Sentence

02022-08-07 | Reading | 3 comments

Who in the world wouldn’t want to stroll along Vico Amandorla? It’s a name that smells like a promise, as soft as marzipan, as mature as liquor in forgotten casks, in the cellar of a faraway monastery where the last monk died twenty years ago one afternoon with an innocent child’s prayer on his lips in the cloister gardens, in the shadow of an almond tree, as happy as a man after a rich dinner with dear friends. Say the name quietly if you are afraid and you won’t be afraid anymore: Vico Amandorla.

— from “La Superba” by Ilya Leonard Pfeijffer

That middle sentence! Mr. Pfeijffer has won best sentence in the Dutch language twice.

3 Comments

  1. JaneParham

    That sentence is poetry, music!

    How about a poignant drama contained in 7 words by E. Hemingway, posed as a want ad:. “For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.”

    Reply
    • JaneParham

      I mean 6 words! Well 7 syllables.

      Reply
  2. anne

    beautiful – just a few words strung together – yet each part of the sentence enlivens the imagination – your minds eye follows the unfolding so beautifully.

    I now say the word – “Vico Amandorla”-

    (…reminds me of my father – who would of been content living as a monk in his later years).

    Reply

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