Laudator Temporis Acti

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), To the Woodsman of Gastine, tr. Curtis Hidden Page in Songs and Sonnets of Pierre de Ronsard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1903), pp. 97-99:

Stay, woodsman, stay thy hand awhile, and hark—
It is not trees that thou art laying low!
Dost thou not see the dripping life-blood flow
From Nymphs that lived beneath the rigid bark?
Unholy murderer of our Goddesses,
If for some petty theft a varlet hangs,
What deaths hast thou deserved, what bitter pangs,
What brandings, burnings, tortures, dire distress!

O lofty wood, grove-dwelling birds' retreat,
No more shall stag and doe, with light-foot tread,
Feed in thy shadow, for thy leafy head
No more shall break the sun's midsummer heat.
The loving shepherd on his four-holed flute
Piping the praises of his fair Janette,
His mastiff near, his crook beside him set,
No more shall sing of love, but all be mute.
Silence shall fall where Echo spoke of yore,
And where soft-waving lay uncertain shade,
Coulter and plough shall pass with cutting blade
And frighted Pans and Satyrs come no more.

Farewell, thou ancient forest, Zephyr's toy!
Where first I taught my seven-tongued lyre to sing,
Where first I heard Apollo's arrows ring
Against my heart, and strike it through with joy;
Where first I worshipped fair Calliope
And loved her noble company of nine
Who showered their roses on this brow of mine;
Where with her milk Euterpe nurtured me.

Farewell, ye ancient oaks, ye sacred heads,
With images and flower-gifts worshipped erst,
But now the scorn of passers-by athirst,
Who, parched with heat the gleaming ether sheds,
And robbed of your cool verdure at their need,
Accuse your murderers, and speak them scathe....
Farewell, ye oaks, the valiant patriot's wreath,
Ye trees Jove himself, Dodona's seed.

'T was you, great oaks, that gave their earliest food
To men, ungrateful and degenerate race,
Forgetful of your favors, recreant, base,
And quick to shed their foster-fathers' blood!
Wretched is he who sets his trust upon
The world!—how truly speaks philosophy,
Saying that each thing in the end must die,
Must change its form and take another on.

Fair Tempé's vale shall be in hills uptossed,
And Athos' peak become a level plain;
Old Neptune's fields shall some day wave with grain.
Matter abides forever, form is lost.

Page didn't translate the first 18 lines of the elegy, which are mostly a description of the mythological punishment of Erysichthon. Here is the entire elegy (numbered XXXII), from Ronsard's Oeuvres, tome IV (1592), pp. 145-147:

Quiconque aura premier la main embesongnée
A te couper Forest, d'une dure congnée,
Qu'il puisse s'enferrer de son propre baston,
Et sente en l'estomac la faim d'Erisichthon,
Qui coupa de Cerés le Chesne venerable 5
Et qui gourmand de tout, de tout insatiable,
Les boeufs & les moutons de sa mere esgorgea,
Puis pressé de la faim soy-mesme se mangea:
Ainsi puisse engloutir ses rentes & sa terre,
Et se devore apres par les dents de la guerre. 10

Qu'il puisse pour vanger le sang de nos forests,
Tousjours nouveaux emprunts sur nouveaux interests
Devoir à l'usurier, & qu'en fin il consomme
Tout son bien à payer la principale somme.

Que tousjours sans repos ne face en son cerveau 15
Que tramer pour-neant quelque dessein nouveau,
Porté d'impatience & de fureur diverse,
Et de mauvais conseil que les hommes renverse.

Escoute, Bucheron (arreste un peu le bras)
Ce ne sont pas des bois que tu jettes à bas, 20
Ne vois-tu pas le sang lequel degoute à force
Des Nymphes qui vivoient dessous la dure escorce?
Sacrilege meurdrier, si on pend un voleur
Pour piller un butin de bien peu de valeur,
Combien de feux, de fers, de morts, & de destresses 25
Merites-tu meschant, pour tuer nos Déesses?

Forest haute maison des oiseaux bocagers,
Plus le cerf solitaire et les Chevreuls legers
Ne paistront sous ton ombre, & ta verte criniere
Plus du Soleil d'Esté rompra la lumiere. 30

Plus l'amoureux Pasteur sur un tronq adossé,
Enflant son flageolet à quatre trous persé,
Son mastin à ses pieds, à son flanc la houlette,
Ne dira plus l'ardeur de sa belle Janette:
Tout deviendra muet, Echon sera sans vois: 35
Tu deviendras campagne, & en lieu de tes bois,
Dont l'ombrage incertain lentement se remue,
Tu sentiras le soc, le coutre, & la charrue:
Tu perdras ton silence, & Satyres & Pans,
Et plus le Cerf chez toy ne cachera ses Fans. 40

Adieu vieille Forest, le jouët de Zephyre,
Où premier j'accorday les langues de ma Lyre,
Où premier j'entendi les fleches resonner
D'Apollon, qui me vint tout le coeur estonner:
Où premier admirant la belle Calliope, 45
Je devins amoureux de sa neuvaine trope,
Quand sa main sur le front cent Roses me jetta,
Et de son propre laict Euterpe m'allaita.

Adieu vielle forest, adieu testes sacrées,
De tableaux & de fleurs en tout temps reverées, 50
Maintenant le desdain des passans alterez,
Qui bruslez en l'Esté des rayons etherez,
Sans plus trouver le frais de tes douces verdures,
Accusent vos meurtriers, & leur disent injures.

Adieu Chesnes, couronne aux vaillans citoyens, 55
Arbres de Jupiter, germes Dodonéens,
Qui premiers aux humains donnastes à repaistre,
Peuples vrayment ingrats, qui n'ont sceu recognoistre
Les biens receus de vous, peuples vrayment grossiers,
De massacrer ainsi nos peres nourriciers. 60

Que l'homme est malheureux qui au monde se fie!
O Dieux, que veritable est la Philosophie!
Qui dit que toute chose à la fin perira,
Et qu'en changeant de forme une autre vestira.

De Tempé la vallée un jour sera montagne, 65
Et la cyme d'Athos une large campagne,
Neptune quelquefois de blé sera couvert.
La matière demeure & la forme se perd.

The historical background is this—in 1573 Henri, King of Navarre (later Henri IV of France), to pay his debts, sold some forests, including that part of the forest of Gâtine that surrounded the Ronsard family estate. See Isidore Silver, Three Ronsard Studies (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1978), pp. 137-141, and Susan K. Silver, "'Adieu vieille forest...': Myth, Melancholia, and Ronsard's Family Trees," Neophilologus 86.1 (January 2002) 33-43 (at 33). I haven't seen the following:

• R. Caisso, "La Vente de la forêt de Gastine à l'époque de Ronsard," Humanisme et Renaissance 4 (1937) 274–285
  
• Ute Margarete Saine, "Dreaming the Forest of Gâtine: Ecology and Antiquity in Ronsard," Cincinnati Romance Review 9 (1990) 1-12
  
• Louisa Mackenzie, "'Ce ne sont pas des bois': Poetry, Regionalism, and Loss in the Forest of Ronsard's Gâtine," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32.2 (Spring 2002) 343-374

Of this forest 23 hectares survive today, in two separate tracts, under the designation Etangs de la Gâtine, located in Loir-et-Cher, near the border with Indre-et-Loire.

---

I.D. McFarlane, "Neo-Latin Verse: Some New Discoveries," Modern Language Review 54.1 (January 1959) 22-28 (at 24-28), suggested that a Latin ode by Gervaise Sepin, "In eum quem salices scindentem reperit" ("Against one whom he found cutting down willow trees"), printed in 1553, inspired Ronsard's elegy. So far as I can tell, Sepin's ode hasn't been translated into English, so I've provided the following rough, but I hope accurate and intelligible, prose version:

O enemy of the goddesses whom Old Mother Earth nourishes in her bosom, o cruel tyrant, what is your bloody right hand doing?

[5] Why do you cut, with unceasing blow of your biting axe, not the trunks of trees, but perhaps the tender metamorphosed bodies of Hamadryads?

[9] Alas, perhaps it is a troop of Oreades, or those who have charge of frail flowers. Perhaps a fickle crowd of Diana's Nymphs, fleeing lustful Satyrs, [13] is turned into these trees and bears neither fruit nor seed as it bends over the water to pay the penalty for abandoning its mistress. [17] For I know that Fauns, in company with Satyrs, frequent these cool shades and, next to the slow flow of the stream, make music with pipes and castanets.

[21] Indeed, it may be that Nisa, traveling this way as she sought her nearby country-house, was by a similar unforeseen accident changed into a willow tree by Diana. [25] Are you splitting her body with your axe? You hear the loud crash of the tree: if you're unaware, these are the lethal pangs and groans of a goddess.

[29] Aren't you afraid that a punishment for such a heinous crime is on the verge of befalling you? O do you not fear Dictynna, often raging against her enemies?

[33] So it was that Dryope, unaware, paid the penalty for plucking a leaf, with the gods taking vengeance, as branched and tender bark covered her white limbs. [37] So it was that the Mother of the Gods once upon a time punished Erysichthon with unending hunger, because he had carried his accursed axe into an ancient grove.

[41] O stop this at once and, if you have any sense, withdraw to your house. For I see that deserved vengeance is coming down from Olympus on your head.

Here is the Latin text of Sepin's ode, from McFarlane (p. 25), although I made a few changes: I emended Orcadum in line 9 to Oreadum, felix in line 24 to salix, and rimoso in line 35 to ramoso; I put a colon at the end of line 26; and I numbered every fifth line:

  Quid tu dearum, quas genitrix alit
Antiqua tellus visceribus suis,
O hostis, o atrox tyranne,
Quid tua dextra facit cruenta?

  Cur tu securis continuo secas 5
Mordacis ictu? non equidem arborum,
Si reris, at forsan reuersa
Corpora Hamadryadum tenella?

  Eheu caterva est forsan Oreadum
Aut quæ caducis floribus imperant: 10
Fortasse Nympharum Dianæ
Turba leuis Satyros procaces

  Vitans in istas vertetur arbores,
Nullosque fructus semina nec parit
Undis recumbens ad relictæ 15
Supplicium dominæ luendum.

  Nam sæpe Faunos cum Satyris scio
Istas per umbras degere frigidas,
Lentumque iuxta cursum aquarum
Cum calamis resonare sistris. 20

  Quid? Nisa fulgens hac faciens iter
Fortasse, villam dum petit hic sitam,
Talique, fortuna impetita
Facta felix fuit a Diana.

  Illique ferro corpora dissecas? 25
Audis fragores arboris æditos:
Si nescias, sunt hi dolores
Mortiferae gemitusque Diuæ.

  Nullumque tanti flagitij times
Iamiam affuturum supplicium tibi? 30
O nonne Dictymnam verere
Sæpe suos furiosam in hostis?

  Ignara pœnas sic Dryope luit
Frondis recisæ, vindicibus diis:
Surgente ramoso per artus 35
Candidulos tenuique libro.

  Mater Deorum sic Erisichthona
Confecit olim perpetua fame,
Quod ipse sacratam bipennim
Intulerat nemori vetusto. 40

  Isthæc relinque o protinus, & tuam
Concede iamiam, si sapias, domum:
Nam cerno delabentem Olympo
Promeritum in caput ultionem.

McFarlane (p. 26) saw three similarities between the two poems: "(i) The failure of the woodcutter to realize that the trees are really divinities...(ii) The thought that the wood is a place of solace and peace, more particularly for Fauns and Satyrs ... (iii) The threat that the woodcutter will incur the wrath and the vengeance of the gods and that he may suffer the fate of Erisichthon."

Thanks very much to my friend Eric Thomson for drawing my attention to Ronsard's elegy.

Related posts: The Heavenly Beauty of Earthly Things; Apollo Karneios and the Cornel-Trees; Pitiful Destruction; Enemy of Orchards; Arboricide and Matricide; The Sacrilegious Axe; Arboricide on the Wayne Ranch; The Woods of Bachycraigh; Papadendrion; Papadendrion Again; A Bewilderment of Birds; Ancient Protests Against Deforestation; Illustrations of Erysichthon; Prayer and Sacrifice to Accompany Tree Cutting; A Spirit Protects the Trees; St. Martin and the Pine Tree; The Geismar Oak; Bregalad's Lament; Petition of a Poplar; Cactus Ed and Arboricide; Views from the Center of Highgate Wood; Artaxerxes and Arboricide; When the Last Tree Falls; The Hamadryads of George Lane; Sorbs and Medlars; So Foul a Deed; Like Another Erysichthon; The Fate of Old Trees; Scandalous Misuse of the Globe; The Groves Are Down; Massacre; Executioners; Anagyrasian Spirit; Butchers of Our Poor Trees; Cruel Axes; Odi et Amo; Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre; Hornbeams; Protection of Sacred Groves; Lex Luci Spoletina; Turullius and the Grove of Asclepius; Caesarian Section; Death of a Noble Pine; Two Yew Trees in Chilthorne, Somerset; The Fate of the Shrubbery at Weston; The Trees Are Down; Hornbeams; Sad Ravages in the Woods; Strokes of Havoc; Maltreatment of Trees; Arboricide; An Impious Lumberjack; Erysichthon in Ovid; Erysichthon in Callimachus; Vandalism.

Labels: arboricide

Christopher Morley, The Unnatural Naturalist:

There are other troubles that spring brings us. We are pitifully ashamed of our ignorance of nature, and though we try to hide it we keep getting tripped up. About this time of year inquisitive persons are always asking us: "Have you heard any song sparrows yet?" or "Are there any robins out your way?" or "When do the laburnums begin to nest out in Marathon?" Now we really can't tell these people our true feeling, which is that we do not believe in peeking in on the privacy of the laburnums or any other songsters. It seems to us really immodest to keep on spying on the birds in that way. And as for the bushes and trees, what we want to know is, How does one ever get to know them? How do you find out which is an alder and what is an elm? Or a narcissus and a hyacinth, does any one really know them apart? We think it's all a bluff. And jonquils. There was a nest of them on our porch, we are told, but we didn't think it any business of ours to bother them. Let nature alone and she'll let you alone.

But there is a pettifogging cult about that says you ought to know these things; moreover, children keep on asking one. We always answer at random and say it's a wagtail or a flowering shrike or a female magnolia. We were brought up in the country and learned that first principle of good manners, which is to let birds and flowers and animals go on about their own affairs without pestering them by asking them their names and addresses. Surely that's what Shakespeare meant by saying a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. We can enjoy a rose just as much as any one, even if we may think it's a hydrangea.

Pausanias 4.17.4 (tr. W.H.S. Jones):

However in course of time the punishment of Neoptolemus, as it is called, came upon the Lacedaemonians themselves in their turn. Now it was the fate of Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, after killing Priam on the altar of Zeus Herkeios (Of the Courtyard), himself to be slain by the altar of Apollo in Delphi. Thenceforward to suffer what a man has himself done to another is called the Punishment of Neoptolemus.

περιῆλθε μέντοι καὶ αὐτοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἀνὰ χρόνον ἡ Νεοπτολέμειος καλουμένη τίσις. Νεοπτολέμῳ γὰρ τῷ Ἀχιλλέως, ἀποκτείναντι Πρίαμον ἐπὶ τῇ ἐσχάρᾳ τοῦ Ἑρκείου, συνέπεσε καὶ αὐτὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς πρὸς τῷ βωμῷ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἀποσφαγῆναι· καὶ ἀπὸ τούτου τὸ παθεῖν ὁποῖόν τις καὶ ἔδρασε Νεοπτολέμειον τίσιν ὀνομάζουσι.

Frazer in his commentary on Pausanias has no note on this passage, and no classical parallels come immediately to my mind.

We find in Psalms the idea that it is fitting for a man to suffer the same pain he intends to inflict on others:

7.15-16:

He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.

9.15:

The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

35.7-8:

For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall.

Edith Hall, "Classics, Class, and Cloaca: Harrison's Humane Coprology," Arion 15.2 (April 2007) 111-136 (at 118, with note on p. 134):

...the Indo-European etymological root from which "scatology" derives is ultimately the same as the root of scire, "to know"²⁰...

²⁰Ralph A. Lewin, Merde: Excursions in Scientific, Cultural and Sociohistorical Coprology (London 1999), 5.

In my copy of Lewin's book (New York: Random House, 1999), this is on p. 3 (not 5):

The word "science," meaning knowledge, and the word "shit," from the Old English scitan, both apparently derive from the same ancient Indo-European root, as does the Greek word from which scatology is derived.

Lewin cites no authority or evidence, but he is correct, according to Calvert Watkins, "Indo-European Roots," in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), pp. 1505-1550.

Watkins s.v. sker-⁴ (at 1540):

Excrement, dung. Extended root of sek-, "to cut, separate," hence "to void excrement." 1. Lengthened o-grade form *skōr- in Greek skōr (genitive skatos < *sk-ṇt-), dung: SCATO-, SCORIA, SKATOLE. 2. Extended form *skert- in taboo metathesis *sterk- in: a. Latin stercus, dung: STERCORACEOUS; b. variant forms *(s)terg-, *(s)treg- in Germanic *threkka- in Middle High German drëc, dung: DRECK. [Pok. sker-d- 947; 8. (s)ter- 1031.]

Watkins s.v. skei- (at 1539):

To cut, split. Extended root of sek-. 1. Latin scire, to know (< "to separate one thing from another," "discern"): SCIENCE, SCILICET, SCIOLISM, SCIRE FACIAS; ADSCITITIOUS, CONSCIENCE, CONSCIOUS, NESCIENT, NICE, OMNISCIENT, PLEBISCITE, PRESCIENT. 2. Germanic suffixed form *ski-nōn- in: a. Old English scinu, shin, shinbone (< "piece cut off"): SHIN¹; b. Old French eschine, backbone, piece of meat with part of the backbone: CHINE¹. 3. Suffixed zero-grade form skiy-enā in Old Irish scīan, knife: SKEAN. 4. Extended root *skeid- in a. Germanic *skītan, to separate, defecate, in (i) Old English *scītan, to defecate: SHIT (ii) Old Norse *skīta, to defecate: SKATE³; b. suffixed zero-grade form *sk(h)id-yo in Greek skhizein, to split: SCHEDULE, SCHISM, SCHIST, SCHIZO-; c. nasalized zero-grade form: *ski-n-d- in Latin scindere, to split: SCISSION; EXSCIND, PRESCIND, RESCIND. 5. Extended root *skeit- in: a. Germanic *skaith- in (i) Old English scēadan, to separate: SHED¹ (ii) perhaps Old English scēath, sheath (< "split stick"): SHEATH; b. Germanic *skīth- in Old Norse skīdh, log, stick, snowshoe: SKI; c. o-grade form *skoit- in Latin scūtum, shield (< "board"): ÉCU, ESCUDO, ESCUTCHEON, ESQUIRE, SCUDO, SCUTUM, SQUIRE. 6. Extended root *skeip- in Germanic *skif- in a. Old English *scife, pulley (< "piece of wood with grooves"): SHEAVE²; b. Middle Dutch and Middle Low German schīve, a slice: SHIVE¹; c. Old Norse skīfa, to slice, split: SKIVE; d. Middle Low German schever, splinter, akin to the Low German source of Middle English scivre, splinter: SHIVER². [Pok. skei 919.]

To summarize:

• From sek- come sker- and skei-.
  
• From sker- comes Greek skōr, skatos (whence scatology).
  
• From skei- come not only Latin scire (whence science) but also *skeid- (whence Germanic *skītan, whence Old English *scītan, whence shit).

Labels: etymology, noctes scatologicae

Linnie Marsh Wolfe, ed., John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), p. 28 (March 4, 1869):

Killed a rattlesnake that was tranquilly sunning himself in coiled ease about a bunch of grass. After dislodging him by throwing dirt, I killed him by jumping upon him, because no stones or sticks were near. He defended himself bravely, and I ought to have been bitten. He was innocent and deserved life.

Donald Culross Peattie, The Road of a Naturalist (1941; rpt. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1986), pp. 34-36:

In this, the first pleasant moment for a walk after long blazing hours, I thought I was the only thing abroad. Abruptly I stopped short.

The other lay rigid, as suddenly arrested, his body undulant; the head was not drawn back to strike, but was merely turned a little to watch what I would do. It was a rattlesnake—and knew it. I mean that where a six-foot blacksnake thick as my wrist, capable of long-range attack and armed with powerful fangs, will flee at the sight of a man, the rattler felt no necessity of getting out of anybody's path. He held his ground in calm watchfulness; he was not even rattling yet, much less was he coiled; he was waiting for me to show my intention.

My first instinct was to let him go his way and I would go mine, and with this he would have been well content. I have never killed an animal I was not obliged to kill; the sport in taking life is a satisfaction I can't feel. But I reflected that there were children, dogs, horses at the ranch, as well as men and women lightly shod; my duty, plainly, was to kill the snake. I went back to the ranch house, got a hoe, and returned.

The rattler had not moved; he lay there like a live wire. But he saw the hoe. Now indeed his tail twitched, the little tocsin sounded; he drew back his head and I raised my weapon. Quicker than I could strike he shot into a dense bush and set up his rattling. He shook and shook his fair but furious signal, quite sportingly warning me that I had made an unprovoked attack, attempted to take his life, and that if I persisted he would have no choice but to take mine if he could. I listened for a minute to this little song of death. It was not ugly, though it was ominous. It said that life was dear, and would be dearly sold. And I reached into the paper-bag bush with my hoe and, hacking about, soon dragged him out of it with his back broken.

He struck passionately once more at the hoe; but a moment later his neck was broken, and he was soon dead. Technically, that is; he was still twitching, and when I picked him up by the tail, some consequent jar, some mechanical reflex made his jaws gape and snap once more—proving that a dead snake may still bite. There was blood in his mouth and poison dripping from his fangs; it was all a nasty sight, pitiful now that it was done.

I did not cut the rattles off for trophy; I let him drop into the close green companionship of the paper-bag bush. Then for a momnt I could see him as I might lave let him go, sinuous and self-respecting in departure over the twilit sands.

Bill Dunn, quoted in Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), p. 260 (ellipses in original):

We saw a dirty great adder, an enormous thing, and Eric quickly planted his boot right on top of its neck and anchored it to the ground and I fully expected that with the other foot he would grind its head into the ground too...but he got out his penknife and quite deliberately opened and proceeded more or less to fillet this wretched creature, he just ripped it right open...I must say, it surprised me terribly because he always really struck me as being very gentle to animals.

D.H. Lawrence, Snake:

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.

Hat tip: An English Physician.

Related post: A Necessary Act?

John Clare, The Crow:

How peaceable it seems for lonely men
To see a crow fly in the thin blue sky
Over the woods and fealds, o'er level fen
It speaks of villages, or cottage nigh
Behind the neighbouring woods—when march winds high
Tear off the branches of the hugh old oak
I love to see these chimney sweeps sail by
And hear them o'er the knarled forest croak
Then sosh askew from the hid woodmans stroke
That in the woods their daily labours ply
I love the sooty crow nor would provoke
Its march day exercises of croaking joy
I love to see it sailing to and fro
While feelds, and woods and waters spread below

Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (1986; rpt. London: Phoenix Press, 2000), p. 295:

Furze is an important and widely-used fuel; it produces a quick hot blaze suitable for heating ovens, getting up a fire in the morning, or burning heretics.

Dear Mike,

More havoc for your collection, from Edward Thomas's 'The South Country' (1909), a chapter ironically entitled 'An Adventurer', which describes the beleaguered life of an old man of Surrey as he sees the land his father farmed being steadily engulfed by the suburbs of London in the first decade of the last century.

"The scaffold-poles, the harsh blocks of stone, the rasping piles of bricks, the scores of cold earthenware and iron articles belonging to the rows of villas about to replace the old houses, looked more like ruin than preparation as they lay stark and hideous among the misty grass and still blue elms. There were days when the thrushes still sang well among the rioting undisturbed shrubberies. But soon men felled the elms and drove away their shadows for ever, and all that dwelled or could be imagined therein. No more would the trees be enchanted by the drunken early songs of blackbirds. The heavenly beauty of earthly things went away upon the timber carriages and was stamped with mud. The butts of the trees were used to decorate the gardens of the new houses. Two, indeed, were spared by some one's folly, and a main bough fell in the night and crushed through a whole fortnight's brickwork.

