word of the day: haruspication

word of the day: haruspication

context:

They made love for a long time and finished wet and exhausted. Like swimmers, Browne thought. By the standards of his sexual haruspication, it augured well. He woke briefly, thinking he had heard her in tears. She appeared asleep. He thought it must have been a dream.

definition (Merriam-Webster): an act or instance of foretelling something

Other sources have the foretelling specifically from the examination of animal entrails. 

Ah, the seeking of omens. I wonder what made looking at spilled guts a method of predicting the future. When one “spills one’s guts” these days, it means one is confessing. But then, those are one’s own guts being spilled, not a slaughtered animal’s. I suppose during slaughter the spilling of the animal’s guts can’t be avoided. Presumably the guts fell out in some particularly weird and memorable way one day, then later something else weird and memorable happened, thus the connection. Who knows?

source:

Outerbridge Reach

by Robert Stone

1992. Ticknor & Fields, New York NY

word of the day: nun buoy

word of the day: nun buoy

context:

In mid-harbor he turned his back on the lights and Liberty’s statue. Hard by the Bayonne shore, he skirted a nun buoy and passed under the lighted fantail of an enormous container ship riding at anchor. Three Filipino crewmen leaned against the rail, smoking, looking silently down on him.

definition (Merriam-Webster): a red metal buoy made of two cones joined at the base and usually marking the starboard side of a channel approached from the sea

Another source gives the origin of the “nun” part as meaning a “spinning top.” I learned “buoy” phonetically as “boo-ee,” but apparently it’s also pronounced “boy.” Thus the nun buoy could be a boy nun, which is rather fun. Or maybe none boy? 

source:

Outerbridge Reach

by Robert Stone

1992. Ticknor & Fields, New York NY

The road that didn’t get here

I’ve been dealing with bouts of envy. This is not new, exactly, but I am old now (55) so it just seems more critical. I want my writings collected in books, which are available in bookstores and libraries. I want to go on a book tour. I don’t want to have to do it all myself. My ambitions seem pretty modest. I don’t expect to write bestsellers, or have Terry Gross suck my Fresh Air or sit on a panel at the Big Book Fair (none which I would scorn, however).

When I came across Jesse Browner’s How Did I Get Here?: making peace with the road not taken, I thought, maybe he’ll offer some consolation, this successful writer offering up an essay about how unsuccessful he is — like me, minus the successful part. 

And some of it just made me roll my eyes. Really? He’s complaining about a life that sounds similar to one I dreamed of as a kid. Polyglot, in his 20s Browner got a well-paid and intellectually stimulating job at the United Nations, married and had two daughters and is still married, and is regularly publishing books. Browner thinks he’s a failure because his books don’t pay his bills, he never sees anybody reading his books on the subway, and he’s not a bohemian living only for his art. Browner’s romantic views of poverty are not mine. I always hated being poor, whereas I used to dream of being an interpreter at the UN. That job seemed so important, if unsung. I have studied other languages, not to no avail but well shy of fluency. I don’t know that I ever had particular dreams about kids of my own, but I like kids, and in one of those alternate universe versions of my life (the kind of musing Browner does quite a bit in the book) I imagine myself as a father. 

But I did end up liking How Did I Get Here? Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, “On the one hand … but on the other hand …”, Browner tries out different ways of thinking about his situation. The essay is framed by a discussion of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and Browner does a good thorough reading of that poem. It’s a far more ambiguous poem than its reputation suggests. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” I like the way Browne even allows that the outcome of that fateful decision might have been terrible. The poet doesn’t really say. The mood of the poem seems wistful and satisfied rather than anguished and regretful, but no concrete result is described. Wealth? Love? Good drugs? The monastery?

So let’s say you are an artist, and underappreciated. What advice does Jesse Browner have for you? Fortunately, it’s less advice and more example. Here’s what I wrestled with in my head, kids. Maybe it will mean something to you?

My favorite line in the book is this one (by “work” he means his writing, not his day job):

My work was there to keep me alive, and it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do, but I was asking it to make me happy, and that was not its job.

