The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

Archive for 2004

nostalgia (again)

8 January 2004, around 18.20.

axunesias

9 January 2004, around 15.33.

Μὴ οὖν προδόται γένησθε ὑμῶν αὐτῶν, γενόμενοι δ’ ὅτι ἐγγύτατα τῇ γνώμῃ τοῦ πάσχειν καὶ ὡς πρὸ παντὸς ἂν ἐτιμήσασθε αὐτοὺς χειρώσασθαι, νῦν ἀνταπόδοτε μὴ μαλακισθέντες πρὸς τὸ παρὸν αὐτίκα μηδὲ τοῦ ἐπικρεμασθέντος ποτὲ δεινοῦ ἀμνημονοῦντες. κολάσατε δὲ ἀξίως τούτους τε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ξυμμάχοις παράδειγμα σαφὲς καταστήσατε, ὃς ἂν ἀφιστῆται, θανάτῳ ζημιωσόμενον. τόδε γὰρ […]

pseudaphoristica (7)

11 January 2004, around 11.57.

periphrasis.

mire

12 January 2004, around 10.27.

Canal.

Crambe repetita (4)

13 January 2004, around 8.38.

Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit.

the very marrow

15 January 2004, around 15.52.

I’ve reached a point where the OED is of no use, for it cannot tell me why some people call them zucchini and other people call them courgettes, nor can it tell me on earth they were not more popular before the mid-twentieth century. The most it can say is that the young fruit of […]

Citation (15)

16 January 2004, around 8.55.

idiosyncratic writing…

cornered

18 January 2004, around 16.43.

de pumilis libellis

20 January 2004, around 19.16.

…by falsifying him into something monstrously charming and extraordinary they hope to be able to keep him alive forever. — Pär Lagerkvist (2002.47, p. 159) Owing to my best efforts to keep an open mind and my almost miraculous attempts to overcome my aversion for the word ‘snark’ and most people who use it, the […]

inquiry (8)

22 January 2004, around 9.33.

These people have excellent sculptors and professional designers. Their pipes, tomahawks, sticks, spoons carved out of horn, etc., embellish our ethnographic collections. —Marcel Mauss (2004.11, p. 43f.)

when in Rome

24 January 2004, around 13.04.

διόπερ οἱ μὲν ἄνδρες τὰ τείχη προκατελάμβανον καὶ τοὺς πρὸ τῆς πόλεως εὐκαίρους τόπους, αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες περιπορευόμεναι τοὺς ναοὺς ἱκέτευον τοὺς θεούς, πλύνουσαι ταῖς κόμαις τὰ τῶν ἱερῶν ἐδάφη· τοῦτο γὰρ αὐταῖς ἔθος ἐστὶ ποιεῖν, ὅταν τις ὁλοσχερὴς τὴν πατρίδα καταλαμβάνῃ κίνδυνος. —Polybius (9.6.3–4) ploratus mulierum non ex priuatis solum domibus exaudiebatur, sed undique […]

birds, for the

26 January 2004, around 17.00.

fulica atra ‘blissfully easy to identify’

ciceronian

27 January 2004, around 14.28.

χρύσειοι <δ’> ἐρέβινθοι ἐπ’ ἀϊόνων ἐφύοντο1 and golden chickpeas were growing on the banks —Sappho (Voigt fr. 143) trans. Anne Carson. I once sat through a lecture wherein the speaker claimed that the presence of an imperfect verb was sufficient to prove the presence of a narrative. Though that notion seems a bit silly to […]

nêpioi

29 January 2004, around 0.16.

There are people who do not love their lives, for they ride bicycles on ice-covered pavement without a helmet.

colonoscopy

29 January 2004, around 18.43.

As the abandonment of periodic arrangement really makes the colon useless, it would be well (though of course any one who still writes in formal periods should retain his rights over it) if ordinary writers would give it up altogether except in special uses, independent of its quantitative value, to which it is being more […]

Citation (16)

