Laudator Temporis Acti

G.W. Bowersock, "Rostovtzeff in Madison," American Scholar 55.3 (Summer 1986) 391-400 (at 395):

Rostovtzeff cut a formidable figure at Madison. Short and stocky, he stood very straight. His hair was cropped in a brush style, his eyes were disconcertingly bright and piercing, and his manner always positive. He could appear frightening, and the Wisconsin students, confronted with this awesome personality, called him "Rough Stuff."

Aristophanes, Wealth 1002 and 1075 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

Once upon a time the Milesians were formidable.

πάλαι ποτ᾿ ἦσαν ἄλκιμοι Μιλήσιοι.

Once upon a time, but no more. The proverb (cf. Anacreon, fragment 426; Diodorus 10.25.2; Athenaeus 12.523 f; etc.) is applicable to certain modern nations as well.

Alan H. Sommerstein, commentary on line 1002:

This comment on their decline, which became proverbial, was ascribed by some to the sixth-century poet Anacreon (PMG 426), by some to Timocreon of Rhodes (early fifth century) (PMG 733 = Timocreon fr. 7 West), by some to a Delphic oracle given to the Carians (Demon FGrH 327 F 16) or to the Cyprians (scholia on 1075) or to Polycrates of Samos (scholia here) in response to an inquiry about the advisability of making an alliance with Miletus.

Erasmus, Poems 95 = Elegy 2, lines 55-68 (tr. Clarence H. Miller):

Then age, sad and full of griefs, rushes upon us. Then crook-backed old age, tottering along, creeps up on us, calamitous with both heavy cares and miserable diseases, encompassed by griefs and hundreds of afflictions. She will sprinkle your temples with grey hair; she will make your hairy skin hang down in folds. Then pleasure suddenly abandons your dying body and all the force and vitality of your mind fail. Beauty dies, the nimble strength of the body dies, and those roses fade from your ruddy cheeks. Suddenly your forehead is rough and furrowed with the wrinkles of old age. The light in your sunken eyes grows dim. Your head, instead of your chin, grows smooth. Finally you become a monkey, quite unlike what you were and unrecognizable even to yourself.

Tristior inde ruit ac plena doloribus aetas,        55
    Inde subit tremulo curva senecta gradu,
Et gravibus curis et tristibus aspera morbis,
    Luctibus et centum conglomerata malis.
Haec tibi temporibus canos sparsura capillos,
    Haec tibi pendentem contrahet hirta cutem.        60
Corpora tum subito linquit moribunda voluptas,
    Omnis et ingenii visque calorque cadit.
Forma perit, pereunt agiles in corpore vires,
    Et rosa purpureis excidit ista genis.
Finditur annosis subito frons aspera rugis,        65
    Decrescunt oculis lumina fusca cavis.
Pro mento fit leve caput, fis simia tandem,
    Ignotusque tibi dissimilisque tui.

On line 67, cf. Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1.2 (tr. Abraham Cohen):

When finally he has grown old, he is bent like a monkey.

Related post: Erasmus on Old Age.

Marc Bloch (1886-1944), The Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), p. 151:

As for homo religiosus, homo oeconomicus, homo politicus, and all that rigmarole of Latinized men, the list of which we could string out indefinitely, there is grave danger of mistaking them for something else than they really are: phantoms which are convenient providing they do not become nuisances. The man of flesh and bone, reuniting them all simultaneously, is the only real being.

Or, homo religiosus, homo oeconomicus, homo politicus, toute cette kyrielle d'hommes en us dont on pourrait, à plaisir, allonger la liste, le péril serait grave de les prendre pour autre chose que ce qu'ils sont en vérité: des fantômes commodes, à condition de ne pas devenir encombrants. Le seul être de chair et d'os est l'homme, sans plus, qui réunit à la fois tout cela.

Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, tr. David Gerard (London: NLB, 1976), p. 11:

We will not use those quite puerile subdivisions based on the artificial distinctions of dates, the kind of thing that is fed to schoolchildren to keep them happy: 'On what day, month, and year did the Middle Ages end?' (We would translate such a question thus: 'What date, in the mind of its inventors, marked the birth and the death of that intellectual abstraction, with no claim to existence other than pedagogic convenience?')

