Laudator Temporis Acti

On the night of his 'conversion' Licentius left to go out to the lavatory, where he sat loudly chanting his favourite line from the Psalms, 'O God of hosts, convert us...', set to Ambrose's new music. Monnica hammered him for singing these words in such an improper place. He tried to answer back: if an enemy was detaining him in the lavatory, surely God would heed his words? Monnica was not impressed with his facetiousness. It took Augustine on the following morning to show him that his singing about 'conversion' had almost been prophetic.²⁷ Even the time and place, Augustine observed, had been apt, whatever Monnica said. The night was dark, the lavatory filthy, and the conversion of which Licentius sang was a conversion from the 'darkness' of error and the 'filth of the body and its stains'.

27. Aug. Ord. I, 8.22-3.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Whatever difficulties he may have had with philosophy, Latin, and calculus, there had never been a time since the age of twelve when Eddie Fislinger had had difficulty in understanding what the Lord God Almighty wanted, and why, all through history, he had acted thus or thus.

His only formal education had been in country schools; and of all books save the Bible, revivalistic hymnals, a concordance handy for finding sermon-texts, and a manual of poultry-keeping, he was soundly ignorant....But it would have been a waste of pity to sigh over Brother Karkis as a plucky poor student. He had no longing for further knowledge; he was certain that he already had it all.

The straight ones serve me with reproof
    Because I never learn their rules:
At least I wisely keep aloof
    From squabble of pulpits and the schools.

Daß ich von Sitte nichts gelernt,
Darüber tadelt mich ein jeder;
Doch bleib ich weislich weit entfernt
Vom Streit der Schulen und Katheder.

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world. . . .

Dans tout homme sommeille un prophète, et quand il s'éveille il y a un peu plus de mal dans le monde...

And for myself no other thing can I see sweeter than one's own land.

                                                            οὔ τοι ἐγώ γε
ἧς γαίης δύναμαι γλυκερώτερον ἄλλο ἰδέσθαι.

So firmly-rooted and so sound is the noble and liberal character of our city, and endowed also with such a hatred of the barbarian, because we are pure-blooded Greeks, unadulterated by barbarian stock. For there cohabit with us none of the type of Pelops, or Cadmus, or Aegyptus or Danaus, and numerous others of the kind, who are naturally barbarians though nominally Greeks; but our people are pure Greeks and not a barbarian blend; whence it comes that our city is imbued with a whole-hearted hatred of alien races.

οὕτω δή τοι τό γε τῆς πόλεως γενναῖον καὶ ἐλεύθερον βέβαιόν τε καὶ ὑγιές ἐστι καὶ φύσει μισοβάρβαρον, διὰ τὸ εἰλικρινῶς εἶναι Ἕλληνες καὶ ἀμιγεῖς βαρβάρων. οὐ γὰρ Πέλοπες οὐδὲ Κάδμοι οὐδὲ Αἴγυπτοί τε καὶ Δαναοὶ οὐδὲ ἄλλοι πολλοὶ φύσει μὲν βάρβαροι ὄντες, νόμῳ δὲ Ἕλληνες, συνοικοῦσιν ἡμῖν, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτοὶ Ἕλληνες, οὐ μιξοβάρβαροι οἰκοῦμεν, ὅθεν καθαρὸν τὸ μῖσος ἐντέτηκε τῇ πόλει τῆς ἀλλοτρίας φύσεως.

The ancients will never become obsolete; they are and remain the lodestar for all our efforts, whether in literature or the plastic arts, and we must never lose sight of this. Discredit and disgrace await the age that dares to set aside the ancients.

Nie werden die Alten veralten. Sie sind und bleiben der Polarstern für alle unsere Bestrebungen, sei es in der Litteratur, oder in der bildenden Kunst, den wir nie aus den Augen verlieren dürfen. Schande wartet des Zeitalters, welches sich vermessen möchte, die Alten bei Seite zu setzen.

Credulity and Falsehood copulate, and give birth to Opinion.

Le mensonge et la crédulité s'accouplent et engendrent l'Opinion.

Titullus, I warn you, live. It is always late for that.
Though you start in your schooldays, it's late.

Titulle, moneo, vive: semper hoc serum est;
sub paedagogo coeperis licet, serum est.

sumen, aprum, leporem, boletos, ostrea, mullos

• Some Lines in Lucretius
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Sidonius
• Verse-Filling Asyndeton
• Verse-Filling Asyndeton: Some Greek Examples
• Another Greek Example of Verse-Filling Asyndeton
• More Examples of Asyndeton Filling Hexameters
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters in Corippus
• Twelve Gods
• Seven Cities
• A Hexameter Consisting of Nouns in Asyndeton
• More Hexameters Consisting of Words in Asyndeton
• Hexameters Consisting of Words in Asyndeton: Dracontius
• Zopyrus' Victims
• A Latin Hexameter Consisting of Adjectives in Asyndeton
• Hexameters Consisting Entirely of Words in Asyndeton: More Greek Examples
• A Sojourn in the Country
• Destruction
• Hexameters Consisting Entirely of Words in Asyndeton: A Horatian Example
• Asyndeton Filling Hexameters: Bernard of Cluny, De Contemptu Mundi, Book I
• A Good Land
• A Greek Hexameter Consisting of Adjectives in Asyndeton

• principumque princeps (6.4.1)
• tribadum tribas (7.70.1)

• King of Kings, and Lord of Lords
• King of Kings Again
• Aeschylus?