1 February 2004, around 8.32.

the author disinterested in finances…

symbolical

2 February 2004, around 8.18.

de aquis urbis Romæ

4 February 2004, around 14.07.

Because everyone is familiar with Frontinus and is eager for more information about aqueducts and Roman water-supply, allow me to recommend A. Trevor Hodge’s charming survey Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply. Hodge eschews incomprehensibility (in so far as possible) and has the virtue, which Ashby lacks, of a modern bibliography. He is, however, rather chatty […]

sphinx

5 February 2004, around 19.10.

I was sitting on the floor outside one of the meeting rooms at a rather silly academic conference—as one does, you know: it makes one ‘memorable’.1 It was the morning of, I think, the third day, about fifteen minutes before the first round of papers was to begin.2 As I was sitting on the floor, […]

splitted in the midst

6 February 2004, around 14.16.

Currently (and actively) reading (in no particular order): François Rabelais. Gargantua and Pantagruel. trans. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955.1 J. Innes Miller. The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 BC to AD 641. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.2 Michel Foucault. The Archeology of Knowledge. trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge, 1989 (1969).3 Goethe. Die […]

the world discovered

8 February 2004, around 9.42.

I seem to be collecting Theophrastian anthologies. By which I mean the text of John Earle’s Microcosmography (1628) is available here for the amusement and edification of all and sundry.1 Here’s an excerpt from ‘A Down-right Scholar’: The time has got a vein of making him ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and […]

curatores cloacarum

9 February 2004, around 17.37.

History of Sanitary Sewers: quite. WaterHistory.org: ‘Our objective is to explore prehistoric and historic water projects worldwide … without taking ourselves too seriously. We are particularly interested in the effect that water has on the quality of life.’ From Creek to Sewer: Sewerage and Drainage in Philadelphia. Let me remind you once again of our […]

hermetically

12 February 2004, around 16.46.

8. Philaletheia, the disinterested love of scholarly truth, can lead one into some strange places. The connection of the two marginalia is the urge to recover the sense of an ancient text in full and accurately; to probe past the obscurity of poet and translator alike, to what Lycophron’s persona thought was to happen in […]

Crambe repetita (5)

15 February 2004, around 8.05.

Henry James, Madame de Mauves.

heuristic

16 February 2004, around 12.05.

‘I mean, Thessaly wasn’t precisely on the cutting edge of epigraphy…’ said the student. ‘To coin a phrase…’ replied the teacher.

invidia

17 February 2004, around 14.57.

fact

21 February 2004, around 9.24.

I call that day good in which I may spend the morning in bed reading Aubrey’s Brief Lives (cf.) and Cornelius Nepos.1 When Oxford surrendred, the first thing General Fairfax did was to sett a good Guard of Soldiers to preserve the Bodleian Library. ’Tis said that there was more hurt donne by the Cavaliers […]

Citation (17)

22 February 2004, around 16.31.

Impossible Object

miaros

25 February 2004, around 16.07.

fragment of a dialogue Is there a reason you haven’t bathed in almost a week? Is there a reason you consider my personal hygiene to be of general interest? Answer the question. Yes. There is a reason. Would you care to elaborate? When have I ever cared to elaborate? Let me rephrase: please share your […]

unfinished

1 March 2004, around 16.32.

pseudaphoristica (8)

4 March 2004, around 15.05.

vartue.

the mind diseased

6 March 2004, around 13.14.

Modern Greece, in history and literature, has been viewed as a transitory moment squeezed between two larger and more important entities. Viewed chronologically, modern Greece rests between the glory of the classical Greek past and the hope of a resurrected Greek future, which in many Western minds ought to resemble the democracies of Western Europe […]

Citation (18)

8 March 2004, around 8.12.

adventurous students always read classics.

the trial

9 March 2004, around 16.44.

K.

sortes

10 March 2004, around 8.07.

Among the Romanes a Poet was called Vates, which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or Prophet, as by his conjoyned words Vaticinium, and Vaticinari, is manifest, so heavenly a title did that excellent people bestowe uppon this hart-ravishing knowledge, and so farre were they carried into the admiration thereof, that they thought in […]

obscure

11 March 2004, around 14.18.

plain and little.

Citation (19)

12 March 2004, around 10.58.

athletes and academics.

red

13 March 2004, around 17.15.

Geryon.

