“A sound interrupted him; a frail quivering sound, a voice bubbling up without direction, vigour, beginning or end, running weakly and shrilly and with an absence of all human meaning into

ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo -

the voice of no age or sex, the voice of an ancient spring sprouting from the earth; which issued, just opposite Regent Park’s Tube Station, from a tall quivering shape, like a funnel, like a rusty pump, like a wind-beaten tree for ever barren of leaves which lets the wind run up and down its branches singing

ee um fah um so
foo swee too eem oo

and rocks and creaks and moans in the eternal breeze”

- a 118-word sentence from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (found in Practical Criticism by Lindy Miller)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

To me, it was a fearful scene. A voice “quivering”, “bubbling”, “weakly”, “shrilly” like a pained and tortured weeping. The strange sounds added to this effect, as if a monstrous creature lay lurking in the “tall quivering shape”, desperate to get out. A dreadful fascination with this fearsome mystery invokes a dark trepidation in me.

If only we could express our feelings like that. Though the words would make no sense, the sentence would.