Laudator Temporis Acti

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), "The Parson's Tale," Canterbury Tales X.423-428 (tr. Larry D. Benson):

Alas, some of them show the bulge of their shape, and the horrible swollen members, that it seems like the malady of hernia, in the wrapping of their leggings; and also the buttocks of them fare as it were the back part of a she-ape in the full of the moon. And moreover, the wretched swollen members that they show through their style of clothing, in parting of their hoses into white and red, seems that half their shameful private members were flayed. [425] And if so be that they divide their hoses in other colors, as is white and black, or white and blue, or black and red, and so forth, then seems it, as by variance of color, that half the part of their private members were corrupt by the fire of Saint Anthony (inflammation of the skin), or by cancer, or by other such mischance. Of the back part of their buttocks, it is very horrible to see. For certainly, in that part of their body where they purge their stinking excrement, that foul part show they to the people proudly in scorn of decency, which decency that Jesus Christ and his friends observed to show in their lives.

Original, from Jill Mann's edition (London: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 721-722:

Allas, somme of hem shewen the shap and the boce of hire horrible swollen membres, that semeth lik the maladye of hirnia, in the wrappinge of hire hoses, | and eek the buttokes of hem, that faren as it were the hindre part of a she-ape in the fulle of the moone. | And mooreover the wrecched swollen membres that they shewe thurgh degisinge, in departinge of hire hoses in whit and reed, semeth that half hire shameful privee membres weren flayn. [425] | And if so be that they departen hire hoses in othere colours, as is whit and blew, or whit and blak, or blak and reed, and so forth, | thanne semeth it as by variaunce of colour that half the partie of hire privee membres ben corrupt by the fir of Seint Antony, or by cancre, or by oother swich meschaunce. | Of the hindre part of hire buttokes it is ful horrible for to see, for certes, in that partie of hire body theras they purgen hire stinkinge ordure, | that foule partie shewe they to the peple proudly, in despit of honestetee, the which honestetee that Jesu Crist and hise frendes observede to shewen in hir live.

Herodotus 8.142.5 (tr. Robin Waterfield):

These foreigners are completely unreliable and dishonest.

βαρβάροισι ἐστὶ οὔτε πιστὸν οὔτε ἀληθὲς οὐδέν.

Cicero, In Defence of Quintus Roscius 7.20 (tr. J.H. Freese):

I beg and beseech you, who know them, to contrast their lives; you who do not know them, look at their faces. Do not the head itself, and those clean-shaven eyebrows seem to reek of malice and proclaim craftiness aloud? If one can make a guess from the silent form of a man's body, does not Fannius seem to be composed entirely of fraud, trickery, and lies from the tips of his fingers to the top of his head? He always has his head and eyebrows shaved, that he may not be accused of having a single hair of an honourable man on him...

oro atque obsecro vos, qui nostis, vitam inter se utriusque conferte, qui non nostis, faciem utriusque considerate. nonne ipsum caput et supercilia illa penitus abrasa olere malitiam et clamitare calliditatem videntur? non ab imis unguibus usque ad verticem summum, si quam coniecturam affert hominibus tacita corporis figura, ex fraude, fallaciis, mendaciis constare totus videtur? qui idcirco capite et superciliis semper est rasis, ne ullum pilum viri boni habere dicatur...

See Elizabeth C. Evans, "Physiognomics in the Ancient World," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 59.5 (1969) 1-101 (at 43). Cicero here portrays Fannius as a vir mollis, according to Jan B. Meister, "Pisos Augenbrauen: Zur Lesbarkeit aristokratischer Körper in der späten römischen Republik," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 58.1 (2009) 71-95 (at 78-79).

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), "On a Sun-Dial," Lectures on the English Comic Writers, with Miscellaneous Essays (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1910; rpt. 1913), pp. 208-216 (at 212-213):

I confess, nothing at present interests me but what has been—the recollection of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, of which only the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom. That things should be that are now no more, creates in my mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the world in the year 2300 than we do about one of the planets. Even George IV. is better than the Earl of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the moon as think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are to come after us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may be said to exist in vacuo, we know not upon what, except as they are blown up with vanity and self-conceit by their patrons among the moderns. But the ancients are true and bonâ-fide people, to whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom, seen by the mellow light of history, we feel our own existence doubled and our pride consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past.

