Alexey
on Brillinger's "Hippopotamians in Ardis": .. "Such a
drought affected Hippo in the most productive months of Augustine's bishopric
that clepsydras had to be replaced by sandglasses" [ADA].
Carolyn
Kunin:Couldn't this be among the several references in Ada to the
ancient near east? ...and that odd shaped lake?
Jansy Mello: "Odd shaped lake"... "clepsydras replaced by sandglasses".
Isn't there this odd shaped lake in Lolita called Our Glass/
Hourglass?
[ BTW: what a wonderful metaphor about time and
mortality drips down from a reference to a severe draught
that changes time-measuring devices from water into sand
instruments?]
Coleridge's river Alph could apply to an "archetypal river"? Sir
Richard Burton's texts also take us to the origins of the Nile,
in a move from Mesopotamia towards Egypt.
Hippo (
horse) brought Pegasus to my mind through references to Parnasus,
Mount Ida, nymphs and, perhaps, to a fountain that sprung from the
impatient hooves of Pegasus.