Tuesday, November 16, 2010
A Prayer
Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección (Bogotá: Villegas Editores, 2001), p. 363 (tr. by Stephen at Don Colacho's Aphorisms, ellipses in orginal):
The primary source for the "daily wonder" or the "ephemeral marvel" used to be the daily newspaper, about which Flaubert said, in a letter to Louise Colet (August 26, 1846, tr. F. Steegmuller):
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...and lead us not into the foolishness of wondering each day at the daily wonder.This recalls and conflates two petitions from the Lord's Prayer: "da nobis hodie panem nostrum cotidianum" (give us this day our daily bread) and "ne nos inducas in tentationem" (lead us not into temptation).
...y no dejes caer en la tontería de admirar cada día la admiración cotidiana.
The primary source for the "daily wonder" or the "ephemeral marvel" used to be the daily newspaper, about which Flaubert said, in a letter to Louise Colet (August 26, 1846, tr. F. Steegmuller):
What would I learn from those wonderful newspapers you so want me to take each morning, with my bread and butter and cup of coffee? Why should I care what they have to say? I have very little curiosity about the news, politics bores me to death, and the literary articles stink. To me it's all stupid-making and irritating...Yes, newspapers disgust me profoundly — I mean the ephemeral, things of the moment, what is important today and won't be tomorrow.In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the primary source for the "daily wonder" is the Internet.
