9/12/11

BigFoot

S.izable T.ennies Coleridge

     A weird anecdote in a Wallace Stevens essay:
     Once on a packet on his way to Germany Coleridge was asked to join a party of Danes and drink with them. Coleridge says:
     "I went, and found some excellent wines and a dessert of grapes with pineapple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, and dressed as I was all in black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings, I might certainly have passed very well for a Methodist missionary. However, I disclaimed my title. What then may you be, a philosopher perhaps? It was at that time in my life in which of all possible names and characters I had the greatest disgust for philosophers.
     "The Danes then informed me that all in the present party were philosophers. We drank and talked and sang til we talked and sang altogether, and then we rose and danced on the deck a set of dances. My large feet and calves never were so sore as then, dancing on that packet with those men."

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