Laudator Temporis Acti

Ronsard, Elegie (from Sonnets pour Hélène, Book II), lines 7-14, tr. Malcolm Quainton and Elizabeth Vinestock:

For, sole master of myself, I used to go at my leisure wherever my feet carried me, led by my wishes, always having in my hands, to serve as my guides, Aristotle, Plato or learned Euripides, my good, silent guests, who never displease; as freely as I pick them up, so freely do I put them down again. O sweet company, useful and honourable! Anyone else would numb my brain by prattling.

Car seul maistre de moy j'allois plein de loisir,
Où le pied me portoit, conduit de mon desir,
Ayant tousjours és mains pour me servir de guide
Aristote ou Platon, ou le docte Euripide
Mes bons hostes muets, qui ne faschent jamais:
Ô douce compagnie et utile et honneste!
Un autre en caquetant m'estourdiroit la teste.

---

I'll be away for the next week or ten days, lectores benevoli, so you'll have to go elsewhere on the World Wide Web for amusement. Better yet, read a book!

Guess who wrote this:

It is a pity that true history is not taught in schools. If it were, people would understand much better the history of what is passing in their own time. For instance, the dangers which are now threatening European civilization are of the same sort in part with those which threatened and at last undermined the old pagan civilization of Rome.

That civilisation was not destroyed by invaders, it was never defeated in any decisive battle. What happened to it was that it was undermined from within, and it was undermined from within by very much the same forces which are destroying the supports of our own traditional culture. Those forces are the forces of contrast between well-being and indigence, coupled with the contrast between freedom and servitude and enforced by the contrast between human and inhuman relations. When a large number of men are compelled to labour by a small number of men, when their labour is passed under inhuman conditions and the sense of servitude inseparable from the enforcement of labour in any form, they end by driving the masses subject to such disabilities to rise against their wrongs. But in doing this, the rebels may well act blindly, for the very conditions of their subjection forbid them the culture that would enable them to act wisely. They are impelled not only by the desire for freedom, but by the hatred of those who exploit them and who enjoy a freedom of security and substance denied to themselves. They are filled also with a general hatred; a love of destruction for its own sake.

It wasn't a Marxist or an Occupy Movement protester. It was Catholic essayist, poet, and historian Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), in "The Barbarians," published in One Thing and Another. A Miscellany from his Uncollected Essays selected by Patrick Cahill (London: Hollis & Carter, 1955), pp. 203-205 (at 203). The essay originally appeared in G.K.'s Weekly, but I don't know when.

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chapter XV:

There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions—the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former be refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life. The love of action is a principle of a much stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition, and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue; and if those virtues are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a state or an empire, may be indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted courage of a single man. To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature. The insensible and inactive disposition which should be supposed alike destitute of both, would be rejected, by the common consent of mankind, as utterly incapable of procuring any happiness to the individual, or any public benefit to the world.

Paul Krugman, "Four Fiscal Phonies," New York Times (March 1, 2012, emphasis added):

To put it in Romneyesque terms, it’s all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams.

This annoying expression is now ubiquitous. Just on Google News for March 2, 2012, I find 400 hits for "I'm all about" (e.g. "I'm all about the big picture"), 13,500 for "it's all about" (e.g. "It's all about what's inside you, what's driving you"), 200 for "he's all about" (e.g. "Chris Brown says he's all about positivity on his new album"), 42 for "you're all about" (e.g. "You're all about finding the next big challenge"), 790 for "we're all about" (e.g. "I want people to know that we're all about Jesus").

Argh!

Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), Wanderings in Spain, anon. tr. (London: Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1853), p. 11 (Chapter II):

On leaving Bordeaux, the Landes recommence, if possible more sad, more desolate, and more gloomy than before. Heather, broom, and pinadas (pine forests), with here and there a shepherd squatted down, tending his flocks of black sheep, or a miserable hut in the style of the Indian wigwams, offer a very lugubrious and by no means diverting spectacle. No tree is seen but the pine, with the gash in it from which the resin trickles down. This large salmon-coloured wound forming a strong contrast with the grey tones of the bark, gives the most miserable look in the world to these sickly trees, deprived of the greatest portion of their sap. They have the appearance of a forest unjustly assassinated, raising its arms to Heaven for justice.

