Laudator Temporis Acti

Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, tr. Miriam L. Kochan et al. (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1986), p. 29, with notes on p. 242:

Excrement became a subject of conversation at the court of Louis XVI.⁵⁶ Voltaire commented that man had not been created in the image of God, since He did not have to satisfy such needs.⁵⁷

56. Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, Rapport sur les améliorations à introduire dans les fosses d'aisances, reprinted in Hygiène publique, 2:350.

57. Voltaire, "Déjection," in Dictionnaire philosophique (Geneva, 1764).

The passage from Voltaire (tr. Abner Kneeland):

Oh man! who is so daring as to call yourself the image of God, tell me whether God eats, and if he have a gut rectum?

You the image of God! and your heart and your mind depends upon a stool!

You the image of God on your close stool! the first man who dared to utter such impertinence, was he prompted by an excess of folly, or was it from extreme pride?

The French:

O homme! qui oses te dire l'image de Dieu, dis-moi si Dieu mange, et s'il a un boyau rectum.

Toi, l'image de Dieu! et ton coeur et ton esprit dépendent d'une selle!

Toi l'image de Dieu sur ta chaise percée! Le premier qui dit cette impertinence la proféra-t-il par une extrême bêtise, ou par un extrême orgueil?

See also Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 25 (tr. Frank Cole Babbitt):

Hence the elder Antigonus, when a certain Hermodotus in a poem proclaimed him to be "the Offspring of the Sun and a god," said, "the slave who attends to my chamber-pot is not conscious of any such thing!"

Aristophanes, Clouds 1071-1074 (Worse Argument speaking; tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

My boy, do consider everything that decency entails, and all the pleasures you stand to lose: boys, women, dice, fine food and drink, laughs. If you're deprived of all this, what's the point of living?

σκέψαι γάρ, ὦ μειράκιον, ἐν τῷ σωφρονεῖν ἅπαντα
ἅνεστιν, ἡδονῶν θ᾿ ὅσων μέλλεις ἀποστερεῖσθαι·
παίδων, γυναικῶν, κοττάβων, ὄψων, πότων, καχασμῶν.
καίτοι τί σοι ζῆν ἄξιον, τούτων ἐὰν στερηθῇς;

When I read these lines, I wondered if ἀποστερεῖσθαι ... στερηθῇς could be an example of compound-simplex iteration, i.e. "the iteration of a compound verb in a succeeding clause or sentence by the simple verb alone, but with the semantic force of the compound" (Calvert Watkins, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71 [1966] 115). Upon checking I found that this passage is included in Robert Renehan's discussion of the phenomenon, Studies in Greek Texts: Critical Observations to Homer, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes and other Authors (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), p. 15.

The ancient Greeks of course had dice (κύβοι), but Aristophanes here doesn't mention dice but rather the drinking game known as kottabos (κότταβος).

John Cleveland (1613-1658), "The Old Gill," Works (London: Printed by R. Holt, for Obadiah Blagrave, 1687), pp. 306-307 (line numbers added):

If you will be still
Then tell you I will
Of a lovely old Gill,
Dwelt under a Hill:
Her Locks are like Sage        5
That's well worn with Age,
And her Visage would swage
A stout Mans Courage.

              2.
Teeth yellow as Box,
Clean out with the Pox,        10
Her Breath smells like Lox,
Or unwiped Nocks.
She hath a devilish Grin,
Long Hairs on her Chin,
To the foul-footed Fin        15
She's nearly a kin.

              3.
She hath a beetle Brow,
Deep Furrows enow
She's ey'd like a Sow,
Flat nos'd like a Cow.        20
Lips swarthy and dun,
A Mouth like a Gun,
And her tattle doth run
As swift as the Sun.

              4.
On her Back stands a Hill,        25
You may place a Windmill,
And the Farts of her Gill
Will make the Sails trill.
Her Neck is much like
The foul Swines in the dike;        30
Against Crab-lice and Tyke,
A blew Pin is her Pike.

              5.
Within this Ano
There dwells an Hurricano,        35
And the Rift of her Plano
Vomits Smoke like Vulcano;
But a Pox of her Twist,
It is always bepist,
And the Devil's in his List, 40
That to her Mill brings Grist.

              6.
'Ware the dint of her Dirt,
She will give you a Flirt,
She has always the Squirt,
She is loose and ungirt;        45
Want of Wine makes her pant
Till she fizzle and rant,
And the hole in her Grant,
Is as deep as &c.

              7.
Yea, as deep as a Well,        50
A Furnace or Kell,
A bottomless Cell,
Some think it is Hell.
But I have spoken my Fill
Of my lovely old Gill;        55
And 'tis taken so ill,
I'll lay down my Quill.

The poem doesn't appear in John M. Berdan, ed., The Poems of John Cleveland. Annotated and correctly printed for the first time with Biographical and Historical Introductions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911), or in Brian Morris and Eleanor Withington, edd., The Poems of John Cleveland (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967), so presumably the attribution to Cleveland is doubtful. Whoever wrote this bit of misogynistic doggerel, it's a veritable treasure-house of lexicographical puzzles. Someone better equipped than I am should write a scholarly article about it. With extreme diffidence I offer the following notes (OED = Oxford English Dictionary).

Title, 3, 55 Gill: OED, s.v. gill | jill, n.4, sense 1.a: "A familiar or contemptuous term applied to a woman; a lass, wench."

9 Box: Buxus sempervirens, the Common or Evergreen Box-tree, whose wood is yellow. False teeth were sometimes made of boxwood, perhaps as far back as ancient Rome (see Martial 2.41.6-7).

11 lox: locks, i.e. malodorous tufts or strands of wool?

12 nocks: Could this be from OED, s.v. knock, n.2 ("A hill; a hillock, a knoll"), meaning here the twin protuberances of the buttocks?

15 Fin: fiend, i.e. devil?

27 Gill: OED, s.v. gill, n.2: "A deep rocky cleft or ravine," perhaps used here for the intergluteal cleft.

28 trill: OED, s.v. trill, v.1, sense 1.a: "To twirl, twiddle, whirl, spin."

31 Tyke: A tyke can be a churl or a dog, but neither meaning seems right here.

32 Pike: weapon, means of defence, but I don't understand how a blew (presumably blue) pin can defend against crab-lice.

34 Ano: Spanish for anus.

36 Plano: Spanish for flat surface, used metaphorically for the expanse of the backside?

38 Twist: OED, sense 3.a: "The part of anything at which it divides or branches; spec. the junction of the thighs, the fork."

44 Squirt: diarrhea.

43 Flirt: ?

47 fizzle: break wind without noise?

48 Grant: Gordon Williams, A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature, Vol. I (London: The Athlone Press, 1994), p. 223: "Grant perhaps relates to grain, fork of the body, Halliwell defining it as 'The pudendum muliebre'."

49 &c.: some word ending in -ant, but what word?

51 Kell: kiln, according to Robert Nares, A glossary; or, Collection of words, phrases, names, and allusions to Customs, Proverbs, etc., which have been thought to Require Illustration, in the Works of English Authors, particularly Shakespeare and his contemporaries, new ed. by James O. Halliwell and Thomas Wright, Vol. II: K-Z (London: John Russell Smith, 1859), p. 480, quoting this line.

A much different version appears in Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy, 3rd ed., Vol. II (London: William Pearson, 1712), pp. 323-324 ("By Cleaveland"):

If you will be still,
Then tell you I will
Of a fusty old Gill,
That dwells under a Hill;
She is a right Sage,
Well worn with Age,
And a Visage will swage
A stout Man's Courage.

She has a beetle Brow,
Deep Furrows enow,
She's Ey'd like a Sow,
Flat Nos'd like a Cow;
She has a devilish Grin,
Long Hairs on her Chin,
She's nearly a-kin
To the foul footed Fiend.

Teeth yellow as Box,
Half out with the Pox,
Her Breath sweet as Socks,
Or the Scent of a Fox:
Lips swarthy and Dun,
With a Mouth like a Gun,
And her Twattle does run
As swift as the Sun.

Hair lowzy with Nits,
She stinks i'th' Arm-pits,
She still hauks and spits,
And hems up great Bits.
She has long unpar'd Nails,
Hands cover'd with Scales,
She's still full of Ails,
And to stink never fails.

Her Back has a Hill,
You may plant a Wind-mill,
And the Farts of this Gill,
Would the Sails well trill.
I've taken my fill
Of the fusty old Gill,
Which she took so ill,
That I laid down my Quill.

Over ten years ago, in Caganer, Mistletoe, and Sancho Panza, I quoted the following from an Associated Press story:

During the holiday season, pastry shops around Catalonia sell sweets shaped like feces, and on Christmas Eve Catalan children beat a hollow log, called the tio, packed with holiday gifts, singing a song that urges it to defecate presents out the other end.

I added the comment:

I am curious about the word for the sweets shaped like feces, and also about the lyrics of the song sung by Catalan children as they beat the tió, which is apparently similar to the piñata.

