The moulded cabbage-leaf jugs for which Worcester is famous are very plentifully available in blue and white, often with the mask spout, as are also all the vine-leaf dessert and tiny pickle-dishes, pierced baskets, comports, salad bowls, soup tureens, butter-dishes, sauce-boats; there are even such items as knife and fork handles, knife rests, salt spoons, tea-caddy spoons and a pierced variety of the latter which are claimed to be egg-draining spoons. Tea jars take on several shapes, oval, round or square, sometimes with ribbed moulding; and teapots come in many shapes, some peculiar to Worcester, others of universal adoption.
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:
Charles E. Bennett, Latin Composition:
R. C. Seaton, ed. Apollonii Rhodii, Argonautica:
This is, apparently, not the year I will be reading the works of the fifteenth century Scots poet, Gavin Douglas. As mentioned earlier, I ordered his Aeneid through ILL, yet received it not; this was meant to be his poetry. At least they got the author’s name right this time.
It is a shame to write with such abundant style and yet offer so little evidence of thought.
Housman in his old age was a remote figure, one of the great men of Cambridge, and the subject of occasional speculation. Stories circulated about him and continue to circulate. Here is one, with a better pedigree than most as it comes from an ex-pupil of Housman’s friend, Andrew Gow:
The philosopher Wittgenstein, who had rooms above Housman, had no private lavatory; Housman had. Wittgenstein had to go downstairs and cross Whewell’s Court to find one. Once, when Wittgenstein had an attack of diarrhoea, he asked through his bedmaker if he might make use of Housman’s lavatory. But the answer came back that Housman was a philosophical hedonist, and therefore refused Wittgenstein’s request.
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.*
* Brief critical introduction to and biography of Douglas. He also has the dubious honor of being somewhere commended by Ezra Pound.
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).*
I note this only because ‘Ich bin müde’ was also the first German sentence I was ever able to recall on the spur of the moment, without a pause for parsing. This amuses me now – as it amused me then – because it is curious to approach a new language with expressions of fatigue.
* translated by Celia Hawkesworth.
My Aunt Philip’s aunt, Mrs. Pring, complained bitterly to my aunt of the parson of her village (of which she was squire) who had come to see her during a serious illness, ‘and you know, my dear,’ she said, ‘he read the bible to me, just as if I had been any old woman in the village’.
Her gardener, Curtis, had consulted her as to how and where some cabbages were to be planted. Later on the gardener came again with a suggestion which was obviously an improvement. ‘Curtis’, said she, ‘if I tell you to plant the cabbages with their leaves in the ground and their roots in the air you will be pleased to do so.’ And yet, as she said to my aunt, she knew Curtis’s way was much better, but she was not going to have settled questions re-opened, and she was going to be mistress of her own house.
Waterfront park, ca. 6.30 a.m.
I looked, as if for the first time. I looked at people and at the order of things for the first time and I saw, I saw simply, and understood simply, understood with every last drop of me all of it – how people have set things up – isn’t the real thing. And so it will not be that way, because I do not wish it.
The tutor was glad and proud at the sight. His face in his drunken daze – for the Commander kept his cup filled – was awfully thin. He was too great an eccentric to have found employment commensurate with his learning, and he lived in poverty and neglect, but Genji had singled him out that way because he saw something in him. The man seemed destined for even greater things in the future…
When reading, I don’t always look up the words I don’t know the meaning of – usually because context is enough, but often just because of laziness. This habitual sloth set me on a false scent with the following passage:
Nobody, probably not even Kathy, need ever be aware of his spiritual child Katherine Volkov; unless some tittuping archivist picked up a scent on a scholarly ramble and thought to enliven scholarship with muck.
‘Tittuping’ is the word in question, and I assumed a meaning of uppity or impertinent or trespassing. Fear of error hounded me, nagged at my conscience for twenty minutes or more until at last I turned to the dictionary:
tittuping, ppl. a. That tittups*; bouncing, cantering, prancing; transf., rollicking, lively; also, unsteady, rickety.
1796 Campaigns 1793-4 II. vii. 44 My pen glances off into titupping strains. 1809 Theo. Jones Hist. Breckn. II. 542 The poem concludes in such galloping tittuping rhymes as almost compel the reader to forget the merits the author certainly possesses. 1824 Scott St. Ronan’s xiii, The ‘Dear me’s’ and ‘O laa’s’ titupping misses, and the oaths of the pantalooned or buckskinned beaux. 1833 New Monthly Mag. XXXVIII. 300 The appropriateness of the harmony itself sinks before the tittuping of an arpeggio bass. 1868 Morn. Star 30 Jan., For such poetic cantering, such tit-tupping of Pegasus in a rhythmic Rotten Row. 1895 Mrs. B. M. Croker Village Tales (1896) 76 They kept up a steady tittuping canter, raising a cloud of dust.
I mention this only because the equine/hunting overtones make the sentence from White that much richer than it might otherwise have been – the scholar a huntsman pursuing a quarry rather than a nosy rambler peeping through hedges.
‘Tittuping’ is also (just by the way) a participle favored by arts reviewers in UK dailies; see, e.g. The Guardian:
She has a wonderful habit, while trying to hide the escaped prisoner, of hitching up her skirt and tittuping across the stage in high heels.
and Telegraph:
Fragmented and episodic, it starts arrestingly with ghostly shushing sounds and moving searchlights picking out a lone dancer in black tittuping nervily on the balls of her feet.
Such usage defies comment.
* tittup, Chiefly dial. [app. echoic, from the sound of the horse’s feet.]
The richer the character, the harder and slower in general is its development.* Two boys were once of the same class in our Edinburgh school; John ever trim precise and dux, Walter ever slovenly confused and dolt: in due time John became Baillie Waugh, and Walter became Sir Walter Scott.
The quickest and completest of all vegetables is – the Cabbage.
* Cf. Plutarch, Cato Minor, (1.3)
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 dry grass, in a stretch of road without streetlights.
