For, as she often said to others and herself, her entire goal was to assist the will of Heaven: but she often made a big mistake, which was to understand by "Heaven" her own brain.
Giacché, come diceva spesso agli altri e a se stessa, tutto il suo studio era di secondare i voleri del cielo: ma faceva spesso uno sbaglio grosso, ch'era di prender per cielo il suo cervello.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, January 04, 2016
The Will of Heaven
Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), I Promessi Sposi, chapter XXV (on Donna Prassede; my translation):