Now at last my curiosity is satisfied. Yesterday I received an email from Jaume Ripoll Miralda, who wrote:

Personally, I have never heard of a specific word for such sweets – in Catalan we say llaminadures for any kind of sweet –, even though I have seen them plenty of times. Yet I hope I can bring some insight on the song when beating the tió. I myself used to sing it as a child along with my little brother!

The most common version of the song goes as follows:

Tió, tió, caga torró,
D'avellana i de pinyó,
Si no pots cagar,
Garrotada va!

Which, rendered in English, is more or less the following:

Tió, tió, shit some nougat,
Made of hazelnut and pine nut,
If you can't shit,
Here comes a beat!

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Greek Anthology 11.55 (by Palladas; tr. W.R. Paton):

Give me to drink, that wine may scatter my troubles,
warming again my chilled heart.

δὸς πιέειν, ἵνα Βάκχος ἀποσκεδάσειε μερίμνας,
    ἂψ ἀναθερμαίνων ψυχομένην κραδίην.

In The Futility and Pain of Latin Lessons, I printed D.A. Millar's loose translation of part of George Buchanan's first elegy. I just found a more literal translation by G.E. Davie, in Hugh MacDiarmid, ed., The Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941), pp. 25-29 (lines 29-74 on pp. 26-28; I added line numbers in brackets and corrected Montaigne to Montaigue):

It's this that causes sudden deaths and destroys hopes of seeing old age, [30] and neither Clio nor Phoebus helps one here. If the head sinks down with tired neck on the elbow and scant sleep shuts the weary eyes, hark the watchman suddenly announces it's four o'clock, and with terrifying peals disturbs the closed eyes: [35] thunder-struck as you are, the piercing bronze's sound shakes sleepiness away and gives warning to lift limbs from the soft couch. There's barely a silence, when five o'clock sounds; now the porter clashes the cymbals, summoning the raw recruits to their standards. Soon the master follows them in, fearsome in his long gown, [40] from his left shoulder his satchel hangs against his back. In his right hand is his weapon for attacking the lads—the cruel tawse; his left hand grasps great Virgil's stirring work. Now he is in his chair and shouting loud enough to burst his lungs; he proceeds with all his wits to examine the complicated passages, [45] he emends and deletes, alters, the points he has worked on while others slept he clearly explains—points which have long been doubtful and hidden. Important facts, facts discovered not by the previous age's wits he digs out, and does not hide away for his own use the treasures he has found. In the meantime the lazy young men for the most part snore, [50] or else many things take priority in their thoughts over the work before them. One is absent, there is a search for another who has bribed a neighbour to call his name, and by cleverness to make the teacher swallow the wily pretence. This fellow has no boots; in one of that man's shoes a hole yawns wide where the leather has burst; another has a pain and another is writing home. [55] Hence rods and roarings sound, and cheeks are wet with tears and there's nothing but sobbing all day long. Next a religious service summons us, then lessons again—and blows again; there is hardly any time allowed for taking a meal. No sooner is the table removed than a lesson begins, [60] and this lesson is succeeded in its turn by another; then a hasty supper—we rise and prolong our unconscionable work till late at night—as if the hours of day-light had been too short for really hard work. Why should I mention just now our toils' thousand stunners which a free spirit one would think oughtn't to have to suffer? [65] See the solid phalanxes of "galoches" from the city: the ground trembles under the tramp of their iron-shod heels; in rushes the mob and lends to the lesson stolid ears—ears such as of yore Phrygian Marsyas directed to Phoebus' lyre—and complains that street corners have not been posted with placards, [70] that their old friend Alexander is held in no honour, that the text-book is not big-bellied with full marginal notes, and that Guido's worthless manual is neglected and suppressed. Off they run with loud murmuring to Montaigue or some other college where things are near the A B C level.

The Latin:

Hinc subitae mortes, et spes praerepta senectae,
   Nec tibi fert Clio, nec tibi Phoebus opem.        30
Si caput in cubitum lassa cervice recumbat,
   Et sopor exiguus lumina fessa premat:
Ecce, vigil subito quartam denuntiat horam,
   Et tonitru horrifico lumina clausa quatit:
Excutit attonito somnos sonus aeris acuti,        35
   Admonet et molli membra levare toro.
Vix siluit, jam quinta sonat; jam janitor urget
   Cymbala, tirones ad sua signa vocans:
Mox sequitur longa metuendus veste magister,
   Ex humero laevo mantica terga premit.        40
Dextera crudeli in pueros armata flagello est:
   Laeva tenet magni forte Maronis opus.
Jam sedet, et longis clamoribus ilia rumpit,
   Excutit implicitos ingenioque locos.
Corrigit, et delet, mutat, vigilata labore        45
   Promit, in obscuro quae latuere diu.
Magna, nec ingeniis aevi explorata prioris,
   Eruit, inventas nec sibi celat opes.
[Ignava incerta stertit plerumque juventus,
   Cogitat aut curae multa priora suae.]        50
Alter abest, petiturque alter, mercede parato
   Qui vocet, et fictos condiat arte dolos.
Ille caret caligis, huic rupta calceus alter
   Pelle hiat: ille dolet, scribit et ille domum.
Hinc virgae, strepitusque sonant, fletuque rigantur        55
   Ora, inter lacrymas transigiturque dies.
Dein nos sacra vocant, dein rursus lectio, rursus
   Verbera: sumendo vix datur hora cibo.
Protinus amota sequitur nova lectio mensa,
   Excipit hanc rursus altera, coena brevis:        60
Surgitur, in seram noctem labor improbus exit,
   Ceu brevis aerumnis hora diurna foret.
Quid memorem interea fastidia mille laborum,
   Quae non ingenua mente ferenda putes?
Ecce tibi erronum plenas ex urbe phalanges,        65
   Terraque ferratis calcibus icta tremit:
Turba ruit, stolidasque legentibus applicat aures,
   Quales Phoebacae Phryx dedit ante lyrae.
Et queritur nullis onerari compita chartis,
   Esse et Alexandrum nullo in honore suum:        70
Nec gravidum pleno turgescere margine librum,
   Neglectumque premi vile Guidonis opus.
Curritur ad montem magno cum murmure acutum,
   Aut alias aedes, sicubi beta sapit.

Greek Anthology 10.124 (by Glycon; tr. W.R. Paton):

All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothing,
for all that is cometh from unreason.

πάντα γέλως καὶ πάντα κόνις καὶ πάντα τὸ μηδέν,
    πάντα γὰρ ἐξ ἀλόγων ἐστὶ τὰ γινόμενα.

D.L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 112:

Jack London (1876-1916), The Iron Heel, chapter VII:

"It will make a sensation," I asserted. "Didn't you see the reporters scribbling like mad while he was speaking?"

"Not a line of which will appear in to-morrow's papers."

"I can't believe it," I cried.

"Just wait and see," was the answer. "Not a line, not a thought that he uttered. The daily press? The daily suppressage!"

"But the reporters," I objected. "I saw them."

"Not a word that he uttered will see print. You have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established."

Greek Anthology 10.49 (by Palladas; tr. W.R. Paton):

They say that even ants and gnats have bile.
So, while the most insignificant beasts have bile,
do you bid me have no bile and lie exposed to the attacks of all the world,
not even wronging by mere words
those who wrong me by deeds? I have for the rest of my life to stop up
my mouth with a rush and not even breathe.

καὶ μύρμηκι χολὴν καὶ σέρφῳ φασὶν ἐνεῖναι·
    εἶτα χολὴν μὲν ἔχει ζῷα τὰ φαυλότατα,
ἐκκεῖσθαι δ᾿ ἐμὲ πᾶσι χολὴν μὴ ἔχοντα κελεύεις,
    ὡς μηδὲ ψιλοῖς ῥήμασιν ἀνταδικεῖν
τοὺς ἔργοις ἀδικοῦντας; ἀποφράξαντα δεήσει
    λοιπὸν ὁλοσχοίνῳ τὸ στόμα, μηδὲ πνέειν.

The same, tr. Tony Harrison:

Mere ants and gnats and trivia with stings
vent their aggression like all living things,
but you, you think that I ought to be meek,
lay myself open, 'turn the other cheek',
not even verbal comebacks, but stay dumb
and choking on my gag till Kingdom Come!

William Blake (1757-1827), "Proverbs of Hell," The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

Jack London (1876-1916), The Iron Heel, chapter I (Ernest Everhard speaking):

"You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorant statement, that you do not know the working class. But you are not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class? You do not live in the same locality with the working class. You herd with the capitalist class in another locality. And why not? It is the capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you are wearing to-night. And in return you preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do not menace the established order of society."

[....]

"So I say to you, go ahead and preach and earn your pay, but for goodness' sake leave the working class alone. You belong in the enemy's camp. You have nothing in common with the working class. Your hands are soft with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of eating." (Here Dr. Ballingford winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth. It was said he had not seen his own feet in years.) "And your minds are filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men of the Swiss Guard. Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, with your preaching, the interests of your employers; but do not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in the two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believe me, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore, the working class can do better without you than with you."