With all big dreams of capturing the world’s attention unfulfilled, how then does the work serve? With commitment to one’s art not bringing satisfaction and contentment as one had expected, is there any point in doing it? To live. Really? To live?

Rereading the quote out of the context of Jesse Browner’s argument I see that “work” he’s referring to could also be the day job … so long as it keeps you alive. (Browner does explore this idea when he discusses Franz Kafka’s oft-voiced distaste for his day job, one at which, Browner says, Kafka actually excelled, moving up in the company and garnering much praise from his supervisors.)

And here we come upon one of my rare insights into the notion of the Blues. Why indulge sadness when you could strive to be happy? Well, there’s sadness in everything because nothing lasts forever. Happiness is great. I much prefer it. And I have a nagging tic of suicidal ideation. But for me the writing of a poem is the visiting of a place, and in that place that feels like a nexus many a disparate thread comes together into a cloth, or a poem. Browner also wonders what “meaning” is in the search for meaning. And I think we agree that the meaning is in the meaning, that is, meaning is an action, meaning is in the making of meaning (or maybe the searching). 

Live while you’re alive. 

source:

How Did I Get Here?: making peace with the road not taken

by Jesse Browner

2015. Harper Wave / HarperCollins, New York NY

95472

Fantagraphics Books (my publisher!) has been issuing volumes of Peanuts strips in collections covering two calendar years. I grew up in Sebastopol, a small Northern California town. I remember being told that Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts lived in town somewhere, that a kid or two I knew had even been to a pool party at this house. If I ever saw Schulz’s house I didn’t know it. So I’m reading vol. 7 of The Complete Peanuts and I come upon a character with a gimmicky name. It seems the boy is named “5.” What is his last name? “95472”

That’s Sebastopol’s zip code. Funny. 5’s sisters’ names are 3 and 4. I have read many collections of Peanuts strips over the years — as well as reading each new strip as it appeared — and I don’t recall these characters. I thought they must have been dropped soon after they were created. There’s not much you can do with such a gimmick. But a little research told me that 5 appeared off and on up to 1983, 20 years after his creation. 

Most significantly, the three number-named kids appear in the first Peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. There are three kids who only appear in a dance scene. Two stringy-haired girls face the camera, smiling, and drop their heads from side to side. A boy with short spiky hair juts out his chin, then pulls it in. Those are 5, 4, and 3. None of them have any lines. But with Peanuts’ limited cast, I guess these otherwise seldom used characters helped fill up a crowd scene. (Credit to Karl Heitmuller for putting together the clues.)

source:

The Complete Poems, vol. 7: 1963-1964

by Charles Schulz

2017. Fantagraphics Books, Seattle WA

word of the day: viga

word of the day: viga 

from “In Chimayo” by Gloria Bird 

Across the arroyo, the news would remind Manuelita of her grief, y su hijito lost the month we moved in. That spring, centipedes sprinkled sand from the warming vigas where they were hidden. 

 

 

definition (Merriam-Webster): one of the heavy rafters and especially a log supporting the roof in American Indian and Spanish architecture of the Southwest 

source: 

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: a Norton anthology of Native Nations poetry 

edited by Joy Harjo, with Leanne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and contributing editors 

2020. W. W. Norton & Co., New York

word of the day: baldachin

word of the day: baldachin

from “The Seventh Angel” by Zbigniew Herbert:

The seventh angel 

is completely different

even his name is different

Shemkel

he is no Gabriel

the aureate

upholder of the throne

and baldachin

and he’s no Raphael

tuner of choirs

…

Shemkel

is black and nervous

and has been fined many times

for illegal import of sinners

definition (Merriam-Webster): a cloth canopy fixed or carried over an important person or a sacred object

bonus definition from Merriam-Webster — aureate: of a golden color or brilliance

source: 

Zbigniew Herbert: Selected Poems

translations by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

1968. Penguin Books, Baltimore MD

word of the day: rhubarb

word of the day: rhubarb

first context Peanuts: 

