NPPF Comm2: Often

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

Let's stretch way out for a few low-hanging P or GR references:
a.  Heliotrope is, of course "hard to obtain".
b.  There's that ever popular red/green magenta/green
lime-green-in-wit-your-rozay color scheme again.
c.  Drugs!
d.  "A long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking" sounds like a
complaint one might make about P. For my money, the farther one has to
go for a fart joke the more pleasant the room is likely to be, though I
confess I'd happily walk a mile for a really first-rate flatulence
jape. Humbert Humbert refers to the discomfort of a "trapped afflatus"
somewhere in Lolita; the ShorterOED offers a single definition --- "the
communication of supernatural knowledge; divine impulse; (esp. poetic)
inspiration" from a latin root meaning the act of blowing or breathing
on. Humbert doesn't know what the word really means, only what it
sounds like. I presume Nabokov knew the correct definition and was
having fun with a Phony Phart Joke. The stinker! The Delphic Sibyl
must've had her nose right in the old Apollonian cobblepot.

Is there more? Could it possibly matter? Heliotrope is, like
pfeffernuss, an inherently silly word and always good for a smile.

Mark


> Heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi) (p 98). MW10 says, with some
> definitions abridged for the convenience of the typist:
> 
> heliotrope. n. [L. heliotropium, fr. Gk. heliotropion, helio [.]  + 
> tropos
> turn; fr. its flowers turning toward the sun.] 1. any of a genus
> (Heliotropium) of herbs or shrubs of the borage family-compare garden
> heliotrope. 2. bloodstone. 3. A variable color averaging a moderate
> to
> reddish purple.
> 
> garden heliotrope. A tall rhizomatous valerian widely cultivated for
> its
> fragrant tiny flowers and for its roots which yield the drug
> valerian.
> 
> valerian. [2.] A drug consisting of the dried rootstock and roots of
> the
> garden heliotrope formerly used as a carminative and sedative.
> 
> carminative. Expelling gas from the alimentary canal so as to relieve
> colic
> or griping.
> 
> Long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking. Oh, and:
> 
> bloodstone. A green chalcedony sprinkled with red spots resembling
> blood-called also heliotrope.
>(snip)
> In any case the heliotrope, with its flowers that turn toward the
> sun, its
> roots that will both relieve gas and calm you down, and its red and
> green
> color scheme, is powerfully connected to memories of home for
> Kinbote. 

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