hawthorn

slumry commented on the word hawthorn

several species of crataegus are called hawthorn

August 1, 2007

knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn

"It was in the "Month of Mary" that I remember first having fallen in love with hawthorns. Not only were they in the church, where, holy ground as it was, we had all of us a right of entry, but arranged upon the altar itself, inseparable from the mysteries in whose celebration they participated, thrusting in among the tapers and the sacred vessels their serried branches, tied to one another horizontally in a stiff, festal scheme of decoration still further embellished by the festoons of leaves, over which were scattered in profusion, as over a bridal train, little clusters of buds of a dazzling whiteness."

-- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p 121 of the Vintage International paperback edition

December 28, 2007

knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn

"And the name Guermantes of those days is also like one of those little balloons which have been filled with oxygen or some other gas; when I come to prick it, to extract its contents from it, I breathe the air of the Combray of that year, of that day, mingled with a fragrance of hawthorn blossom blown by the wind from the corner of the square, harbinger of rain, which now sent the sun packing, now let it spread itself over the red woolen carpet of the sacristy, clothing it in a bright geranium pink and in that, so to speak, Wagnerian sweetness and solemnity in joy that give such nobility to a festive occasion."

--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 5 of the Modern Library paperback edition

July 13, 2008

knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn

"When all was said, the stories I had heard at Mme de Guermantes's, very different in this respect from what I had felt in the case of the hawthorns, or when I tasted a madeleine, remained alien to me."

--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 756 of the Modern Library paperback edition

September 29, 2008

knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn

"When we speak of the "niceness" of a woman, we are doing no more perhaps than project outside ourselves the pleasure that we feel in seeing her, like children when they say: "My dear little bed, my dear little pillow, my dear little hawthorns." Which explains, incidentally, why men never say of a woman who is not unfaithful to them: "She is so nice," and say it so often of a woman by whom they are betrayed."

--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 670 of the Modern Library paperback edition

February 15, 2010

knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn

"Gradually, as the love that Albertine may have felt for certain women ceased to cause me pain, it attached those women to my past, made them somehow more real, as the memory of Combray gave to buttercups and hawthorn blossom a greater reality than to unfamiliar flowers."

--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 746 of the Modern Library paperback edition

February 18, 2010

knitandpurl commented on the word hawthorn

"And then, you've talked so often to Saint-Loup about the hawthorns and lilacs and irises at Tansonville, he'll see what you meant now."

--The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 918 of the Modern Library paperback edition

February 23, 2010