Alexander Souter (1873-1949), "Preface," A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), pp. v-vi:

Lexicographers can claim to know some of the joys and excitements of all explorers. We, too, have often to hack our way through tangled growths. These tangled growths are sometimes tralaticious blunders which have passed undetected, or at least unremoved, through a series of dictionaries. Texts rapidly produced for the press in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, often from late, poor, and interpolated, if readily accessible, manuscripts, have fallen under the eyes of a lexicographer who has duly recorded a word which is not what the author wrote; and this error has been copied by later lexicographers.

[....]

The joy of discovering unrecorded words is perhaps even greater, and of these there are thousands in this book that will not be found in any of the ordinary handbooks, and even a number that are not in the Thesaurus itself.

Thanks very much to the anonymous benefactor who gave me this book.

H.J. Massingham (1888-1952), Remembrance: An Autobiography (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1942), pp. 117-118:

The complexity of our society is too heavy a burden for it to bear. Mediaeval society was intricate enough but not merely from without; its spiritual life was sufficiently developed to balance against its own errors, discords, cruelties and superstitions. Ours, alas, is so hollow as almost to form a vacuum. Consequently, its movement, abrupt or gradual, will be katabolic and towards simplification. In that sense, its direction will be from the modern towards the mediaeval, unless the disintegration is more radical. It will move from the bigger towards the smaller, from parasitism towards self-support, from centralisation towards federated groups, from urban towards rural, from the factory towards the workshop, from mechanisation towards the co-operation of hand and eye with brain. At least, it will if it is to go on living. These excellent things are all in essence mediaeval.

George Buchanan (1506-1582), Elegies, I (Quam misera sit conditio docentium literas humaniores Lutetiae, i.e., How wretched is the condition of those who teach classics in Paris), lines 29-74, loosely translated by T.D. Robb in George Buchanan: A Memorial, 1506-1906, ed. D.A. Millar (St. Andrews: W.C. Henderson & Son, 1907), pp. 254-256:

What guerdon for it all? Long years and glory?
In no wise does the Muse of song or story
So royally reward. An early death
Is all the comfort that she promiseth.

For sleep's denied. The tired neck may bow,
And on the pillowed elbow droop the brow,
A little sleep may cool your burning sight,
When sudden clamour fills the startled night.
Wildly you wake, unnerved for what dread shock,
And hear the night-watch bellowing "Four o'clock!"
With brazen din he deafens night around,
Warning day's bondmen not to sleep too sound.
Scarce is he silent, scarce your eyelids close,
When "Five o'clock!" shatters your last repose.
Clang goes the bell! The porter—sleepless ass!—
Is ringing scholars to your morning class.

Prompt at the call, and dreadful in the frown
He wears to match his flowing Roman gown,
Behold the master follow forth to school.
He clutches what proclaims a sceptred rule,
And looks as he'd out-tyrannise the Turk;
In the other hand he holds the morning's work,
Virgil perchance,—so great, yet thus so mean.

Now at his desk he eyes the restless scene,
And cracks his cheeks with shouting. Say he wins,
And quiet—most comparative—begins;
He takes his task, unravelling some skein
Of tangled Latin, seeking to make plain
To careless boys the questionable text
That had his midnight vigil so perplext.
He changes this and that, with skill to note
Errors the classic author never wrote,
And vindicates the readings that may be,
From lore long latent in his memory.

He scatters knowledge with a lordly hand;
Things that no former age could understand
Are his attainment; and he casts away
Those treasures of his cornucopia,—
But casts to slothful swine. A steady snore
Comes from the crowd that study on the floor:
And those who seem awake in studious wise
Are knaves that listen only with their eyes.

Some one is truant; another has taken care
To hire some rascal with a specious air
To have him called away. Or, this cold morn,
One has no boots; another's boots are worn
To sandals. In that corner over there,
Some booby blubbers for a mother's care;
Or there is one that lets his fancy roam,
And, 'stead of writing notes, is writing home.

Wherefore the switch is busy, and the sound
Of frequent lamentation floats around;
Tears channel youthful cheeks; and, when 'tis run,
The record of the hour is—Nothing done.

