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To talk philosophy without seeming to do so and by jests to accomplish the same as those who speak seriously

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Plutarch’s Sympotic Questions or Table-Talk (as the Loeb puts it) 613F-614A.  Translation is basically the Loeb, slightly revised.

In just such a manner a philosopher too, when with drinking-companions who are unwilling to listen to his homilies, will change his role, fall in with their mood, and not object to their activity so long as it does not transgress propriety. For he knows that, while men practise oratory only when they talk, they practise philosophy when they are silent, when they jest, even, by Zeus, when they are the butt of jokes and when they make fun of others. Indeed, not only is it true that ‘the worst injustice is to seem just when one is not,’ as Plato says, but also the height of understanding is to talk philosophy without seeming to do so, and by jests to accomplish the same as those who speak seriously. Just as the Maenads in Euripides, without shield and without sword, strike their attackers and wound them with their little thyrsoi, so true philosophers with their jokes and laughter somehow arouse men who are not altogether invulnerable and make them attentive.

οὕτω δὴ καὶ φιλόσοφος ἀνὴρ ἐν συμπόταις μὴ δεχομένοις τοὺς λόγους αὐτοῦ μεταθέμενος ἕψεται καὶ ἀγαπήσει τὴν ἐκείνων διατριβήν, ἐφ᾿ ὅσον μὴ ἐκβαίνει τὸ εὔσχημον, εἰδὼς ὅτι ῥητορεύουσι μὲν ἄνθρωποι διὰ λόγου, φιλοσοφοῦσι δὲ καὶ σιωπῶντες καὶ παίζοντες καὶ νὴ Δία σκωπτόμενοι καὶ σκώπτοντες. οὐ γὰρ μόνον ‘ἀδικίας ἐσχάτης ἐστίν,’ ὥς φησι Πλάτων, ‘μὴ ὄντα δίκαιον εἶναι δοκεῖν,’ ἀλλὰ καὶ συνέσεως ἄκρας φιλοσοφοῦντα μὴ δοκεῖν φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ παίζοντα διαπράττεσθαι τὰ τῶν σπουδαζόντων. ὡς γὰρ αἱ παρ᾿ Εὐριπίδῃ μαινάδες ἄνοπλοι καὶ ἀσίδηροι τοῖς θυρσαρίοις παίουσαι τοὺς ἐπιτιθεμένους τραυματίζουσιν, οὕτω τῶν ἀληθινῶν φιλοσόφων καὶ τὰ σκώμματα καὶ οἱ γέλωτες τοὺς μὴ παντελῶς ἀτρώτους κινοῦσιν ἁμωσγέπως καὶ συνεπιστρέφουσιν.

 

A visceral testimony to Homer’s influence

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Aelian’s Historical Miscellany 13.22 (or however you want to render Ποικίλη Ἱστορία).

Ptolemy Philopator, building a temple to Homer, erected a beautiful statue of him and in a circle around it placed all the cities who claim Homer as their own.

The painter Galaton depicted Homer vomiting and the other poets gathering up his vomit.

 Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Φιλοπάτωρ κατασκευάσας Ὁμήρῳ νεών, αὐτὸν μὲν καλῶς ἐκάθισε, κύκλῳ δὲ τὰς πόλεις περιέστησε τοῦ ἀγάλματος, ὅσαι ἀντιποιοῦνται τοῦ Ὁμήρου.

Γαλάτων δὲ ὁ ζωγράφος ἔγραψε τὸν μὲν Ὅμηρον αὐτὸν ἐμοῦντα, τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ποιητὰς τὰ ἐμημεσμένα ἀρυομένους.

This Ptolemy, Ptolemy IV, ruled Egypt in the final two decades of the third century BC.  Galaton is otherwise unknown.

Hoc opus, hic labor est

~ Walter Shandy ~ 1 Comment

What is certainly one of the Aeneid’s best known passages (6.129ish),

Trojan, son of Anchises, easy is the descent to Avernus:
night and day do the doors of black Dis lay open;
but to retrace your step and escape to the upper air,
this is the task, this the labor

Tros Anchisiade, facilis descensus Averno:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hic labor est.

