Rain and precipitation

Use in the book

Anaximenes links showers with closely compressed air and cloud. The Aristotelian account derives several forms of precipitation from moist exhalation, then describes rain as condensed vapor returning as water when the raising heat leaves it. Drizzle is distinguished by the small portions into which the falling water is divided.

Places to read

1. I.31.1Showers arise through further compression.
2. I.31.6.1The moist exhalation underlies the group of phenomena.
3. I.31.6.2Rain and drizzle are distinguished by formation and portion size.
4. I.9.1Rain joins earth and sky in a poetic image of fertility.

Translation in this edition

Specific names are preserved where the source distinguishes them. The unusual assignment of snow and hail in the Anaximenes report follows the printed text and is discussed in the bilingual note.

Rain as ombros

Ombros means rain or a shower. In the poem at I.9.1, earth longs for rain and sky longs to pour it down; their union under Aphrodite produces nourishment. The word is embedded in a personification of cosmic fertility. Its physical reference remains rain, while the lovers’ language explains the poem’s account of productive union.

Use in the book

Rain changes the capacities of the whole scene. On 25 April 1833 it refreshes earth and birds’ throats and appears to make the air newly resonant. A few weeks later its residue hangs on trees and falls into the pond as isolated, plaintive notes. These are different consequences of the same process: an expansive chorus and a nearly private after-sound.

Rain is also the medium by which an experience penetrates and later returns. Reading René drenches a dry soul like storm rain; happiness at Le Val is a fine rain that afterward wells out in springs of tears. The image describes circulation across time rather than a simple opposition between joyful sunshine and sad rain.

In May 1834 gentle rainfall gives leaves repeated oscillations and loads the air with scent, almost to the point of sensory dulling. Conversely, April 1835 recalls distributed rain as the gentle form in which life no longer arrives. Rain’s value depends on rhythm, proportion, and receptivity, not on its mere presence.

Places to read

1. 30 July 1832 · ¶1A forceful reading breaks inward drought through storm-rain imagery
2. 25 April 1833 · ¶1Rain refreshes earth, birds, and the sound-bearing air together
3. 9 May 1833 · ¶3Residual drops become the trees’ last tears
4. 9 December 1833 · ¶4Happiness enters as rain and returns later as tears
5. 7 May 1834 · ¶1Gentle rain establishes a continuous tremor through the foliage

Translation in this edition

The April 2 translation keeps rosées fines as fine dews even though the sentence describes rain falling. Readers should retain this fine-droplet effect rather than assuming the paragraph has moved to a separate report of morning dew.