyone already knows exactly who he is. 

If Bunny has a fatal flaw, it is that he appears to be the only one capable of seeing the absurdism in The Secret History in an unromantic light: this leads him directly, though undeservedly, to his death. Everything is a joke to him, a quality which incessantly irritates his friends. He does not take Classics– their lifestyle; their raison d’etre– seriously; he makes a mockery of the form by typing his essays triple-spaced. His tweed jacket is frayed and stained; he chews pink bubble gum and has a honking laugh. Bunny’s very presence in the clique ruins its ‘dark academia’ aesthetic which Tumblr loves to glorify (entirely missing the point of the novel)– there’s a reason why he is left out of so many fan-made edits and moodboards. Even his insults are delivered tongue-in-cheek, as he starts to lash out against a fate which he knows is inescapable. Bunny dies laughing, which is perhaps the most grievous jab at the group that he was capable of delivering. They fall apart after he is gone because it is painfully clear that everything they stood for, everything they were, was a joke all along. 

Bunny spirals in the weeks before his death: he’s drunk, incoherent, suffocating under the weight of being forced to keep the secret of the farmer’s murder. And, of course, he verbally attacks each member of the group, trying to get at their most sensitive weakness: Francis’s gayness, Camilla’s femininity, Richard’s poverty. He’s a deeply unpopular character primarily because of the prejudices he so openly owns– but these attacks are personal far more so than they are universal. The point is not Bunny’s homophobia or sexism– values which, it could be argued, he seems to mock or parody as he does Classics– but the fact that he feels directly threatened by his own friends. In the letter discovered late in the novel, Bunny reveals that he knew Henry was planning to kill him and that everyone else was in on it long before his actual murder. He begs for help from Julian because he knows, months in advance, that all of his so-called ‘friends’ hated him and wanted him dead. How can anyone, even someone far less flawed than Bunny, reconcile with a truth as harsh as this? He copes poorly, but his last weeks are a cry for help, not a justification for his murder. 

“Bunny got what was coming for him” is a take that can be found in several different iterations online; some in jest, some not. To that I answer: those who seriously believe it are as gullible and idealistic as Richard, who allowed himself to be convinced that being annoying was a crime punishable by death. Bunny was not a killer (which is more than can be said for the rest of the characters in The Secret History): he was somebody’s brother and somebody’s son, a normal person and a life recklessly and pointlessly thrown away. His controversial honesty dismantled the Greek ideals which his ‘friends’ idolized, and for that, at least, we must value him. 

[cat-brodsky]

I can’t say I agree with everything in this post, but it was too damn good for me to not emerge from hibernation and reblog.

[cat-brodsky]

hey, i really enjoyed your the secret history parody and i was wondering if you've thought about writing one of if we were villains?

Thank you!

I haven’t thought about that before, but I might just end up writing it. Won’t be for a while, though - studies are absolutely killing me right now.

[cat-brodsky]

are you russian? I'm just asking because of the Russian poetry and the tobacco comment

In a nutshell, yes. (The actual answer is a little more complex). And no, I’m terrible at chess.

[lilwindie]

One of the things I like the most in French is how we use the verb “miss”. It is build differently in a sentence than in English, when we mean “I miss you” in English, we say “Tu (you) me (I) manques” in French. There’s an inversion of the pronouns, so the object of the missing actually becomes the centre of the sentence.

What I found truly amazing is that in that way, saying “Tu me manques” actually means at its origins “a piece of me is missing when you are not near”. And that for me, is one of the most beautiful and poetic thing in the French language.

[cat-brodsky]

(I had to reblog to reply)

Reflective pronouns are just that, pronouns that correspond to -self pronouns - e.g. myself, yourself, etc.

I am certainly not a French teacher either, so, I asked a native speaker friend of mine. His take is that the translation is “You are missed by me”, and that while your interpretation is beautiful, it’s not correct. There’s no such implication.

Manquer is a verb with many meanings - to lack, to miss (in time), to fail to do something, and, of course, to miss emotionally - manquer à. Paul manque à sa mère - Paul is missed by his mother. Since à generally corresponds to the “to” preposition, we can reasonably infer that the literal translation is simply “you are missing to me”.

lawlessfrench.com/grammar/manquer-lesson/ french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/manquer-a-means-to-miss-someone-something-emotionally Sources

[lilwindie]

I am, actually, also a native speaker and it is true that most of the time we use the preposition "à", as in "to". But in some specific cases, when we don’t use explicitly the object, the literary explanation and analysis can refer to what I said earlier— i do agree with you though I’m not trying to contradict anyone here! I think your explanation is more grammatically correct while mine is more based on a literary analysis ? Anyways saying "Tu me manques" or as you said, "tu manques à moi" (which we don’t say as it’s not that natural to say in French) still implies that something is missing within you.

Hope it clarified a bit !

[cat-brodsky]

Ah, I see. Thank you; I very much appreciate the in-depth replies.

Some expressions do, if that makes sense, arise from shortened ones - e.g. “prithee” for “I pray thee”. So there might, actually, be an equivalent of such for “manquer à” implying what you’ve said.