Vauvenargues (1715-1747), Reflections and Maxims, no. 102 (tr. F.G. Stevens):

We should expect the best and the worst from mankind, as from the weather.

Il faut tout attendre et tout craindre du temps et des hommes.

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.7.20 (tr. Arthur P. Peabody):

Xerxes, indeed, replete with all the prizes and gifts of fortune, not content with his cavalry, his foot-soldiers, his vast fleet, his boundless supply of gold, offered a reward to him who should have invented a new pleasure, — with which he was not satisfied; for never will desire find an end.

nam Xerxes quidem refertus omnibus praemiis donisque fortunae, non equitatu, non pedestribus copiis, non navium multitudine, non infinito pondere auri contentus, praemium proposuit, qui invenisset novam voluptatem: qua ipsa non fuit contentus; neque enim umquam finem inveniet libido.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), "On the Want of Money," Lectures on the English Comic Writers, with Miscellaneous Essays (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1910; rpt. 1913), pp. 293-307 (at 304-305):

Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money. To be in want of money, is to pass through life with little credit or pleasure; it is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you come into it; it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out to dinner, or noticed in the street; it is not to have your opinion consulted or else rejected with contempt, to have your acquirements carped at and doubted, your good things disparaged, and at last to lose the wit and the spirit to say them; it is to be scrutinized by strangers, and neglected by friends; it is to be a thrall to circumstances, an exile in a foreign land; to forego leisure, freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the good-will and caprice of others, or earn a precarious and irksome livelihood by some laborious employment; it is to be compelled to stand behind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public office, or to marry your landlady, or not the person you would wish; or to go out to the East or West-Indies, or to get a situation as judge abroad, and return home with a liver-complaint; or to be a law-stationer, or a scrivener or scavenger, or newspaper reporter; or to read law and sit in court without a brief; or to be deprived of the use of your fingers by transcribing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal-engraver and pore yourself blind; or to go upon the stage, or try some of the Fine Arts; with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, most probably to fail, or if you succeed, after the exertions of years, and undergoing constant distress of mind and fortune, to be assailed on every side with envy, back-biting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite with the public for awhile, and then thrown into the back-ground—or a jail, by the fickleness of taste and some new favourite; to be full of enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, of chagrin and disappointment in after-life; to be jostled by the rabble because you do not ride in your coach, or avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it as a claim on their respect or their purse; to be a burden to your relations, or unable to do anything for them; to be ashamed to venture into crowds; to have cold comfort at home; to lose by degrees your confidence and any talent you might possess; to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous, dissatisfied with every one, but most so with yourself; and plagued out of your life, to look about for a place to die in, and quit the world without anyone's asking after your will.

Daniel Webster, Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States (March 7, 1850):

It is in the nature of man, manifested in his whole history, that religious disputes are apt to become warm in proportion to the strength of the convictions which men entertain of the magnitude of the questions at issue. In all such disputes, there will sometimes be found men with whom every thing is absolute; absolutely wrong, or absolutely right. They see the right clearly; they think others ought so to see it, and they are disposed to establish a broad line of distinction between what is right and what is wrong. They are not seldom willing to establish that line upon their own convictions of truth or justice; and are ready to mark and guard it by placing along it a series of dogmas, as lines of boundary on the earth's surface are marked by posts and stones. There are men who, with clear perception, as they think, of their own duty, do not see how too eager a pursuit of one duty may involve them in the violation of others, or how too warm an embracement of one truth may lead to a disregard of other truths equally important. As I heard it stated strongly, not many days ago, these persons are disposed to mount upon some particular duty, as upon a war-horse, and to drive furiously on and upon and over all other duties that may stand in the way. There are men who, in reference to disputes of that sort, are of the opinion that human duties may be ascertained with the exactness of mathematics. They deal with morals as with mathematics; and they think what is right may be distinguished from what is wrong with the precision of an algebraic equation. They have, therefore, none too much charity towards others who differ from them. They are apt, too, to think that nothing is good but what is perfect, and that there are no compromises or modifications to be made in consideration of difference of opinion or in deference to other men's judgment. If their perspicacious vision enables them to detect a spot on the face of the sun, they think that a good reason why the sun should be struck down from heaven. They prefer the chance of running into utter darkness to living in heavenly light, if that heavenly light be not absolutely without any imperfection.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels, Book III, chapter VI:

