My thanks to Stuart Goring for sending over these great Thomas Hardy celestial quotes. Those who know this blog or my book will be aware that I love it when nature and the arts come together. The two following excerpts are taken from ‘Far From the Madding Crowd.’
“He stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the altitudes of the stars. The Dog-star and Alderbaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were halfway up the Southern sky ,and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren gloomy square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees, and Cassiopeia’s chair…
The wind brings with it the character of the land, or water, it passes over. It adopts signature scents and temperatures and if the land of an area is known well enough, it is often possible to deduce the direction that a wind is coming from by analysing its character. Gustave Flaubert does a humorous and divine job of exposing this concept through the mouth of the young chemist in his novel, 