Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Vocabulary
Rack
Hello,
In the book "Parrot and Olivier in America" by Peter Carey, Parrot is watching a man who is painting a bird:
"I stared at him and the dead bird he was painting – gold and black, as big as a blackbird, its beak partly open, its legs and claws tied tight around a rack, and the whole of the poor thing threaded through with wire."
And later Parrot sees a picture of the same man (his mistress Mathilde has painted him) and he says:
"He had a bird upon his rack, but not the one I had seen. Along its base was carefully inscribed, like holy writ in Greek:
h(t) = Xitb."
Could you, please, explain to me what the word "rack" means here. When I look it up in the dictionary, there are so many meanings that I don't know which one to choose.
Thank you very much.
In the book "Parrot and Olivier in America" by Peter Carey, Parrot is watching a man who is painting a bird:
"I stared at him and the dead bird he was painting – gold and black, as big as a blackbird, its beak partly open, its legs and claws tied tight around a rack, and the whole of the poor thing threaded through with wire."
And later Parrot sees a picture of the same man (his mistress Mathilde has painted him) and he says:
"He had a bird upon his rack, but not the one I had seen. Along its base was carefully inscribed, like holy writ in Greek:
h(t) = Xitb."
Could you, please, explain to me what the word "rack" means here. When I look it up in the dictionary, there are so many meanings that I don't know which one to choose.
Thank you very much.
Top answer
It seems to me to be a sort of small open-framed wooden grid, like a small easel with cross-pieces, perhaps, on which the artist can tie the dead bird in various positions.
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It seems to me to be a sort of small open-framed wooden grid, like a small easel with cross-pieces, perhaps, on which the artist can tie the dead bird in various positions.
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