Effort required to see the narrow dirt track by the head- and tail-lights of rare passing cars; also, the effort necessary to walk in a straight line when the pavement resumes.
Reflexive averting of gaze when police car passes.
Realization that pyjamas are perhaps not the most appropriate apparel for these midnight strolls.
The Count said a great many civil things to me upon the occasion; and added, very politely, how much he stood obliged to Shakespeare for making me known to him – But, a-propos, said he, Shakespeare is full of great things he forgot a small punctilio of announcing your name – it puts you under a necessity of doing it yourself.
¶ THERE is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am – for there is scarce any body I cannot give a better account of than myself; and I have often wish’d I could do it in a single word – and have an end of it. It was the only time and occasion in my life I could accomplish this to any purpose for Shakespeare lying upon the table, and recollecting I was in his books, I took up Hamlet, and turning immediately to the gravediggers scene in the fifth act, I laid my finger upon YORICK, and advancing the book to the Count, with my finger all the way over the name – Me voici! said I.
– Laurence Sterne
A Sentimental Journey
(‘The Passport – Versailles– 1–2)
It makes things easier to pretend to dislike what one does not wish to leave; this is true of places and people. Rather, it makes things easier for the one who leaves – especially if that person be of weak spirit and narrow mind.
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.
I am, as it were, at sea. The most difficult part of packing books is deciding which ones I am most likely to want to read or refer to in the near future. Should Vita Sackville-West’s Joan of Arc go in the suitcase, or Kafka’s Briefe an Felice? Ought The Book of Memory make the two-month voyage by boat in a box, or Ovid’s Tristia or the Teubner Odyssey? Alas – but one of the many problems in shaping one’s ‘old course, in a Country new’.*
Compounding these difficulties, I accidentally purchased The Old English Baron, The Vampyre, and Melmoth the Wanderer – I justify the frivolity (and added baggage) with feeble flutterings about my invalid mind in need of distraction and repose. This sort of mental hypochondria has helped me overcome the guilt of many an ill-judged book-purchase before, and I do not think it will fail me now. (Although how the Gothic is supposed to help strengthen my intellect I have not, as yet, discovered; at least it’s not Ann Radcliffe.)
* Is there meant to be a pun, do you think, on course and corse? Probably. You with the Arden Lear ready to hand, yes, you in the back, sir: would you mind checking the notes for me?
Also, I was going to be terribly pretentious (in the manner of Gissing) and write ‘eheu’ for ‘alas’; congratulate me, please, on my restraint.
Martha’s Vineyard.
The rough brick wall bore in chalk the legend: ‘PROPERTY IS THEFT’; heedless, I read ‘PROPERTIUS IS DEFT’, which seemed a strange idea. Also, apropos of nothing:
He is a small, broad-shouldered man, with the thin, dead-looking fair hair, mild eyes, and bulging, over-heavy forehead of the German vegetarian intellectual. He wears sandals and an open-necked shirt.
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’.
τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους ὄντας παραλόγως περιπεσεῖν τινι τῶν δεινῶν οὐ τῶν παθόντων, τῆς τύχης δὲ καὶ τῶν πραξάντων ἐστὶν ἔγκλημα, τὸ δ’ ἀκρίτως καὶ προφανῶς περιβαλεῖν αὑτοὺς ταῖς μεγίσταις συμφοραῖς ὁμολογούμενόν ἐστι τῶν πασχόντων ἁμάρτημα. διὸ καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἐκ τύχης πταίουσιν ἔλεος ἕπεται μετὰ συγγνώμης καὶ ἐπικουρία, τοῖς δὲ διὰ τὴν αὑτῶν ἀβουλίαν ὄνειδος καὶ ἐπιτίμησις συνεξακολουθεῖ παρὰ τοῖς εὖ φρονοῦσιν.
* Yes, yes, it’s a famous passage – I’ve not wit enough at present to be obscure.
Note to self: do not forget Cicero’s haircut & Clodius’ hubristas (Cicero, 30.6–7); also the macrons & Diogenes’ ‘littleness’.
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.
Athos, Olympus, Ætna, Atlas, made
These hills seem things of lesser dignity,
All, save the lone Soracte’s height, display’d
Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman’s aidFor our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes…
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. It is the habit alone of reasoning which can make a reasoner. And men can never be better invited to the habit than when they find pleasure in it. A freedom of raillery, a liberty of decent language to question everything, and an allowance of unraveling or refuting any argument without offence to the arguer, are the only terms which can render such speculative conversations any way agreeable. For to say truth, they have been rendered burdensome to mankind by the strictness of the laws prescribed to them and by the prevailing pedantry and bigotry of those who reign in them and assume to themselves to be dictators in these provinces.
So I settled down at once as a full-fledged anarchist.
Figure to yourself a group of naked cottages with bald slate roofs untempered by the years – no moss, no house-leeks – dropped down at random in a sticky clay cabbage-field – and you see our colony. […] Most of these young men were good fellows in their way – very simple-hearted anarchists. I do not credit it that they could have blown up a Tsar, or even dropped a bomb into a suburban letter-box. They confined themselves to cabbages and passionate denunciation of the oppressors.
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Henry James. The Sacred Fount. New Directions, 1995 (1901) |
In conversation with Ford Obert, R.A., the nameless novelist narrator of The Sacred Fount notes the following:
It might have been my mere fancy – but it was my fancy – that he looked at me a trifle harder. ‘How on earth can I tell what you’re talking about?’ (145).
Readers might feel inclined to ask the same question; that’s the great joy of the novel – trying to figure out if one can tell what on earth James (or the narrator or, indeed, any of the other characters) is talking about.
June 2004
No. 35 Holywell St.
I will be to you wine in the cellar and the more modestly or rather indolently I retire into the backward Bin, the more falerne will I be at the drinking…
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 I make things.’
This could pass as modesty, if Aristotle had never been done into English. Why? In his treatise on poetry, our favorite peripatetic refers to poetic composition with the word ποίησις from the verb ποιέω, which is commonly translated as ‘to make, create or produce’. From this vantage, Carson’s seeming distinction between poetic composition and ‘making things’ sounds false, or at least preciously sly. I must admit, though, that the bleak light it casts on the character and future of ‘the poet’ is amusing, for she obliquely implies that a ‘poet’ is perfected, completed, dead,2 though the making of things – the poiesis – continues. Is the NYTimes journalist meant to grasp this? If not, then for whom is such cleverness displayed? On whom is the joke perpetrated? Call it wit, call it arrogance, I call it unnecessary. But only a pedant would say every utterance must be dictated by ἀνάγκη.
Perhaps I would be willing to forgive this sort of opacity if I actually liked her poems, but I find I must agree with one reviewer (of The Autobiography of Red) who finds that ‘in spite of its surface of high intellectualism, it is an easy read, the same sort of psychological baring that one finds in much confessional poetry, the “literary” equivalent of a beach towel novel.’ To complain about the facility of her poetry immediately after lamenting the ‘difficulty’ of her manner might seem the sign of an addled mind, if both complaints did not spring from the same source: irritation with (an apparent) lack of substance beneath the surface cleverness. But mere generalizations won’t forward my point – best to look at a poem.3
1. Dinitia Smith, ‘A Passion for the Classics and, Well, Passion’, 27 March 2004; one has to pay to access it online, which is why there is no link.
2. Or, depending on how you feel about the historicity of Homer, non-existant.
3. I would call it a text, but that word annoys me; please consider the word ‘poem’ to be a shorthand for ‘words arranged on a page in a decidedly un-proselike fashion’. Also, I apologize for using the words ‘poetry’ and ‘verse’ interchangeably.
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Jane Collier An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting ed. A. Bilger, 2003 (1753) |
…it is from suffering, and not from inflicting torments, that the true idea of them is gained (130).
A satire in the manner of Swift’s Directions to Servants,* Collier’s Essay is neither so light nor so sharp a piece of prose, though it possesses a certain sardonic weariness. I am reminded of Woolf’s criticism of Jane Eyre – one feels the author’s indignation and, more importantly, lack of control so much that the work itself is weakened. Such criticism is not quite appropriate in this case, not least because the sections dealing with Collier’s own experience as an unmarried dependent female or any of the common perversities of friendship are the most powerful in the work:
When a person so thoroughly loves his friend, that it is one his greatest pleasure, to serve, to please, or to amuse him; he cannot, it is true, want thanks for every thing he does; nay, he will be so far from it, that nothing could be more unpleasant to him, than to receive such perpetual acknowlegements for his kindness; yet there is a manner of overlooking such constant endeavours, which is not only mortifying, but very grating, and which I would have you, my good pupil, not fail to practise. But if ever it has been in your power to do the least service to your friend, you may puff and blow; you may magnify the trouble you have taken; and you may praise your own friendly disposition and good-nature, till you have forced from your friend thanks and acknowlegements enough to repay you for having conferred the greatest favour in the world (100).
Although it is possible to read the Essay looking for humor, as I did, I wonder now whether it wouldn’t be more appropriate to consider it as an anatomy of psychological abuse, an approach that might reconcile a reader the occasional broken and limping passages.
There is one mistake which people have often run into, in their choice of a dupe; namely, in thinking, that the principle qualification to be insisted on is, his having a soft place in his head; whereas the chief thing to seek after is, the man who has a soft place in his heart. Many a disappointment has arose, from fixing your choice on a fool; for frequently will you find such a want of affection, such a thorough selfishness, so much cunning and obstinacy, annexed to folly, that all your labour will be thrown away (94).
* The Broadview edition contains an excerpt from Swift’s satire, as well as passages from Sarah Fielding’s The Adventures of David Simple (1744) and Maria Edgeworth’s An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification (1795).
Then how vncertaine our estates would be, how vncomfortable our selues, how dangerous and pernicious it would be for the state of euery common-wealth, all men may easily iudge, yet God to preuent these inconueniences, for the further benefit of mankind, as hee hath giuen vs a voice to expresse the minde vnto the eare, so hee hath giuen vs hands to frame letters or markes for the voice to expresse the minde vnto the eyes. So that the eyes and eares are as it were the receiuers of message sent vnto the heart, the hands and voice as deliuerers of message sent from the heart: And though the voice be a more liuely kind of speech, yet in respect it is but onely a sleight accident made of so light a substance as the ayre, it is no sooner vttered but it is dissolued, euery simple sound doth expell and extinguish the sound going before it, so that the eare can haue but one touch of the ayre beating vpon it to declare the speech vnto the mind: but the hand though it giue a dumbe and a more dull kind of speech, yet it giues a more durable. A letter is a grosser substance, and therefore is of more continuance than a sound: what is once written still continueth when the hand ceaseth. If the eyes haue not satisfied the mind at one view, they may looke on it againe, yea till they haue satisfied it’s desire: And by this meanes of noting and charactring of the voice, all things worthy of memory are defended form iniury of forgetfulnesse…*
* A learned and wise person would refer to Plato and the evolution of views on literacy & orality & memory, but at present I am too feeble – the spirit, as they say, is willing, but the flesh is weak. Also, the cisterns in the following passage please me:
…perchance I may be charged with presumption both in respect of my selfe, and in respect of my yeers, in that I professe to be a teacher of a science to others, hauing as it were but newly learned my letters my selfe: Whereunto I answer, that I learned not this my arte out of the books and workes of learned men, neither would my small meanes afford me to be acquainted with their great volumes, only out of a volume of Gods owne guift and making did I take this small Manuscript, euen to all men hath he giuen the same impression, whereby the truth hereof may be examined: yet certainly the vnripenesse of my yeeres, and want of other learning, had wholly withheld me from publishing thereof, so that it might haue died with my selfe and haue benefited no man, had I not considered that euery one of what estate, degree, or condition soeuer, is bound in duety to reueale whatsoeuer may be beneficiall to his country; assuring my selfe that God doth not giue either knowledge or riches to any priuate person meerly for his own particular vse, but imploieth those on whom he bestoweth such guifts, as Cisternes and conduits to conuey and impart them likewise to others. Yet he therein so prouideth that themselues also be neuer empty. This consideration therefore caused me to thinke it were far better, though with boldnesse to set foorth that portion of knowledge which God had giuen me, then with a dastard-like feare for the causes afore remembred to conceale the benefit; Hauing therefore laboured to finde out the true ground of speech, that the manifold errors therein might be made manifest, and so auoided (f.A6v–A7).