Which, with consistent temperamental flippancy, I cannot read without recalling Ovid’s corrupting echo in Ars Amatoria 1.453:

But what you haven’t given, seem always on the cusp of giving:
In this way a barren field has often deceived its owner:
In this way the gambler – so that he won’t lose – does not leave off losing
and often the dice call back his greedy hands.
This is the the task, this the labor – to get her to bed without a preceding gift;
And so that what she’s given won’t have been given for nothing she’ll keep on giving.

At quod non dederis, semper videare daturus:
Sic dominum sterilis saepe fefellit ager:
Sic, ne perdiderit, non cessat perdere lusor,
Et revocat cupidas alea saepe manus.
Hoc opus, hic labor est, primo sine munere iungi;
Ne dederit gratis quae dedit, usque dabit.

Some metaphors of divine travel in Homer and Apollonius

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

Homer’s original at Iliad 15.78-83.  The first translation is the new Peter Green – which I was curious to glance through.  He seems rather to miss the core of the image in failing to translate the νόος (mind) of the νόος ἀνέρος – or does he separate it to a few lines later?  The second is the Loeb by A.T. Murray.

So he spoke, and Hērē, white-armed goddess, did not disobey him,
but went from the mountains of Ida to lofty Olympos.
Like a man who’s travelled to many countries, who
hurries about, reflects, “How I wish I was here, or there”,
whose sharp mind speeds its way through a mass of desires,
so rapidly in her eagerness flew the lady Hērē

So he spoke, and the goddess, white-armed Hera, failed not to obey, but went from the mountains of Ida to high Olympus. And just as swiftly darts the mind of a man who has traveled over far lands and thinks in his cunning mind, “Would I were here, or there,” and many are the wishes he conceives, so swiftly sped on the queenly Hera in her eagerness;

ὣς ἔφατ᾽, οὐδ᾽ ἀπίθησε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη,
βῆ δ᾽ ἐξ Ἰδαίων ὀρέων ἐς μακρὸν Ὄλυμπον.
ὡς δ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἂν ἀΐξῃ νόος ἀνέρος, ὅς τ᾽ ἐπὶ πολλὴν
γαῖαν ἐληλουθὼς φρεσὶ πευκαλίμῃσι νοήσῃ
ἔνθ᾽ εἴην ἢ ἔνθα, μενοινήῃσί τε πολλά,
ὣς κραιπνῶς μεμαυῖα διέπτατο πότνια Ἥρη:

And Apollonius’s reworking in Argonautica 2.541-48, in the Loeb translation of William Race

And as when a man roams from his homeland—as we suffering humans often must wander—and no land is distant but all routes are visible, and he thinks of his own home, and pictures at once the way by sea and land, and in his swift thoughts seeks now one place, now another with his eyes—so quickly did Zeus’ daughter spring down and plant her feet on the inhospitable Thynian shore.

ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τις πάτρηθεν ἀλώμενος, οἷά τε πολλὰ
πλαζόμεθ᾽ ἄνθρωποι τετληότες, οὐδέ τις αἶα
τηλουρός, πᾶσαι δὲ κατόψιοί εἰσι κέλευθοι,
σφωιτέρους δ᾽ ἐνόησε δόμους, ἄμυδις δὲ κέλευθος
ὑγρή τε τραφερή τ᾽ ἰνδάλλεται, ἄλλοτε δ᾽ ἄλλῃ
ὀξέα πορφύρων ἐπιμαίεται ὀφθαλμοῖσιν:
ὧς ἄρα καρπαλίμως κούρη Διὸς ἀίξασα
θῆκεν ἐπ᾽ ἀξείνοιο πόδας Θυνηίδος ἀκτῆς.

Do you want to know, Duthier, what sort of place Rome is?

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Joachim du Bellay’s Les Regrets (no. 82).  The poem itself is standard Horace/Persius/Juvenal satire remade but came to mind today when a colleague sent – together with some accusatory innuendo – the below pictures of our library’s copy of the David Slavitt ‘translation’ of the collection.  I had forgotten but several years ago I was looking this up for some reason and got so enraged at his facing translation that I defaced several pages with my own spur of the moment versions.  I remain convinced I was in the right, if only to warn any future readers.  But I also enjoy the pure absurdity of it.

First is the Richard Helgerson translation:

Do you want to know, Duthier, what sort of place Rome is?  Rome is a public scaffold for all the world, a stage, a theater, where nothing is lacking that men can do.

Here we see the game of Fortune and how her hand keeps us turning, now down, now up.  Here everyone shows himself and cannot, however cunning he may be, prevent the populace from calling him what he is.

Here rumor spreads quickly, whether false or true.  Here courtiers make love and pay court.  Here ambition and trickery about.

Here freedom makes the lowborn man bold.  Here idleness makes the good man vicious.  Here the base porter holds forth on worldly affairs.

Now the original:

Veuls-tu sçavoir (Duthier) quelle chose c’est Rome?
Rome est de tout le monde un publique eschafault,
Une scene, un theatre, auquel rien ne default
De ce qui peult tomber es actions de l’homme.
Icy se void le jeu de la Fortune, et comme
Sa main nous fait tourner ores bas, ores haut:
Icy chacun se monstre, et ne peult, tant soit caut,
Faire que tel qu’il est, le peuple ne le nomme.
Icy du faulx et vray la messagere court,
Icy les courtisans font l’amour et la court,
Icy l’ambition, et la finesse abonde:
Icy la liberté fait l’humble audacieux,
Icy l’oysiveté rend le bon vicieux,
Icy le vil faquin discourt des faicts du monde.

Now the absurdity:

Let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From ch.5 of Moby Dick – Ishmael’s morning-after response to what he terms the  innkeeper’s ‘skylarking … in the matter of my bedfellow.’

However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

Which accords nicely with Mr. Bennet’s lovely “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” from ch.57 of Pride and Prejudice.

He that disembarks on distant sands, becomes thereby the greater man.

~ Walter Shandy ~ 1 Comment

Petronius, poem 78 in the Loeb edition.  The politely archaizing translation is Michael Heseltine’s from the same edition.

Linque tuas sedes alienaque litora quaere,
o iuvenis: maior rerum tibi nascitur ordo.
Ne succumbe malis: te noverit ultimus Hister,
te Boreas gelidus securaque regna Canopi,
quique renascentem Phoebum cernuntque cadentem:
maior in externas fit qui descendit harenas.

Leave thine home, O youth, and seek out alien shores: a larger range of life is ordained for thee. Yield not to misfortune; the far-off Danube shall know thee, the cold North-wind, and the untroubled kingdoms of Canopus,2 and the men who gaze on the new birth of Phoebus or upon his setting: he that disembarks on distant sands, becomes thereby the greater man.

 

This poem is one of three epigraphs – along with verses by George Herbert and Louis MacNeice –  to one of my favorite books, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travel narrative of walking across Europe in the 1930s, A Time of Gifts.  Of its personal significance he says the following in his introductory letter to that work:

During the last days, my outfit assembled fast. Most of it came from Millet’s army surplus store in The Strand: an old Army greatcoat, different layers of jersey, grey flannel shirts, a couple of white linen ones for best, a soft leather windbreaker, puttees, nailed boots, a sleeping bag (to be lost within a month and neither missed nor replaced); notebooks and drawing blocks, rubbers, an aluminium cylinder full of Venus and Golden Sovereign pencils; an old Oxford Book of English Verse. (Lost likewise, and, to my surprise—it had been a sort of Bible—not missed much more than the sleeping bag.) The other half of my very conventional travelling library was the Loeb Horace, Vol. I, which my mother, after asking what I wanted, had bought and posted in Guildford. (She had written the translation of a short poem by Petronius on the flyleaf, chanced on and copied out, she told me later, from another volume on the same shelf: ‘Leave thy home, O youth, and seek out alien shores… Yield not to misfortune: the far-off Danube shall know thee, the cold North-wind and the untroubled kingdom of Canopus and the men who gaze on the new birth of Phoebus or upon his setting…’ She was an enormous reader, but Petronius was not in her usual line of country and he had only recently entered mine. I was impressed and touched.

