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Comment by DrScump | Hacker News Reader

I think selecting him as the inspiration for painful opening sentences stems directly from the opening line to Paul Clifford:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

This sentence gained pop-culture resonance in the Peanuts comic strip, where Snoopy repeatedly would start writing his novels with "It was a dark and stormy night." and quickly derail from there.

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Huh, I kind of like that sentence and that kind of florid prose.

I agree. I think it's rambling but it's not horrible. I think

> It was a dark and stormy night.

or even

> It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents.

are actually excellent. I like the rest of it as well. It just shouldn't be a single sentence.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents. At times it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets -- for it is in London that our scene lies -- rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

I'm not a professional writer but I personally like this rephrasing.

In a Kindle novel it would be:

London. Thunder. Rain.

Why is that? Does Kindle limit the number of words?

Alexander Blok (Russian poet)

A direct translation:

Night, street, lamp, drugstore, A dull and meaningless light. Go on and live another quarter century - Nothing will change. There's no way out.

You'll die, then start from the beginning, It will repeat, just like before: Night, icy ripples on a canal, Drugstore, street, lamp.

More attempts here: https://ruverses.com/alexander-blok/night-street-lamp-drugst...

You could do 'swept up the London streets' quite easily, which saves an authorial interjection that's part of the whole Bulwer-Lytton vibe.

Yeah I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be so bad. It doesn’t stand out as being far worse than lots of other old books. The Scarlet Letter begins like this and goes on to have sentences so euphemistic and littered with commas that they need three re-reads to understand, but that’s a classic:

“A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.”

That reads like the author had a surplus of commas he had to move.

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