Thursday 24 March 2011

Poodles in Puddles and Love


It is the delight of etymology to notice that two words that sound similar are the same. What seemed to be the free association of sounds is the steady stagger of history. Imagine that each time one person reminded you of another they turned out, though you had met them in different countries and contexts, to be brothers.

All of which is a long way of saying that the best place for a poodle is in a puddle. The poodle comes from the German pudelhund, meaning puddle-hound. This is because the poodle was bred to hunt water fowl and thus spent much of its time paddling in puddles.

The French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine once wrote that "Love is a poodle's chance of attaining the infinite, and personally I have my pride."

I don't know what a poodle's chance of the infinite is. It would depend, I suppose, on whether infinity could be found in a puddle.

A searcher after the infinite

3 comments:

  1. Lovely post, and lovely poodle pic.

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  2. This, I will remember. And there's even a chance I'll think more kindly of poodles because of it.

    (I'm so pleased to see your blog exposure growing - you are so consistently good and deserving of all the attention you're getting.)

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