Those elms had come unconsciously to be part of the real religion of men in that neighbourhood, and certainly of that old man. Their cool green voices as they swayed, their masses motionless against the evening or the summer storms, created a sense of pomp and awe. They gave mystic invitations that stirred his blood if not his slowly working humble brain, and helped to build and to keep firm that sanctuary of beauty to which we must be able to retire if we are to be more than eaters and drinkers and newspaper readers. When they were gone he wondered, still humbly, what would do their work in the minds of the newcomers. Looking at the features of the younger people, held in a vice of reserve or pallidly leering, and hearing the snarl of their voices, he was not surprised. They had not been given a chance. How could they have the ease, the state, the kindliness of the old inhabitants? They had no gods, only a brand-new Gothic church. Often they supported this or that new movement, or bought a brave new book, but they continued to sneer timidly or brutally at everything else. They were satisfied with a little safe departure from the common way, some mental or spiritual equivalent to the door-knocker of imitation hammered copper. They did not care very much for trees though they planted them in every street, where the grammar-school boys and errand-boys mutilated them one by one in the dark; they cut off the heads of a score of tall poplars, lest perchance the west wind should one day do the same thing when one of the million was passing below."

The South Country (1909) London: J. M. Dent pp. 64-5

Regards,

Eric Thomson

Frontispiece of Edward Thomas, The South Country
Related posts: Apollo Karneios and the Cornel-Trees; Pitiful Destruction; Enemy of Orchards; Arboricide and Matricide; The Sacrilegious Axe; Arboricide on the Wayne Ranch; The Woods of Bachycraigh; Papadendrion; Papadendrion Again; A Bewilderment of Birds; Ancient Protests Against Deforestation; Illustrations of Erysichthon; Prayer and Sacrifice to Accompany Tree Cutting; A Spirit Protects the Trees; St. Martin and the Pine Tree; The Geismar Oak; Bregalad's Lament; Petition of a Poplar; Cactus Ed and Arboricide; Views from the Center of Highgate Wood; Artaxerxes and Arboricide; When the Last Tree Falls; The Hamadryads of George Lane; Sorbs and Medlars; So Foul a Deed; Like Another Erysichthon; The Fate of Old Trees; Scandalous Misuse of the Globe; The Groves Are Down; Massacre; Executioners; Anagyrasian Spirit; Butchers of Our Poor Trees; Cruel Axes; Odi et Amo; Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre; Hornbeams; Protection of Sacred Groves; Lex Luci Spoletina; Turullius and the Grove of Asclepius; Caesarian Section; Death of a Noble Pine; Two Yew Trees in Chilthorne, Somerset; The Fate of the Shrubbery at Weston; The Trees Are Down; Hornbeams; Sad Ravages in the Woods; Strokes of Havoc; Maltreatment of Trees; Arboricide; An Impious Lumberjack; Erysichthon in Ovid; Erysichthon in Callimachus; Vandalism.

Labels: arboricide

Semonides, Fragment 1 (tr. M.L. West):

Loud-thundering Zeus controls the outcome, lad,
in everything, and makes it how he wants.

ὦ παῖ, τέλος μὲν Ζεὺς ἔχει βαρύκτυπος
πάντων ὅσ' ἐστὶ καὶ τίθησ' ὅκῃ θέλει,

Men have no foresight, but from day to day
they live like cattle, knowing not at all
how God will bring each matter to its end;

νοῦς δ' οὐκ ἐπ' ἀνθρώποισιν, ἀλλ' ἐπήμεροι
ἃ δὴ βοτὰ ζόουσιν, οὐδὲν εἰδότες
ὅκως ἕκαστον ἐκτελευτήσει θεός.

yet everybody feeds on hope and trust
throughout his vain endeavours. Some await
tomorrow, some the turning of the seasons;

ἐλπὶς δὲ πάντας κἀπιπειθείη τρέφει
ἄπρηκτον ὁρμαίνοντας· οἳ μὲν ἡμέρην
μένουσιν ἐλθεῖν, οἳ δ' ἐτέων περιτροπάς·

there's no man does not think he'll reach next year
the Wealth-god's darling, and society's.

νέωτα δ' οὐδεὶς ὅστις οὐ δοκεῖ βροτῶν
Πλούτῳ τε κἀγαθοῖσιν ἵξεσθαι φίλος.

But one is overtaken by old age
before he makes his goal, others succumb
to grim diseases, others slain in war
Hades escorts below dark earth, while some
die out at sea, by tempests buffeted
and the salt purple deep's unending waves,
when they can make no living on the land;

φθάνει δὲ τὸν μὲν γῆρας ἄζηλον λαβὸν
πρὶν τέρμ' ἵκηται, τοὺς δὲ δύστηνοι βροτῶν
φθείρουσ' νοῦσοι, τοὺς δ' Ἄρει δεδμημένους
πέμπει μελαίνης Ἀΐδης ὑπὸ χθονός·
οἳ δ' ἐν θαλάσσῃ λαίλαπι κλονεόμενοι
καὶ κύμασιν πολλοῖσι πορφυρῆς ἁλὸς
θνήσκουσιν, εὖτ' ἂν μὴ δυνήσωνται ζόειν.

others again fasten themselves a noose
and leave the sunlight by their own grim choice.

οἳ δ' ἀγχόνην ἅψαντο δυστήνῳ μόρῳ
καὐτάγρετοι λείπουσιν ἡλίου φάος.

So we are spared no ill, but numberless
dangers and hurts for which we cannot plan
exist for mortals. If I had my way,
we would not cling to sorrow, or so long
torment ourselves by dwelling on our woes.

οὕτω κακῶν ἄπ' οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ μυρίαι
βροτοῖσι κῆρες κἀνεπίφραστοι δύαι
καὶ πήματ' ἐστίν. εἰ δ' ἐμοὶ πιθοίατο,
οὐκ ἂν κακῶν ἐρῷμεν, οὐδ' ἐπ' ἄλγεσι
κακοῖv ἔχοντες θυμὸν αἰκιζοίμεθα.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED), s.v. blizzard, definition 2:

A furious blast of frost-wind and blinding snow, in which man and beast frequently perish; a 'snow-squall'. Also attrib. and Comb. orig. U.S.

The earliest citations in the OED are:

1859 L.B. WOLF Diary 1 Dec. in Kansas Hist. Q. (1932) I. 205 A blizzard had come upon us about midnight... Shot 7 horses that were so chilled could not get up. 1876 Monthly Weather Rev. Dec. 424 The very severe storms known in local parlance as 'blizzards' were reported on the 8th as prevailing in Iowa and Wisconsin. 1880 Let. 29 Dec., fr. Chicago in Manch. Even. News, 24 Jan. 1881 The thermometer was 17 degrees below zero last night, and it was blowing a blizzard all the time. 1881 Standard 22 Jan. 5/1 The region [Manitoba] is swept by those fearful blasts known as 'blizzards' which send the 'poudre', or dry snow, whirling in icy clouds. 1881 N.Y. Nation 184 The hard weather has called into use a word which promises to become a national Americanism, namely 'blizzard'. It designates a storm (of snow and wind) which men cannot resist away from shelter. 1882 Contemp. Rev. Sept. 350 Those bitter 'blizzards' so justly dreaded by all who have to do with live stock. 1888 T. WATTS in Athenæum 18 Aug. 224/2 By Ferrol Bay those galleys stoop To blasts more dire than breath of Orkney blizzard.

The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (Springfield: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1991), s.v. blizzard, pp. 50-51 (at 51):

The earliest printed citation for the use that is so far known appeared in the Estherville, Iowa, Northern Vindicator on 23 April 1870. It was spelled blizards, and was cautiously enclosed in quotation marks. One week later, in the 30 April edition, it appeared again, with the now familiar double -z spelling, but still in quotation marks....The Dictionary of Americanisms has citations dated 1859 and 1861 from a diary published in the Kansas Historical Quarterly in 1932. The diary was kept by an army captain at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It turns out, however, that the diarist revised or enlarged or rewrote the diary about 1905, when blizzard was a common word, and we do not know whether he unconsciously used it in his revision, or if he had used it in the original, which was unfortunately thrown away. No printed evidence, however, has yet been found that antedates the Northern Vindicator.

An example of blizzard meaning snow storm, earlier than any of those cited above, is C.A. Wean, A Winter in the Pine Woods (Chicago: Wean & Shover, 1839), pp. 214-215:

The fire crackled and roared even louder than the storm outdoors, but it was a cheery, agreeable roar, which robbed the other of its terrors. A Northern Michigan blizzard, without a fire, would / have some very real terrors too.

Dylan Thomas, Christmas Letter (1933):

Walking, as we do, at right angles with the earth, we are prevented from looking, as much as we should, at the legendary sky above us and the only-a-little-blt-more-possible ground under us. We can only (without effort) look in front of us and around us; we can look only at things that are between the earth and sky, and are much in the position of a reader of books who can look only at the middles of pages and never (without effort) at the tops and bottoms. We see what we imagine to be a tree, but we see only a part of the tree; what the insects under the earth see when they look upwards at the tree, what the stars see when they look downwards at the tree, is left to our imagination. And perhaps the materialist can be called the man who believes in the part of the trees he sees, & the spiritualist a man who believes in a lot more of the tree than is within his sight. Think how much wiser we would be if it were possible for us to change our angles of perspective as regularly as we change our vests.

Few if any doctors today could, in good conscience, recite the Hippocratic Oath in its complete original form. Like many other ancient oaths, the Hippocratic Oath consists of [1] an invocation of certain gods as witnesses to [2] the oath-taker's promise to perform (or refrain from performing) certain actions, and [3] a wish that certain things will happen if the oath-taker keeps (or breaks) his promise.

Here is Ludwig Edelstein's translation of the Hippocratic Oath, with the ancient Greek interspersed, and the three parts marked:

[1] I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses,

Ὄμνυμι Ἀπόλλωνα ἰητρὸν, καὶ Ἀσκληπιὸν, καὶ Ὑγείαν, καὶ Πανάκειαν, καὶ θεοὺς πάντας τε καὶ πάσας, ἵστορας ποιεύμενος,

[2] that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

ἐπιτελέα ποιήσειν κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμὴν ὅρκον τόνδε καὶ ξυγγραφὴν τήνδε·

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art—if they desire to learn it—without fee and covenant;

ἡγήσασθαι μὲν τὸν διδάξαντά με τὴν τέχνην ταύτην ἴσα γενέτῃσιν ἐμοῖσι, καὶ βίου κοινώσασθαι, καὶ χρεῶν χρηΐζοντι μετάδοσιν ποιήσασθαι, καὶ γένος τὸ ἐξ ωὐτέου ἀδελφοῖς ἴσον ἐπικρινέειν ἄῤῥεσι, καὶ διδάξειν τὴν τέχνην ταύτην, ἢν χρηΐζωσι μανθάνειν, ἄνευ μισθοῦ καὶ ξυγγραφῆς,

to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.

παραγγελίης τε καὶ ἀκροήσιος καὶ τῆς λοιπῆς ἁπάσης μαθήσιος μετάδοσιν ποιήσασθαι υἱοῖσί τε ἐμοῖσι, καὶ τοῖσι τοῦ ἐμὲ διδάξαντος, καὶ μαθηταῖσι συγγεγραμμένοισί τε καὶ ὡρκισμένοις νόμῳ ἰητρικῷ, ἄλλῳ δὲ οὐδενί.

I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.

διαιτήμασί τε χρήσομαι ἐπ' ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμὴν, ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν.

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.

οὐ δώσω δὲ οὐδὲ φάρμακον οὐδενὶ αἰτηθεὶς θανάσιμον, οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι ξυμβουλίην τοιήνδε·

Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.

ὁμοίως δὲ οὐδὲ γυναικὶ πεσσὸν φθόριον δώσω.

In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.

ἁγνῶς δὲ καὶ ὁσίως διατηρήσω βίον τὸν ἐμὸν καὶ τέχνην τὴν ἐμήν.

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.

οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιθιῶντας, ἐκχωρήσω δὲ ἐργάτῃσιν ἀνδράσι πρήξιος τῆσδε.

Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.

ἐς οἰκίας δὲ ὁκόσας ἂν ἐσίω, ἐσελεύσομαι ἐπ' ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων, ἐκτὸς ἐὼν πάσης ἀδικίης ἑκουσίης καὶ φθορίης, τῆς τε ἄλλης καὶ ἀφροδισίων ἔργων ἐπί τε γυναικείων σωμάτων καὶ ἀνδρῴων, ἐλευθέρων τε καὶ δούλων.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

ἃ δ' ἂν ἐν θεραπείῃ ἢ ἴδω, ἢ ἀκούσω, ἢ καὶ ἄνευ θεραπηΐης κατὰ βίον ἀνθρώπων, ἃ μὴ χρή ποτε ἐκλαλέεσθαι ἔξω, σιγήσομαι, ἄῤῥητα ἡγεύμενος εἶναι τὰ τοιαῦτα.

[3] If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come;

ὅρκον μὲν οὖν μοι τόνδε ἐπιτελέα ποιέοντι, καὶ μὴ ξυγχέοντι, εἴη ἐπαύρασθαι καὶ βίου καὶ τέχνης δοξαζομένῳ παρὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐς τὸν αἰεὶ χρόνον·

if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

παραβαίνοντι δὲ καὶ ἐπιορκοῦντι, τἀναντία τουτέων.

I haven't yet seen Alan H. Sommerstein and Judith Fletcher, edd., Horkos: The Oath in Greek Society (Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press, 2007). Rudolf Hirzel, Der Eid: Ein Beitrag zu seiner Geschichte (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1902), is available in full view at Google Books.

Related posts:

• The Athenian Ephebic Oath
  
• Ancient Oaths

In Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 5, there is a reproduction of "a forest scene by Hans Toma" showing a boy seated in the woods reading a book. The plate credits on p. 357 give the location of the painting as Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.

The painting is actually by Hans Thoma, not Hans Toma. It struck my fancy, and I searched on the World Wide Web for an electronic copy. I couldn't find one, but I did find two other paintings of readers by Hans Thoma that I liked equally as much:

A Peaceful Sunday
The Artist's Mother in the Little Room

Greek scholar K.J. Dover died on March 7. Obituaries appeared in The Times, The Guardian (by Stephen Halliwell), The Telegraph, and The Scotsman (by Chris Mair).

I own the following books by Dover:

• Aristophanes, Clouds, abridged ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)
  
• Aristophanes, Frogs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
  
• Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972)
  
• Greek and the Greeks: Collected Papers, vol. I (Language, Poetry, Drama) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987)
  
• Greek Homosexuality, updated ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)
  
• Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974; rpt. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994)
  
• Plato, Symposium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)

He wrote many more books, and everything he wrote on the subject of the ancient Greeks is of course illuminating. I confess that his controversial autobiography, Marginal Comment (London: Duckworth, 1994), left me cold—too much about academic politics, too little about the study of Greek. On the day when he died, by coincidence, I borrowed his school edition of Thucydides, Book VII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), from the library. Here are a couple of quotations from the Preface, a bit out of context, but still characteristic:

• ...I have no sympathy or respect for the currently fashionable view that Classical scholars should spend more time in entertaining the public and less in trying to discover what the Greek authors actually said...
  
• ...I do not believe that any worth-while contribution to Greek studies is ever likely to be made by anyone who does not know the Greek language well...

Ginkgo biloba is on the blacklist at the Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health. In general, I'm a hard-core adherent of the native plant movement, but there is still a soft spot in my heart for Ginkgo biloba, and I don't regard it as an illegal alien. Here's my reasoning: fossils of relatives of Ginkgo biloba have been found in what is now the United States of America, and so whoever plants one of these trees here is just repatriating an exile.

I used to work in an office building in the city of Bloomington, Minnesota. Bloomington, along with some other benighted American cities, has declared war on the ginkgo. See Nigel Duara, "Smell has some cities ripping out gingko trees" (Associated Press, October 5, 2009):

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The ginkgo tree is renowned for its hardiness, surviving everything from road salt to an atomic bomb, but it may be undone by another trait — it reeks.

"It's pretty disgusting," said Jan Schneider, an office manager in downtown Iowa City whose business has a ginkgo out front.

Iowa City was one of many communities that planted ginkgoes in the 1970s only to discover that after years without problems, some of the trees can begin dropping large seed shells, creating a sticky, slimy, smelly mess. The smell makes some think of rotten eggs, while others are reminded of vomit.

Some cities have started cutting down ginkgoes, while others are standing by their trees and even planting more of them. In Iowa City, deciding to cut down another one of its few remaining ginkgoes was a no-brainer.

"We have no recourse at this point," said Terry Robinson, superintendent of the city's forestry division. "It creates a sanitation problem for us because we have to be down there cleaning it up as often as possible."

"No matter what we do, two seconds after we leave, there are more on the ground and somebody can step in it."

Officials reached a similar conclusion in Easton, Pa., where ginkgo trees were removed last year after complaints about seed shells raining on cars and pedestrians.

Easton planning director Becky Bradley said the slippery pulp was dangerous for passers-by. And of course, there was the smell.

"Stinky. I know, that's highly sophisticated, but I don't know how else to phrase it," Bradley said. "It's not a very friendly odor."

Ginkgo's defenders point out that not all the trees cause problems and the species has a lot going for it.

The tree, native to Asia, is incredibly resilient, with several surviving an atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima. Ginkgoes also stand up well to smog, road salt and pests.

But unlike most tree species common in the U.S., the ginkgo is dioecious, meaning trees are male or female. Female ginkgoes produce the troublesome seeds, which are covered in a fleshy coating that contains butyric acid, also found in rancid butter.

That has prompted cities such as Bloomington, Minn., and Lexington, Ky., to ban female ginkgoes. And Easton left the male trees while removing the females.

The problem, though, is occasionally male trees undergo a metamorphosis and begin dropping smelly seeds. That's what Robinson suspects happened to an Iowa City tree after decades without problems.

A study in Virginia found that such changes are rare, happening in about one in 100 male trees. With that in mind, some cities are planting ginkgo trees, including Boston, Lansing, Mich., Santa Monica, Calif., and Washington, D.C.

In Washington, the city's Urban Forestry Administration allows property owners on each block to decide whether they want female trees replaced by males.

"Most people are very happy with them," said John Thomas, associate director of the forestry agency. "Some people say they moved into a neighborhood specifically because of the female ginkgoes."

Santa Monica has planted between 250 and 300 ginkgoes citywide since 2003, urban forester Walt Warriner said. He makes sure only males are planted and has returned six trees to the nursery that were sold as male but revealed to be female.

Robinson, the Iowa City superintendent, laughed when told of cities planting ginkgoes.

"I'd proceed with caution," he said.

To some, however, city officials are missing the point. What, they ask, is wrong with a smelly tree?

All the Iowa City ginkgoes were planted near the University of Iowa campus. At other universities where they've been planted, students don't seem bothered.

At Reed College in Portland, spokesman Kevin Myers acknowledged periodic reports that "something died over here" in the area of a female ginkgo tree. But there's been no thought of cutting it down.

"It's a fact of life," Myers said. "But we're happy with it. The leaves are really beautiful."

It's the same at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where botanist Laura Jull said people notice but don't dwell on the smell of the campus ginkgoes.

Still, she enjoys watching new arrivals amble by the trees.

"I find it kind of comical watching people pass by and they're looking around like, 'Who smells?'" Jull said. "That's a little plant humor."

My daily walk in St. Paul, Minnesota, takes me past about half a dozen ginkgo trees. I would be sorry to see St. Paul follow the lead of the mis-named Bloomington and try to exterminate them. If we are to be persecuted for the occasional foul smell, who among us is safe?

Here is a poem by Howard Nemerov about ginkgo trees, with the title The Consent:

Late in November, on a single night
Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees
That stand along the walk drop all their leaves
In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind
But as though to time alone: the golden and green
Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday
Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?
What in those wooden motives so decided
To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,
Rebellion or surrender? and if this
Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?
What use to learn the lessons taught by time,
If a star at any time may tell us: Now.

From Engelbert Kaempfer, Amoenitates Exoticae

Eric Thomson informed me that Victor Hugo's poem À Albert Durer was inspired in part by Dürer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel (Knight, Death, and Devil):

Eric also brought to my notice another poem inspired by the engraving, by Jorge Borges (tr. Norman Thomas di Giovanni):

Our ways are two. His—the man of steel
and pride, who rides unshaken in his faith
through the world's dubious forest, between the Devil's
scorn and Death's immobile dance; and mine—
different, shorter. In what forgotten night
or morning now long dead did my eyes first see
Dürer's lasting dream, this strange epic—
the hero and his thronging shades—seeking
me out, lying in wait, uncovering me?
It's me and not the Knight that the old, white-
faced man, head crowned with writhing snakes, exhorts.
The hourglass, grain by grain, measures my time,
not his eternal present. I will turn
to ash and void. I, who started out
long after you, will reach my mortal end,
while you, who's never been, Knight of bared sword
and leafless wood, will go your way as long
as men endure—aloof, unreal, eternal.

Los caminos son dos. El de aquel hombre
de hierro y de soberbia, y que cabalga,
firme en su fe, por la dudosa selva
del mundo, entre las befas y la danza
inmóvil del Demonio y de la Muerte,
y el otro, el breve, el mío. ¿En que borrada
noche o mañana antigua descubrieron
mis ojos la fantástica epopeya,
el perdurable sueño de Durero,
el héroe y la caterva de sus sombras
que me buscan, me acechan y me encuentran?
A mí, no al paladín, exhorta el blanco
anciano coronado de sinuosas
serpientes. La clepsidra sucesiva
mide mi tiempo, no su eterno ahora.
Yo seré la ceniza y la tiniebla;
yo, que partí después, habré alcanzado
mi término mortal; tú, que no eres,
tú, caballero de la recta espada
y de la selva rígida, tu paso
proseguirás mientras los hombres duren.
Imperturbable, imaginario, eterno.

David Kovacs' translations of Euripides, in the Loeb Classical Library series, seem to me to be models of their kind. In Andromache, however, I wondered about the translations of a few passages.

207-208:

It is not beauty but goodness that gives a husband pleasure.

οὐ τὸ κάλλος, ὦ γύναι, / ἀλλ' ἁρεταὶ τέρπουσι τοὺς ξυνευνέτας.

Here Kovacs did not translate ὦ γύναι (o woman).

861-865:

O that I could soar out of the land of Phthia to the place where the ship of pine, first bark that ever sailed, passed through the Symplegades!

Φθιάδος ἐκ γᾶς
κυανόπτερος ὄρνις ἀρθείην,
πευκᾶεν σκάφος ᾇ διὰ κυανέ-
ας ἐπέρασεν ἀκτάς,
πρωτόπλοος πλάτα.

862 ἀρθείην Stevens: εἴθ' εἴην C

Here Kovacs did not translate κυανόπτερος ὄρνις (a bird with blue-black wings. e.g. a raven). Andromache also refers to her wings in line 441. See Escape for parallels.

900-904:

ORESTES
O Phoebus, healer god, give us an end to these troubles! What is the matter? Is it by gods or mortals that you are being ill-treated?
HERMIONE
In part it is my doing, in part my husband's, and in part one of the gods is to blame. Yet I am wholly undone.

ΟΡΕΣΤΗΣ
ὦ Φοῖβ' ἀκέστορ, πημάτων δοίης λύσιν.
τί χρῆμα; πρὸς θεῶν ἢ βροτῶν πάσχεις κακά;
ΕΡΜΙΟΝΗ
τὰ μὲν πρὸς ἡμῶν, τὰ δὲ πρὸς ἀνδρὸς ὅς μ' ἔχει,
τὰ δ' ἐκ θεῶν του· πανταχῇ δ' ὀλώλαμεν.

For πανταχῇ, "on all sides" or "from all directions" might be preferable to "wholly", in light of what precedes, and "Yet" seems a bit strong for δ' here.

For inclusion in my commonplace book, here are passages from Andromache that attracted my attention.

100-102:

One should never call any mortal happy until he dies and you can see how he has completed his days and gone below.

χρὴ δ' οὔποτ' εἰπεῖν οὐδέν' ὄλβιον βροτῶν,
πρὶν ἂν θανόντος τὴν τελευταίαν ἴδῃς
ὅπως περάσας ἡμέραν ἥξει κάτω.

189-190:

Those whose pride is great do not take kindly to hearing superior arguments from their inferiors.

οἱ γὰρ πνέοντες μεγάλα τοὺς κρείσσους λόγους
πικρῶς φέρουσι τῶν ἐλασσόνων ὕπο.

243:

We do not live in this city according to barbarian customs.

οὐ βαρβάρων νόμοισιν οἰκοῦμεν πόλιν.

319-320:

O renown, renown, countless are the mortals, worthless men in themselves, whose lives you have puffed to greatness!

ὦ δόξα δόξα, μυρίοισι δὴ βροτῶν
οὐδὲν γεγῶσι βίοτον ὤγκωσας μέγαν.

410 (cf. the contrary sentiments of Pheres in Euripides' Alcestis):

Not to die for my child would be a reproach to me.

ἐμοὶ δ' ὄνειδος μὴ θανεῖν ὑπὲρ τέκνου.

611-613 (something for commanders-in-chief to keep in mind):

You lost [i.e. destroyed] lives many and brave, left old women at home bereft of their sons, and robbed gray-headed fathers of their noble children.

ψυχὰς δὲ πολλὰς κἀγαθὰς ἀπώλεσας
παίδων τ' ἄπαιδας γραῦς ἔθηκας ἐν δόμοις
πολιούς τ' ἀφείλου πατέρας εὐγενῆ τέκνα.

642-644:

From trivial causes the tongue brings about great quarrels for men. Mortals who are wise take care not to wrangle with their kin.

σμικρᾶς ἀπ' ἀρχῆς νεῖκος ἀνθρώποις μέγα
γλῶσσ' ἐκπορίζει· τοῦτο δ' οἱ σοφοὶ βροτῶν
ἐξευλαβοῦνται, μὴ φίλοις τεύχειν ἔριν.

699-700 (for politicians to consider):

And sitting arrogantly in office in the city they think grander thoughts than the common people, though they are worthless.

σεμνοὶ δ' ἐν ἀρχαῖς ἥμενοι κατὰ πτόλιν
φρονοῦσι δήμου μεῖζον, ὄντες οὐδένες.

727-728:

Old men are a thing unrestrained and hard to control because of their quick tempers.

ἀνειμένον τι χρῆμα πρεσβυτῶν γένος
καὶ δυσφύλακτον ὀξυθυμίας ὕπο.

985:

For the tie of blood is strangely powerful.

τὸ συγγενὲς γὰρ δεινόν.

1270-1272:

Cease your grieving for the dead. For this is the judgment that stands over all mortals, and death is their debt to pay.

παῦσαι δὲ λύπης τῶν τεθνηκότων ὕπερ·
πᾶσιν γὰρ ἀνθρώποισιν ἥδε πρὸς θεῶν
ψῆφος κέκρανται κατθανεῖν τ' ὀφείλεται.

Thanks very much to David K. for sending me volume 3 of the Loeb Classical Library (LCL) edition of Pausanias as a gift. It's surprising that anyone, other than relatives and close friends, bothers to read this blog. It's also gratifying and touching to realize that someone appreciates it enough to send a gift, as occasionally happens.

When I was at university, one of the professors invited some students to read Pausanias with him over the summer. I didn't stay with the group long, alas, but I've recently been reading Pausanias systematically, book by book. Pausanias says little about himself—in the first half of his work a few nuggets of homely wisdom attracted my notice (translations from the LCL edition, mostly by W.H.S. Jones).

1.3.3:

But there are many false beliefs current among the mass of mankind, since they are ignorant of historical science and consider trustworthy whatever they have heard from childhood in choruses and tragedies.

1.5.4:

But there is no way for a mortal to overstep what the deity sees fit to send.

1.10.3:

Love is wont to bring many calamities upon men.

2.1.5 (of attempts to dig a canal through the isthmus of Corinth):

So difficult it is for man to alter by violence what Heaven has made.

2.8.6:

But no man finds all of his plans turn out according to his liking.

2.23.6:

It is not easy to make the multitude change their views.

3.23.3:

For to a man whose object is gain what is sacred is of less account than what is profitable.

4.2.3:

Most matters of Greek history have come to be disputed.

4.4.3:

These are the accounts given by the two sides; one may believe them according to one's feelings towards either side.

4.4.7:

For among the many inducements to be found in humans which drive us to wrongdoing the love of gain exercises the greatest power.

4.9.6:

But human affairs and human purpose above all are obscured by fate, just as the mud of a river hides a pebble.

4.11.6:

Men are apt to be most annoyed by what they regard as beneath them.

4.28.8:

Indeed Homer's ideas have proved useful to men in every matter.

5.10.1:

Many are the sights to be seen in Greece, and many are the wonders to be heard; but on nothing does Heaven bestow more care than on the Eleusinian rites and the Olympic games.

5.25.3:

The benevolence of the gods makes all things easy.

Peter Levi, in his Penguin Classics translation, praised Pausanias as follows:

The work of which this is a translation was conceived in an age of dictatorship and false enlightenment, but is impregnated with that sense of a persistent religion, of the inevitable victories of reason, and of the godlike resurrections of liberty and democracy in Greece which make Greek stones noble.

David Konstan once gave an essay the title "The Joys of Pausanias". I've found joy and pleasure in reading the first five books of Pausanias, and I look forward to reading the rest.

Donald Culross Peattie, An Almanac for Moderns (March 5):

I like the skunk cabbage emerging now in the woods, for other reasons than those that endear to me innocent pretties like hepaticas and trout lilies. It has the fascination of a particularly crafty and devious old man, wrapped in a cape, and puttering about down in the leafless copses for some dubious enterprise. It is an unlikely customer to see in these parts, since aroids are a race chiefly of the tropics. With its lingering smell it defies you to touch it, and so, ingeniously protected from our vernal lust for wildflower gathering, this curious old vegetable lives on from year to year, outwitting us all, increasing, as it goes its subterranean way.

Related post: Skunk Cabbage.

Thoreau, Journal (March 3, 1841):

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

James Hayford, To Be Rich:

Musing on what it would be to be rich,
I saw what I was looking at: the ditch
Coated with chocolate mud the thaw had left,
Of velvet texture and luxurious heft.
As if confirming a conclusion drawn,
The naked tree put golden grosbeaks on.

Perhaps evening grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus):

Daniel Ricketson, quoted in F.B. Sanborn, Henry D. Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), p. 268:

One afternoon, when my wife was playing an air upon the piano,—"Highland Laddie," perhaps,—Thoreau became very hilarious, sang "Tom Bowline," and finally entered upon an improvised dance. Not being able to stand what appeared to me at the time the somewhat ludicrous appearance of our Walden hermit, I retreated to my "shanty," a short distance from my house; while my older and more humor-loving friend Alcott remained and saw it through, much to his amusement. It left a pleasant memory, which I recorded in some humble lines that afterwards appeared in my "Autumn Sheaf."

Daniel Ricketson, "The Improvised Dance," in The Autumn Sheaf: A Collection of Miscellaneous Poems (New Bedford: By the Author, 1869), p. 198:

Like the Indian dance of old,
  Far within the forest shade,
Showing forth the spirit bold,
  That no foeman e'er dismayed,—

Like the dancing of the Hours,
  Tripping on with merry feet,
Triumphing o'er earthly powers,
  Yet with footsteps all must greet,—

Like the Fauns and Satyrs too,
  Nimbly leaping in the grove,
Now unseen, and then in view,
  As amid the trees they move,—

Like the leaves by whirlwind tossed,
  In some forest's valley wide,
Scattered by the Autumn frost,
  Whirling madly side by side,—

Thus, and still mysterious more,
  Our philosopher did prance,
Skipping on our parlor floor
  In his wild improvised dance.

Henry S. Salt, Life of Henry David Thoreau (London: Walter Scott, 1896), p. 77:

On the occasion of one of his visits to Mr. Ricketson at "Brooklawn," New Bedford, Thoreau surprised the company by an unexpected outburst of hilarity, under which impulse he sang "Tom Bowling," and finally entered upon an improvised dance. Mr. Ricketson, "not being able to stand what appeared at the time the somewhat ludicrous appearance of our Walden hermit," retreated to his shanty, a short distance from his house, whilst the more "humour-loving" Alcott remained to see the entertainment. Thoreau afterwards told his sister Sophia that in the excitement of this dance he had made a point of treading on the toes of the guileless Alcott.

F.B. Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years, vol. 2 (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1909), p. 397:

As Mrs. R. struck up a lively Scotch air ("The Campbells are Comin'"), Thoreau felt moved to try a dance, and did so,—keeping time to the music perfectly, but executing some steps more like Indian dances than the usual ballroom figures. Anna was so amused at the sight, which she saw through the window, that she ran and called her father and Channing, who came and looked on,—Alcott sitting on the sofa, meanwhile, and watching the dance. Thoreau continued the performance for five or ten minutes; it was earnest and spontaneous, but not particularly graceful.

Edward Waldo Emerson, Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), p. 146:

Mrs. Ricketson, playing at her piano, struck into "The Campbells are Coming." Thoreau put down his book and began to dance—a sylvan dance, as of a faun among rocks and bushes in a sort of labyrinthine fashion, now leaping over obstacles, then advancing with stately strides, returning in curves, then coming back in leaps. Alcott, coming in, stood thunderstruck to see "Thoreau acting his feelings in motion" as he called it. Alcott did not have that kind of feelings.

