Tag: Laurence Sterne

Which touched the point of wisdom as well as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Herodotus’ Histories (1.133), a supposed custom of the Persians:

Moreover it is their custom to deliberate about the gravest matters when they are drunk; and what they approve in their counsels is proposed to them the next day by the master of the house where they deliberate, when they are now sober and if being sober they still approve it, they act thereon, but if not, they cast it aside. And when they have taken counsel about a matter when sober, they decide upon it when they are drunk.

μεθυσκόμενοι δὲ ἐώθασι βουλεύεσθαι τὰ σπουδαιέστατα τῶν πρηγμάτων· τὸ δ᾿ ἂν ἅδῃ σφι βουλευομένοισι, τοῦτο τῇ ὑστεραίῃ νήφουσι προτιθεῖ ὁ στέγαρχος, ἐν τοῦ ἂν ἐόντες βουλεύωνται, καὶ ἢν μὲν ἅδῃ καὶ νήφουσι, χρέωνται αὐτῷ, ἢν δὲ μὴ ἅδῃ, μετιεῖσι. τὰ δ᾿ ἂν νήφοντες προβουλεύσωνται, μεθυσκόμενοι ἐπιδιαγινώσκουσι.

Tacitus reports a similar custom in the Germania (22):

after washing they take a meal, seated apart, each at his own table: then, arms in hand, they proceed to business, or, just as often, to revelry. To make day and night run into one in drinking is a reproach to no man: brawls are frequent, naturally, among heavy drinkers: they are seldom settled with abuse, more often with wounds and bloodshed; nevertheless the mutual reconciliation of enemies, the forming of family alliances, the appointment of chiefs, the question even of war or peace, are usually debated at these banquets; as though at no other time were the mind more open to obvious, or better warmed to larger, thoughts. The people are without craft or cunning, and expose in the freedom of the occasion the heart’s previous secrets; so every mind is bared to nakedness: on the next day the matter is handled afresh; so the principle of each debating season is justified: deliberation comes when they are incapable of pretence, but decision when they are secure from illusion.

lauti cibum capiunt: separatae singulis sedes et sua cuique mensa, tum ad negotia nec minus saepe ad convivia procedunt armati. diem noctemque continuare potando nulli probrum. crebrae, ut inter vinolentos, rixae raro conviciis, saepius caede et vulneribus transiguntur. sed et de reconciliandis invicem inimicis et iungendis adfinitatibus et adsciscendis principibus, de pace denique ac bello plerumque in conviviis consultant, tamquam nullo magis tempore aut ad simplices cogitationes pateat animus aut ad magnas incalescat. gens non astuta nec callida aperit adhuc secreta pectoris licentia loci; ergo detecta et nuda omnium mens. postera die retractatur1 et salva utriusque temporis ratio est: deliberant, dum fingere nesciunt, constituunt, dum errare non possunt.

And finally Laurence Sterne adds the Shandean variant, further enriched with a Lit de justice pun:

THE ancient Goths of Germany, who (the learned Cluverius is positive) were first seated in the country between the Vistula and the Oder, and who afterwards incorporated the Herculi, the Bugians, and some other Vandallick clans to ’em—had all of them a wise custom of debating every thing of importance to their state, twice, that is,—once drunk, and once sober:——Drunk—that their councils might not want vigour;——and sober—that they might not want discretion.

Now my father being entirely a water-drinker,—was a long time gravelled almost to death, in turning this as much to his advantage, as he did every other thing which the ancients did or said; and it was not till the seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless experiments and devices, that he hit upon an expedient which answered the purpose;——and that was, when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the family, which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its determination,——he fixed and set apart the first Sunday night in the month, and the Saturday night which immediately preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with my mother: By which contrivance, if you consider, Sir, with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

These my father, humorously enough, called his beds of justice;——for from the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a middle one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times.

What the reader is to consider is one of the earliest jokes of the novel (chap 4 of volume 1):

——————Shut the door.——————
I was begot in the night betwixt the first Sunday and the first Monday in the month of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. I am positive I was.—But how I came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before I was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this point.

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of ——, was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as ever the Sunday-night came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Othello (3.3.329-332):

Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons.
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood.
Burn like the mines of Sulphur

And a similar notion, less direly construed – from Tristram Shandy v.2 ch.19:

I mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the progress and establishment of my father’s many odd opinions,—but as a warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who, after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into our brains,—at length claim a kind of settlement there,——working sometimes like yeast;—but more generally after the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest,—but ending in downright earnest.

—of wondering why he was begot,—wishing himself dead;—sometimes worse

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Tristram Shandy, for those days wasted in war with bookcases and shelving:

My father, I say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience,—of wondering why he was begot,—wishing himself dead;—sometimes worse:——And when the provocation ran high, and grief touched his lips with more than ordinary powers—Sir, you scarce could have distinguished him from Socrates himself.——

A pelting kind of thersitical satire, as black as the very ink ’tis wrote with

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

A history of the reception of Thersites would be a fun project.

A prepping quote from Tristram Shandy:

And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire, as black as the very ink ’tis wrote with——(and by the bye, whoever says so, is indebted to the muster-master general of the Grecian army, for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a man as Thersites to continue upon his roll——for it has furnish’d him with an epithet)

And a sample of Shakespeare’s indulging in the thersitical vein, from Troilus and Cressida (5.1):

THERSITES
Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk:
thou art thought to be Achilles’ male varlet.
PATROCLUS
Male varlet, you rogue! what’s that?
THERSITES
Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases
of the south, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
loads o’ gravel i’ the back, lethargies, cold
palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing
lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,
limekilns i’ the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the
rivelled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take
again such preposterous discoveries!