Aristophanes, Acharnians 352-354 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

It's terrible that the temper of gentlemen should grow so vinegary that they throw stones, and shout, and are unwilling to listen to something evenly balanced...

δεινὸν γὰρ οὕτως ὀμφακίαν πεφυκέναι
τὸν θυμὸν ἀνδρῶν ὥστε βάλλειν καὶ βοᾶν
ἐθέλειν τ᾿ ἀκοῦσαι μηδὲν ἴσον ἴσῳ φέρον...

S. Douglas Olson ad loc.:

Marc Bloch (1886-1944), The Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), p. 140:

Are we so sure of ourselves and of our age as to divide the company of our forefathers into the just and the damned?

Pour séparer, dans la troupe de nos pères, les justes des damnés, sommes-nous donc si sûrs de nous-mêmes et de notre temps?

Erasmus, letter to Jan Šlechta (November 1, 1519; tr. R.A.B. Mynors):

Another thing, it seems to me, which would reconcile many nations to the Roman church, to which all gravitate now as though to some common head, would be a readiness not to define everything over a wide field in the way we should willingly think appropriate for the subject-matter of the faith, but only such things as are clearly laid down in Holy Writ or without which the system of our salvation cannot stand. For this a few truths are enough, and the multitude are more easily persuaded of their truth if they are few. As things are, we make six hundred articles out of one, some of them of such a kind that one can be ignorant of them, or unconvinced, without peril to one's religion.

Quin et illud, mea sententia, complures populos conciliaret Ecclesiae Romanae, in quam nunc velut in caput quoddam colliguntur omnes, si non passim quaelibet sic definiantur vt velimus ad fidei negocium pertinere; sed ea duntaxat quae euidenter expressa sunt in sacris literis, aut sine quibus non constat ratio salutis nostrae. Ad haec pauca sufficiunt, et pauca citius persuadentur pluribus. Nunc ex vnico articulo sexcentos facimus, quorum aliqui tales sunt vt citra periculum pietatis vel nesciri possint vel ambigi.

Thanks to Jaume Ripoll Miralda for drawing my attention to the technique of bowdlerization employed in the series Col·lecció Fundació Bernat Metge. The series is similar to the Loeb Classical Library, in that it presents Greek or Latin texts on the left-hand pages, with a Catalan translation on the right-hand pages, but the critical apparatus and notes appear to be much more extensive than those in the LCL.

Here is an image showing how the series deals with an obscene original, from M. Valeri Marcial, Epigrames, Vol. I: Espectacles: Llibres I-IV (Barcelona: Fundació Bernat Metge, 1949), pp. 28-29 (Martial 1.46):


Note that the epigram appears in full in Latin, but instead of a translation there is a space filled with three asterisks.

For the benefit of the prurient-minded, here is the Latin with D.R. Shackleton Bailey's English translation:

Cum dicis 'propero, fac si facis,' Hedyli, languet
    protinus et cessat debilitata Venus.
expectare iube: velocius ibo retentus.
    Hedyli, si properas, dic mihi ne properem.

1 & 4 Hedyli Bentley: -le γ (deest β)

Hedylis, when you say "I'm in a hurry, do it if you're going to," forthwith my passion languishes; crippled, it subsides. Tell me to wait, and I shall go all the faster for the check. Hedylis, if you are in a hurry, tell me not to be in a hurry.

Not that obscene, really — even Walter C.A. Ker translated it in the original Loeb edition (1919). On the sex of Hedylis or Hedylus see P.T. Eden, "More Observations on Martial," Mnemosyne 52.5 (October, 1999) 578-584 (at 578-579).

Also from Jaume:

But maybe the most outstanding censorship to me was a Spanish edition of the poems by Catullus, which is quite an oddity to find these days. The famous "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" was translated into Spanish as "Os demostraré mi hombría": I will show you my manhood.

Erasmus, letter to Jan Šlechta (November 1, 1519; tr. R.A.B. Mynors):

It seems to me astonishing that nothing can be thought of so monstrous that it finds no followers.

Illud mihi mirum videri solet, nihil excogitari posse tam prodigiosum, quin suos reperiat sectatores.

Id.:

So great is the credulity of mortals, and such their infinite fertility of ideas. I believe myself that if anyone arose now and taught that religion required men and women to dance together naked in the market-place, he would not lack followers and patrons for his way of thinking.

