The fact is, I'm in Iceland all alone
    -MacKensie's prints are not unlike the scene --
Ich hab' zu Haus, ein Gra, ein Grammophon.
    Les gosses anglais aiment beacoup les machines.
    To kalos. glubit. che... what this may mean
I do not know, but rather like the sound
Of foreign languages like Ezra Pound.

(Auden, Letter to Byron)

Dear Jacob, do not you feel that this thing you're going to write "one
of this days" is deadly boring? That it's not more interesting than "a
rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"? What could be more _obvious_.
Can you imagine how many thousands times this was said before?

...bent resolutely on wringing lilacs from acorns

Now that same Kenner says that Joyce when writing Ulysses, and knowing
no Greek, used only Cowper's verse and Butler's prose translation.
That _is_ some kind of information.

JK> modern writers who so
JK> often employ it demonstrate the benefits of crossing cultural limits.
Do not you think that, say,
"Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch"
is not employed to "demonstrate the benefits of crossing cultural
limits", but, well, to demonstrate contrary?

Nikolay