Crambe repetita (6)

16 March 2004, around 8.08.

Collins, The Woman in White.

reference

19 March 2004, around 16.08.

Idem classi praefectus circumvehens Peloponnesum, Laconicen populatus, classem eorum fugavit, Corcyram sub imperium Atheniensum redegit sociosque idem adiunxit Epirotas, Athamanas, Chaonas omnesque eas gentes, quae mare illud adiacent. quo facto Lacedaemonii de diutina contentione destiterunt et sua sponte Atheniensibus imperii maritimi principatum concesserunt, pacemque iis legibus constituerunt, ut Athenienses mari duces essent. quae victoria tantae […]

entrance

22 March 2004, around 15.15.

de arte poetica liber

23 March 2004, around 12.18.

To my great embarrassment, I mistook this overview of William Blades’s Enemies of Books (via) for a poem1; e.g.: Bagford the biblioclast. Illustrations torn from MSS. Title-pages torn from books. Rubens, his engraved titles. Colophons torn out of books. Lincoln Cathedral Dr. Dibdin’s Nosegay. Theurdanck. Fragments of MSS. Some libraries almost useless. […] The care […]

A Sudden Liberating Thought

23 March 2004, around 19.09.

with no sudden crisis of conscience

punt

24 March 2004, around 8.28.

it was the distance…

Vittoria Corombona

24 March 2004, around 15.18.

Springtime along the river, March 2004

The Victim of Prejudice

24 March 2004, around 19.07.

or, the difficulties of being desired

Citation (20)

25 March 2004, around 15.25.

a love-song, a love-song.

epistulæ immaniores

26 March 2004, around 9.18.

I was quite pleased with myself: I managed to trim a ten-paragraph letter down to nine words, excluding salutation. Sadly, neither the grammar nor spelling were all that they should be, and I am pleased no more.

Rasselas

26 March 2004, around 19.06.

a philosophical expedition to Abissinia

pseudaphoristica (9)

27 March 2004, around 17.39.

hogwash.

The Green Dwarf

27 March 2004, around 19.05.

a suggestion

to the dogs

29 March 2004, around 19.26.

Artemis.

Street Sleeper

31 March 2004, around 19.02.

Volkswagens and other historical anecdotes

WBY

1 April 2004, around 8.33.

I cannot think of a writer I dislike more than William Butler Yeats; mind you, I’m sure such an author exists – the literary world would be a sad place indeed if the most unlikeable creature it could offer was WBY – but I can’t think of one right now. Aside from being a pompous […]

Directions to Servants

1 April 2004, around 19.01.

lessons for masters

Crambe repetita (7)

5 April 2004, around 8.18.

Alexander Pope, Martinus Scriblerus.

Inquiries

7 April 2004, around 13.25.

On quires and choirs.

Portrait of the Author

9 April 2004, around 12.14.

Portrait of the Author in University Parks

Love and Freindship (sic)

9 April 2004, around 18.59.

the perils of misspelling for young authors

continuity

10 April 2004, around 9.54.

Citation (21)

11 April 2004, around 18.50.

Margaret Cavendish gazes into eternity…

exquisite

19 April 2004, around 22.33.

meme (ex machina):1 Intrigue me?2 The impression is that the lay-out of the whole area resembled that of the Seraglio in Constantinople, with palaces, barracks, and other royal buildings set in an area of parkland.3 A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; […]

ablative abecedarian

20 April 2004, around 13.49.

Also as it sounds.

experimentalist

21 April 2004, around 8.15.

…the judgement that someone is unliterary is like the judgement ‘This man is not in love’, whereas the judgement that my taste is bad is more like ‘This man is in love, but with a frightful woman’. And just as the mere fact that a man of sense and breeding loves a woman we dislike […]

perspicable

23 April 2004, around 14.12.

Happily Miss Carridge was a woman of few words. When body odour and volubility meet, then there is no remedy (43). *     *     * Her mind was so collected that she saw clearly the impropriety of letting it appear so (79). —Samuel Beckett Murphy (1938)

clouds

24 April 2004, around 22.09.

pseudaphoristica (10)

25 April 2004, around 8.08.

proportion.

Murphy

25 April 2004, around 18.58.

insidious

discoursing

27 April 2004, around 23.57.

A Man may make a Remark – In itself – a quiet thing That may furnish the Fuse unto a Spark In dormant nature – lain – Let us divide – with skill – Let us discourse – with care – Powder exists in Charcoal – Before it exists in Fire – —Emily Dickinson913 (1865) […]

ex magna turba…

29 April 2004, around 15.30.

Nihil mihi nunc scito tam deesse quam hominem eum, quocum omnia, que me cura aliqua adficiunt una communicem, qui me amet, qui sapiat, quicum ego cum loquar nihil fingam, nihil dissimulem, nihil obtegam. abest enim frater ἀφελέστατος et amantissimus. †Metellus† non homo, sed ‘litus atque aër’ et ‘solitudo mera’. tu autem, qui saepissime curam et […]

