It creates as a distance between two points, rather than a straight line, an arabesque.

它加长了两点之间的距离，使它变得非直而曲。

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In other words, replacing the shortest distance between two points that we experience in a practical message, "literariness," as the formalists call it, or "poetic language," as they also sometimes call it and as the New Critics certainly call it, slows us down.

也就是说，实用语言以最短的距离,联系两点，而文学性，如形式主义者所称，或诗意的语言，他们有时也会这么叫,新批评派成员一定会这么称呼，使我们的理解速度慢了下来。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

I don't know how well you can see it in this figure here, is the slope of a straight line connecting these two points, and as the points come closer and closer, the straight line would become tangent to the curve.

我不清楚你们对于这个图像的理解,这条连接两点的斜线,随着两点距离逐渐缩小,两点连线会变成曲线的切线

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