Arden adds these enlightening but effect-deflating glosses:

guts-griping … palsies ‘colic or other spasms of the abdoment, hernias, common colds or other infections of nose and throat, severe cases of kidney stones, illnesses like stroke that result in torpor or inertness, severe termor and paralysis

(From Longer notes) …The list comprises: chronic eye inflammation, liver ailments like hepatitis, asthma, bladder infections caused by cysts or abscesses (impostumes), lower back pain (sciaticas), gout (which can produce white lumps in the joints and knuckles) or else psoriasis (causing dry, reddish itchy patches on the skin of the hand), bone-ache (including the ‘Neapolitan bone-ache’ or syphilis), and pustular outbreaks of the skin caused by herpes, impetigo, ringworm, etc. This last, the tetter, produces a rivelled fee-simple or irreversible wrinkling.

Where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune but as five

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

I rarely get upset. I can’t take anger – mine or anyone’s – seriously. But when, as earlier today, I do get upset, I soon shed it in the same way Walter Shandy shed his grief – by taking so much pleasure in the chance for expression that I forget altogether the cause. From Tristram Shandy (v. 3, ch. 3):

My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the Hebrews and the Romans—or slept it off, as the Laplanders—or hanged it, as the English, or drowned it, as the Germans,—nor did he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or lillabullero it.——

——He got rid of it, however.

Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these two pages?

When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at first he laid it to his heart,—he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto it.—O my Tullia! my daughter! my child!—still, still, still,—’twas O my Tullia!—my Tullia! Methinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I talk with my Tullia.—But as soon as he began to look into the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might be said upon the occasion—no body upon earth can conceive, says the great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me.

My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his weakness too.——His strength—for he was by nature eloquent; and his weakness—for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one—(bating the case of a systematic misfortune)—he had all he wanted.—A blessing which tied up my father’s tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune but as five—my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.

A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

Number 257 of La Rochefoucauld’s Réflexions morales

La gravité est un mystère du corps inventé pour cacher les défauts de l’esprit.

Gravity is a mystery of the body invented in order to hide the defects of the mind.

Which Laurence Sterne cites in his perfect portrait of Yorick’s sensibilities regarding – because it comes to mind in my own struggle with this – what I’ll call ‘professionalism.’

For, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity;—not to gravity as such;—for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of mortal men for days and weeks together;—but he was an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly: and then, whenever it fell in his way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.

Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that Gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it,—viz. ‘A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind;’—which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.

I think I knew – or could have guessed – the source but I hadn’t realized the similar connection with the reflexion immediately proceeding, number 256:

Dans toutes les professions chacun affecte une mine et un extérieur pour paraître ce qu’il veut qu’on le croie. Ainsi on peut dire que le monde n’est composé que de mines.

In all professions each person puts on an expression and an exterior in order to appear as what he wishes to be taken for.  Accordingly you could say that the world is composed only of appearances.

That thou among the wastes of time must go

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Shakespeare’s Sonnets – no. XII – but found in William Hazlitt’s On the Pleasure of Hating – with what I’m finding to be Hazlitt’s typical looseness of precision in quoting.  The beautiful origin aside, I marked this mainly for its closeness to ‘gutter of time’ – which I would not be against betting was another of Sterne’s intentionally warped echoes of Shakespeare

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
  And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
  Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Curing himself of adhesions in the lungs by polevaulting and dropping himself on the rocks below

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

Some Sternean conversational wit, from a footnote in the first volume of the Florida Editions Letters (pg. 150)

Dr. Hill had reported that, at a dinner hosted by Charles Stanhope, Sterne had ridiculed a “pedantic medicine monger” (Monsey?), who was lecturing on the “difference between the phrenitis and the paraphrenitis,” by telling a cock-and-bull story about curing himself of adhesions in the lungs by polevaulting and dropping himself on the rocks below (see Cross, Letters 1:43-45)

Nimium amator ingenii sui

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From a letter of Laurence Sterne’s of Jan 1, 1760, responding to an unknown addressee’s cautionary remarks about Tristram Shandy.  There are three significantly enough different versions of this letter that the editors of the Florida Edition printed them separately, numbering each 35A, B, and C.  I’m pulling from A.

I know not whether I am entirely free <of> [from?] the fault Ovid is so justly censured for – of being nimum ingenij sui amator.  the hint however is right – to sport too much with a Man’s own wit is surfeiting: like toying with a man’s mistress, it may be delightful enough to the Inamorato but of little or no entertainment to By-standers.   in general I have ever endeavour’d to avoid it, by leaving off as soon as possible whenever a point of humour or Wit was started, for fear of saying too much…

The criticism of Ovid is from Quintilian 10.1.88:

Lascivus quidem in herois quoque Ovidius et nimium amator ingenii sui, laudandus tamen partibus…

Indeed Ovid is too sportive/playful/roguish/badin [lascivus] even in his heroes and too great a lover of his own talent/temperament – but nevertheless he must be praised in certain areas…

So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Tristram Shandy, as Tristram dashes through France:

‘Make them like unto a wheel,’ is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which David prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop Hall, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which David ever utter’d against the enemies of the Lord—and, as if he had said, ‘I wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.’—So much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven.

Now, I (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy—and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil—