August 21. — In the Bois de Boulogne. To see all these great trees fall under the axe, with the quiverings of men wounded to death; to see these [sic, read there], where a green curtain was spread, this mass of sharpened stakes, shining whitely, this sinister harrow — you feel a hatred of the Prussians rising in your heart; they are the cause of these violations of nature.Hat tip: Eric Thomson.
21 août. — Au bois de Boulogne. À voir sous la cognée tomber ces grands arbres, avec des vacillements de blessés à mort, à voir là, où c’était un rideau de verdure, ce champ de pieux aigus, luisant blanc, cette herse sinistre, il vous monte de la haine au cœur pour ces Prussiens, qui sont cause de ces assassinats de la nature.
"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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Saturday, August 31, 2024
Arboricide in the Franco-Prussian War
The Journal of the de Goncourts; pages from a great diary, being extracts from the Journal des Goncourt. Edited, with introduction, by Julius West (London: T. Nelson, 191-?), p. 91: