Friday, May 26, 2006
Hodgepodge
On Pelikan and the pelican, see the remarks of Laura Gibbs at Bestiaria Latina Blog.
Michael Hendry at Curculio translates an aphorism of Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
Deogolwulf at the Joy of Curmudgeonry translates an aphorism by Lichtenberg:
Dennis Mangan at Mangan's Miscellany translates a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo.
Patrick Kurp at Anecdotal Evidence quotes a poem by Zbigniew Herbert, "Why the Classics," which is based on a passage from the Greek historian Thucydides.
Emendations in the text of Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960):
P. 69 (from Mount Athos):
P. 89 (from The Spirituality of Sinai):
My son recently went camping with friends in a swamp in eastern North Carolina. His account of the trip includes this anecdote:
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Michael Hendry at Curculio translates an aphorism of Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
Paganism is the other Old Testament of the Church.
Deogolwulf at the Joy of Curmudgeonry translates an aphorism by Lichtenberg:
Most teachers of a faith defend their propositions, not because they are convinced of their truth, but because they have once asserted their truth.
Dennis Mangan at Mangan's Miscellany translates a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo.
Patrick Kurp at Anecdotal Evidence quotes a poem by Zbigniew Herbert, "Why the Classics," which is based on a passage from the Greek historian Thucydides.
Emendations in the text of Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960):
P. 69 (from Mount Athos):
Some of the monasteries have telephone connections with each other. Only one has electric lights, and in consequence is devised by the others.For devised, read despised.
P. 89 (from The Spirituality of Sinai):
At his best, Climacus sometimes suggests Theocritus and La-Bruyère.For Theocritus, read Theophrastus.
My son recently went camping with friends in a swamp in eastern North Carolina. His account of the trip includes this anecdote:
On our midnight canoe run, Ken and I disturbed a great blue heron nesting in the canopy above us: as it flew away, loudly protesting, it discharged its copious cloacal contents in our direction, which splashed loudly around the canoe nearly hitting us. I shone the light upwards through the canopy and I remember quite clearly the sight of the fecal salvo descending rapidly towards us.This fulfills the prophecy in Aeschylus, fragment 275 Nauck, lines 1-2 (tr. Herbert Weir Smyth):
For a heron, in its flight on high, shall smite thee with its dung, its belly's emptyings.Another scene from the same camping trip, entitled Shootin' tequila and shootin' the bull:
ἐρῳδιὸς γὰρ ὑψόθεν ποτώμενος
ὄνθῳ σε πλήξει νηδύος κενώμασιν.