In an April 1963 Sunday strip Lucy is on the pitcher’s mound. She calls over Snoopy to have him slobber on the baseball. When thrown, the ball loops and swirls before passing over home plate into the catcher’s mitt, Charlie Brown swinging at it fruitlessly. Charlie Brown lectures Lucy on the rule that prohibits such a pitch: “Right here on page thirty-one, section three, rule 6.12!” Pleased with himself nevertheless Snoopy sits by thinking to himself, “I love a good rhubarb.”

second context Dykes to Watch Out For:

In a 2/20/08 strip Mo and Lois run into each other at the grocery store, and do a little catching up. Lois, always ready to bed the latest hot babe, is surprised and a little disturbed to note that she’s been an exclusive relationship for three years. One of her housemates (not her girlfriend) is insisting on stocking the larder as a locavore. Mo looks into the grocery cart full of commercially produced food packages. “Clarice [a different housemate] told me you were only eating local food.” Lois: “That’s just at my place. When I want to escape the rhubarb wine, I go to [the house of Jasmine, the girlfriend].” Being as it’s 2008 and the Democratic Party is in the midst of the contentious primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Jasmine and daughter Janis start arguing over which candidates each prefers. Lois turns to Mo, “And when I want to escape the political rhubarb, I go back home!”

definition (Merriam-Webster): a heated dispute or controversy

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use “rhubarb” this way in conversation. I remember reading the Peanuts strip as a kid and being puzzled by the word. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alison Bechdel also picked up “rhubarb” from Peanuts, but who knows? Maybe back east it’s common usage. 

sources:

The Complete Poems, vol. 7: 1963-1964

by Charles Schulz

2017. Fantagraphics Books, Seattle WA

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

by Alison Bechdel

2008. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York

word of the day: dunnage

word of the day: dunnage

context: 

“Our canoe, old now with the weight of her journey, lay with her scrofulous sides on the shore. Beside her was the meager pile of supplies which must see us out of the land. It was raining. A fine penetrating haze as cold and dismal as the gray sweat on the face of a corpse hung over us.

Ohoto and Ootek came to help us stow our spare dunnage against the rough splintered ribs of the canoe.”

Farley Mowat was one of my mother’s favorite writers. But then Mowat often wrote about one of my mother’s favorite topics — the people and animals of the arctic. He writes well. I read Never Cry Wolf when I was a teen and enjoyed it. Good adventure story. 

In the excerpt above Mowat has just gotten back from a trip through territory even his Eskimo guide didn’t know. It was his longest expedition on this visit to the arctic, and it was sometimes harrowing. But now it is time for Mowat to return south, to civilization, to his non-arctic life. 

definition (dictionary.com): baggage or personal effects.

source:

The People of the Deer

by Farley Mowat

1952. Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston MA

words of the day: dace and tangle

words of the day: dace and tangle

In the months and years after the atomic bomb explosion over Hiroshima the survivors have to deal with the effects of radiation poisoning. Yasuko was not hurt by the initial blast but wandered the ruins looking for her uncle, so unknowingly took on a strong dose. Her uncle and aunt were also sickened, but the younger woman seemed to have it worse. 

I see the doctor to the gate and am told: ‘She seems more listless than yesterday. It’s the effect of the fever, I imagine.’

For supper, stewed dace, egg, tangle, shallots, one bowl of rice, tomatoes. The doctor said he would come every three days, but after talking with my husband and with Yasuko, I go to Dr. Kajita’s house to ask him to come every day. He agrees.

The patient goes to bed at eight.

dace (dictionary.com): a small, freshwater cyprinoid fish, Leuciscus leuciscus, of Europe, having a stout, fusiform body.

tangle (dictionary.com): any of several large seaweeds of the genus Laminaria.

source: 

Black Rain

by Masuji Ibuse

translated by John Bester

1985. Kodansha International / Bantam Books, NY

word of the day: rusk

word of the day: rusk

The narrator is walking back into post-A-bomb Hiroshima. He has come upon a body that at first he thinks might be alive, as “from time to time it seemed to puff its cheeks out and take a deep breath. Its eyelids seemed to be moving, too.” As he approaches the narrator is revolted to see the movements of the face are the actions of maggots swarming.