I have been very idle lately; both from the overpowering idea of our dead poets and from abatement of my love of fame. I hope I am a little more of a Philosopher than I was, consequently a little less of a versifying Pet-lamb.
Convert me into meter, sir,
dispose of me in rhyme –
pray enjamb me in a corner
where I must bide your time.With assonance I’ll not demur,
in iambs I shall dwell,
embrace alliteration’s lure –
I’m sure it suits me well;each topsy-turvy metaphor
and simile obscene –
I will not ponder what they’re for
or ask you what you mean.For meaning’s mark you may forswear
though I should keep your time:
Dispose of me in meter, sir,
disperse me into rhyme.
postation · postpositive · postprandial · post-haste · dumb as a post · postage · postulate · postilion · postalize · imposture · postliminy · by post · ‘ oh, omne animal triste!’ · postless · post-mortem · posthumous · posterity · post factum · ergo propter hoc
Post scriptum: postreme.
quis autem non magis solos esse, qui in foro turbaque quicum conloqui libeat non habeant, quam qui nullo arbitro vel secum ipsi loquantur, vel quasi doctissimorum hominum in concilio adsint, cum eorum inventis scriptisque se oblectent?
From my new copy of A. S. F. Gow’s
A. E. Housman, a Sketch.*
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, but in 1929, when the fifth volume of his Manilius was nearing completion, he went by train. He was asked why, and replied that the percentage of accidents was much higher in air-travel, and that, until his Manilius was complete, his life was too valuable to risk unnecessarily (55f).
* In addition to their inability to clear up typographical errors in monographs, OUP seems to be divesting itself of its library; which is bad for them, but good for me.
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…
Put down the apple Adam
And come away with me
So shal’t thou have a pippin
From off my Father’s tree!
[↩]
To abolish seduction is a mother’s goal.
She will replace it with what is real: products.
Demeter’s victory
over Hades
does not consist in her daughter’s arrival from down below,
it’s the world in bloom –
cabbages lures lambs broom sex milk honey!
These kill death.
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 lenten diet,
And learnt her not to startle at his name.
1. – I could sit forever with a man, provided that what he said did not grate on my ears, that he had charm, and that he did not talk very much. […] The mark of an excellent man is that he writes easily in an acceptable hand, sings agreeably and in tune, and, though appearing reluctant to accept when wine is pressed on him, is not a teetotaler.
– from the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō
(trans. D. Keene)
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Orhan Pamuk. Snow. tr. Maureen Freely. 2004 (2002). |
The silence of the snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called what he felt inside him ‘the silence of the snow’.
In chs. 29 and 41 of Snow Pamuk tells his reader how the story should be read – generally a worrying practice from a novelist. The analysis is putatively of the book within a book, a collection of poems written by the poet Ka (who uses his initials because he does not like his given name: Kerim Alakuşoğlu), and this collection of poems, also called Snow, is based on the six-armed shape of a snowflake.
Ka was one of those who shy away from happiness for fear of the pain that might follow. So we already know that his most intense emotions came not when he was happy but when he was beset by the certainty that this happiness would soon be lost to him (347).
This reader’s manual is divided over an interval of twelve chapters. I leave the reader to do the math. Only the most superficial analysis of the novel could be undertaken without a thorough understanding of this structure. Thus I feel I am not at liberty to discuss the joys of the intrusive narrator (Orhan – great shades of Vladimir or Paul Auster (ick), &co.) or the elegant tangles of plot (involving a theatrical military coup in a provincial Turkish town) and character (how many love triangles can be crammed into one novel?).
As Ka had so often suggested to me, I simply did not understand poetry well enough, nor the great sadness from which it issues. So there had been a wall between us; a wall that now divided me no just from the melancholy city described in his notes, but from the impoverished place I was seeing with my own eyes (387).
Collectively and individually – every act is a betrayal, every memory stolen, and every desire inherited. Connecting all, of course, is elegance, precision, and a terrible beauty.
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Vladimir Nabokov. Pnin. New York: Knopf, 2004 (1953). [extract from Lodge’s intro] |
Asked to sum it up in one word, I would unhesitatingly say ‘sweet’; by which I probably do not mean what you think I mean. It is not sweet in the manner ascribed to human infants and other small mammals; it is not cute, or precious, or fluffy. This is no asinine candy-coated scribble to delight the many and appall the few. Well, perhaps it is. At the very least, it introduces an unprepossessing character who might describe himself as follows:
I am not handsome, I am not interesting, I am not talented. I am not even rich. But, Lise, I offer you everything I have, to the last blood corpuscle, to the last tear, everything. And, believe me, this is more than any genius can offer you because a genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do (ch. 6).
N. gives every indication that this is an accurate appraisal and, since the story of such a one could so easily be ponderous, one reads with amazement the sustained lightness of the prose. Moreover, it is impossible to scorn Pnin, just as one cannot fully pity him; rather, in reading it is as though one unfolds him carefully and peruses him like a misdirected letter.