Crambe repetita (8)

1 May 2004, around 8.50.

Joyce, Dubliners.

pseudaphoristica (11)

2 May 2004, around 8.24.

silent.

sunk

3 May 2004, around 10.21.

Beirette BL, Agfa Ultra 100, f2.8/60 14 April 2004

cyclic

4 May 2004, around 8.22.

To move away from one thing is not necessarily to approach another, though this may be the unintended consequence; to move towards an object does not require departing from another – but this, too, often happens. Few can observe their impulses with perspicacity.

A view (14)

6 May 2004, around 19.33.

present absent.

markedly

10 May 2004, around 14.06.

Agfa Silette. Agfa Ultra 100, 3.4/30 8 May 2004 locus ille animi nostri stomachus ubi habitabat olim concalluit. privata modo et domestica nos delectent, miram securitatem videbis; cuius plurimae mehercule partes sunt in tuo reditu. nemo enim in terris est mihi tam consentientibus sensibus.1 —Cicero, ad Atticum, iv.18.2.15ff. (emphasis mine) Incidentally, does it worry anyone […]

scrapes

11 May 2004, around 14.31.

‘As is’ he she we they you you you I her so pronouns begin the dance called washing whose name derives from an alchemical fact that after a small stillness there is a small stir after great stillness a great stir —Anne Carson

introductory

12 May 2004, around 17.20.

…once we have recognised that knowledge in itself is good for man, we shall need to invent no pretexts for studying this subject or that; we shall import no extraneous considerations of use or ornament to justify us in learning one thing rather than another. If a certain department of knowledge specially attracts a man, […]

Pnin

13 May 2004, around 18.58.

ars academica

madárka

15 May 2004, around 11.58.

Snow

15 May 2004, around 18.56.

a Turkish winter

Citation (22)

16 May 2004, around 8.46.

marks of the excellent man.

they say it’s May

18 May 2004, around 8.22.

cf. She schools the flighty pupils of her eyes, With levell’d lashes stilling their disquiet; And puts in leash her pair’d lips lest surprise Bare the condition of a realm at riot. If he suspect that she has ought to sigh at His injury she’ll avenge with raging shame. She kept her love-thoughts on most […]

west

19 May 2004, around 23.54.

Crambe repetita (9)

21 May 2004, around 7.20.

Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband.

Put down the apple Adam

22 May 2004, around 18.10.

Mortality is fatal Gentility is fine Rascality, heroic Insolvency, sublime […] A coward will remain, Sir Until the fight is done; But an immortal hero Will take his hat and run… —Emily Dickinson No. 21 This entry’s title is from the same poem; the stanza runs: Put down the apple Adam And come away with […]

give pearls away and rubies

23 May 2004, around 8.25.

From my new copy of A. S. F. Gow’s A. E. Housman, a Sketch.1 It was Housman’s custom to spend three weeks or a month every summer in France, choosing each year a new district, exploring it by car, and studying the architecture, the local dishes and the local wines. Usually he flew to Paris, […]

naufragium

25 May 2004, around 8.07.

quis autem non magis solos esse…

midnight oil

29 May 2004, around 18.14.

not ashes yet, or cinders.

postponed

4 June 2004, around 14.31.

After the fact.

Poetastery (3)

6 June 2004, around 6.20.

a love-song, a love-song.

we like sheep

8 June 2004, around 20.33.

a versifying Pet-lamb.

Citation (23)

11 June 2004, around 18.27.

modesty & the art of pronunciation.

An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting

12 June 2004, around 18.54.

household exercises

parrying poetics

16 June 2004, around 12.32.

At the end of March there was a puff piece about Anne Carson in the NY Times, occasioned by a staged reading of her translation of, I think, Euripides’ Hekabe.1 One short passage attracted my attention: For all this, Ms. Carson said, she is not a poet. ‘Homer’s a poet,’ she said. ‘I would say […]

an interval

21 June 2004, around 14.49.

In a backward bin.

