failure, another something of
There is a something of ecstatic in
the most sluttish heap of things ₁
a something of incongruity ₂ in a
place where she was so little likely to find it;
a something that had betrayed a tremor. ₃
For it is in the minutiae of these
things ₄ — a something of failure ₅ —
a something of rapture, there, had been. ₃
sources
- “‘K.T.’ to Charlotte Brontë, 11 December 1850,” in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, with a selection of letters by family and friends. Margaret Smith, ed.; Vol. 2, 1848-1851 (2000) : 529 / more
sluttish — dirty, slovenly...
etymonline : link - Mrs. Trollope, The Lottery of Marriage : A Novel. (London, 1849) / more
- Anthony Trollope. Can You Forgive Her? (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1865) / more
- Harry Hieover, Stable Talk and Table Talk, or, Spectacles for Young Sportsmen (London, 1845) / more
in which
I conclude a something of this opinion actuates the manager and actor in our equestrian spectacles, when the attempt at the personification of a sportsman is made to give effect to the song,
“Hie-ho Chevy, this day a stag must die!” - Isabella. A Novel. By the author of “Rhoda” &c. [Frances Jackson (1754-1842)] (London, 1823) / more
aside —
currently reading — and reflecting on (“staying with”) — Living on After Failure : Affective Structures of Everyday Life (2025), by Irving Goh, starting with his discussion of Barthes’s concept of “the Neutral,” in connection with Rachel Cusk her Aftermath (2019) and the Outline trilogy (2016, 2017, 2019).
publisher’s page (and introduction) : link