Texts about angling often include a particular trope - a sententious statement in which we're invited to think about the value of a day of fishing as opposed to other ways of spending time. I'm interested in the ubiquity of these sayings and in the very fact that the day is the unit they usually mention. It's perfectly possible to spend a morning fishing, or an afternoon, or, indeed, a whole week's holiday. But to take a day out of one's routine - a day to do something different - seems to carry a particular symbolic charge.
A bad day fishing is better than a good day of work. This saying is all over the internet - the prototype of the kind of trope I'm talking about. And here is a more earnest one quoted in Bradford's book:
Angling Spirit.—"It is the way we do things and the spirit in which we prosecute our endeavors that counts. The man who takes the day to go fishing on the great ocean or in the forest and can commune with Nature can be as good a Christian as the best man that ever entered the portals of a church, cathedral, or synagogue."—"Nature Factor."These references to 'days well spent' have something in common with Horace's famous injunction - carpe diem, 'seize the day'. (Atually, the Latin verb carpere means something more like 'gather' or 'pluck'. There is an agricultural metaphor implicit in the tag.) Each new sunrise seems to renew the challenge to use time wisely and well. And, as Prospero says in the final speech of the Tempest, life itself can be figured as the interval between two sleeps.
I wonder also where my comment went? Sometimes I do write things here and they get deleted but I just assume it is the work of the Malicious Demon who runs modern life. I wrote about the proverbs and sayings in 'The Technique of Freshwater Fishing (dated MCMLII) which although it is about a book about technique has a lot of poetic stuff in it. the section on Baits starts in this way:
ReplyDelete"Years ago I had a grandfather who always explained anything unusual by saying, "What is seldom is wonderful". He had been a fisherman all his life and I have often thought that when he made use of that statement his mind must have been turning on the many occasions he had taken fish on strange baits." p. 47
I live this quote because it is the 'we always do this' genre of talk, which as an ethnographer is endlessly fascinating. Phrases like 'I always have gold spray in the house' or 'his mind must have been turning on strange baits' seem to come from totally different schema or cultural frames of reference but once they are in place they do seem very logical.
I don't know what happened to your comment either, Kate, and I'm not sure why things get deleted. I haven't removed any comments myself - I just 'hit' publish for the ones that appear in my in-box.
ReplyDeleteAs well as quotations, Bradford also includes little bits of advice, each presented as a single line only loosely related to what has gone before and what comes after. And, yes, they do have a curiously poetic quality. I might post some of them here in the next few days.
I meant like this quote. My spelling is a bit odd at 6 in the morning.
ReplyDeleteYou mean you don't live the quote? I'm disappointed ;o)
ReplyDelete