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Tag: bare infinitives
____________
verbs in this venue, you might’ve
expected that the indicative would
soon follow
of narratives, storytelling, the default
mode, essentially, where most of our
communication takes place, be it
oral or written
famous first lines of novels will attest
to that, lines you’ve probably heard
before, however only incidentally, if
not actually read
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
and the rest is so good, I can’t, in all
consciousness, exclude it
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was
the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the
season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
or
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
from Daphne du Maurier’s eerily Gothic
“Rebecca“, heiress to not only Charlotte
Brontë’s “Jane Eyre“, but also to her
sister Emily’s, to my mind, much more
accomplished work, “Wuthering“, and
indeed wonderful, “Heights“, whereupon
I’ll refrain from continuing to follow the
sentences, however compelling, for
lack of space and time
but
I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
unforgettable novel, however brilliantly
translated to film, must take its place
here among towering introductory
sallies
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.
Proust’s answer to Homer, his “À la
For a long time, I’d go to bed early.
which, as I read on, no less than
changed my life
but that’s another story, however
totally engrossing
everywhere above, let me point out,
the mood has been indicative, to a
very verb, so unobtrusive you
probably didn’t even notice
in music, a counterpart for the
indicative would be the allegro,
the baseline, not too fast, not
too slow, the tempo listeners
would most easily respond to
but more about that only later, after
a traipse through the speculative
conditional, then the aspirational
subjunctive
here and there an infinitive, and a
peppering of conditionals, however
might these be signal, to utterly break
your heart
R ! chard
__________
when I referred to Shakespeare’s
perhaps most famous monologue,
shed light on the idea of tempi,
that it would parallel Beethoven’s
Opus 111 in its philosophical
significance, however might’ve I
done so unintentionally, I was
nevertheless quite spot on, it is
perhaps his most potent
disquisition, as is Beethoven’s
own masterpiece, on existence
but let me extrapolate
to be, or not to be, both infinitives,
which is to say that their form, their
mood, relate to infinity, the infinite,
etymological correlatives, which
means that the actions, thus, are
not localized, not specific, but
belong to all places at all times and
for all people, the very stuff, let me
point out, of philosophy
whether ’tis nobler in the mind to
suffer, infinitive, the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune, or
to take, infinitive again, arms
against a sea of troubles, and by
which is to say, without the
preposition to, them
as in
to die, to sleep, infinitives, no more,
and by a sleep to say, infinitive, we
end the heartache and the thousand
natural shocks that flesh is heir to,
’tis a consummation devoutly to be
you’ll find that the rest of the
soliloquy abounds in infinitives,
the grammatical home, the
territory, of philosophy
Shakespeare kicks off, in
literature, the Renaissance, much
as Beethoven with his Opus 111
firmly establishes, in music, the
Romantic Period
compare, meanwhile, thou shalt
not kill, an imperative, the mood,
the tenor, the register, is of
commandments, it differs from
the infinitive in that, though
seemingly universal at first, there
is an exception to its authoritative
span, and that exception is the
speaker, all others are called upon
to abide, this is not philosophy,
this is power
much as in music, see in that context
lot between the lines
R ! chard
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