French text, from Gautier, Tra Los Montes, Tome I (Bruxelles: Meline, Cans et Compagnie, 1843), pp. 21-22:

Au sortir de Bordeaux, les landes recommencent plus tristes, plus décharnées et plus mornes, s'il est possible; des bruyères, des genêts et des pinadas (forêts de pins); de loin en loin, quelque fauve berger accroupi gardant des troupeaux de moutons noirs, quelque cahute dans le goût des wigwams des Indiens; c'est un spectacle fort lugubre et fort peu récréatif. On n'aperçoit d'autre arbre que le pin avec son entaille d'où coule la résine. Cette large blessure dont la couleur saumon tranche avec les tons gris de l'écorce, donne un air on ne peut plus lamentable à ces arbres souffreteux et privés de la plus grande partie de leur séve. On dirait une forêt injustement égorgée qui lève les bras au ciel pour lui demander justice.

Théophile Gautier, The Pine of the Landes Country, tr. Norman Shapiro, in Gautier, Selected Lyrics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 281:

In passing through the barren Landes, one sees—
Over the French Sahara's sand dust-white
Poking among the brackish pools, no trees
In the parches grass, save pine, with slashes right

And left, ripping their bark...For man, creation's
Villain, who lives on what he kills, will steal
Their resin tears, furrow his depredations
Along their flanks. And yet, the pine will feel

No loss of sap-blood, trickling drop by drop;
Yielding his bubbling balm, with held held high,
By the road, upright, proudly, toe to top,
Like wounded soldier who stands tall to die.

Landes-like, the poet with his poetry,
Unwounded, holds his treasure well controlled.
But he must bear a deep heart-gash if he
Would spread his verses' heavenly tears of gold!

French text (Le Pin des Landes, id., p. 280):

On ne voit en passant par les Landes désertes,
Vrai Sahara français, poudré de sable blanc,
Surgir de l'herbe sèche et des flaques d'eaux vertes
D'autre arbre que le pin avec sa plaie au flanc,

Car, pour lui dérober ses larmes de résine,
L'homme, avare bourreau de la création,
Qui ne vit qu'aux dépens de ceux qu'il assassine,
Dans son tronc douloureux ouvre un large sillon!

Sans regretter son sang qui coule goutte à goutte,
Le pin verse son baume et sa sève qui bout,
Et se tient toujours droit sur le bord de la route,
Comme un soldat blessé qui veut mourir debout.

Le poète est ainsi dans les Landes du monde;
Lorsqu'il est sans blessure, il garde son trésor.
Il faut qu'il ait au coeur une entaille profonde
Pour épancher ses vers, divines larmes d'or!

The final stanza is omitted in the following translation by Henry Carrington, Anthology of French Poetry, 10-19th Centuries (London: Henry Frowde, 1900), p. 262:

As the long desert downs you pass between,
  That French Sahara, bleached sands far and wide
'Mid the sere grass, and water ditches green,
  You see no tree, but pine with wounded side.

For, to deprive him of his resinous tears,
  Man, Nature's murderer, slave of avarice,
Who only lives by what he kills and tears,
  In his pained trunk cuts a large orifice.

Ne'er grudging that his life-blood flows away,
  The pine his balsam yields till all is lost,
And holds himself upright in full array,
  Like wounded soldier dying at his post.

I prefer Gautier's poem without the final stanza about the poet.

There is also a translation by Thomas J. Corr in Favilla: Tales, Essays and Poems (London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1887), pp. 458-459. Everything is supposed to be on the World Wide Web now, but Corr's book isn't, except in bits and pieces from a 21st century reprint. Only the first two stanzas of Corr's translation are visible in Google Books, not worth transcribing.

Homer sometimes compares fallen warriors with felled trees. The same comparison appears in Horace, Odes 4.6.9-12 (describing the death of Achilles):

Like a pine tree struck with the biting steel or a cypress blown over by the East Wind, he fell on his face, covering much ground, and he laid his neck in the dust of Troy.

ille, mordaci velut icta ferro
pinus aut impulsa cupressus Euro,
procidit late posuitque collum in
    pulvere Teucro.

