nurseling

His use of etiology as a poetic vehicle for half of the elegies in this book is significant, highlighting a focus upon past beginnings and upon the potential within beginnings and names (in etiology and etymology) to promise a "true history" Yet in his declaration in 4.1.37 that nil patrium nisi nomen habet Romanus alumnus (The Roman nurseling has nothing from his forefathers but his name), and in Vertumnus's competing versions of how he himself got his name (4.2.10-20), we see the instability and volatility of etiological and etymological discourse--indeed, we see the instability of all such discursive attempts to bridge the gap between past and present.

Attempting to make her California real, she comes closer to realizing how she was formed there: Your job is to tell the history of each & every piece Begin with lost houses lost loves lost boxes or keys Continue with a description of a journey Conclude with the real subject which is quiescence among the trees reflecting a way to extinguish the will a nurseling wind gone berserk

After briefly sketching the character of the peevish Tetrica, the essay concludes, "though peevishness may sometimes justly boast its descent from learning or from wit, it is much oftener of base extraction, the child of vanity, and the nurseling of ignorance" (4: 27).