Adeo credulum est genus mortalium et tanta est ingeniorum varietas. Equidem opinor, si quis exoriatur nunc qui doceat religiosum esse si viri nudi cum foeminis nudis saltent in foro, non defore sectae suos discipulos ac patronos.

See the entry on Šlechta by J.K. Zeman in Contemporaries of Erasmus, edd. Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), pp. 259-261.

Marc Bloch (1886-1944), The Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), p. 88:

But when certain readers complain that a single note, strutting along by itself at the foot of the page, makes their heads swim, or when certain publishers claim that their customers, doubtless less hypersensitive in reality than they would have us believe, are tortured by the mere sight of a page thus disfigured, these aesthetes merely prove their imperviousness to the most elementary maxims of an intellectual ethic. For, apart from the free play of imagination, we have no right to make any assertion which cannot be verified and a historian who in using a document indicates the source as briefly as possible (that is, the means of finding it again) is only obeying a universal rule of honesty. Corrupted by dogma and myth, current opinion, even when it is least hostile to enlightenment, has lost the very taste for verification. On that day when, having first taken care not to discourage it with useless pedantry, we shall succeed in persuading the public to measure the value of a science in proportion to its willingness to make refutation easy, the forces of reason will achieve one of their most smashing victories. Our humble notes, our finicky little references, currently lampooned by many who do not understand them are working toward that day.

Mais lorsque certains lecteurs se plaignent que la moindre ligne, faisant cavalier seul au bas du texte, leur brouille la cervelle, lorsque certains éditeurs prétendent que leurs chalands, sans doute moins hypersensibles en réalité qu'ils ne veulent bien les peindre, souffrent le martyre à la vue de toute feuille ainsi déshonorée, ces délicats prouvent simplement leur imperméabilité aux plus élémentaires préceptes d’une morale de l'intelligence. Car, hors des libres jeux de la fantaisie, une affirmation n'a le droit de se produire qu'à la condition de pouvoir être vérifiée; et pour un historien, s'il emploie un document, en indiquer le plus brièvement possible la provenance, c'est-à-dire le moyen de le retrouver, équivaut sans plus à se soumettre à une règle universelle de probité. Empoisonnée de dogmes et de mythes, notre opinion, même la moins ennemie des lumières, a perdu jusqu'au goût du contrôle. Le jour où, ayant pris soin d'abord de ne pas la rebuter par un oiseux pédantisme, nous aurons réussi à la persuader de mesurer la valeur d'une connaissance sur son empressement à tendre le cou d'avance à la réfutation, les forces de la raison remporteront une de leurs plus éclatantes victoires. C'est à la préparer que travaillent nos humbles notes, nos petites références tatillonnes que moquent aujourd'hui, sans les comprendre, tant de beaux esprits.

I miss the ironic "tant de beaux esprits" in the translation.

Related posts:

• Footnotes
• Footnotes and Marginalia
• A Long Footnote
• Apology for Extensive Annotation
• The Subject of Notes
• Text and Commentary
• Footnotes and Parentheses
• Footnotes
• The Sauce and the Fish
• Tendencies Within Classical Commentaries

Erasmus, "Additional Formulae," Colloquies, tr. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997 = Complete Works of Erasmus, 39), pp. 118-131 (at 119-120):

Christian What good's a letter without money? Just what purpose does an empty letter serve? What value has it? What good does an empty letter bring, do, serve, afford? Whom does a letter without money please? What good's an idle letter? Of what help is it? For what use? What end does it serve? What does it bring of importance? What do useless, empty letters matter?

Peter Useful, suitable, convenient for cleaning your backside with. They're serviceable for cleaning your buttocks. If you don't know their use, they're good for cleaning your behind. For wiping your buttocks. For cleaning your rear.

The Latin, from Erasmus, "Colloquiorum Familiarum Formulae," Opera Omnia, I.3 = Colloquia, ed. L.-E. Halkin, F. Bierlaire, R. Hoven (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1972), pp. 76-104 (at 81-82, with apparatus):

AVGVSTINVS. Quorsum spectant literae sine pecunia? ad quid tandem inanes conducunt literae? Quorsum valent, ad quid conferunt, faciunt, literae vacuae? Cui gratae, cui acceptae litterae sine nummis, quid emolumenti adferunt literae inanes?

