Eyes and Ears
We have thoroughly enjoyed many of the works of the late David Lodge, British author and professor of literature, including his novels Changing Places, Small World, and Therapy, as well as the collection of his newspaper columns published as The Art of Fiction. This week’s acrostic features a quotation from another of his novels, Deaf Sentence, which appeared in 2008.
That quotation forms part of a longer passage in which Lodge provides a fuller comparison of eyes and ears:
“It’s a very unequal contest between the two organs. Eyes are the windows of the soul, they express feelings, they come in subtle, alluring colours and shades, they brim with tears, they shine and gleam and twinkle. Ears, well they’re funny-looking things really, especially when they stick out, all skin and gristle, secreting wax, sprouting hair, no wonder women hang earrings on the lobes, men too of course in certain societies and periods, to distract the eye from the furry hole that leads to your brain.”
And an earlier passage in the novel contains other amusing observations on the subject of eyes and ears:
“[I]magine if the poet had written ‘Drink to me only with thine ears …’ It’s actually no more illogical than saying drink with thine eyes. Both metaphors are equally impossible concepts, in fact an ear is more like a cup than an eye, and you could conceivably drink, or at least slurp, out of an ear, though not your own of course … But poetical it isn’t. Nor would ‘Smoke gets in your ears‘ be a very catchy refrain for a song. If smoke gets in your eyes when a lovely flame dies it must get in your ears too, but you don’t notice and it doesn’t make you cry. ‘There’s more in this than meets the ear‘ is something Inspector Clouseau might say, not Poirot.
Clearly, in Lodge’s view, the eyes have it! (Har, har.)
We had considerable fun coming up with words and phrases relating to seeing and hearing that could find their way into this puzzle. Which ones most struck your fancy?
As a final treat for the eyes, if not the ears, we included in the acrostic Answer V. (“EARTHRISE”) and offer its image here:
