How for another person's shame
I found not words enough of blame.
How black it seemed—I made it blacker still,
And yet not black enough to suit my will.
I blessed myself, would boast and grin—
And now myself am caught in sin.
Wie konnt ich über andrer Sünden
Nicht Worte gnug der Zunge finden!
Wie schien mir's schwarz, und schwärzt's noch gar,
Mir's immer doch nicht schwarz gnug war,
Und segnet mich und tat so groß,
Und bin nun selbst der Sünde bloß!
"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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Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Finding Fault
Goethe, Faust, Part I, lines 3579-3584 (Gretchen speaking; tr. Walter Kaufman):