CHRISTIANVS. Podici tergendo vtiles, idoneae, conducunt natibus tergendis. Si vsum nescis earum, ad anum expurgandum valent, ad nates tergendas, ad posticum purgandum.

————

purgandum B: purgandum. AVGVSTINVS. Equidem noui quendam cuius lingua malim ad hoc abuti. CHRISTIANVS. At ego noui cuius lingua nihilo tutius sit abstergi, quam aconiti foliis. AVGVSTINVS. Iste igitur dignus est, qui aconitum edat ardeleo C

Sigla:

B = ed. Louanii, Th. Martens, Cal. Mart. 1519
C = ed. Louanii, Th. Martens (1519)

Edward Lee, in a letter to Erasmus (February 1, 1520; tr. R.A.B. Mynors), quotes the passage from edition C (apparatus above), which he thought referred to him:

I should by now be ashamed to produce another of your trumped-up charges — it is so foul and disgusting, stinking as it does of the privy — were it not that it provides a second specimen of Erasmus' famous modesty. It runs like this:

AUGUSTINE What useful purpose do these vacuous studies serve?

CHRISTIAN They can be used for wiping the buttocks, and are fit for wrapping mackerel and the like.

AUGUSTINE For my part, I know a man whose tongue I would rather divert to such a task.

CHRISTIAN I on the other hand know someone by whose tongue it would be as risky to be wiped as by aconite leaves.

AUGUSTINE He really deserves then to eat aconite, the rapscalleon.

I ask you, Erasmus, are these words worthy of you? Are they worthy of a man who wishes, like you, to be thought a theologian and the world's great critic? Could one say anything filthier, more revolting, more poisonous? Is there a noisy ruffian, a buffoon, a low comedian, the keeper of a privy who could have voided anything so foul on anyone?

Erasmus defended himself against the charge of obscenity in "An Apologia in Response to the Two Invectives of Edward Lee," tr. Erika Rummel in Erasmus, Controversies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005 = Complete Works of Erasmus, 72), pp. 1-65 (at 52-53):

First of all, I ask you, dear reader, what is obscene about someone who teaches the Latin language giving this example: 'This book is good for nothing except wiping behinds.' Is it so obscene to name that part of the body when a part popularly considered more obscene is named in the Bible: 'vagina'? Tell me, if a schoolteacher threatens his boys with the rod, is he considered to speak obscenely because he names that part of the body which is usually struck? Would it be considered obscene if those who discuss the nature of living creatures named all parts of the human body by their proper names? You will say: They do so for the purpose of instruction. In this case too I give instruction in the Latin language. Would the author of a lexicon be considered obscene when he explains words denoting in Latin what is commonly regarded as filthy? Just as no blame attaches to the surgeon or physician who treats obscene parts of the body, so the person who names them for some useful purpose ought to be free of blame. I should like to ask Lee: Has he never heard the male member mentioned frivolously at social gatherings with his friends, or the word for hinder parts that is used even by respectable people? And how does this agree with his quotation from Jerome in Annotation 31? Jerome says that it is not dishonourable to mention any part of the human body. I shall not defend here the Cynics, who believe that it is not foul to say what is not foul to do. I like modesty of speech, and have always been careful to preserve it, even in books written for sport and entertainment. In this passage I certainly cannot see anything obscene. It is spoken passionately rather than obscenely against a virulent tongue that deserves to be cut out with the sword and given over to the most abject uses.

As a young man, I remember, I once travelled aboard a ship carrying the usual mixed crowd. Among them was a theologian who had made a great name for himself, a member of the Dominican order, whose sermons were popular with the people. He was a corpulent man. A sailor began joking about him for obviously leading a soft life. When he had said many ridiculous things — the kind of jokes common people usually make about prefects of nunneries — the theologian replied that he lacked only one comfort in life, which had not yet been mentioned. When the sailor asked right away what that was, he said: 'Your tongue, to wipe my backside.' Loud laughter ensued, and no one thought that it was spoken indecently, because it was spoken against a slanderous tongue. For this reason I cannot sufficiently express my surprise at Lee, whose eyes would discern a detestable obscenity in my words even though they are not spoken in my own person and are uttered during a drinking bout.

