I have a friend who is a spellbinding talker. He’s a professor. I’ve heard him give lectures, citing the details of several scientific papers, with no notes.
Occasionally, he closes his eyes as he talks. He moves one hand back and forth, a kind of metronome that governs the rhythm of his sentences.
Coleridge did the same thing, according to Eric G. Wilson’s biography of Charles Lamb, the English essayist.
Lamb said Coleridge once waylaid him on a street in London, buttonholed him into the entryway of a garden and started describing a train of thought he’d been working on. Coleridge got caught up in the topic, closed his eyes and moved one hand rhythmically, keeping the other on a button on Lamb's coat.
It was fascinating, but Lamb had to get to work.
As a church bell chimed the hour, Lamb panicked, cut the button off his coat with a penknife and ran, leaving Coleridge in his reverie. Lamb claimed that he returned five hours later and found Coleridge in the same entryway, eyes closed, one hand grasping the button and the other moving rhythmically, aiding the thoughts as they came forth into the world.
A tall tale? Of course.
Lamb told it for the same reason I’m repeating it: He liked to think and he admired people who could lose themselves in thought.
• Sources: Eric G. Wilson, Dream-Child: A Life of Charles Lamb; Yale University Press, 2022, p. 69. For more, see “A new biography of Charles Lamb,” Aug. 20, 2022.
No comments:
Post a Comment