For a moment, I felt like flinging my bundle in the river. I hated war. Who cared, after all, which side won? The only important thing was to end it all as soon as possible: rather an unjust peace than a ‘just’ war! I went back to the parapet, but instead of flinging my bundle into the river made it fast on my back. It was full of things necessary for survival amidst the ruins: a bottle containing stomach pills, a trowel, old magazines, eucalyptus leaves, dried rusks, a round paper fan, and the like.

definition (Merriam-Webster): hard crisp bread originally used as ship's stores

The eucalyptus leaves, when burned slowly, are a mosquito repellent, the paper fan a way to keep the smoke moving. 

source: 

Black Rain

by Masuji Ibuse

translated by John Bester

1985. Kodansha International / Bantam Books, NY

Death by Balloon

Eight years ago I put up a post about Japan’s World War II rather random weapon, the incendiary balloon. I just came across a more thorough account in Nicholas Basbanes’ history of paper. The balloons were made of paper, so … 

[This] ambitious [balloon] offensive was deemed feasible on the strength of meteorological research conducted in the 1930s that had discovered ‘rivers of fast moving air’ flowing in the upper atmosphere toward North America, wind patterns that we know today as jet streams. …

Seven manufacturing centers were set up around Tokyo to assemble what was code-named the Fu-Go Weapon (the first character of the word for balloon is fu), with handmade paper selected for the skin of the thirty-two-foot-diameter balloons, six hundred individual sheets required for each one, all glued together in a lamination that made no allowance for gas leakage. …

It is believed that nine thousand balloon bombs were launched from three coastal locations in Japan between November 3, 1944, and April 5, 1945, each inflated with nineteen thousand cubic feet of hydrogen. About a thousand are thought to have reached North America … Sightings were confirmed in locations that ranged from Alaska, British Columbia, and Manitoba … to Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska … One traveled as far east as Grand Rapids, Michigan … Wreckage … turns up from time to time in densely wooded areas, one as recently as 1992. …

Unwilling to give the Japanese any information to fine-tune their assaults, American censors placed a strict embargo on all details of the raids. … The … assault was not without its victims, however. On May 5, 1945, a woman and five children on an outing near the Gearhart Mountains, northwest of Klamath Falls, Oregon, came across a strange object lying on the ground; all six were killed when one of them apparently tugged on a dangling line, triggering a bomb. A memorial plaque erected after the war identifies the location as the ‘only place on the American continent where death resulted from enemy action during World War II.’

The people killed in the ballon bombing campaign were almost all children. Children killed by balloons. Children love balloons!

source:

On Paper: the everything of its two-thousand year history

by Nicholas A. Basbanes

2013. Alfred A. Knopf, New York

The structure of Oz

In her book on writing Ariel Gore uses The Wizard of Oz to illustrate “the classic five-act” structure for a novel. She calls it “the traditional Western male story structure that so much of modern prose relies on.”

Act I : “This is your background … This act shows your character in her known world, in her daily life, in her culture or subculture. This is Dorothy in Kansas before the tornado.”

Act II : “Your character faces a crisis and leaves something that is known for something that is unknown. … This is Dorothy landing in Oz.”

Act III : “This act introduces a complication or further conflict. Here your character faces tests, bumps in the road, a temptation or distraction from the goal. … This is Dorothy crossing a fast-moving river, falling asleep in the poppy field, seeking an audience with the Wizard.”

Act IV : “In this act, it appears that the forces of ‘evil’ will win out, the character will never reach her destination … Total defeat. The Wizard is a fraud.”

Act V : “There is a turn of events … that enables your character to resolve the problem, get to her destination or home again. … Dorothy realizes she has what she needs within herself to get home. Tap, tap, tap.”

Ariel Gore mixes up the original L. Frank Baum novel and the MGM movie adaptation somewhat. There’s no fast-moving river in the movie, but there is in the novel. There is no realization in the novel that Dorothy has always had everything she needs to get home. But it does take a sorceress to tell her the silver shoes will get her there, the very shoes she’s been wearing ever since she shook the dust of the Wicked Witch of the East out of them. Her companions, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, are the ones who already had what they needed within themselves.  

source:

How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead

by Ariel Gore

2007. Three Rivers Press / Crown Publishing / Random House

“make it impossible”

In an interview with a book editor, Ariel Gore asks for tips on the kind of query they would like to see. 