This would be the sentimental approach. Reason dictates I observe that Pnin is a very fine example of the ‘campus novel’, a genre which includes the likes of Pictures from an Institution (whose title I can never remember), The Lecturer’s Tale (one of the rare books I am actually ashamed to have finished reading – as opposed to the many books I blush to admit sits on a shelf, bookmark midway through), and Lucky Jim (which I dislike). Pnin quite tops them all, for university life is acutely observed and concisely captured (cf. ‘lightness’) in descriptions sadly familiar fifty years on:
Again the marble neck of the homely Venus in the vestibule of Humanities Hall received the vermilion imprint, applied in lipstick, of a mimicked kiss. Again the Waindell Recorder discussed the Parking Problem. Again in the margins of library books earnest freshmen inscribed such helpful glosses as ‘Description of nature,’ or ‘Irony’; and in a pretty edition of Mallarmé’s poem, an especially able scholiast had already underlined in violet ink the difficult word oiseaux and scrawled above it ‘birds.’ […] And still the college creaked on. Hard-working graduates, with pregnant wives, still wrote dissertations on Dostoevski and Simone de Beauvoir. Literary departments still labored under the impression that Stendhal, Galsworthy, Dreiser, and Mann were great writers (ch. 6, again).
…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, let him study that, and study it because it attracts him; and let him not fabricate excuses for that which requires no excuse, but rest assured that the reason why it most attracts him is that it is best for him. The majority of mankind, as is only natural, will be most attracted by those sciences which most nearly concern human life; those sciences which, in Bacon’s phrase, are drenched in flesh and blood, or, in the more elegant language of the Daily Telegraph, palpitate with actuality. The men who are attracted to the drier and the less palpitating sciences, say logic or pure mathematics or textual criticism, are likely to be fewer in number; but they are not to suppose that the comparative unpopularity of such learning renders it any the less worthy of pursuit. Nay, they may if they like console themselves with Bacon’s observation that ‘this same lumen siccum doth parch and offend most men’s watery and soft natures’ and infer, if it pleases them, that their natures are less soft and watery than other men’s. But be that as it may…
Also, ibidem:
I do not believe that the proportion of the human race whose inner nature the study of the classics will specially transform and beautify is large; and I am quite sure that the proportion of the human race on whom the classics will confer that benefit can attain the desired end without that minute and accurate study of the classical tongues which affords Latin professors their only excuse for existing.
‘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
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
Incidentally, does it worry anyone else that most of the Greek phrases C. uses in his letters only occur very rarely in the entirety of the extant Greek corpus and usually in authors dating after the second century CE? Far be it from me to insinuate from silence, but it does look a bit odd.
Shackleton Bailey’s translation:
That place in my mental anatomy which used to contain my spleen grew a tough skin long ago. Providing only that my private and domestic circumstances give me pleasure, you will find my equanimity quite remarkable. It largely depends, believe me, on your return. There is no one in the world with whom I hit it off quite so happily.
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There should be a pigeon.
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.
Beirette BL, Agfa Ultra 100, f2.8/60
14 April 2004
It is the lot of the fool to wait another’s pleasure.
I grow tired of waiting.
— 65, catch your cabbage!
Everyone laughed. Mr M’Coy, who wanted to enter the conversation by any door, pretended that he had never heard the story. Mr Cunningham said:
— It is supposed – they say, you know – to take place in the depot where they get these thundering big country fellows, omadhauns, you know, to drill. The sergeant makes them stand in a row against the wall and hold up their plates. He illustrated the story by grotesque gestures.
— At dinner, you know. Then he has a bloody big bowl of cabbage before him on the table and a bloody big spoon like a shovel. He takes up a wad of cabbage on the spoon and pegs it across the room and the poor devils have to try and catch it on their plates: 65, catch your cabbage.
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 angorem animi mei sermone et consilio levasti tuo, qui mihi et in publica re socius et in privatis omnibus conscius et omnium meorum sermonum et consiliorum particeps esse soles, ubinam es? ita sum ab omnibus destitutus ut tantum requietis habeam quantum cum uxore et filiola et mellito Cicerone consumitur. nam illae ambitiosae nostrae fucosaeque amicitiae sunt in quodam splendore forensi, fructum domesticum non habent. itaque cum bene completa domus est tempore matutino, cum ad forum stipati gregibus amicorum descendimus, reperire ex magna turba neminem possumus, quocum aut iocari libere aut suspirare familiariter possimus.
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 –
An insidious book. I started and thought it an unhappy cross between Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Dubliners, but as I progressed it worked through me its tentacles and I cannot escape – I will (I must) quote about Miss Dow and her cabbages, and the eleutherian sentiments of an Irish fire, that will not burn behind the bars of the grate. Some of the foreshadowing is a bit heavy-handed (e.g. Murphy and the gas), but it is funny, though bleakly so. Yet most of its jokes cannot be drawn from their context; every paragraph, every word depends on its proper place in the narrative to be understood. The most melancholy sentence in the whole book is:
The end of the line skimmed the water, jerked upwards in a wild whirl, vanished joyfully in the dusk (158).
Only a fool would use a cleaver to lance a boil.
Τῆς αὐταρκείας καρπὸς μέγιστος ἐλευθερία.
Freedom is the finest product of self-sufficiency.1
Yes, yes, I know karpos means ‘fruit’ or ‘harvest’ – but I don’t really like the idea of autarkeia (another tangled concept, but there’s no helping it) reaping the whirlwind. If you don’t like the translation of megistos (lit. greatest, largest) as ‘finest’, well, there it is – those who live by the LSJ die in the middle of Liddell.
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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).
…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 properly and inevitably makes us consider her again and look for, and sometimes find, something in her we had not noticed before, so, in my system, the very fact that people, or even any one person, can well and truly read, and love for a lifetime, a book we had thought bad, will raise the suspicion that it cannot really be as bad as we thought. Sometimes, to be sure, our friend’s mistress remains in our eyes so plain, stupid and disagreeable that we can attribute his love only to the irrational and mysterious behaviour of hormones; similarly, the book he likes may continue to seem so bad that we have to attribute his liking to some early association or other psychological accident. But we must, and should, remain uncertain. Always, there may be something in it that we can’t see.