We now know that Horace was influenced here by Simonides, fragment 11, lines 1-12, tr. M.L. West, Greek Lyric Poetry (1993; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 168:

str[uck you ... and you fell, as when a larch]
    or pine-tree in the [lonely mountain] glades
is felled by woodcutters ...
    and much ...
[A great grief seized] the war-host; [much they honoured you,]
    [and with Patr]oclus' [ashes mingled yours.]
[It was no ordinary mortal] laid you low,
    ['twas by Apoll]o's hand [that you were struck.]
[Athena] was at [hand, and smote the famous t]own[n]
    [with Hera; they were wro]th with Priam's sons
[because of P]aris' wickedness. The car of God's
    Justice o'ertakes [the sinner in the end.]

I'm too lazy to transcribe the Greek, which can be found (among other places) in Alessandro Barchiesi, "Simonides and Horace on the Death of Achilles," Arethusa 29 (1996) 247–253 (at 247). Barchiesi makes an interesting observation on p. 251 (footnotes omitted):

At the risk of sounding too rationalistic, I would note that tradition has it that Achilles was not struck at the throat or the breast—as is usually the case with Homeric warriors who fall to the ground "like a tree"—but at the heel or ankle. Achilles' fall is modeled on that of a tall pine, not only because of its height, but also because his body was felled by a blow to the base, just like a tall trunk assailed almost at its root by the woodcutters.

Labels: arboricide

Horace, Odes 4.9.45-52 (tr. Niall Rudd):

One would not be right to call happy the man of many possessions; the title of happy is more rightly claimed by the man who has the intelligence to make wise use of the gods' gifts and to put up with the rigours of poverty, who fears disgrace worse than death, and is not afraid to die for his dear friends or his native land.

non possidentem multa vocaveris
recte beatum; rectius occupat
    nomen beati, qui deorum
        muneribus sapienter uti

duramque callet pauperiem pati
peiusque leto flagitium timet,
    non ille pro caris amicis
        aut patria timidus perire.

In Jonathan Swift's translation:

Him for a happy man I own,
Whose fortune is not overgrown;
And happy he who wisely knows
To use the gifts that Heaven bestows;
Or, if it please the powers divine,
Can suffer want and not repine.
The man who infamy to shun
Into the arms of death would run;
That man is ready to defend,
With life, his country or his friend.

Horace, Satires 1.3.73-75 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

One who expects his friend not to be offended by his own warts will pardon the other's pimples. It is but fair that one who craves indulgence for failings should grant it in return.

qui ne tuberibus propriis offendat amicum
postulat, ignoscet verrucis illius: aequum est
peccatis veniam poscentem reddere rursus.

Good advice, which Erasmus (Adagia I vi 91, tr. R.A.B. Mynors) says "has all the look of a proverb." Cf. Seneca, On the Happy Life 27 (tr. John W. Basore): "You look at the pimples of others when you yourselves are covered with a mass of sores" (papulas observatis alienas obsiti plurimis ulceribus).

Horace also mentions a wen (polypus) afflicting someone named Hagna in line 40 of the same satire. As an aside, I sometimes wonder if people know the meaning of wen ("sebaceous cystic tumour under the skin, occurring chiefly on the head," Oxford English Dictionary). How else to explain that there is a hair care product called WEN®? The words wen and hair, in combination, suggest to me a bristle growing out of a warty facial excrescence. Not a pretty picture.

The mysterious Campanian disease mentioned by Horace in the fifth satire of his first book may have been a skin ailment. Here is the passage in context (Satires 1.5.56-64, tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

And first Sarmentus: "You, I say, are like a wild horse." We laugh, and Messius himself, " I grant you," and tosses his head. "Oh!" says Sarmentus, "if only the horn had not been cut out of your forehead, what would you do, when you can threaten, thus dehorned?" Now an unsightly scar had disfigured the left side of his bristly brow. With many a joke on his Campanian disease and on his face, he begged him to dance the Cyclops shepherd-dance: he would need neither mask nor tragic buskin.

                       prior Sarmentus: "equi te
esse feri similem dico." ridemus, et ipse
Messius "accipio," caput et movet. "o tua cornu
ni foret exsecto frons," inquit, "quid faceres, cum
sic mutilus minitaris?" at illi foeda cicatrix
saetosam laevi frontem turpaverat oris.
Campanum in morbum, in faciem permulta iocatus,
pastorem saltaret uti Cyclopa rogabat:
nil illi larva aut tragicis opus esse cothurnis.

