Long-windedly

1962, Isaac Babel quoted by Konstantin Paustovsky in “Reminiscences of Babel” in Patricia Blake and Max Hayward (editors), Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature, New York: Pantheon, p. 50, Perhaps my sentences are too short. This may be partly due to my chronic asthma. I can’t talk long-windedly; I’m short of breath.

[…] an Italian piece of many parts and much intricacy—it is only a Master Braham or Madame Catalani who has got throat long enough and flexible enough for it; which stretching out as gracefully as a hen drinketh water, she cackles out the whole piece as sweetly as Orpheus, as dexterously as a fiddler’s elbow, as long-windedly as the pipe of an ass, and as proudly as if she had laid a golden egg.

One who had caught a glimpse of the shining yet solemn eyes of the youth, as he walked home, would wonder no longer that he should talk as he did—so sedately, yet so poetically—so long-windedly, if you like, yet so sensibly—even wisely.

But then I thought, perhaps this is how these Dutch Protestants behave when they fall in love: prudently, long-windedly, without fire, without grace.