Related posts:

• Fate of Scholarly Journals
• An Ignominious End
• Yet More Bumf
• Fate of Ancient Authors
• A Capital Offence
• A Most Painful Subject
• An Episode in the History of Bumf
• Die Arschwische
• Bumf
• Bumf Again
• More Bumf
• Cacata Carta
• Bumf in Coleridge
• A Place for Reading
• Books and Toilets

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Marc Bloch (1886-1944), The Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), pp. 59-60:

It is always disagreeable to say: "I do not know. I cannot know." It must not be said except after an energetic, even a desperate search. But there are times when the sternest duty of the savant, who has first tried every means, is to resign himself to his ignorance and to admit it honestly.

Il est toujours désagréable de dire: «je ne sais pas», «je ne peux pas savoir». Il ne faut le dire qu'après avoir énergiquement, désespérément cherché. Mais il y a des moments où le plus impérieux devoir du savant est, ayant tout tenté, de se résigner à l'ignorance et de l'avouer honnêtement.

Marc Bloch (1886-1944), The Historian's Craft, tr. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), p. 38:

In truth, whoever lacks the strength, while seated at his desk, to rid the mind of the virus of the present may readily permit its poison to infiltrate even a commentary on the Iliad or the Ramayana.

En vérité, qui, une fois devant sa table de travail, n'a pas pas la force de soustraire son cerveau aux virus du moment sera fort capable d'en laisser filtrer les toxines jusque dans un commentaire de L'Iliade ou du Ramayana.

Auguste Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1904), p. 138, number 86 = Eric Ziebarth, Neue Verfluchungstafeln aus Attika, Boiotien und Euboia, number 22 (from Boeotia, now in Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Inv. 9363), tr. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World, ed. John G. Gager (1992; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 85-86, with footnotes:

(Side A) I assign Zois the Eretrian, wife of Kabeira, to Earth and to Hermes— her food, her drink, her sleep, her laughter, her intercourse,¹ her playing of the kithara,² and her entrance,³ her pleasure, her little buttocks,⁴ her thinking, her eyes ...
(Side B)⁵ and to Hermes (I consign) her wretched walk, her words, deeds, and evil talk ...

1. The Greek term sunousia could be used of social or sexual intercourse.
2. A common musical instrument, related to the zither.
3. The Greek term parodos might mean "entrance" or "passage," thus designating a particular way of entering a room. But it was also used as a technical term in Greek theater and could refer to public recitation. Here it may also have sexual overtones.
4. The Greek term pugeón generally referred to the buttocks but might also be used of certain kinds of dancing, which seems to fit well here where other aspects of performance or entertainment are in focus.
5. The writing on Side B is quite fragmentary.

The Greek:

A.1 παρατίθομαι Ζο-
ίδα τὴν Ἐρετρικὴν
τὴν Καβείρα γυναῖκα
[— τ]ῆ Γῆ καὶ τῶ Ἑρμῆ, τὰ βρώ-
ματα αὐτῆς, τὸν ποτᾶ, τὸν ὕ-
πνον αὐτῆς, τὸν γέλωτα,
τὴν συνουσίην, τὸ κιθ{φε}άρισ[μα] {κιθάρισμα}
αὐτῆς κὴ τὴν πάροδον αὐ-
[τῆς], τὴν ἡδον<ὴν>, τὸ πυγίον,
[τὸ] <φρό>νημα, {ν} ὀφθα[λμοὺς]
— —ααπηρη(?) τῆ Γῆ.
B.1 καὶ τῶ Ἑρμῆ τὴν
περιπάτη<σι>ν μοχθη-
ρ[ὰ]ν, ἔπεα [ἔ]ργα, ῥήματα κακὰ
καὶ τὸ — — —

Some discussions:

• Eugen G. Kagarow, Griechische Fluchtafeln (Lwów: Societas Philologa Polonorum, 1929 = Eos, Supplementa, 4), p. 51
• Christopher A. Faraone, "The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells," in Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, edd. Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (1991; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3-32 (at 14)
• Lucia Prauscello, "A Note on Tabula Defixionis 22(A).5-7 Ziebarth: When a Musical Performance Enacts Love," Classical Quarterly 54 (2004) 333-339
• Esther Eidinow, Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 2-3, 143, 217-218
• Kevin Solez, "Zois the Eretrian, wife of Kabeiras (22 Ziebarth): Music, sexuality, and κιθάρισμα in cultural context," Eugesta 5 (2015) 85-99

Who commissioned this curse tablet directed against Zois? Some think it was a romantic rival for her husband Kabeira's affection, others that it was a fellow musician seeking to upstage her and acquire her business clients. Maybe it was just another woman, envious of Zois' charms. Her naughty way of sashaying around (περιπάτησιν μοχθηρὰν) and entering a room (πάροδον) was quite fetching, I imagine, especially with her diminutive derrière (πυγίον). For some reason I'm reminded of Horace's "dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, / dulce loquentem."

Ian Jackson (October 27, 1951 - February 18, 2018)
Someone should do for my dear departed friend Ian Jackson, scholar, author, and antiquarian bookseller, what he recently did for one of his friends, namely write a detailed account of his life and achievements — see Bernard M. Rosenthal, 5 May 1920 - 14 January 2017: A Biographical and Bibliographical Account by Ian Jackson in the Style of Pierre Bayle (1646-1706) (Berkeley: The Wednesday Table, 2017). I don't have the knowledge or skill for such a tribute, but now that the initial shock of Ian's passing is starting to wear off, it would be disloyal and ungrateful of me not to say a few words, however inadequate, about this remarkable man. I was going to wait until his obituary appeared in the newspaper before writing anything, but news of his tragic and untimely death has by now already appeared elsewhere.

Ian first swam into my ken (he would have immediately caught the allusion and, I hope, pardoned the cliché) in June of 2011, when I received in the mail a package from him filled with books, articles (by himself and others), and a charming letter of introduction. It was to be the first of many such packages. Everywhere I turn in my house I see gifts given to me by Ian, from pictures on the walls to books (hundreds of them) on the shelves.

It was also in June of 2011 that the acknowledgement "Hat tip: Ian Jackson" first appeared on this blog. Ian, polymath and polyglot that he was, should have had his own corner of the World Wide Web from which to disseminate witty observations and remarks on his extensive reading, but he chose instead to favor me with much of his Lesefrüchte. I still have boxes of unused material which he sent me, and so "Hat tip: Ian Jackson" will continue to appear in this space, despite his death.

Ian Jackson was born in Montreal, the son of physicist John Jackson and Barbara Cook. He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz, in his words "attracted by the fact that it was then still possible to graduate essentially by reading in the library — with the aid of sympathetic professors, chiefly British expatriates with mere M.A.'s, in the twilight years of that Golden Age before the 'Ph.D. incubus' barred many a delightful eccentric from the academic world." In 1973 he received the degree of B.A. in Classics. That might have been the end of his formal education, but he soon became through self-tuition an immensely erudite independent scholar, spending two or three hours a day reading in local academic libraries (primarily at the University of California at Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union).

His knowledge of foreign languages and literatures was exceptional. A native Frenchman said of him, "Ian speaks excellent French — the French of the 18th century." Among his many unpublished works is a wonderfully idiomatic translation of Roland Cailleux's La Religion du Coeur (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1985), in which various minor characters give their version of the Gospel narrative. Ian never studied Italian in school, but picked it up from listening to opera and from his knowledge of other Romance languages. Another unpublished work is Lettres à une Inconnue, an English translation of Leo Spitzer's letters, over a hundred in all, written in Italian to a young woman.

Many of Ian's works appeared in self-published limited editions under the imprint "Ian Jackson Books." With his wife Ann Arnold (artist, book illustrator, and fascinating and attractive figure in her own right), he published such titles as The Chaste Mouse and the Wanton Mouse (Lunenburg: Stinehour Editions, 2016) and Addie & Zika (Berkeley: Ian Jackson Books, 2017). Under the anagrammatic pseudonym Jan Cosinka, he wrote Teach Yourself Malkielese (Berkeley: Ian Jackson, 2006), a study of the idiolect of the Romance philologist Yakov Malkiel. The speech of his own father was the subject of another book, Mathein Pathein: A Thesaurus of the Idiolect of John David Jackson (1925-2016) (Berkeley: Ian Jackson, 2016). His ground-breaking study The Price-Codes of the Book-Trade: A Preliminary Guide (Berkeley: Ian Jackson, 2010) was followed by a 2nd revised and enlarged edition (Narberth: Bruce McKittrick, 2017). These are just a few of his many books.