· anodyne · bask · charming · destitution · emperish · fret · grapple · hebetude · incendiary · jest · kairos · lassitude · Mephistopheles · notoriety · omphalos · presume · quiff · restraint · sumptuous · tergiversate · unctuous · vertiginous · waffle · xiphoid · yare · zealous ·
meme (ex machina):*
Intrigue me?1 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.2 A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like those countries far in the North, where it is as clear at mid-night as at mid-day.3 It can infuse vehemence and passion into spoken words in many ways, and when combined with argumentative passages it not only persuades the auditor but actually enslaves him.4 Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing he thought-of was a contribution, accession, a change or revolution made.5 The duke himself only rarely paid a visit north of the rivers and, when he did, stayed only briefly.6
* Take the nearest six to ten books from your shelf; open them to page 23, and find the fifth sentence: write down those sentences and arrange them to form a short story; post the text in your journal along with these instructions.
…for certainly Life is so Pretious, as it ought not to be Ventured, where there is no Honour to be Gain’d in the Hazard, for Death seems Terrible, I am sure it doth to Me, there is nothing I Dread more than Death, I do not mean the Strokes of Death, nor the Pains, but the Oblivion in Death, I fear not Death’s Dart so much as Death’s Dungeon, for I could willingly part with my Present Life, to have it Redoubled in after Memory, and would willingly Die in my Self, so I might Live in my Friends; Such a Life have I with you, and you with me, our Persons being at a Distance, we live to each other no otherwise than if we were Dead, for Absence is a Present Death, as Memory is a Future Life; and so many Friends as Remember me, so many Lives I have, indeed so many Brains as Remember me, so many Lives I have, whether they be Friends or Foes, onely in my Friends Brains I am Better Entertained; And this is the Reason I Retire so much from the Sight of the World, for the Love of Life and Fear of Death…
* See also the Duchess of Newcastle’s autobiography.
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Of juvenilia I am not a fan, but, in a desire to improve my mind by reading what I do not like, I picked up yet another volume of opuscula published by Hesperus. It should not be surprising that Jane Austen possessed, at the age of fourteen, all the sharpness of observation which would later make her famous. She punctures the conventions of eighteenth century ‘chick-lit’ (see, e.g., the works of Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, or Mary Hays). She mocks the romantic sensibility and its affectations both physical (‘it was too pathetic for the feelings of Sophia and myself – We fainted alternately on a sofa…’) and emotional:
She staid but half an hour and neither, in the Course of her Visit, confided to me any of her secret thoughts, nor requested me to confide in her any of Mine. You will easily imagine, therefore, my Dear Marianne, that I could not feel any ardent affection or very sincere Attachment for Lady Dorothea.
This would be of little interest, were it not for the transparency with which Austen punctures the narrator’s pretensions and reveals her self-absorption:
Nay, faultless as my Conduct had certainly been during the whole course of my late Misfortunes and Adventures, she pretended to find fault with my Behaviour in many of the situations in which I had been placed. As I was sensible myself that I had always behaved in a manner which reflected Honour on my Feelings and Refinement, I paid little attention to what she said…
As might be expected, Austen’s sense of the ridiculous allows her to avoid such silliness as the ‘African Olympic Games‘ but, as with most juvenilia, it is of interest primarily in the light of what comes after. The presence of names such as Dashwood, Willoughby, and Musgrove in this collection rather emphasize than dispel that unfortunate association.
Lately I’ve been thinking (very slowly) about the word choir and, in particular, its appearance in two familiar poems. The first is Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth‘, and the relevant passage (ll.5–8) runs as follows:
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, —
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
I like the reversal of expectations; one assumes that the choir will be composed of boys singing dirges, but instead – with the emphasis of repetition – the choir is composed of the shells hissing over no-man’s land. Owen relegates the expected boys to silence in the next stanza (ll. 10–11). Equally silent, but in a different context, are the choirs in Shakespeare’s seventy-third sonnet (ll. 1–4):
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In this metaphorical application to the empty branches of a tree in winter, choir is used in the (quite common) sense of the place in a church where the choristers stand. Again, as in the Owen poem, one senses the failure (or emptiness) of organized religious expression to capture the emotions the author wishes to communicate. But that is not what I want to talk about. Rather, I’m interested in homonymy – in particular, the word quire. In addition to being an alternate (and archaizing) spelling ‘choir’, a quire is:
1. A set of four sheets of parchment or paper doubled so as to form eight leaves, a common unit in mediæval manuscripts; hence, any collection or gathering of leaves, one within the other, in a manuscript or printed book.
2. A small pamphlet or book, consisting of a single quire; a short poem, treatise, etc., which is or might be contained in a quire. Obs.1
In a bound book, the text-block is composed of quires.2 In the case the ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ it adds to the tone of the shells a second quire, a second voice of mourning: the poet’s own; but I do not think this formal parallel was conscious for Owen. For Shakespeare, though, it’s almost impossible to deny the pun. The yellow leaves lingering on the branches might just as well be the leaves of a book – pages which must be unwritten, of course, when the poet dies (just as the branches ‘where late the sweet birds sang’ become ‘bare ruin’d choirs’).3 The full quires containing the sonnets, however, will continue their serenade (dare I say, ‘twittering’?) despite the changing seasons, despite death, in a typical declaration of immortality. I could go on. But I won’t. It is enough that in the printed editions of these poems the words within the quires sing tunefully, recited through the passing years in many voices, despite the silent or demented choirs mentioned.