A man who is "sound of mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.

L'homme sain d'esprit est celui qui porte le fou à l'intérieur.

Perhaps nothing astonishes the observer of the Greek world more than when he discovers that from time to time the Greeks made as it were a festival of all their passions and evil natural inclinations and even instituted a kind of official order of proceedings in the celebration of what was all-too-human in them: this constitutes the real paganism of their world, uncomprehended by and incomprehensible to Christianity, which has always despised and combatted it with the greatest severity. — They took this all-too-human to be inescapable and, instead of reviling it, preferred to accord it a kind of right of the second rank through regulating it within the usages of society and religion: indeed, everything in man possessing power they called divine and inscribed it on the walls of their Heaven. They do not repudiate the natural drive that finds expression in the evil qualities but regulate it and, as soon as they have discovered sufficient prescriptive measures to provide these wild waters with the least harmful means of channeling and outflow, confine them to definite cults and days. This is the root of all the moral free-mindedness of antiquity. One granted to the evil and suspicious, to the animal and backward, likewise to the barbarian, the pre-Greek and Asiatic, that still lived on in the foundations of the Hellenic nature, a moderate discharge, and did not strive after their total annihilation.

Vielleicht gibt es nichts Befremdenderes für den, welcher sich die griechische Welt ansieht, als zu entdecken, dass die Griechen allen ihren Leidenschaften und bösen Naturhängen von Zeit zu Zeit gleichsam Feste gaben und sogar eine Art Festordnung ihres Allzumenschlichen von Staats wegen einrichteten: es ist dies das eigentlich Heidnische ihrer Welt, vom Christentume aus nie begriffen, nie zu begreifen und stets auf das härteste bekämpft und verachtet. — Sie nahmen jenes Allzumenschliche als unvermeidlich und zogen vor, statt es zu beschimpfen, ihm eine Art Recht zweiten Ranges durch Einordnung in die Bräuche der Gesellschaft und des Kultus zu geben: ja alles, was im Menschen Macht hat, nannten sie göttlich und schrieben es an die Wände ihres Himmels. Sie leugnen den Naturtrieb, der in den schlimmen Eigenschaften sich ausdrückt, nicht ab, sondern ordnen ihn ein und beschränken ihn auf bestimmte Kulte und Tage, nachdem sie genug Vorsichtsmassregeln erfunden haben, um jenen wilden Gewässern einen möglichst unschädlichen Abfluss geben zu können. Dies ist die Wurzel aller moralistischen Freisinnigkeit des Altertums. Man gönnte dem Bösen und Bedenklichen, dem Tierisch-Rückständigen ebenso wie dem Barbaren, Vor-Griechen und Asiaten, welcher im Grunde des griechischen Wesens noch lebte, eine mässige Entladung und strebte nicht nach seiner völligen Vernichtung.

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out every day: massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without destroying each other, without hating each other to death?

Quelle que soit la grande ville où le hasard me porte, j'admire qu'il ne s'y déclenche pas tous les jours des soulèvements, des massacres, une boucherie sans nom, un désordre de fin du monde. Comment, sur un espace aussi réduit, tant d'hommes peuvent-ils coexister sans se détruire, sans se haïr mortellement?

What the young need is to listen to Mozart, look at Chardin, learn geography, and memorize miles of poetry.

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous. Which does not keep our thoughts from being contaminated by the presence of the human, from stinking of the human, and from being unable to cleanse themselves of it. Of what truths are we capable, to what revelation can we rise, when this pestilence asphyxiates the mind and disqualifies it from considering anything but the pernicious and fetid animal whose emanations it endures? He who is too weak to declare war on mankind must never forget, in his moments of fervor, to pray for a second Flood, more radical than the first.

La multiplication de nos semblables confine à l'immonde le devoir de les aimer, au saugrenu. Il n'empêche que toutes nos pensées sont contaminées par la présence de l'humain, qu'elles sentent l'humain, et qu'elles n'arrivent pas à s'en dégager. De quelle vérité seraient-elles susceptibles, à quelle révélation pourraient-elles se hausser, quand cette pestilence asphyxie l'esprit et le rend impropre à considérer autre chose que l'animal pernicieux et fétide dont il subit les émanations? Celui qui est trop faible pour déclarer la guerre à l'homme ne devrait jamais oublier, dans ses moments de ferveur, de prier pour l'avènement d'un second déluge, plus radical que le premier.

