Saturday, July 10, 2010

Who Said: "God is in the Adverbs"?

It should be known that Akaky Akakievich expressed himself mostly with prepositions, adverbs, and finally such particles as have decidedly no meaning. If the matter was very difficult, he even had the habit of not finishing the phrase at all, so that very often he would begin his speech with the words, "That, really, is altogether sort of..." after which would come nothing, and he himself would forget it, thinking everything had been said.
--Nikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat," in
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol 394-424, 402
(Pevear and Volokhonsky trans. 2007)

Update: Who said "God is in the adverbs"? Nobody, really; the expression is "God loveth adverbs," and it is a regular on Christian websites, as in “God loveth adverbs; and careth not how good, but how well.”

No comments: