Laudator Temporis Acti

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms. Most of the strangers they see on the islands are philological students, and the people have been led to conclude that linguistic studies, particularly Gaelic studies, are the chief occupation of the outside world.

'I have seen Frenchmen, and Danes, and Germans,' said one man, 'and there does be a power of Irish books along with them, and they reading them better than ourselves. Believe me there are few rich men now in the world who are not studying the Gaelic.'

They sometimes ask me the French for simple phrases, and when they have listened to the intonation for a moment, most of them are able to reproduce it with admirable precision.

Parochialism and provincialism are opposites. The provincial has no mind of his own; he does not trust what his eyes see until he has heard what the metropolis—towards which his eyes are turned—has to say on any subject. This runs through all activities.

The parochial mentality on the other hand is never in any doubt about the social and artistic validity of his parish. All great civilizations are based on parochialism—Greek, Israelite, English.

In Ireland we are inclined to be provincial not parochial, for it requires a great deal of courage to be parochial. When we do attempt having the courage of our parish we are inclined to go false and to play up to the larger parish on the other side of the Irish Sea. In recent times we have had two great Irish parishioners—James Joyce and George Moore. They explained nothing. The public had either to come to them or stay in the dark. And the public did come. The English parishioner recognizes courage in another man's parish.

Advising people not to be ashamed of having the courage of their remote parish, is not free from many dangers. There is always that element of bravado which takes pleasure in the notion that the potato-patch is the ultimate. To be parochial a man needs the right kind of sensitive courage and the right kind of sensitive humility.

Parochialism is universal; it deals with the fundamentals.

It is not by the so-called national dailies that people who emigrate keep in touch with their roots. In London, outside the Catholic churches, the big run is on the local Irish papers. Lonely on Highgate Hill outside St Joseph's Church I rushed to buy my Dundalk Democrat, and reading it I was back in my native fields. Now that I analyse myself I realize that throughout everything I write there is this constantly recurring motif of the need to go back. Why do we always need to go back? What is it we want to return to? Freud says, the womb, and there is something in it too. We are never happy from the moment we leave the womb. The Mother is the roots. The Mother is the thing which gives us a world of our own. The Mother is the basis of romantic love.

Far have I travelled from the warm womb.
Far have I travelled from home.

So it is for these reasons that I return to the local newspaper. Who has died? Who has sold his farm?

• Local Attachment
• Patriotism
• Insularity
• Le Patriotisme de Clocher
• Home Sweet Home

Moral greatness consisted, in the opinion of the ancient Greeks, as much in an unchangeable love to friends as in an unalterable hatred to enemies.

Die moralische Grösse bestand bei den alten Griechen in einer ebenso unveränderlichen Liebe gegen seine Freunde, als unwandelbarem Hasse gegen seine Feinde.

May the great wide bronze sky fall upon me from above, the fear of earth-born men, if I do not aid those who are my friends and cause my enemies pain and great misery.

ἔν μοι ἔπειτα πέσοι μέγας οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ὕπερθεν
    χάλκεος, ἀνθρώπων δεῖμα χαμαιγενέων,
εἰ μὴ ἐγὼ τοῖσιν μὲν ἐπαρκέσω οἵ με φιλεῦσιν,
    τοῖς δ᾿ ἐχθροῖς ἀνίη καὶ μέγα πῆμ᾿ ἔσομαι.

Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it.

The next summer, as I sat on a hill there one sultry Sunday afternoon, the meeting-house windows being open, my meditations were interrupted by the noise of a preacher who shouted like a boatswain, profaning the quiet atmosphere, and who, I fancied, must have taken off his coat. Few things could have been more disgusting or disheartening.

1. TEMPERANCE
Eat not to fulness; drink not to elevation.

Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don't sit down without one of the gods.

2. SILENCE
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

3. ORDER
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Know that you are responsible to the gods inside you and to the men in whom the gods are manifest. Recognize your superiors and your inferiors, according to the gods. This is the root of all order.

4. RESOLUTION
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Resolve to abide by your own deepest promptings, and to sacrifice the smaller thing to the greater. Kill when you must, and be killed the same: the must coming from the gods inside you, or from the men in whom you recognize the Holy Ghost.

5. FRUGALITY
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.

Demand nothing; accept what you see fit. Don't waste your pride or squander your emotion.

6. INDUSTRY
Lose no time, be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary action.

Lose no time with ideals; serve the Holy Ghost; never serve mankind.

7. SINCERITY
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

To be sincere is to remember that I am I, and that the other man is not me.

8. JUSTICE
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just.

9. MODERATION
Avoid extremes, forbear resenting injuries as much as you think they deserve.

Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.

10. CLEANLINESS
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Don't be too clean. It impoverishes the blood.

11. TRANQUILLITY
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

The soul has many motions, many gods come and go. Try and find your deepest issue, in every confusion, and abide by that. Obey the man in whom you recognize the Holy Ghost; command when your honour comes to command.

12. CHASTITY
Rarely use venery but for health and offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

Never 'use' venery at all. Follow your passional impulse, if it be answered in the other being; but never have any motive in mind, neither offspring nor health nor even pleasure, nor even service. Only know that 'venery' is of the great gods. An offering-up of yourself to the very great gods, the dark ones, and nothing else.

13. HUMILITY
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

See all men and women according to the Holy Ghost that is within them. Never yield before the barren.

You are man: then never say what will happen tomorrow, nor, when you see a prosperous man, how long he will prosper; for not even the movement of a long-winged fly is so swift.

Being human never say what will happen tomorrow nor how long a happy man will remain so. For not even of a long-winged fly is the change so swift.

As you are mortal, don't ever affirm what tomorrow will bring,
or how long the man that you see in good fortune will keep it:
not even the wing-spreading house-fly
changes perch so fast.

If you are a simple mortal, do not speak
of tomorrow or how long this man may be
among the happy, for change comes suddenly
like the shifting flight of a dragonfly.

ἄνθρωπος ἐὼν μή ποτε φάσῃς ὅ τι γίνεται αὔριον,
μηδ᾿ ἄνδρα ἰδὼν ὄλβιον ὅσσον χρόνον ἔσσεται·
ὠκεῖα γὰρ οὐδὲ τανυπτερύγου μυίας
οὕτως ἁ μετάστασις.

Zurich you think for example
Must be a place more profound
Where wonders and wisdom are always
A part of the daily round?

You think that out of Havana,
White and hibiscus red,
Must break forth eternal manna
For you in your desert of lead?

Bahnhofstrassen and rues,
Boulevards, Lidos, and Quais,
On even the Fifth Avenues
Emptiness comes and holds sway.

Travel's a vain undertaking!
In the end you meet only yourself:
Stay put and hold in safekeeping
The I that delimits itself.

Do you think Zürich for instance
Would be a town with more style?
Miracles galore and incense
To make your life more worth while?

Or do you think Havana,
White and hibiscus red,
Would offer eternal manna
In your waste land for bread?

Zürich main streets, London mews,
Boulevards, lidos in plenty,
Even on Fifth Avenues,
Suddenly you feel empty.

What use does travel serve?
Not till too late do you see:
Stay put and quietly preserve
The self-sufficient me.

Meinen Sie Zürich zum Beispiel
sei eine tiefere Stadt,
wo man Wunder und Weihen
immer als Inhalt hat?

Meinen Sie, aus Habana,
weiß und hibiskusrot,
bräche ein ewiges Manna
für Ihre Wüstennot?

Bahnhofstraßen und Rueen,
Boulevards, Lidos, Laan —
selbst auf den Fifth Avenueen
fällt Sie die Leere an —

ach, vergeblich das Fahren!
Spät erst efahren Sie sich:
bleiben und stille bewahren
das sich umgrenzende Ich.

• No Escape from Oneself
• Escape from Oneself
• Somewhere Else
• Crossing the Seas
• Here
• From Dan to Beersheba
• Travel

What life is there, what pleasure without golden Aphrodite? May I die when I no longer care about secret intrigues, persuasive gifts, and the bed, those blossoms of youth that men and women find alluring. But when painful old age comes on, which makes even a handsome man ugly, grievous cares wear away his heart and he derives no joy from looking upon the sunlight; he is hateful to boys and women hold him in no honour. So harsh has the god made old age.

What's life, what's joy, without love's heavenly gold?
    I hope I die when I no longer care
for secret closeness, tender favours, bed,
    which are the rapturous flowers that grace youth's prime
for men and women. But when painful age
    comes on, that makes a man loathsome and vile,
malignant troubles ever vex his heart;
    seeing the sunlight gives him joy no more.
He is abhorred by boys, by women scorned;
    so hard a thing God made old age to be.

τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης;
    τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι,
κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή,
    οἷ᾿ ἥβης ἄνθεα γίνεται ἁρπαλέα
ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξίν· ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ        5
    γῆρας, ὅ τ᾿ αἰσχρὸν ὅμως καὶ καλὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ,
αἰεί μιν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,
    οὐδ᾿ αὐγὰς προσορέων τέρπεται ἠελίου,
ἀλλ᾿ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν·
    οὕτως ἀργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.        10

4 οἷ᾿ Ahrens: οἱ vel εἰ codd.
6 ὅμως Verdenius: ὁμῶς codd., καλὸν codd.: κακὸν Hermann
7 αἰεί μιν Bergk: ἀεὶ μὲν codd.

[T]ranslations such as 'which puts the ugly and the handsome man in the same condition' and 'which makes even a handsome man ugly like the plain man' do violence to the meaning of the common expression ὅμως καί.

What I find odd about Campbell's comment is that he presupposes that Hudson Williams too (1926) had adopted Verdenius's (1953) emendation. Admittedly, Doederlein had made the same conjecture in 1812, but the fact remains that Hudson Williams' translation 'which puts the ugly and the handsome man in the same condition' cannot do violence to ὅμως καί as that was not in his text....One thing that αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ κακὸν has in its favour is that there's almost a mirror image of near synonyms in Mimnermus, fragment 5, line 3: τερπνὸν ὁμῶς καὶ καλόν.

[....]

After searching high and low in the midden, I finally found Fränkel (in irksomely Greekless translation, Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy), who for the handsome-into-ugly reading adduces a couplet of Theognis (497-498):

ἄφρονος ἀνδρὸς ὁμῶς καὶ σώφρονος οἶνος, ὅταν δὴ
    πίνῃ ὑπὲρ μέτρον, κοῦφον ἔθηκε νόον.

κοῦφον reminds me of Scots 'coof', so why not:

The gash an' glaikit alike, fou wi ower muckle wine, are nocht but coofs.

8.
I have a shieling in the wood,
None knows it save my God:
An ash tree on the hither side, a hazelbush beyond,
A huge old tree encompasses it.

9.
Two heath-clad doorposts for support,
And a lintel of honeysuckle:
The forest round its narrowness sheds
Its mast upon fat swine.

10.
The size of my shieling tiny, not too tiny,
Many are its familiar paths:
From its gable a sweet strain sings
My lady in her cloak of the ousel's hue.

11.
The stags of Oakridge leap
Into the river of clear banks:
Thence red Roigne can be seen,
Glorious Mucraime and Maenmag.

12.
Hidden, lowly little abode,
Which has possession of ...,
To behold it will not be granted me,
Yet I shall be able to find its ...

13.
A hiding mane of a green-barked yew-tree
    Which supports the sky:
Beautiful spot! the large green of an oak
    Fronting the storm.

14.
A tree of apples — great its bounty!
    Like a hostel, vast:
A pretty bush, thick as a fist, of tiny hazelnuts,
    Branching, green.

15.
A choice pure spring and princely water
    To drink:
There spring watercresses, yew-berries,
    Ivy-bushes of a man's thickness.

16.
Around it tame swine lie down,
    Goats, pigs,
Wild swine, grazing deer,
    A badger's brood.

17.
A peaceful troop, a heavy host of denizens of the soil,
    Atrysting at my house:
To meet them foxes come,
    How delightful!

18. Fairest princes come to my house.
    A ready gathering!
Pure water, perennial bushes,
    Salmon, trout.

19.
A bush of rowan, black sloes,
    Dusky blackthorns,
Plenty of food, acorns, pure berries,
    Bare flags.

20.
A clutch of eggs, honey, delicious mast,
    God has sent it:
Sweet apples, red whortle-berries,
    Berries of the heath.

21.
Ale with herbs, a dish of strawberries,
    Of good taste and colour,
Haws, berries of the yew,
    Sloes, nuts.

22.
A cup with mead of hazelnut, blue-bells,
    Quick-growing rushes,
Dun oaklets, manes of briar,
    Goodly sweet tangle.

23.
When pleasant summertime spreads its coloured mantle,
    Sweet-tasting fragrance!
Pignuts, wild marjoram, green leeks,
    Verdant pureness!

24.
The music of the bright redbreasted men,
    A lovely movement!
The strain of the thrush, familiar cuckoos
    Above my house.

