disjecta membra

English

Etymology

Alteration of Horace’s Latin phrase disjecti membra poetae (“limbs of a dismembered poet”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dɪsˈdʒɛk.tə ˈmɛm.bɹə/, /dəs-/

Noun

disjecta membra pl (plural only)

1. Scattered fragments, especially of written work.
   • 1805 January 26, B., “To the Right Honourable William Windham: Upon Our Military Force, Particularly That of the Volunteers”, in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, volume VII, number 6, London, published 9 February 1805, column 201:

     […] though the whole construction be taken to pieces, are still the disjecta membra, with which the work of renovation must be begun.

   • 1876 December 20, Moise, “Our Paris Letter. […]”, in The Inter Ocean, volume V, number 253, Chicago, Ill., published 13 January 1877, page 9:

     A thoughtful spirit drifting upon this tide in a large city like Paris cannot but often think of this, and shiver with the feeling that beneath and all around are scattered thickly, if invisibly, putrescent corpses and whitening skeletons. But sometimes strange things do come to the surface—featureless, formless, unrecognizable objects, upon which men gaze wonderingly, conjecturingly, but unknowingly; and which are in reality the disjecta membra of ghastly things over whose hideousness the unquiet billows once mercifully swept. In the large boarding houses of focal points of civilization like Paris, where are gathered together representatives from every clime under the sun, and where the waves of life come beating in to a common center from many a distant sea, these disjecta membra float oftener than in more tranquil waters;

   • 1897 August 3, Solomon Schechter, “A Hoard of Hebrew MSS [=Manuscripts] .”, in The Times, page 13:

     One can hardly realize the confusion in a genuine, old Genizah until one has seen it. It is a battlefield of books, and the literary productions of many centuries had their share in the battle, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area. Some of the belligerents have perished outright, and are literally ground to dust in the terrible struggle for space, whilst others, as if overtaken by a general crush, are squeezed into big, unshapely lumps, which even with the aid of chemical appliances can no longer be separated without serious damage to their constituents. In their present condition these lumps sometimes afford curiously suggestive combinations; as, for instance, when you find a piece of some rational work, in which the very existence of either angels or devils is denied, clinging for its very life to an amulet in which these same beings (mostly the latter) are bound over to be on their good behavior and not interfere with Miss Jair’s love for somebody.

   • 1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 474:

     As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the distortion of their paintless rails, revealed with increasing candour the disjecta membra of bygone dinners, Lily felt that Rosedale was taking contemptuous note of the neighbourhood;

   • 1927 October 27, C. B. Pyper, “About Pictures”, in The Winnipeg Evening Tribune, volume XXXVIII, number 257, Winnipeg, Man., page 4:

     I knew more about “disjecta membra” than a butcher or a furniture mover. That was a great phrase of mine—disjecta membra—I used to work it off on my friends, I have never since had such a chance to play with it till today. “There,” I would say to them, quietly, just like that, “there are the Elgin marbles, disjecta membra.”

   • 1959, Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music, the University of New Hampshire, page 21:

     Notes are strewn about like disjecta membra;

   • 1999, Areté, page 84:

     Disjecta membra scattered everywhere, unrecognisable, through my oeuvre: complex, trivial, true.

   • 2006 December 17, Stephen Knight, “That Ted Hughes, he’s hot stuff”, in The Independent, number 877, page 26:

     Newcomers to her work would not see what the fuss is about, for all the inventiveness and nimble versification of this disjecta membra; a number of pieces crumble away or have too many lacunae to be truly satisfying.