Then comes the call to prayers; after which
Another hour of Latin and the switch.
Then breakfast: but the board is hardly set
When it is borne away. We only whet
Our appetites ere clangs the bell again,
Renewing the futility and pain
Of Latin lessons. When that weird is o'er
Comes dinner, and as breakfast proved before,
'Tis but a snack ere we are called away.
Whither? The tired to sleep, the fresh to play?
No, Latin lends small heed to set of sun,
And we are deep in night ere work is done,—
Such work as 'tis. Why should I court your scorn
Telling the thousand degradations borne
In classes crowded with an adult crew
Too old to birch, yet seeking nothing new,
Nor even come to keep their learning green.
All day the city's nuisance they have been.
Now from the streets dusk-driven, where so well
Ensconce themselves and make a childish hell
As in those rooms where once they suffered woe?
So, foolishly indulged to come and go
At their sweet will, into the class they pour
With clogs that well-nigh clatter through the floor,—
A graceless rabble! Making no pretence
To listen, for their dull indifference
Is God's own blame: they fail in heavenly fire,
As the Phrygian failed when Phoebus charmed his lyre.

Yet they'll complain: "Why are no posters out
To tell us what the lectures are about?"
Or, "This new grammar! Why have you forsook
Old Alexander? Never a better book!
Do you fancy that we bothered with his notes!"
Nay, even neglected Guido has their votes!
So, with a hue and cry for Latin grammar—
The sound old style!—they rush with rowdy clamour
To Montaigu, or whereso they shall find
An atmosphere to suit the idle mind.

The Latin (id., pp. 250-252, line numbers added):

Hinc subitae mortes, et spes praerepta senectae,
   Nec tibi fert Clio, nec tibi Phoebus opem.        30
Si caput in cubitum lassa cervice recumbat,
   Et sopor exiguus lumina fessa premat:
Ecce, vigil subito quartam denuntiat horam,
   Et tonitru horrifico lumina clausa quatit:
Excutit attonito somnos sonus aeris acuti,        35
   Admonet et molli membra levare toro.
Vix siluit, jam quinta sonat; jam janitor urget
   Cymbala, tirones ad sua signa vocans:
Mox sequitur longa metuendus veste magister,
   Ex humero laevo mantica terga premit.        40
Dextera crudeli in pueros armata flagello est:
   Laeva tenet magni forte Maronis opus.
Jam sedet, et longis clamoribus ilia rumpit,
   Excutit implicitos ingenioque locos.
Corrigit, et delet, mutat, vigilata labore        45
   Promit, in obscuro quae latuere diu.
Magna, nec ingeniis aevi explorata prioris,
   Eruit, inventas nec sibi celat opes.
[Ignava incerta stertit plerumque juventus,
   Cogitat aut curae multa priora suae.]        50
Alter abest, petiturque alter, mercede parato
   Qui vocet, et fictos condiat arte dolos.
Ille caret caligis, huic rupta calceus alter
   Pelle hiat: ille dolet, scribit et ille domum.
Hinc virgae, strepitusque sonant, fletuque rigantur        55
   Ora, inter lacrymas transigiturque dies.
Dein nos sacra vocant, dein rursus lectio, rursus
   Verbera: sumendo vix datur hora cibo.
Protinus amota sequitur nova lectio mensa,
   Excipit hanc rursus altera, coena brevis:        60
Surgitur, in seram noctem labor improbus exit,
   Ceu brevis aerumnis hora diurna foret.
Quid memorem interea fastidia mille laborum,
   Quae non ingenua mente ferenda putes?
Ecce tibi erronum plenas ex urbe phalanges,        65
   Terraque ferratis calcibus icta tremit:
Turba ruit, stolidasque legentibus applicat aures,
   Quales Phoebacae Phryx dedit ante lyrae.
Et queritur nullis onerari compita chartis,
   Esse et Alexandrum nullo in honore suum:        70
Nec gravidum pleno turgescere margine librum,
   Neglectumque premi vile Guidonis opus.
Curritur ad montem magno cum murmure acutum,
   Aut alias aedes, sicubi beta sapit.

Other translations include:

• Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560), "L'Adieu aux Muses," on which see Nathalie Catellani-Dufrêne, "L'Adieu aux Muses: Joachim du Bellay, traducteur de George Buchanan," Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 69.2 (2007) 425-433
• Robert Garioch (1909-1981), "The Humanists' Trauchles in Paris," Complete Poetical Works (Edinburgh: MacDonald Publishers, 1983), pp. 29-34
• David Henry Sabrio, George Buchanan's Elegies and Silvae. Translated with an Introduction and Commentary (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1980), unavailable to me

Update: For a more literal translation of these lines, by G.E. Davie, see George Buchanan's First Elegy Again.

