JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This fine illustration with the wonderful helmet does look like some sort of 19th century robot, but seeing the little sign at the pinnacle--"Dr. Aktenstaub"--identifies this as an antiquarian antiquarian being shielded from the dust of accumulated and lonely wisdom. "Aktenstaub" is a wonderful word which identifies the smallest bits of existence: dust. But "dust" is much more poet and involved than that, with this "aktenstaub" relating to the old dust of old books, and so the helmet protects the reader from the weight of dusty ages. The horizon for the idea of dust is far and wide, though, as a walk through the Oxford English Dictionary attests. Describing dust seems more varied than the description of a book itself, or the identities of snow...the dust of organ pipes being different from that of wooden floorboards or corn husks or weary dust of travel on a long duster the dust of the cosmos; it describes a condition of humiliation, cash, disturbances of different sorts, and of course the "mortal frame of man", and seems to have a seat at a very long table of possibility, which is remarkable for such a small and unassuming word. The entry for dust is quite long and involved, and is followed by a longer list of dust-compounds, where things get really interesting. Dust-blister, dust-core, and dust-spawn are good examples of the long road of dust-possibilities. And so far as "aktenstaub" goes, it gives the idea of antiquarian book dust a personality as vibrant as fairy-dust, and so is perfectly fine with me--it is hard to go wrong, sometimes, with definitions of words that enrich the imagination more so than limit it.
dust
dust and ashes
dust-atomy
dust-ball
dust-basket
dust-bath
dust-begrimed
dust-blister
dust-born
dust-bowl
dust-brush
dust bunny
dust-cap
dust-cart
dust-catcher
dust-catching
dust-cellar
dust-chamber
dust-cloak
dust-clogged
dust-cloth
dust-cloud
dust-coat
dust-coat
dust-collector
dust-colour
dust-coloured
dust-contractor
dust-core
dust-counter
dust-cover
dust cover
dust-covered
dust-creeping
dust-cup
dust-destructor
dust-devil
dust-dry
dust-filled
dust-flow
dust-free
dust-gold
dust-gown
dust-gown
dust-grey
dust-guard
dust-haze
dust-heap
dust-hole
dust-jacket
dust jacket
dust-laden
dust-laying
dust-licking
dust-like
dust-louse
dust mite
dustpan
dustpanful
dust-particle
dust-plate
dust-polluted
dust-producing
dust-proof
dust-raising
dust-screen
dust-sheet
dust-sheeted
dust-shoot
dust-shot
dust-shovelling
dust-sifter
dust-sifting
dust-soiled
dust-spawn
dust-spout
dust-storm
dust tail
dust-tempered
dust-thread
dust-throwing
dust-trap
dust-way
dust-wharf
dust-whirl
dust-white
dust-wind
dust-woman
dust-worm
dust-wrap
dust-wrap
dust-wrapper
dust-yard
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