The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.
Showing posts with label R L Stevenson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label R L Stevenson. Show all posts

Unusual words 04 Mien Taciturnity

Mien and taciturnity are not so unusual but I came across them together recently in the same sentence and although I could tell you what mien is easily enough, I would struggle a little with taciturnity. The sentence is "Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men of the place detained him for a word." The sentence is from near the beginning of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
Mien is, of course, face or look. It's a bit of a literary word and comes up in R L Stevenson's famous book in the sentence "The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll ..."
Taciturnity derives from a word for silence and means incommunicative (I'd thought it meant obtuse or difficult to be honest). See W Somerset Maugham Of human bondage "Perhaps his taciturnity a contempt for the human race which had abandoned the great dreams of his youth and now wallowed in sluggish ease; or perhaps these thirty years of revolution had taught him that men are unfit for liberty, and he thought that he had spent his life in the pursuit of that which was not worth the finding."

Noson Cwis

Enjoyed a nice evening yesterday with Eleri, Rhodri and others at the Welsh School. The main event was a seven round quiz and over £450 was raised. We were with two other parents (the fine by meez we were) and nearly won. We did well on the rock and pop (using our joker) and music intro rounds (thanks to Rhods and me and others). Thankfully John did the maths questions for us (though kicked himself over the formula for measuring a cone). We were okay but not great on the people bits but got caught out in the movies round not knowing the final line of Some like it hot*. Literature should be my forte but I hadn't heard of Sophie Kinsella, couldn't remember the surname of Chocolat woman Joanne (Harris) and boobed on Sherlock Holmes' address (it's a number and I'm disnumerate!). (BTW caught an excellent programme on Radio 4 - Gyles Brandreth looking at Conan Doyle, R L Stevenson, Wilde, Bram Stoker and J M Barry. See here.). Anyway we went into a tie break and had to say how many days a red blood cell lasts - not a clue. We said 4 days, the other team 14 so they won - though we were both miles out. Answer here. Ah well, *nobody's perfect*.