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• Teacher's Lament
• The Joy of Teaching
• Thankless Uphill Work
• An Intellectual Botany Bay
• The Education of the Young

David Crystal, "From gong to shitter, and closet to the House of Lords: words for a privy," Words in Time and Place: Exploring Language Through the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 71-83 (at 71):

In the beginning, judging by the words in Old English, it was all about 'going'. A gong (also spelled gang and geng), the root of many derived forms, was a passage, drain, or privy. The Anglo-Saxons had a surprising number of synonyms for privy, but none of them show the imaginative coinages of the kind we so often encounter in Old English literature, where the sea is a 'whale-road' and the sun is a 'sky-candle'. Rather, what we find is a repeated use of gang: a gangpytt ('going-pit'), gangeen ('going-place'), gangseti ('going-seat'), and gangtun ('going-yard'), or an utgang ('outgoing'), forthgang, and earsgang ('arse-going').

Other compounds are gangstol ('going-stool') and gong-thurl ('going-hole'). For a possible occurrence of gangtun see Debby Banham, ed., Monasteriales Indicia: The Anglo-Saxon Sign Language (1991; rpt. Hockwold cum Wilton: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1996), p. 41 (no. 94):

The sign of the latrine is that you put your right hand flat over your belly and by this sign you must ask permission of your superior, if you want to go there.

The Old English (Banham, p. 40, with my apparatus):

[.]yna tunes tacen is þæt þu sete þinne swyþran hand bradlinga ofer þin innoð and þu be þam tacne þe leafe scealt æt þinum ealdre abyddan gyf þe þyder lyst.

[.]yna tunes: initial omitted; Willem S. Logeman, "Zu den Indicia Monasterialia," Englische Studien 12 (1899) 305-307 (at 306) suggested Rynatunes; Nancy P. Stork, "Monastic Sign Language in Anglo-Saxon England: The Monasteriales Indicia from British Library MS Cotton Tiberius A.III," at https://web.archive.org/web/20070623071342/http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/Indicia.htm, suggested Gangtunes.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Sarah Griffiths, "Are We Closer to Finding Atlantis?" Daily Mail (January 31, 2017):

The origins of the myth of Atlantis lies [sic] solely with Greek philosopher Plato, who referred to the Bronze Age city in two of his dialogues, 'Temaeus' and the 'Critas', in the fourth century BC.

Screen capture:

Labels: typographical and other errors

Greek Anthology 10.100, lines 1-4 (by Antiphanes; tr. W.R. Paton):

Brief would be the whole span of life that we wretched men
live, even if grey old age awaited us all,
and briefer yet is the space of our prime. Therefore, while the season is ours,
let all be in plenty, song, love, carousal.

ἀνθρώποις ὀλίγος μὲν ὁ πᾶς χρόνος, ὅν ποτε δειλοὶ
   ζῶμεν, κἢν πολιὸν γῆρας ἅπασι μένῃ·
τῆς δ᾿ ἀκμῆς καὶ μᾶλλον. ὅτ᾿ οὖν χρόνος ὥριος ἡμῖν,
   πάντα χύδην ἔστω, ψαλμός, ἔρως, προπόσεις.

Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead 1.2-3 (Diogenes and Pollux speaking; tr. H.W. Fowler):

Diog. May I give you another message to those same philosophers?

Pol. Oh, I don't mind; go on.

Diog. Charge them generally to give up playing the fool, quarrelling over metaphysics, tricking each other with horn and crocodile puzzles and teaching people to waste wit on such absurdities.

Pol. Oh, but if I say anything against their wisdom, they will call me an ignorant blockhead.

Diog. Then tell them from me to go to the devil.

Pol. Very well; rely upon me.

Diog. And then, my most obliging of Polluxes, there is this for the rich:—O vain fools, why hoard gold? why all these pains over interest sums and the adding of hundred to hundred, when you must shortly come to us with nothing beyond the dead-penny?

Pol. They shall have their message too.

Diog. Ah, and a word to the handsome and strong; Megillus of Corinth, and Damoxenus the wrestler will do. Inform them that auburn locks, eyes bright or black, rosy cheeks, are as little in fashion here as tense muscles or mighty shoulders; man and man are as like as two peas, tell them, when it comes to bare skull and no beauty.

ΔΙΟΓΕΝΗΣ
βούλει καὶ πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους ἐντείλωμαί τι τοὺς φιλοσόφους;

ΠΟΛΥΔΕΥΚΗΣ
λέγε· οὐ βαρὺ γὰρ οὐδὲ τοῦτο.