The editor shakes their head at “sloppy” authors who don’t “really put a lot of time and effort into making the best impression.” The editor goes on, “The sad truth is that, like everyone else, agents and editors are busy, and as much as we want to find the next book we can’t turn down, there is such a high volume of material coming in that it’s easier to find reasons to say no than to say yes.”

The editor concludes, “The author’s job is to make it impossible for us to say no.”

That’s what the author’s job is. The book is obviously secondary. You’d better be good at sales, author. You’d better be a real salesman. 

None of this is a new information. Since I was a kid I’ve been reading books on how to be a writer and achieve publication. But this is one of those things about being an author that I find discouraging. Sales. I’m no good at sales. 

The editor’s obvious disgust for authors is offputting, too. I get it. Editors are overwhelmed by the mass of manuscript that comes their way. On their bad days they’d prefer 99% of the hopefuls clogging their in-box would just drop dead. In order to stand out you’d better be good at jumping up and down on the page and shouting in just that way that demonstrates your brilliance, the million-selling potential of your product, your obedient and marketable personality, etc. 

I like to write. I get a lot of value out of it. Having written interesting things, I would like to find a publisher for them. But the sort of advice the editor is dishing up always depresses me. Make it impossible, they say. But that seems to be their job.

source:

How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead

by Ariel Gore

2007. Three Rivers Press / Crown Publishing / Random House

word of the day: suguration

word of the day: suguration

The elderly, ailing Aunt Jane is telling her heirs what to expect from her will.

context: 

Aunt Jane turned to her brother.

‘I have also provided for you, John, in the sum of five thousand dollars.’

‘Me!’ he exclaimed, astounded. ‘Why, suguration, Jane, I don’t —‘

‘Silence!’ she cried, sternly. ‘I expect neither thanks nor protests. If you take care of the money, John, it will last you as long as you live.’

Uncle John laughed.

I googled “suguration” and got one search result — Aunt Jane’s Nieces. The website Word in Context quotes exactly the same passage, but offers no definition. 

Presumably Baum coined it. I’m guessing the first two syllables “sugur” sound like “sugar.” So the word might be heard as “sugar-ration.” 

There is a long tradition of nonsense words being used in place of curses or other taboo words, from “darn” for “damn” to “freaking” for “fucking,” and Baum is not the first or last to make one up himself. Nor is it unusual to switch something sweet in for something nasty. The “honey wagon” that pumps the sewage out of your septic tank comes to mind.

source: Aunt Jane’s Nieces

by L. Frank Baum, writing as Edith Van Dyne

1906/2003. International Wizard of Oz Club, Antioch CA

Wizard of Oz as allegory

In her book on Modern Monetary Theory Stephanie Kelton touches on the most obvious, inarguable allegory of The Wizard of Oz:

The United States is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. But even when Americans were at their poorest during the Great Depression, we managed to establish Social Security and the minimum wage, electrify rural communities, provide federal housing loans, and fund a massive jobs program. Like Dorothy and her companions in The Wizard of Oz, we need to see through the myths and remember once again that we’ve had the power all along.

The Cowardly Lion was already brave, the Tin Woodman already compassionate (not what you’d expect for someone without a heart), and the Scarecrow (despite having a head stuffed with straw) took care to think things through. In other words, the Oz friends had to learn that what held them back were “myths,” as Kelton puts it. 

The myth Kelton addresses in her book is the myth that the U.S. is deeply in debt and we must continually cut spending in order to keep from going under. I’ve found this truism of Washington politics most curious in the case of our endless wars and so-called defense spending. There never seems to be an issue about paying for that stuff. And yet the economy doesn’t crash based on profligate military budgets. 

Don’t our taxes pay for everything the government does? No, says Stephanie Kelton. Taxes don’t actually pay for the federal government. The federal government self-funds — by printing money. Also, the federal government is never in debt. Those treasury bills bearing interest, that we can read as the federal debt? They’re not really a debt. They’re a way to get people to use the money the USA creates. 

There’s a lot more to Kelton’s argument, and I’m not sure I get it all. But before I read the book I knew there was plenty of money — there is plenty of money to do everything we need to do, everything that’s really a good idea, and a lot of silly, just-for-fun things. Stephanie Kelton backs me up on that. 

The last time I wrote about Wizard as allegory was back in 2012. 

source:

The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the birth of the people’s economy

by Stephanie Kelton

2020. Public Affairs / Perseus Books / Hachette Book Group, New York

unholy math

In medieval Europe the numerals we use today weren’t so much unknown as they were taboo. They were sinful, evil, because Christianity. 

Numbers were dangerous; at least these Indian [also known as Arabic] numbers were. They were contraband. The zero was the most unholy: a symbol for nothingness, a Hindu concept, influenced by Buddhism and transplanted to Christian Europe. It became a secret sign, a signal between fellow travelers. Sunyata was a well-established Buddhist practice of emptying the mind of all impressions, dating as far back as about 300 B.C. The Sanskirt term for zero was sunya, meaning ‘empty’ or ‘blank.’ Flashing a zero to another merchant let him know that you were a user of Hindu-Arabic numerals. In many principalities, Arabic numerals were banned from official documents. Math was sometimes exported to the West by ‘bootleggers’ in Hindu-Arabic numerals. There is plentiful evidence of such illicit number use in thirteenth-century archives in Italy, where merchants used Gwalior numbers as a secret code.

Hindu-Arabic numerals were so much easier to use in calculations than Roman numerals that they were even considered magical — which, of course, made them more verboten. 

I wonder how many mathematicians were burned at the stake. 

source:

Lost Discoveries: the ancient roots of modern science — from the Babylonians to the Maya

by Dick Teresi

2002. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY

New York City tableau

The musician known as Moby namedrops a lot in his memoir Then It Fell Apart. He also drinks a lot and does a lot drugs.  This was the paragraph that maxed the namedropping: 

Teany had become a place where some of the public figures in the neighborhood like to hang out, and somehow today they had all shown up at the same time. Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth were at one of the tables. David Bowie and Iman and their toddler daughter were at another table. A few feet away Gus Van Sant was having tea with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Joaquin Phoenix. Outside, Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal were having scones.

Do I want to hang out with David Bowie and Jake Gyllenhaal and that lot? Wouldn’t it be nice?

Moby is, like, one month older than me. He found fame and wealth pursuing his art. The adoring crowds, the money, the celebrity buddies made him feel loved. For a little while. 

Teany was a tea shop / lounge that Moby and his girlfriend Kelly opened in NYC. Moby had a lot of money to throw around. He financed teany, but says Kelly did almost all the work. Theirs is one of the longer relationships Moby describes in his book. Intimacy gives him panic attacks, he says, and he evens himself out with large quantities of drink. 

Moby describes taking every kind of drug, often in poured in together, though he drinks so much the drugs are really only sprinkles on the alcohol cupcake. 

It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who buys a three-storey penthouse apartment with expansive views of Central Park. But, yeah, the poor guy was unhappy. And Natalie Portman wishes he wouldn’t say they were ever in a relationship. 

source:

Then It Fell Apart

Moby

2019. Faber & Faber, London UK

The French in Bernard into Battle

Bernard into Battle is the last book in Margery Sharp’s Rescuers series (or, as the author seems to prefer it, the Miss Bianca series). This last adventure has the mice who live in the Embassy threatened by an invasion of rats from the sewer. The mice must mount a defense, and, it turns out, it’s a deadly battle. 

The rats lay siege to the Moot Hall of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society, which is an old wine barrel. To thwart the rats, the mice fight back with chemical warfare — a particularly stinky old cheese:

[The] fumes [of the bad cheese] proved so deadly, the rats succumbed as before a gas attack. Those in front fell sideways from their hunkers with all four feet in the air, and even the rearmost ranks choked and spluttered but a moment before following suit, and within a moment all were hors de combat (which is French for being down and out). Even Hercules was hors de combat, he the foremost of all having received the Gorgonzola’s full blast absolutely nez a nez (which is French for head on), and lay senseless upon what should have been his field of victory!