What the Commentator Cruquianus says ad loc. (my translation) is probably no more than a guess:

For this, as though by nature, is characteristic of almost all inhabitants of Campania, that on the temples of the head big warts grow, like horns. When they have the warts cut off, scars remain on the face, like marks of horns cut out.

hoc enim quasi a natura Campanis fere omnibus inest, ut capitis temporibus magnae verrucae innascantur in modum cornuum, quas cum incidi faciunt, cicatrices in fronte manent, quasi notae exsectorum cornuum.

T.S. Eliot, "Goethe as the Sage," On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1957), pp. 207-227 (at 210):

And antipathy overcome, when it is antipathy to any figure so great as Goethe, is an important liberation from a limitation of one's own mind.

George Santayana, Persons and Places, I.x (The Latin School):

What idle thoughts had been wandering for years through all those empty heads in all those tedious school hours! In the best schools, almost all school-time is wasted. Now and then something is learned that sticks fast; for the rest the boys are given time to grow and are kept from too much mischief.

Erasmus, A Fish Diet, in The Colloquies of Erasmus, tr. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 312-357 (at 329):

FISH-MONGER. On the other hand, you should have confidence in anyone with a doctor's degree.

BUTCHER. But among these I find some more ignorant and more absurd than those who are completely uneducated.

SALSAMENTARIUS. Caeterum quibus contigit titulus doctoris, his oportet fidere.

LANIO. Verum in his quoque comperio nonnullos multo rudiores ac stultiores illis, qui prorsus sunt illiterati.

T.S. Eliot, "Virgil and the Christian World," On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1957), pp. 121-131 (at 125-126):

The fact that every major poetic form employed by Virgil has some precedent in Greek verse, must not be allowed to obscure the originality with which he recreated every form he used. There is I think no precedent for the spirit of the Georgics, and the attitude towards the soil, and the labour of the soil, which is there expressed, is something that we ought to find particularly intelligible now, when urban agglomeration, the flight from the land, the pillage of the earth and the squandering of natural resources are beginning to attract attention. It was the Greeks who taught us the dignity of leisure; it is from them that we inherit the perception that the highest life is the life of contemplation. But this respect for leisure, with the Greeks, was accompanied by a contempt for the banausic occupations. Virgil perceived that agriculture is fundamental to civilization, and he affirmed the dignity of manual labour.

Isaak Levitan, Evening in the Field

Erasmus, The Apotheosis of That Incomparable Worthy, John Reuchlin, in The Colloquies of Erasmus, tr. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 79-86 (at 85):

O sacred spirit, bless languages and those who study them; prosper godly speech; bring to nought evil speech, infected by the poison of hell.

O sancta anima, sis felix linguis, sis felix linguarum cultoribus, faveto linguis sanctis, perdito malas linguas, infectas veneno gehennae.

Lucian, Slander 24 (tr. H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler):

I know nothing so characteristic of a warped slavish nature as to bite the lip while you nurse your spite and cultivate your secret hatred, one thing on your heart and another on your tongue, playing with the gay looks of comedy a lamentable sinister tragedy.

οὗ δὴ ἐγὼ οὐδὲν οἶμαι ἀδικώτερον οὐδὲ δουλοπρεπέστερον, ἐνδακόντα τὸ χεῖλος ὑποτρέφειν τὴν χολὴν καὶ τὸ μῖσος ἐν αὑτῷ κατάκλειστον αὔξειν ἕτερα μὲν κεύθοντα ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλα δὲ λέγοντα καὶ ὑποκρινόμενον ἱλαρῷ καὶ κωμικῷ τῷ προσώπῳ μάλα περιπαθῆ τινα καὶ ἰοῦ γέμουσαν τραγῳδίαν.

Schiller, Our Common Fate (Das gemeinsame Schicksal, tr. Paul Carus):

O, how we struggle and hate! Inclinations, opinions divide us.
  Yet in the meantime thy locks turn into silver like mine.

Siehe, wir hassen, wir streiten, es trennet uns Neigung und Meinung;
  Aber es bleichet indess dir sich die Locke wie mir.