Allais also invented the holorhyme, which consists of an entirely homphonous couplet so the two lines sound identical, but mean different things. One of his ran:
Par les bois du djinn où s'entasse de l'effroi,
Parle et bois du gin ou cent tasses de lait froid.
Which means:
By the genie's forest where fear abounds
Talk, drink gin, or a hundred cups of cold milk.
The only example of a holorhyme in English that I know of is by Miles Kington and goes thuslyly:
In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass?
Inertia, hilarious, accrues, hélas!
Perhaps they are easier in French. Here, off the top of my head, is one of my own composition on Napoleon's advance on Moscow.
War, snow, rushin' on.
Was no Russian? Non.
Which may prove my point about the language (I can't quite work out the Gaul/gall pun right now). Anybody with an effort of their own please feel free to post in the comments. It will give you something to do over Christmas other than charades.
Herewith another photograph I took yesterday:
Note the anaemic communicants on the left
Update: Another (two?) holorhymes on the advance on Moscow
There, hoarse as Marshall Ney,
Their horse's martial neigh
And almost:
The steppe galls
The gauls' step.
I see Gloucester rain -
ReplyDeleteicy, glossed terrain
Turnips which, in two days, ease -
ReplyDeleteTurn Ipswich into daisies.
These are both brilliant. And a mere three years after the post.
ReplyDeleteFor I scream...
ReplyDeletefor ice cream
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ReplyDelete(Corrected comment)
ReplyDeleteA Hungarian example (from Karinthy):
"Egy kis pesti vendéglőbe
egy kispesti vendég lő be"
(Lit . Into a small Budapest tavern
shoots a guest from Kispest)