25.
Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world,
    A gentle chorus:
Wild geese and ducks, shortly before summer's end,
    The music of the dark torrent.

26.
An active songster, a lively wren
    From the hazelbough,
Beautiful hooded birds, woodpeckers,
    A vast multitude!

27.
Fair white birds come, herons, seagulls,
    The cuckoo sings in between, —
No mournful music! — dun heathpoults
    Out of the russet heath.

28.
The lowing of heifers in summer,
    Brightest of seasons!
Not bitter, toilsome over the fertile plain,
    Beautiful, smooth!

29.
The voice of the wind against the branchy wood
    Upon the deep-blue sky:
Cascades of the river, the note of the swan,
    Delightful music!

30.
The bravest band makes music to me,
    Who have not been hired:
In the eyes of Christ the ever-young I am no worse off
    Than thou art.

31.
Though thou rejoicest in thy own pleasures,
    Greater than any wealth,
I am grateful for what is given me
    From my good Christ.

32.
Without an hour of fighting, without the din of strife
    In my house,
Grateful to the Prince who giveth every good
    To me in my bower.

I was getting my first sense of crafting words and for one reason or another, words as bearers of history and mystery began to invite me. Maybe it began very early when my mother used to recite lists of affixes and suffixes, and Latin roots, with their English meanings, rhymes that formed part of her schooling in the early part of the century. Maybe it began with the exotic listing on the wireless dial: Stuttgart, Leipzig, Oslo, Hilversum. Maybe it was stirred by the beautiful sprung rhythms of the old BBC weather forecast: Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Shetland, Faroes, Finisterre; or with the gorgeous and inane phraseology of the catechism; or with the litany of the Blessed Virgin that was part of the enforced poetry in our household: Tower of Gold, Ark of the Covenant, Gate of Heaven, Morning Star, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comforter of the Afflicted. None of these things were consciously savoured at the time but I think the fact that I still recall them with ease, and can delight in them as verbal music, means that they were bedding the ear with a kind of linguistic hardcore that could be built on some day.

Our notion of faith or belief always allows for the possibility of disbelief; this is true in the world of ghosts, but is especially valid on a higher religious plane. 'Faith', the credo, requires as its opposite a false belief, a heresy; it is tied to a dogma which people must either attack or defend with their very lives. All this was foreign to the Greeks; they looked upon their gods as so natural and self-evident that they could not even conceive of other nations acknowledging a different faith or other gods.

To the Christians who landed in America the gods of the the Indians were of course idols and devils; to the Jews the gods of their neighbours were enemies of Yahweh. But when Herodotus visited Egypt and encountered the native deities, it never occurred to him that he might not find Apollo, Dionysus and Artemis there too. Bupastis translated into Greek is none other than Artemis (2.137), Horus is called Apollo, and Osiris is Dionysus (2.144). Just as the Egyptian name of the king sounds different in Greek, as his insignia deviate from those of a Greek or a Persian king, as a ship or a street does not have one and the same name or appearance in Egypt and in Greece, so also the Egyptian gods are not identical with those of the Greeks, but they are easily 'translated' into the Greek tongue and into Greek ideology. Not every nation calls all the gods its own; Herodotus found some barbarian gods for whom he was unable to cite a Greek name; those gods were to be regarded as barbarian par excellence. The Greeks, then, did not think along the same lines as the Jews or the Christians or the Mohammedans who know but one true god, their own, a god who demands conversion of those who would not recognize him. The Greek attitude springs in part from the circumstance that, dispersed as they were over various lands, they worshipped their gods in many shapes and under many names. The Artemis of Ephesus, the goddess with a hundred breasts, scarcely resembles her namesake, the huntress of Sparta. What wonder that in Egypt she exists in yet another guise, and under another name? The gods of the Greeks are a necessary part of the world, and that is reason enough why they should not be linked exclusively with national boundaries or privileged groups. How could there be any gods but those whose existence is self-evident, inherent in nature itself? Who, for instance, would gainsay that Aphrodite exists? Everybody knows that she is as active among all other peoples as she is among the Greeks; even the animals are subject to her rule. It would be downright absurd to maintain that one does not 'believe' in Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It is possible to neglect her, to pay no respect to her, as was done by the huntsman Hippolytus, but Aphrodite is present, and active, none the less. The same is true of Athena and Ares. And could anyone deny that, when all is said and done, Zeus upholds the sacred order of the world? The existence and the power of the gods are no less certain than the reality of laughter and tears, the living pulse of nature around us, the plain fact of our doings whether they be sublime and solemn, or bold and hard, or bright and serene. Every human act betrays the vitality of the ultimate cause behind it.

Worries then weigh less on a man, and of thirty parts one is removed, when he blurts out his troubles to a friend, or a fellow-traveller, or even finally to the deaf gusts of wind.

κουφοτέρως τότε φῶτα διαθλίβουσιν ἀνῖαι,
    ἐκ δὲ τριηκόντων μοῖραν ἀφεῖλε μίαν,
ἢ φίλον ἢ ὅτ᾿ ἐς ἄνδρα συνέμπορον ἢ ὅτε κωφαῖς
    ἄλγεα μαψαύραις ἔσχατον ἐξερύγῃ.

• It is Unmanly to Complain
• On Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip
• Grosse Seelen Dulden Still
• Hiding Troubles
• Nietzsche on Emotional Incontinence
• Buckled Lips
• Emotional Incontinence
• Euripidea
• Hostile Laughter
• Hostile Laughter in Euripides' Medea
• Icy Laughter
• Notes to Myself
• On Concealing One's Misfortunes
• Quotations about Complaints

I don't understand the languages from which are borrowed the words so beloved by the present day, tabu and totem, mana and orenda, but I consider it a safe procedure to stick to the Greeks, and in what concerns Greece to think in Greek.

Ich verstehe die Sprachen nicht, aus denen die zurzeit beliebten Wörter, Tabu und Totem, Mana und Orenda, entlehnt sind, halte es aber auch für einen zulässigen Weg, mich an die Griechen zu halten und über Griechisches griechisch zu denken.

Nothing cheers me up so much as when I have succeeded in understanding something difficult, and yet I try so little to learn to understand difficult things. I ought to try to more often.

Nichts muntert mich mehr auf, als wenn ich etwas Schweres verstanden habe, und doch suche ich so wenig Schweres verstehen zu lernen. Ich sollte es öfter versuchen.

Mania for the new. They say that the new is better than the non-new: why on earth? I take my stand with what is evolved, with the new that is also old; I am darwinian. I draw from the store of an old master as from a fountain. That wise prose is a solace, that slow, slow thought, that boldness without arrogance . . . I re-read it all every two or three years.

Mania del nuovo. Dice che il nuovo è meglio del non-nuovo: e perché mai? Io sto con ciò che è evolutivo cioè nuovo e anche vecchio; sono darwiniano. Attingo nella roba del maestro delle origini come a una fontana. È un balsamo quella prosa prudente, quel pensare lento lento, quel coraggio senza iattanza . . . Rileggo tutto ogni due o tre anni.

• New versus Old Authors
• Pleasure from the Dead Languages
• Dead, All Dead
• A Good Rule
• Philology (Nietzsche on philology as slow reading)

He has no creed. He is not pledged to any institution. The sanest man I ever knew...

We ask for zeal for learning, the gift of Hermes.

αἰτοῦμεν εὐμάθειαν Ἑρμᾶνος δόσιν.

Something in me says, "You should read this book word for word from cover to cover." Something else contradicts with: "You know from experience that you have almost never found a book that was worth reading entire. Don't waste your time with this one whatever its pretensions. Bite into it the way the Children of Israel bolted their Pentacostal [sic] meal, or the way a traveling salesman consumes a piece of apple pie at the stand-up counter of the Bingville Junction Depot where the train waits five minutes to take in water."

I look at my bookcases. Bulging. Something must go. But what? I look more closely. The shelves are lined with those I love. There is Morandi, all the books I have been able to find on him, almost one solid foot of them—his small, still, perfect world of bottles and paint. No I will not let him go. There is Jean Cocteau, sometimes irritating but always fresh, new, irrepressible. So full of himself that he makes you full of him. I have over two feet of him. I could let part of him go, but never the novels. No, I will keep him. Ah, there is Madame Yourcenar. Everything she wrote. Sententious, wise, a bit ponderous, but always honest. How could I ever let Memoirs d'Hadrien go? Or the woman who wrote it. No, she stays. Borges, all of him in English. My companion for years now. Am I not tired of him? In a way—his donnishness tires. But to throw out Labyrinths—and the man who wrote it? Never. Jane Austen? Of course not. She is part of me. What to do, then? Well, Shakespeare, whom I really do not much like. But it is only one volume and tossing him out would not save much space.