What, bred at home! Have I taken all this pains for a creature that is to lead the inglorious life of a cabbage, to suck the nutritious juices from the spot where he was first planted? No, to perambulate this terraqueous globe is too small a range; were it permitted, he should at least make the tour of the whole system of the sun. Let other mortals pore upon maps, and swallow the legends of lying travellers…
A bracingly absurdist guide to the (mis)behavior appropriate to servants. In addition to a general exhortation to all the household staff to cheat their master and mistress in every way possible, Swift also addresses individual notes to the Butler, the Cook, the Footman (including advice on how to act when going to be hanged), the Coachman (who should be drunk), the Groom, the Steward, the Porter, the Chambermaid, the Waiting-maid, the Housemaid, the Dairymaid, the Children’s Maid, the Nurse (‘If you happen to let the child fall, and lame it, be sure never to confess it; and if it dies, all is safe&’ [70]), the Laundress, the Housekeeper, and the Governess. All are told to look out for their own best advantage and their master’s ‘credit’ – especially if given money in advance to make purchases. Chutzpah is the greatest virtue, and Swift explores its myriad applications with very near his usual vigor. See, for instance, his advice to a footman:
If you are ordered to make coffee for the ladies after dinner, and the pot happens to boil over while you are running up for a spoon to stir it, or are thinking of something else, or struffling with the chambermaid for a kiss, wipe the sides of the pot clean with a dish-clout, carry up your coffee boldly, and when your lady finds it too weak, and examines you whether it hath not run over, deny the fact absolutely, swear that you put in more coffee than ordinary, that you never stirred an inch from it, that you strove to make it better than usual because your mistress had ladies with her, that the servants in the kitchen will justify what you say. Upon this, you will find that the other ladies will pronounce your coffee to be very good, and your mistress will confess that her mouth is out of taste, and she will for future suspect herself, and be more cautious in finding fault.1) This I would have you do from a principle of conscience, for coffee is very unwholesome, and, out of affection to your lady, you ought to give it to her as weak as possible; and upon this argument, when you have a mind to treat any of the maids with a dish of fresh coffee, you may, and ought to subtract a third part of the powder on account of your lady’s health, and getting her maids’ goodwill (38f.)
It is a delightful trifle (as opposed to an agreeable fluff), and I wish Swift had had the energy to develop it further; I suppose the author’s death is as good an excuse as any for not finishing it, but I’m still disappointed.
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 ass, Edith Wharton said he was ‘fluffy and loveable’ – which is not only no recommendation, but is, in fact, the kiss of death.1 My apologies, of course, to his fans. I have nothing to say against (or for or about) his poetry – indeed, may it achieve such immortality as it deserves. However… oh, forget it.
Then they heard the sound of a two-tone horn. Whether it was police, fire or ambulance they didn’t know, but it was time to be going. Fat Les took the remaining bottles out of the car, dropped them in the middle of the road to form a zebra crossing of petrol and broken glass. He threw a piece of burning rag at the petrol. A sheet of flame danced satisfyingly from the tarmac. They returned to the Beetle, drove round the wreck of the Range Rover and set off again into some unimaginable future of
love, revenge, class warfare and oral sex (108).
Geoff Nicholson’s short novel Street Sleeper is about the Volkswagen Beetle, and historical anecdotes about its design and marketing form a significant part of the narrative. Street Sleeper‘s also about former librarian Barry Osgathorpe, who buys an ugly VW Bug he calls Enlightenment, changes his name to Ishmael (as in,’Call me…‘) and sets out in search of spirituality and the perfect blow-job. Along the way, he picks up a disciple, Davey, and a girl, Marilyn. They get tangled up with Fat Les, champion of the underdog and refurbisher of Beetles, as well as a conservative MP and his shotgun-toting cronies the ‘Crockenfield Blazers’. To describe any more of the plot would lessen one’s enjoyment of this agreeable fluff (from which one
could doubtless draw important observations about breakdowns in English society in the 1980s). My favorite bit, though, is a description of the ad-man Bill Bernbach:
An English graduate from New York University, he is at heart a copywriter, but a copywriter with an unfailing instinct for integrating words and pictures.
He gets to work at nine, goes home at five. He is a brilliant maverick who loves his family.
He carries with him a card that he looks at from time to time, especially when facing some client with whom he particularly disagrees.
The card reads, ‘Maybe he’s right.’
(110f.)
Bentley: ‘A Dissertation upon Phaleris’.
Also: ‘Some experts who have seen the painting have raised questions about the woman’s yellow shawl, saying that while the paint may indeed be 17th century, the folds are heavy and, in the words of one Vermeer expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “un-Vermeer-like”.’ – isn’t it wonderful how this expert’s future credibility is more important to him(/her) than (his/)her integrity? (Of course, perhaps (s)he’s afraid of the anti-hyphen brigade…)
Because everyone needs to read more Duke of Wellington fan-fiction.
If you have found a silk purse, it would be absurd to keep the sow’s ear ‘just in case’.
There are some who object to the use of novels for the proliferation of philosophical principles, but I cannot say that I am usually one of them. Reading this unhappy cross between Vathek and Candide almost alters my opinion, though. Inasmuch as Vathek is more entertaining, and Candide is more vicious (or vice versa), I cannot recommend Rasselas as anything other than a benignant uncle of a novellas, mumbling truisms such as:
If the eye of hostility could learn reverence or pity, excellence like yours had been exempt from injury. But the angels of affliction spread their toils alike for the virtuous and the wicked, for the mighty and the mean. Do not be disconsolate… (ch. 38)
Most readers, though, are likely to concur with the opinion of one literary heroine:
…a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the title: ‘Rasselas‘ looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages. I returned it to her; she received it quietly…
– Jane Eyre, Ch. 5.
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.
Yet what, said she, is to be expected from our persuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, that happiness itself is the cause of misery? Why should we endeavour to attain that, of which the possession cannot be secured? I shall henceforward fear to yield my heart to excellence, however bright, or to fondness, however tender, lest I should lose again what I have lost…
Who knew that stealing grapes could have such terrible repurcussions? The young Mary Raymond (beautiful according to the custom of such novels) misappropriates the fruit to gratify the hunger of her childhood companion (and later, of course, beloved) William; she is, however, caught by the owner of the grapes, Sir Peter Osborne, who takes a fancy to her (tho’ she was only twelve at the time…). One would need to be blind not to see where this story is going. So poor Mary (poor, put-upon, thieving Mary) is, at a later date, obligingly raped by the wicked Sir Peter, who had gone through much trouble and expense to get her guardians out of the country (her father having conveniently died without leaving her much money). Poor Mary (poor, sweet Mary) then makes mighty efforts (friendless in a wicked world) not to become a prostitute as all ravaged women invariably do. She, being virtuous and intelligent as well as beautiful (being beautiful is such a nuisance, isn’t it?), of course succeeds and lives in modest contentment after her guardians return from two years of ‘exile’, but:
The vigorous promise of my youth has failed. The victim of a barbarous prejudice, society has cast me out from its bosom. The sensibilities of my heart have been turned to bitterness, the powers of my mind wasted, my projects rendered abortive, my virtues and my sufferings alike unrewarded, I have lived in vain! unless the story of my sorrows should kindle in the heart of man, in behalf of my oppressed sex, the sacred claims of humanity and justice (174).
