Ah, what a difference, and what midgets we seem compared with these ancients! Like wine turned sour, the blood of our ancestors has gone bad in our veins...Related post: Progress or Regress?
Ah! quelle différence, et que près de ces vieux
Nous paraissons mesquins! Le sang de nos aïeux,
Comme un vin qui s'aigrit s'est tourné dans nos veines...
"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, October 02, 2017
Nos Nequiores
Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), from his poem "Melancholia" (my translation):