 

 

His adjectives always embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety

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From another of Edith Wharton’s too-overlooked stories, The Mission of Jane.

“How smart you look! Is that a new gown?” he asked.

….

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

Since she never did, he always wondered at her bringing this out as
a fresh grievance against him; but his wonder was unresentful, and
he said good-humoredly: “You sparkle so that I thought you had on
your diamonds.”

She sighed and blushed again.

“It must be,” he continued, “that you’ve been to a dressmaker’s
opening. You’re absolutely brimming with illicit enjoyment.”

She stared again, this time at the adjective. His adjectives always
embarrassed her: their unintelligibleness savored of impropriety.

A powerful indictment of our vices

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy in that collection’s final story, Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy).  I am not a science fiction fan but Stanislaw Lem is the one author I’ve found in that genre whom I deeply enjoy.  But that in itself is due to much of his work falling more towards speculative philosophy (His Master’s Voice, Imaginary Magnitudes) and philosophy of technology (Summa Technologiae).  The pure hard sci-fi (The Invincible) does less for me and his Lucianic strain of marvel-filled satire – like Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and the below – is best kept to controlled doses.

The famous mirages of Stredogentsia owe their existence solely to man’s vicious inclinations.  At one time chillips grew on the planet in great numbers, and warmstrels were hardly ever found.  Now the latter have multiplied incredibly.  Above thickets of them, the air, heated artificially and diffracted, gives rise to mirages of taverns, which have caused the death of many a traveler from Earth.  It is said that the warmstrels are entirely to blame.  Why, then, don’t their mirages mimic schools, libraries, or health clubs? Why do they always show places where intoxicating beverages are sold? The answer is simple.  Because mutations are random, warmstrels at first created all sorts of mirages, but those that showed people libraries and adult-education classes starved to death, and only the tavern variety (Thermomendax spirituosus halucinogenes of the family Anthropophagi) survived.  This special adaptation of the warmstrels, brought about by man himself, is a powerful indictment of our vices.

 

A specter both pathetic and comical, the outmoded shadow of an entire age

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Menuet by Guy de Maupassant, in his short story collection Contes de la bécasse.  The narrator is recalling a memory from his youth that has never left him.  As a student he had taken the habit of visiting a park of a style no longer in fashion at the time.  There he made the acquaintance of a former dancing director of the Opera and his wife, a former star of the same.  The two visited the park each day, the director explaining their devotion as notre plaisir et notre vie … tout ce qui nous reste d’autrefois (our delight and our life … all that remains to us of the past.).  They perform the below scene for the narrator:

Then I saw something unforgettable.  They moved forward and back with childlike affectation, smiled, swayed, bent, leapt like two old puppets some old machine was making dance – puppets a bit broken and made long ago by a skilled craftsman according to the manner of his time.

And I watched them, my heart stirred with exceptional feelings, my soul touched by an inexpressible melancholy.  It seemed I was seeing a specter both pathetic and comical, the outmoded shadow of an entire age.  I wanted to laugh and needed to cry.  All at once they stopped, they had finished the movements of the dance.  For some seconds they remained standing, the one before the other, contorting their faces in an unexpected way.  Then they embraced, weeping.

Alors je vis une chose inoubliable. Ils allaient et venaient avec des simagrées enfantines, se souriaient, se balançaient, s’inclinaient, sautillaient pareils à deux vieilles poupées qu’aurait fait danser une mécanique ancienne, un peu brisée, construite jadis par un
ouvrier fort habile, suivant la manière de son temps.

Et je les regardais, le cœur troublé de sensations extraordinaires, l’âme émue d’une
indicible mélancolie. Il me semblait voir une apparition lamentable et comique, l’ombre
démodée d’un siècle. J’avais envie de rire et besoin de pleurer. Tout à coup ils s’arrêtèrent, ils avaient terminé les figures de la danse. Pendant quelques secondes ils restèrent debout l’un devant l’autre, grimaçant d’une façon surprenante ; puis il s’embrassèrent en sanglotant.