Thursday, January 5, 2012

bantering

 Pierre (1852):
"... of old, poetry was a consecration and an obloquy to all hapless modes of human life; but in a bantering, barren, and prosaic, heartless age, Aurora's music-moan is lost among our drifting sands, which whelm alike the monument and the dirge." 

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger (August 1853), 461:
C.  "Ah! no bantering now—there is a dreamy art of more pretension still;—that would paint the heart;—that would fix the wandering thought;—that would delve for discoveries in the deep mine of man's nature!

"But I have been writing, Frank, something for your especial approval; I have been setting forth grim realities,—and most philosophically. I did strike at last, but most naturally and truly, a little vein of—"

F.  "—Poetry, perhaps?  by the merest accident in the world." 

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