“The old man nodded, as if his neck was afraid of the weight of his head.”
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 2
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Raymond Chandler 124
Novelist, screenwriter 1888–1959Related quotes
“And now the high crest sinks, now the head is nodding overpowered and the huge neck has slipped from around the fleece it guarded, like refluent Po or Nile that sprawls in seven streams or Alpheus when his waters enter the Hesperian world.”
Iamque altae cecidere iubae nutatque coactum
iam caput atque ingens extra sua vellera cervix
ceu refluens Padus aut septem proiectus in amnes
Nilus et Hesperium veniens Alpheos in orbem.
Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 88–91
VIII. 306–308 (tr. R. Lattimore); the death of Gorgythion.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain, —
So sinks the youth; his beauteous head, depressed
Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
I. 528–530 (tr. Richmond Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. (22 October 1883).
1880s, Speech at the Civil Rights Mass Meeting (1883)
Variant: No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
“Euryalus
In death went reeling down,
And blood streamed on his handsome length, his neck
Collapsing let his head fall on his shoulder—
As a bright flower cut by a passing plow
Will droop and wither slowly, or a poppy
Bow its head upon its tired stalk
When overborne by a passing rain.”
Volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artus
It cruor inque umeros cervix conlapsa recumbit:
Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo
Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.
Compare:
Μήκων δ' ὡς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν, ἥ τ' ἐνὶ κήπῳ
καρπῷ βριθομένη νοτίῃσί τε εἰαρινῇσιν,
ὣς ἑτέρωσ' ἤμυσε κάρη πήληκι βαρυνθέν.
He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy
bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime;
so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.
Homer, Iliad, VIII, 306–308 (tr. R. Lattimore)
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IX, Lines 433–437 (tr. Fitzgerald)
Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)