It is a good thing even to lie with a woman
in love.

ἀγαθὸν δὲ γυναικί περ ἐν φιλότητι
μίσγεσθ᾽...

Sophoclism. — Who has ever put more water into their wine than the Greeks! Sobriety and gracefulness combined — that was the privilege of the nobility of Athens at the time of Sophocles and after him. Imitate them who can! In life and in works!

Sophokleismus. — Wer hat mehr Wasser in den Wein gegossen als die Griechen! Nüchternheit und Grazie verbunden — das war das Adels-Vorrecht des Atheners zur Zeit des Sophokles und nach ihm. Mache es nach, wer da kann! Im Leben und Schaffen!

The meals which were brought to the Elect were therefore selected for their richness in Light. By eating fruit and grain, they killed nothing. Instead, their stomachs separated out the waste matter (perhaps in visibly greater bulk, as they were vegetarians): it was then excreted, but never into water as it would pollute it. For the Elect, a modern lavatory would be an abomination. After digesting it, the Elect then breathed out the remaining Light from their mouths, especially while praying and singing. They also sweated it, hiccupped it or even, so the older Augustine mocked, farted it out to set it on its way back to heaven. Manichaeism is the only world religion to have believed in the redemptive power of farts.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

What is more, even Grammar, the basis of all education, baffles the brains of the younger generation today. For if you take note, there is not a single modern schoolboy who can compose verses or write a decent letter. I doubt too whether one in a hundred can read a Latin author, or decipher a word of any foreign language. — And no wonder, for at every level of our educational system you'll find Humbug in charge, and his colleague Flattery tagging along behind him. And as for dons and Divinity lecturers — the men who are supposed to master all branches of learning, and be ready to debate every question and answer every argument — I am ashamed to say that if you were to examine them tomorrow in the Arts and Sciences, they would all be ploughed!

Grammer, the ground of al, bigileth now children:        370
For is noon of thise newe clerkes—whoso nymeth hede—
That kan versifye faire ne formaliche enditen,
Ne naught oon among an hundred that an auctour kan construwe,
Ne rede a lettre in any langage but in Latyn or in Englissh.
Go now to any degree, and but if gile be maister,        375
And flaterere his felawe [to fourmen under hym],
Muche wonder me thynketh amonges us alle!
Doctours of decrees and of divinite maistres,
That sholde konne and knowe alle kynnes clergie,
And answere to arguments and a1so to a quodlibet—        380
I dar noght siggen it for shame—if swiche were apposed,
Thei sholde faillen of hir Philosophie, and in Phisik bothe.

No, quite the contrary, I do have a religion, my own religion, and in fact I'm more religious than all of them, with their charades and their mumbo-jumbo. Yes indeed, I do worship God! I believe in a Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it's of no importance to me, who put us here on earth to do our duty as citizens and fathers; but I don't need to go into a church and kiss silver platters and dig into my pocket to fatten up a lot of humbugs who eat better than you or I do! Because he can be worshipped just as well in a wood, or a field, or even just gazing at the ethereal vault, like the ancients. My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Béranger! I believe in the credo of the Vicaire savoyard and in the immortal principles of '89! I've no time for an old dodderer of a god who goes round his garden with a walking stick, quarters his friends in the bellies of whales, dies giving a shriek, and then comes back to life after three days: things not only absurd in themselves but which are, furthermore, flatly contradicted by every law of the physical universe; which only goes to prove, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in the most profound ignorance, in which they do their best to engulf the entire populace along with themselves.

J'ai une religion, ma religion, et même j'en ai plus qu'eux tous avec leurs mômeries et leurs jongleries. J'adore Dieu, au contraire! Je crois en l'Être suprême, à un créateur quel qu'il soit, peu m'importe, qui nous a placés ici-bas pour y remplir nos devoirs de citoyen et de père de famille; mais je n'ai pas besoin d’aller dans une église baiser des plats d'argent et engraisser de ma poche un tas de farceurs qui se nourrissent mieux que nous. Car on peut l'honorer aussi bien dans un bois, dans un champ, ou même en contemplant la voûte éthérée, comme les anciens. Mon Dieu, à moi, c'est le Dieu de Socrate, de Franklin, de Voltaire et de Béranger! Je suis pour la Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard et les immortels principes de 89! Aussi je n'admets pas un bonhomme de Bon Dieu qui se promène dans son parterre la canne à la main, loge ses amis dans le ventre des baleines, meurt en poussant un cri et ressuscite au bout de trois jours — choses absurdes en elles-mêmes et complètement opposées d’ailleurs à toutes les lois de la physique, ce qui nous démontre, en passant, que les prêtres ont toujours croupi dans une ignorance turpide, où ils s'efforcent d'engloutir avec eux les populations.