Another professor showed me a large paper of instructions for discovering plots and conspiracies against the government. He advised great statesmen to examine into the diet of all suspected persons; their times of eating; upon which side they lay in bed; with which hand they wiped their posteriors; to take a strict view of their excrements, and from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness, or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs. Because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by frequent experiment: for in such conjunctures, when he used merely as a trial to consider which was the best way, of murdering the king, his ordure would have a tincture of green; but quite different, when he thought only of raising an insurrection, or burning the metropolis.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848-1931), Antigonos von Karystos (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1881), p. 81 (tr. Richard Stoneman):

The tone is throughout subjective, the narrator speaks not with that dispassionate tedium that the philistines have always taken for objectivity, because it is forbidden them to wax enthusiastic about any subject, but from personal understanding and personal sensibility.

Der ton ist durchaus subjectiv, der berichterstatter redet nicht mit jener teilnahmlosen langweiligkeit, welche die philister allezeit für sachlich genommen haben, weil es ihnen versagt ist für eine sache sich zu erwärmen, sondern aus eigenem wissen mit eigenem gefühle.

Herodotus 8.73.3 (on the "seven nations" of the Peloponnese during the war with Persia; tr. A.D. Godley):

Now of these seven nations all the cities, save those aforesaid, sat apart from the war; and if I may speak freely, by so doing they took the part of the enemy.

τούτων ὦν τῶν ἑπτὰ ἐθνέων αἱ λοιπαὶ πόλιες, πάρεξ τῶν κατέλεξα, ἐκ τοῦ μέσου κατέατο· εἰ δὲ ἐλευθέρως ἔξεστι εἰπεῖν, ἐκ τοῦ κατήμενοι ἐμήδιζον.

"They took the part of the enemy" — more literally, "they sided with the Medes," or "they medized." See David F. Graf, "Medism: The Origin and Significance of the Term," Journal of Hellenic Studies 104 (1984) 15-30.

Brian Stross, "Eight Reinterpretations of Submerged Symbolism in the Mayan Popol Wuj," Anthropological Linguistics 49.3/4 (Fall-Winter, 2007) 388-423 (at 419):

Quichua (del Oriente) of Ecuador has a similar-sounding word for 'devil' supai ('el demonio, el diablo, el espíritu maligno'). It is based on the word supi 'flatus, flatulence'—an exact parallel to Yukateko kisin 'devil', which is based on Yukateko kis 'flatus, flatulence, breaking wind'. The Peruvian Quechua word supay or supai, with meanings of 'demon, devil, witch', occurs in a number of Quechua dialects (Anne Helsley p.c. 1985).

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Labels: noctes scatologicae

Stobaeus, Florilegium 4.34.60, in Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium, Vol. V: Anthologii Libri Quarti Partem Alteram, ed. Otto Hense (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912), p. 843 (attributed to Aristotle; my translation):

For what is man? Specimen of feebleness, time's spoils, fortune's toy, image of change, poised between envy and disaster, and, for the rest, phlegm and bile.

τί γάρ ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος; ἀσθενείας ὑπόδειγμα, καιροῦ λάφυρον, τύχης παίγνιον, μεταπτώσεως εἰκὼν, φθόνου καὶ συμφορᾶς πλάστιγξ, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν φλέγμα καὶ χολή.

I translate "phlegm and bile" (two of the humors), rather than as (e.g.) "fire and anger."

For τύχης παίγνιον cf. Secundus, Sententiae 7, in Friedrich Wilhelm August Mullach, ed., Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1860), p. 513 (with Mullach's Latin translation):

Τί ἐστιν Ἄνθρωπος; Νοῦς σεσαρκωμένος, πνευματικὸν ἀγγεῖον, αἰσθητικὸν οἴκημα, οἰκητήριον ὀλιγοχρόνιον, ἐπίπονος ψυχή, τύχης παίγνιον, φάντασμα χρόνου, ὠστεωμένον ὄργανον, κατάσκοπος βίου, φωτὸς ἀποστάτης, γής ἀπαίτημα.

Quid est Homo? Mens indula carne, vas spiritale, sensile domicilium, breve habitaculum, anima laboris patiens, fortunae ludibrium, vana temporis imago, instrumentum osseum, vitae explorator, lucis desertor, terrae postulatum.