I shouldn’t be so flippant about such a serious topic, but poor Hays uses so many of the same phrases and quotations from her earlier book – The Memoirs of Emma Courtney, about a woman who becomes infatuated with a man who cannot reciprocate, not least because he is (secretly) married – that it seems as though she writes by recipe. Still, for those who enjoy eighteenth century women’s novels, there’s much scope for interpretation, criticism, and feminist delight in the book, replete as it is with a heartless male villain, an oppressive society, &c.
Springtime along the river, March 2004
Couplets for two ‘sonnets’ I will never complete:
Leave me my quiet corner and my books –
Safe from the ways of men and their sour looks.
· · ·
Do not lament I write but of my self:
It is my all – I have no other pelf.
A collection of precisely observed short stories, wherein the mundane has meaning, and the unusual is commonplace; most of the men are disgusted at the thought of the moment of their conception, old men have weak hearts, and chess is invariably suggested as means for estranged relatives to pass the time. Women are usually more sensible, but equally ineffable. No one – especially if young – knows why they they act as they do and ‘the world isn’t what it used to be’ (187). The world-weariness and emptiness (‘Godlessness’?) of every moment becomes a bit tiring. To be read slowly, in the evenings, avoiding excess. It is a shame that the story ‘Thomas F’s Last Notes for the General Public’ is placed near the end of the collection, as it is wonderfully representative of all that is good in these stories, from the clear and unreliable characters, to the resigned humor in the face of change:
It’s been a long time since I stopped discussing finances with people who say they are losing money on something they could get rid of, it must be thirty years now, so I said nothing. But he didn’t require a rejoinder in order to go on. He held forth about all the other buildings of his which also showed a deficit, it was pitiful to listen to – he must’ve been a very poor capitalist. But I didn’t say a word, and eventually his lamentations came to an end – it was high time. Instead he asked for no apparent reason whether I believed in God. I was on the verge of asking which god he was referring to but contented myself with shaking my head (198).
By the time one reaches it, though, one already knows Askildsen’s tricks. Which is not, I suppose, necessarily a bad thing. ‘Carl Lange’ the story of a translator not quite accused of statutory rape, and the title story are also superb.
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 that should be taken of books.
Enjoyment derived from them.
Incidentally, I am still amused by The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, though its table of contents is nowhere near so … poetical:
My First Love
The Birth of a New Passion
The Luxury of Reading in Bed
The Mania of Collecting Seizes Me
Baldness and Intellectuality[...]
The Pleasures of Extra-Illustration
The Odors which My Books Exhale.
College entrance, Oxford UK
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 fuit Atticis laetitiae, ut tum primum arae Paci publice sint factae eique deae pulvinar sit institutum.
A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.
…eorum virorum cogitata non solum ad mores corrigendos, sed etiam ad omnium utilitatem perpetuo sunt praeparata, athletarum autem nobilitates brevi spatio cum suis corporibus senescunt; itaque neque cum maxime sunt florentes neque posteritati hi, quemadmodum sapientium cogitata hominum vitae, prodesse possunt.
The researches of these men are an everlasting possession, not only for the improvement of character but also for general utility. Indeed, the fame of athletes soon wanes with their bodily powers; and neither when they are most vigorous, nor afterwards for posterity, can they do for human life what is done by the researches of the learned.
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 the chanceable hitting uppon any of such verses, great foretokens of their following fortunes, were placed. Whereupon grew the word of Sortes Vergilianae, when by suddaine opening Virgils Booke, they lighted uppon some verse of his, as it is reported by many, whereof the Histories of the Emperours lives are full.
Sometimes I like to start my mornings by playing sortes Vergilianae — which is not, in my arrogant opinion, very different from reading one’s horoscope or doing the crossword. My question is usually something along the lines of ‘what should I do today’. I play this little game not, incidentally, because I like Vergil. I loathe Vergil. But I like my allusive actions to be apt in their aping of the antique.
This morning’s result was the following:
At Venus aetherios inter dea candida nimbos
And meanwhile Venus, goddess radiant amid the aery clouds…
This could have several meanings, I think:
I don’t like any of these options; so here’s a bibliography of Vergilian influences — may it protect you therefrom.
The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
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 and America, which were founded on classical Greek models.
Roessel’s book is much needed: the ideals of and ideas about modern Greece in English-language literature after Byron deserves much closer attention.1 I just wish he wouldn’t begin it by citing the silly fallacy that ‘the democracies of Western Europe and America […] were founded on classical Greek models’. Last I checked, representative democracy (aka ‘Republicanism’)—such as is found in, e.g., America—was a Roman idea. The details of all the constitutions of ‘Western Europe’ is beyond my ken, but again I would imagine that there’s more of Rome than Athens in them—romantic fictions notwithstanding.
Come to think of it, though, there were so many different forms of ‘classical’ Greek government, it’s ridiculous to talk as if Athens was the model for them all.2 Admittedly, it would not be at all amiss to talk as though people think that’s the case. However: if I keep on at this rate, I’ll start telling you why I think the Elgin marbles should be sent to China; and I don’t think either of us would be amused at the end of that tirade…
Lack of opportunity is no proof of virtue.
Afterword: why does the sudden realisation that I shall never read Ruskin’s Stones of Venice in its entirety bring tears to my eyes? Is it an allergic reaction to a lack of mad art historians? Or is it something more?
Epilogue: they dove into the pavement and disappeared.
Postscript: a verse, averse, aversion.
Addendum: I like GMH for word patterns, rather than sprung rhythm. It is thought that some Roman playwright was not a native Latin speaker because he played too much with the sound of words. Terence, I think.