The deadliness of the fumes prove to be more figure of speech than real poison, and the rats recover to attack another day.

While the rats are recuperating, our old friend Bernard convinces Miss Bianca to stay out of any future fray. She may be able to talk a cat out of eating a mouse, but Bernard doesn’t think Miss Bianca’s silver tongue is up to the challenge of a swarm of rats. Miss Bianca, however, refuses to be cooped up 24/7.

Bernard … consented to [Miss Bianca] walking out for twenty minutes or so each day in the Radish Patch, which permission he gave more readily because the Radish Patch was surrounded by practically a cheval-a-frise of close set holly bushes …

The war culminates in a real pitched battle. Pen-nibs have been appropriated from the Ambassador’s office to act as spear heads. Even thus armed, our mouse heroes are outmatched by the burlier rats.

Many a pen-nib indeed found its mark in rattish vitals, but even a rat struck to the heart could ere he succumbed still bowl his assailant over and leave it to a fellow-rat to administer the bite, or coup de grace.

Hercules, the leader of the rats, is confident of victory.

Hercules advanced at the head of his corps d’elite (again French, meaning his best troops).

definitions: Margery Sharp usually provides quick translations of her French in Bernard into Battle. But here are some versions from the internet, too:

hors de combat : Out of action due to injury or damage.

nez a nez : face to face

cheval-a-frise : an obstacle, usually a piece of wood with projecting spikes, formerly used to hinder enemy horsemen 

coup de grace : a death blow or death shot administered to end the suffering of one mortally wounded

corps d’elite : A select group

source:

Bernard into Battle

by Margery Sharp

illustrated by Leslie Morrill

1978. Little, Brown, & Co., Boston

word of the day: jeu d’esprit

word of the day: jeu d’esprit

Miss Bianca has returned from what turned out to be a rather boring vacation for her in the mountains. She couldn’t play in the snow with the Boy, who is her special human friend, so she’s mostly been restricted to staring out windows. Upon her return to the Embassy she learns that Bernard has gone off on a rescuing mission without her. Miss Bianca is the prime mover of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society so she is worried. She knows Bernard is capable, yet … 

So when he shows up at the end of his own adventure, Miss Bianca is much relieved. 

“[H]ow tired you must be …, my dear, dear Bernard!”

"Just a bit whacked," admitted Bernard. "Did you miss me at all, Miss Bianca, while you were away at that mountain resort?"

"Did I miss you!" exclaimed Miss Bianca. "You were hardly absent from my thoughts! I even wrote a poem about you!"

"Really?" cried Bernard. "Really and truly? Oh Miss Bianca, won’t you repeat it to me?"

"’Twas but a jeu d’esprit which I’ve almost forgotten," said Miss Bianca.

"Can’t you remember even a line or two of it?" pressed Bernard.

"Well, the last two," said Miss Bianca, "were O Bernard are you all right / Out of my sight?"

Bernard drew a deep, happy breath.

Ah, to be immortalized in a poem by the beloved! Now, if only she would love him. 

definition (Collins): a clever, witty turn of phrase, piece of writing, etc.

source:

Bernard the Brave

by Margery Sharp

illustrated by Leslie Morrill

1977. Little, Brown & Co., Boston

word of the day: facer

word of the day: facer

In the role of rescuer (representing the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society) Bernard has at last succeeded in the necessary first step of mounting a rescue — finding the prisoner. 

The heiress to be freed from bondage expresses full confidence in her would-be savior. 

“I … place myself entirely in your hands!’ [the young lady says.]

This was a bit of a facer for Bernard, who … had as yet no solid plan for rescuing her.

definition (Merriam-Webster): British : a sudden often stunning check or obstacle

source:

Bernard the Brave

by Margery Sharp

illustrated by Leslie Morrill

1977. Little, Brown & Co., Boston