Interstices

24 June 2004, around 15.20.

June 2004

The Sacred Font

26 June 2004, around 18.48.

and other puzzles

Crambe repetita (10)

26 June 2004, around 22.25.

‘Olive Pratt Rayner’, The Type-Writer Girl.

periplum

30 June 2004, around 8.00.

Postcard (from the editor of the text to his godmother) found in a copy of ‘Urne Buriall’ and ‘The Garden of Cyrus’ … according to the notion I have of reason, neither the written treatises of the learned nor the set discourses of the eloquent are able of themselves to teach the use of it. […]

Citation (24)

8 July 2004, around 15.42.

mistook.

oinopa

12 July 2004, around 13.29.

Three chairs on the deck of the house opposite rock of their own volition, looking at the sea and seven sail-less sailboats. The bright pink flowers of potted geranium plants refuse to lose their petals. And I, sadly, am reading William Hazlitt.

skholê

17 July 2004, around 9.09.

καὶ μικρὸν μὲν ἀνεκάθισεν, ἀνθρώπων τοσούτων ἐπερχομένων, καὶ διέβλεψεν εἰς τὸν ᾿Αλέξανδρον. ὡς δ’ ἐκεῖνος ἀσπασάμενος καὶ προσειπὼν αὐτὸν ἠρώτησεν, εἴ τινος τυγχάνει δεόμενος, ‘μικρὸν’ εἶπεν· ‘ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου μετάστηθι’. —Plutarch Alexander 14.41 τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους ὄντας παραλόγως περιπεσεῖν τινι τῶν δεινῶν οὐ τῶν παθόντων, τῆς τύχης δὲ καὶ τῶν πραξάντων ἐστὶν ἔγκλημα, τὸ […]

unsettled

24 July 2004, around 17.14.

Books to be packed. She sat rather glumly looking at her own hands, her chin drawn in as though suffering from indigestion, or a surfeit of English. —Patrick White The Vivisector, p. 317. I am, as it were, at sea. The most difficult part of packing books is deciding which ones I am most likely […]

pseudaphoristica (12)

31 July 2004, around 14.21.

departure.

Citation (25)

5 August 2004, around 2.43.

identity crisis.

peripatetic

20 August 2004, around 17.51.

The look of sunflowers bent in the streetlight. Streets butting into dead ends and empty lots (still smelling of farmland), signposted ‘private property, trespassing, loitering forbidden’. Circumspect distance maintained between pedestrians while waiting for the crosswalk signal in pseudo-suburbia: ca. eight feet. Inconvenient end of the concrete sidewalk in molehills, broken glass, blackberry brambles and […]

Crambe repetita (11)

3 September 2004, around 17.49.

Thomas Carlyle, Two Notebooks.

a quiver

15 September 2004, around 9.51.

Curvet.

Citation (26)

28 September 2004, around 8.45.

eccentric employments.

A view (15)

18 October 2004, around 17.55.

point of view.

Crambe repetita (12)

2 November 2004, around 18.20.

Samuel Butler, Notebooks.

noted

3 November 2004, around 16.11.

Started reading The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugrešić. The novel proper begins as follows: 1. ‘Ich bin müde,’ I say to Fred. His sorrowful, pale face stretches into a grin. Ich bin müde is the only German sentence I know at the moment (3).1 I note this only because ‘Ich bin müde’ was […]

a quiet evening

8 November 2004, around 12.15.

Seinsverfassung

10 November 2004, around 12.25.

from the Cowley Image Archive All was sunshine and flowers until the library delivered the wrong book for an interlibrary loan. I don’t care what the critics say, Allen Mandelbaum is no Gavin Douglas.1Brief critical introduction to and biography of Douglas. He also has the dubious honor of being somewhere commended by Ezra Pound. [↩]

Citation (27)

13 November 2004, around 12.24.

philosophical hedonism and the necessary…

What’s this?

23 November 2004, around 10.56.

pseudaphoristica (13)

3 December 2004, around 11.20.

criticaster.

commerce

13 December 2004, around 14.14.

Relics of the book trade; but see also a more impressive collection. O. W. Holmes, The Poet at the Breakfast Table: Joyce Kilmer, Trees and Other Poems: ibidem H. W. Auden, Greek Prose Phrase-Book: A. Kiesling, ed. Seneca Rhetor: Newton & Treat, Outline for Review: Roman History: Lord Houghton, Life and Letters of John Keats: […]

Crambe repetita (13)

17 December 2004, around 0.18.

John Bedford, Old Worcester China.

ego hoc feci mm–MMXXIV · cc 2000–2024 M.F.C.

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