Not a snaking elongated piece of public transport but still a very evocative 17th-century word for a circuitous, long-winded route or way of doing something or telling a story …
It’s a style perhaps best know in Laurence Sterne’s groundbreaking meta-novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the first of its nine volumes published in 1759. A brilliant piece of gentle satire, its autobiographical content of the titular hero, narrated in the first person, is richly filled with explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, so much so the that Tristram's own birth is not even reached until Volume III. Influenced by Rabelais’s 1532 work Gargantua and Pantagruel, the book rambles mischievously in all directions, and metaphorically follows its own nose, but also literally includes the character of Hafen Slawkenbergius "distinguished by the length of his nose, and a great authority on the subject of noses”. But circumbendibus is the norm, and as Shandy puts it: “Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; – they are the life, the soul of reading; – take them out of this book for instance, – you might as well take the book along with them;”
But the first actual use of the word is known to be from the pen of the prolific satirical poet John Dryden in 1681, and his tragi-comedy play Spanish Friar OR The Double Discovery, in which the character Dom remarks: “Let him alone; let him alone; I shall fetch him back with a circum-bendibus, I warrant him.”
But it comes to songs on this subject, some prime examples can be found in a previous playlists topic of: playlists: songs about distractions, diversions and digressions, as well as many more nominated in the topic main piece, Whatever next? Songs about distractions, digressions and diversions.
Want to add further examples of circumbendibus in action? Feel free to share anything more in relation to anything whether in music or wider culture, such as from film, art, or other contexts, in comments below.
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