ΔΙΟΓΕΝΗΣ
τὸ μὲν ὅλον παύσασθαι αὐτοῖς παρεγγύα ληροῦσι καὶ περὶ τῶν ὅλων ἐρίζουσιν καὶ κέρατα φύουσιν ἀλλήλοις καὶ κροκοδείλους ποιοῦσι καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἄπορα ἐρωτᾶν διδάσκουσι τὸν νοῦν.

ΠΟΛΥΔΕΥΚΗΣ
ἀλλὰ ἐμὲ ἀμαθῆ καὶ ἀπαίδευτον εἶναι φάσκουσι κατηγοροῦντα τῆς σοφίας αὐτῶν.

ΔΙΟΓΕΝΗΣ
σὺ δὲ οἰμώζειν αὐτοὺς παρ᾿ ἐμοῦ λέγε.

ΠΟΛΥΔΕΥΚΗΣ
καὶ ταῦτα, ὦ Διόγενες, ἀπαγγελῶ.

ΔΙΟΓΕΝΗΣ
τοῖς πλουσίοις δ᾿, ὦ φίλτατον Πολυδεύκιον, ἀπάγγελλε ταῦτα παρ᾿ ἡμῶν· τί, ὦ μάταιοι, τὸν χρυσὸν φυλάττετε; τί δὲ τιμωρεῖσθε ἑαυτοὺς λογιζόμενοι τοὺς τόκους καὶ τάλαντα ἐπὶ ταλάντοις συντιθέντες, οὓς χρὴ ἕνα ὀβολὸν ἔχοντας ἥκειν μετ᾿ ὀλίγον;

ΠΟΛΥΔΕΥΚΗΣ
εἰρήσεται καὶ ταῦτα πρὸς ἐκείνους.

ΔΙΟΓΕΝΗΣ
ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς καλοῖς τε καὶ ἰσχυροῖς λέγε, Μεγίλλῳ τε τῷ Κορινθίῳ καὶ Δαμοξένῳ τῷ παλαιστῇ, ὅτι παρ᾿ ἡμῖν οὔτε ἡ ξανθὴ κόμη οὔτε τὰ χαροπὰ ἢ μέλανα ὄμματα ἢ ἐρύθημα ἐπὶ τοῦ προσώπου ἔτι ἔστιν ἢ νεῦρα εὔτονα ἢ ὦμοι καρτεροί, ἀλλὰ πάντα μία ἡμῖν κόνις, φασί, κρανία γυμνὰ τοῦ κάλλους.

The Greek is fairly straightforward and is made even easier thanks to Evan Hayes and Stephen Nimis, Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods. An Intermediate Greek Reader. Greek Text with Running Vocabulary and Commentary (Oxford: Faenum Publishing, 2015), where this passage appears on pp. 7-9.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), "La Prière d'un païen" (tr. Francis Scarfe):

Ah, slow not thy flames:
warm my numbed heart,
voluptuousness, tormentor of souls:
O goddess, grant my prayer!

Goddess who, spread through the air,        5
art a torch in our dark cellar,
grant the prayer of a downcast soul
who offers thee a hymn of bronze.

Voluptuousness, be thou ever my queen:
assume the Siren's mask        10
of flesh and velvet,

or pour me thy heavy slumbers
in formless, mystic wine,
O voluptuousness, elastic Shade!

In French (and a bit of Latin):

Ah! ne ralentis pas tes flammes;
Réchauffe mon coeur engourdi,
Volupté, torture des âmes!
Diva! Supplicem exaudi!

Déesse dans l'air répandue,        5
Flamme dans notre souterrain!
Exauce une âme morfondue,
Qui te consacre un chant d'airain.

Volupté, sois toujours ma reine!
Prends le masque d'une sirène        10
Faite de chair et de velours,

Ou verse-moi tes sommeils lourds
Dans le vin informe et mystique,
Volupté, fantôme élastique!

From Ian Jackson: ​

You might enjoy learning about the fate of the manuscript of [D.H. Lawrence's] Sea and Sardinia. Frieda Lawrence writes in Not I, but ​the Wind (p. 133):

One day I found the manuscript of 'Sea and Sardinia' in the W.C. at Fontana Vecchia. So I told him: 'But why did you put it there, it's such a pity, it's so nicely written and tidy.' I had then no idea it might have any value, only regretted the evenly written pages having this ignominious end. But no, he had a passion for destroying his own writing.

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• Bumf
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• More Bumf
• Cacata Carta
• Bumf in Coleridge
• A Place for Reading
• Books and Toilets

Labels: noctes scatologicae