Friedrich Nietzsche, letter to Carl von Gersdorff (April 7, 1866; tr. Christopher Middleton):

Three things are my relaxations, but infrequent ones: my Schopenhauer, Schumann's music, and then solitary walks.

Drei Dinge sind meine Erholungen, aber seltne Erholungen, mein Schopenhauer, Schumannsche Musik, endlich einsame Spaziergänge.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), "The Parson's Tale," Canterbury Tales X.206-209:

And forther over, they shul have defaute of alle manere delices; for certes, delices ben after the appetites of the five wittes, as sighte, heringe, smellinge, savoringe, and touchinge, | but in helle hir sighte shal be ful of derknesse and of smoke, and therfore ful of teeres; and hire heringe ful of waimentinge and of grintinge of teeth, as seyth Jesu Crist. | Hir nosethirles shul be ful of stinkinge stink, and as seyth Isaie the prophete, 'hire savoring shal be ful of bitter galle,' | and touchinge of al hir body ycovered with 'fir that nevere shal quenche, and with wormes that nevere shul dien,' as God seyth by the mouth of Isaie.

Nevill Coghill very briefly summarizes but doesn't translate "The Parson's Tale" in his modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (1951; rpt. London: Penguin Books, 1977), but the passage quoted above is easy enough to understand without a translation.

I searched quickly in Richard Newhauser, "The Parson's Tale," in Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, edd., Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, Vol. I (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2002), pp. 529-611, but didn't find any sources for this passage.

I haven't tracked down the references cited by Lee W. Patterson, "The Parson's Tale and the Quitting of The Canterbury Tales," Traditio 34 (1978) 331-380 (at 355):

To amplify the second phrase ('drede ... of the horrible peynes of helle') Chaucer relies on the tradition of the supplicia damnatorum, which provides him with both a list of punishments and their rationales, e.g., the sinner who has indulged in 'delices' while alive will have each of his five senses assaulted with ugliness and pain while dead (207-210).⁶⁶ But again, rather than present a random list of items Chaucer provides a coherent structure by appropriating Gregory's exegesis of a passage from Job: 'Suffre, Lord, that I may a while biwaille and wepe, er I go withoute returnyng to the derke lond, covered with the derknesse of deeth; to the lond of mysese and of derknesse, whereas is the shadwe of deeth, whereas ther is noon ordre or ordinaunce, but grisly drede that evere shal laste' (176-177, Job 10.21). This passage is then broken up into seven phrases which are carefully expounded and among which the various supplicia are distributed.

⁶⁶ For comparable but less well-organized discussions of the pains of hell, see Peter Damian, Institutio monialis 12 (PL 145.745-746) and The Pricke of Conscience 174-203. See also the passage from MS Trinity R.14.7 printed by Bryan and Dempster 745-758.

Xenophanes, fragment 27 (tr. J.H. Lesher):

For all things are from the earth and to the earth all things come in the end.

ἐκ γαίης γὰρ πάντα, καὶ εἰς γῆν πάντα τελευτᾷ.

Herodotus 8.22.1 (tr. A.D. Godley):

But Themistocles picked out the seaworthiest Athenian ships and went about to the places of drinking water, where he engraved on the rocks writing which the Ionians read on the next day when they came to Artemisium. This was what the writing said: "Men of Ionia, you do wrongly to fight against the land of your fathers and bring slavery upon Hellas...."

Ἀθηναίων δὲ νέας τὰς ἄριστα πλεούσας ἐπιλεξάμενος Θεμιστοκλέης ἐπορεύετο περὶ τὰ πότιμα ὕδατα, ἐντάμνων ἐν τοῖσι λίθοισι γράμματα, τὰ Ἴωνες ἐπελθόντες τῇ ὑστεραίῃ ἡμέρῃ ἐπὶ τὸ Ἀρτεμίσιον ἐπελέξαντο. τὰ δὲ γράμματα τάδε ἔλεγε. "Ἄνδρες Ἴωνες, οὐ ποιέετε δίκαια ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας στρατευόμενοι καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα καταδουλούμενοι...."

ἡμέρῃ del. Van Herwerden

The Greek doesn't say "the land of your fathers," but simply "the fathers" — see J. Enoch Powell, A Lexicon to Herodotus (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1938), p. 296 ("ancestors"). Cf. the translation of Robin Waterfield ("your ancestral line") and the commentary of Charles Forster Smith and Arthur Gordon Laird (words in brackets added):

πατέρας: the Athenians; cp. l. 14 [μεμνημένοι ὅτι ἀπ᾿ ἡμέων γεγόνατε = "be mindful that you are our sons"] and 7.51.8 [ἐπὶ τοὺς πατέρας], 11 [καταδουλουμένους τὴν μητρόπολιν].

The eponymous ancestor of the Ionians was Ion, an Athenian.

Confucius, The Analects 2.17 (tr. Burton Watson):

The Master said, You (Zilu), shall I teach you what it means to know something? When you know, to know you know. When you don't know, to know you don't know. That's what knowing is.

Cicero, Against Verres II 1.20.54 (tr. L.H.G. Greenwood, with his note):

My charge is that Verres did not leave one single statue behind; that from temples and public places alike, with the whole of Aspendus looking on, they were all openly loaded on wagons and carted away. Yes, even the famous Harper of Aspendus, about whom you have often heard the saying that is proverbial among the Greeks, of whom it was said that he made "all his music inside"^a—him too Verres carried off and put right inside his own house...

^a The proverb was applied to those who do things for their own pleasure and not that of others. The lifelike figure appeared to be enjoying his own music, inaudible to everyone else.

hoc dico, nullum te Aspendi signum, Verres, reliquisse, omnia ex fanis, ex locis publicis, palam, spectantibus omnibus, plaustris evecta exportataque esse. atque etiam illum Aspendium citharistam, de quo saepe audistis id quod est Graecis hominibus in proverbio, quem omnia intus canere dicebant, sustulit et in intimis suis aedibus posuit...

George Long ad loc.:

Cicero has this expression (In Rullum, ii.26), "atque hoc carmen hic tribunus plebis non vobis, sed sibi intus canit." The explanation of this passage by Asconius, which Klotz has adopted, is the following:—"There was something in the manner in which this figure was represented as holding the lyre, to which the words 'intus canere' refer. Asconius says that the player on the cithara holds the 'plectrum' in his right hand, whiich is 'foris canere;' and he has the fingers of the left hand on the strings, which is 'intus canere.' This 'citharista' of Aspendus was represented doing every thing with the left band, 'intus;' he did not use the right hand at all. The proverbial expression 'intus canere' was also applied to a person who slily looked after his own interest." Asconius adds: 'unde omnes, quotquot fures erant, a Graecis Aspendii citharistae in proverbio dicebantur, quod, ut ille carminis, ita isti furtorum occultatores erant.' But this explanation of Asconius certainly does not explain the proverb. Zumpt gives a different sense to the words 'intus canere,' as applied to the 'citharista:' "the statue was made with such skill, that the 'citharista' seemed to be feeling his music, or 'intus canebat;'" but nobody else, of course, could hear it. He had, then, all his playing to himself.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973), A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (New York: The Viking Press, 1970), p. 196:

And this anonymous Neapolitan lyric is, surely, beautiful.

Strunz' . . .
Nel sole fumante
Come un incenso
A Dio . . .
Una mosca
Ti canta
Una ninna-nanna . . .
Zzz . . . Zzz . . .
Ma . . . tu non ascolti . . .
Strunz' . . . .

(Turd, smoking in the sun to God like a thurifer . . . A fly sings you a hush-a-bye . . . Zzz . . . Zzz . . . but . . . you don't listen . . . Turd! . . .)

I can't find any older source for this "Neapolitan lyric".

---

Dear Mike,

There’s a clear resemblance between Auden’s 'anonymous Neapolitan lyric' and a poem variously attributed to writers Salvatore di Giacomo (1860-1934) and Ferdinando Russo (1866-1927):

Strunz,
ch'arravugliat' staj,
n'goppa a nu marciapiede
dint a na sfera e sole.

Nù muscuglione t' gir attuorn'
e t' canta na ninna nanna,
e tu t'adduorm,
STRUNZ.

In standard Italian:

Stronzo
che attorcigliato stai
su un marciapiede
dentro un raggio di sole.

Un moscone ti gira intorno
e ti canta la ninna nanna
e tu ti addormenti,
STRONZO.

I wonder if Auden had come across a popular variant of this, or perhaps the author of the poem was echoing an earlier tradition? I don't know where or when it was published.

Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]

Labels: noctes scatologicae