Ian contributed articles, book reviews, and obituaries (in English, French and Italian) to periodicals such as Landscape, Fine Print, North American Pomona, Garden History, The Bookplate Journal, The Independent, The Book Collector, Bookdealer, Petits Propos Culinaires, Archives of Natural History, Pacific Horticulture, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Conférence, Belfagor, and Taxon. Just to compile a list of his writings would in itself be a worthy act of pietas, but the materials to do so are currently unavailable to me. I have some of his books, and I have started to make a collection, for my own use, of his Belfagor and Taxon articles from the JSTOR repository.

That such a man chose to make me his friend is a high honor, and I will do my best to perpetuate his memory in whatever small way I can. Although we never met in person (he didn't drive, and I rarely leave home), I have several photographs of Ian. Here he is, surrounded by some of his favorite things, shortly after being diagnosed with the cruel disease which took him away from family and friends much too soon:


I would be very glad to receive (megilleland AT gmail.com) and perhaps to publish reminiscences from Ian's other friends.

Peter Gay (1923-2015), My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 44:

In my fond imagination I had thought of rage as a fixed quantity. The more I released, the less would be left. But it soon appeared that my fury was being fed by a subterranean stream that continuously refilled the reservoir I thought I had emptied.

Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2010), p. 209:

For a long time now we have understood ourselves as traveling toward some sort of industrial paradise, some new Eden conceived and constructed entirely by human ingenuity. And we have thought ourselves free to use and abuse nature in any way that might further this enterprise. Now we face overwhelming evidence that we are not smart enough to recover Eden by assault, and that nature does not tolerate or excuse our abuses.

Erasmus, Complaint of Peace 18 (tr. Betty Radice):

Tell me, how can the soldier during divine worship pray in the words 'Our Father'? What impudence, to dare call on God as Father, when you are making for your brother's throat! 'Hallowed be thy name.' How could the name of God be less hallowed than by your violence towards each other? 'Thy kingdom come.' Is this how you pray, when you are planning so much bloodshed to get a kingdom for yourself? 'Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.' But God's will is for peace, and you are preparing for war. Do you ask for daily bread from our common Father when you burn your brother's crops and would prefer them to be lost to you rather than to benefit him? And then, how can you say 'Forgive us the debts we owe, as we forgive those who are indebted to us,' you who are hurrying to murder your kin? You pray to be spared the danger of being put to the test, but you risk danger to yourself so that you can endanger your brother. Do you beg to be delivered from the evil one while you are plotting the worst of evils against your brother at his prompting?

Quaeso, quid in hisce sacris orat miles, Pater noster? Os durum, audes eum appellare Patrem, qui fratris tui iugulum petis? Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Qui magis dehonestari poterat nomen Dei, quam istiusmodi inter vos tumultibus? Adveniat regnum tuum. Sic oras, qui tanto sanguine tyrannidem tuam moliris? Fiat voluntas tua, quemadmodum in coelo, ita et in terra. Pacem vult ille, et tu bellum paras? Panem quotidianum a communi Patre petis, qui fraternas exuris segetes, et tibi quoque mavis perire, quam illi prodesse? Iam quonam ore dices illud? Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris, qui ad parricidium festinas? Deprecaris periculum tentationis, qui tuo periculo fratrem in periculum pertrahis? A malo liberari postulas, cuius instinctu summum malum fratri machinaris?

Peter Gay (1923-2015), My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 179-180:

My father did his best, in fact, to be a good citizen-to-be. When he encountered complaining refugees, whom he disdainfully called "the Byunskis," he was pitiless with them. This unlovely epithet was loosely based on an invidious comparison popular with a number of German Jews who had not adjusted to the United States: Bei uns in Deutschland war alles besser, they would say, "At home in Germany everything was better." Though not normally a preacher, my father would give little sermons on the text of gratitude. Emigrés ought to be glad to be alive and to have landed in the hospitable, democratic United States.