W.H. Auden, Lullaby (April 1972), line 31:

Let your last thinks all be thanks.

Auden wasn't just idly playing with words that superficially sound similar. He was aware of the etymological connection between thank and think. See the following, originally written for but eventually omitted from Auden's "The Giving of Thanks" (Mademoiselle Magazine, 1944):

So let's turn to that best of all desert-island books, Murray's New English Dictionary. There we find that, in the teutonic languages, to thank is to think, to think is to thank.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) s.v. thank, n.:

OE. þanc, þo̢nc = OFris. thonk, OS. *thank (MDu. danc, D. dank), OHG., MHG. danc (G. dank), ON. þökk (:-þanku fem.), Sw. tack, Da. tak, Goth. þagks:-OTeut. *þanko^z, f. ablaut stem þenk: þank: þunk: see THINK. The primary sense was therefore thought.

OED, s.v. think, v.²:

Cognate with Old Frisian thanka, thenkia, thenzia, tinsa, etc., past tense thogte, tochte (present stem forms with stem vowel i may perhaps result from merger with a cognate of THINK v.¹; West Frisian tinke), Old Dutch thenken, past tense thāhta (Middle Dutch denken, dinken, Dutch denken), Old Saxon thenkian, past tense thāhta (Middle Low German denken), Old High German thenken, denken, past tense thāhta, dāhta (Middle High German denken, German denken), Old Icelandic þekkja, past tense þekkti, in early use also þátti, Old Swedish þækkia, Old Danish tække, Gothic þagkjan, past tense þāhta < the same Germanic base as THOUGHT n., THANK n., and I-THANK n., probably < the same Indo-European base as Old Latin tongēre to know (only in Ennius, as reported in a quotation in the 8th cent. A.D. writer Paulus Diaconus), Oscan tanginom opinion; a different ablaut grade is shown by THINK v.¹

Labels: etymology

Euripides, Bacchae 397-399 (tr. David Kovacs):

Our life is short: this being so a man who pursues great things may miss what lies at hand.

βραχὺς αἰών· ἐπὶ τούτῳ
δέ τις ἂν μεγάλα διώκων
τὰ παρόντ᾽ οὐχὶ φέροι.

Pindar, Pythian Odes 3.21-23 (tr. William H. Race):

For there is among mankind a very foolish kind of person, who scorns what is at hand and peers at things far away, chasing the impossible with hopes unfulfilled.

ἔστι δὲ φῦλον ἐν ἀνθρώποισι ματαιότατον,
ὅστις αἰσχύνων ἐπιχώρια παπταίνει τὰ πόρσω,
μεταμώνια θηρεύων ἀκράντοις ἐλπίσιν.

Pausanias 3.13.5 (tr. W.H.S. Jones, with an addition in brackets):

The poetess Praxilla represents Carneüs as the son of Europa <and Zeus>, Apollo and Leto being his nurses. There is also another account of the name; in Trojan Ida there grew in a grove of Apollo cornel-trees, which the Greeks cut down to make the Wooden Horse. Learning that the god was wroth with them they propitiated him with sacrifices and named Apollo Carneüs from the cornel-tree (craneia), a custom prevalent in the olden time making them transpose the r and the a.

Πραξίλλῃ μὲν δὴ πεποιημένα ἐστὶν ὡς Εὐρώπης εἴη καὶ <Διὸς ὁ> Κάρνειος καὶ αὐτὸν ἀνεθρέψατο Ἀπόλλων καὶ Λητώ· λέγεται δὲ καὶ ἄλλος ἐπ' αὐτῷ λόγος, ἐν τῇ Ἴδῃ τῇ Τρωικῇ κρανείας ἐν Ἀπόλλωνος ἄλσει πεφυκυίας τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐκτεμεῖν ἐς τοῦ ἵππου τοῦ δουρείου τὴν ποίησιν· μαθόντες δὲ ὀργήν σφισιν ἔχειν τὸν θεὸν θυσίαις ἱλάσκονται καὶ Ἀπόλλωνα ὀνομάζουσι Κάρνειον ἀπὸ τῶν κρανειῶν, ὑπερθέντες τὸ ῥῶ κατὰ δή τι ἀρχαῖον.

Διὸς ὁ inseruit H. Hitzig, Διὸς iam W.F. Rinck, Die Religonen der Hellenen 2 (Zurich: Meyer und Zeller, 1854) p. 139, n. 7.

Cf. Carl Wendel, ed., Scholia in Theocritum Vetera (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914), p. 172, scholion d on Theocritus 5.83:

There is a festival of Zeus [sic] called Karneia. Among the Greeks it is celebrated because the wooden horse was made of cornel-tree wood.

ἔστιν ἑορτὴ Διὸς Κάρνεια ὀνομαζομένη. παρ' Ἕλλησι δὲ τελεῖται διὰ τὸν δούρειον ἵππον ἐκ κρανείου εἶναι ξύλου.

Wendel in his critical apparatus:

fort. post ἑορτὴ supplenda: Ἀπόλλωνος ἀπὸ Κάρνου τοῦ. Ἀπόλλωνος pro Διὸς scribi vult Kalkmann l.l. 213.

With Wendel's conjecture, "There is a festival of Apollo called Karneia after Zeus' son Karnos..." With Kalkmann's conjecture, "There is a festival of Apollo called Karneia..."

Probably no one today accepts the derivation of Karneios from kraneia, but inscriptions do survive that forbid tree cutting in sanctuaries of Apollo, e.g. F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1969), no. 37, Attica, 4th century B.C. (tr. Aslak Rostad, Human Transgression - Divine Retribution: a study of religious transgressions and punishments in Greek cultic regulations and Lydian-Phrygian reconciliation inscriptions, pp. 266-267):

Gods. The priest of Apollo Erithaseos declares and forbids on behalf of himself and the other members of the dēmē and the Athenian people anyone to cut down trees in the sanctuary of Apollo, and to bring wood, twigs, firewood or fallen leaves out of the sanctuary. If anyone receives what is illegally cut or brought out of the sanctuary, he shall, if he is a slave, be whipped with fifty lashes and the priest shall give his and his master's name to the king archon and the council in accordance with the decision of the council and the Athenian people. If he is a free man the priest shall, together with the dēmarch fine him fifty drachmas and give his name to the king and the council in accordance with the decision of the council and the Athenian people.

Cornel-Tree
Related posts: Pitiful Destruction; Enemy of Orchards; Arboricide and Matricide; The Sacrilegious Axe; Arboricide on the Wayne Ranch; The Woods of Bachycraigh; Papadendrion; Papadendrion Again; A Bewilderment of Birds; Ancient Protests Against Deforestation; Illustrations of Erysichthon; Prayer and Sacrifice to Accompany Tree Cutting; A Spirit Protects the Trees; St. Martin and the Pine Tree; The Geismar Oak; Bregalad's Lament; Petition of a Poplar; Cactus Ed and Arboricide; Views from the Center of Highgate Wood; Artaxerxes and Arboricide; When the Last Tree Falls; The Hamadryads of George Lane; Sorbs and Medlars; So Foul a Deed; Like Another Erysichthon; The Fate of Old Trees; Scandalous Misuse of the Globe; The Groves Are Down; Massacre; Executioners; Anagyrasian Spirit; Butchers of Our Poor Trees; Cruel Axes; Odi et Amo; Kentucky Chainsaw Massacre; Protection of Sacred Groves; Lex Luci Spoletina; Turullius and the Grove of Asclepius; Caesarian Section; Death of a Noble Pine; Two Yew Trees in Chilthorne, Somerset; The Fate of the Shrubbery at Weston; The Trees Are Down; Hornbeams; Sad Ravages in the Woods; Strokes of Havoc; Maltreatment of Trees; Arboricide; An Impious Lumberjack; Erysichthon in Ovid; Erysichthon in Callimachus; Vandalism.

Herodotus 2.133 (tr. Aubrey de Selincourt):

After the death of his daughter a second calamity fell upon Mycerinus: he received an oracle from Buto to the effect that he was destined to live only for six more years and to die within the seventh....Mycerinus, convinced by this that his doom was sealed, had innumerable lamps made, by the light of which he set himself every evening to drink and be merry, and never ceased day or night from the pursuit of pleasure, travelling about from place to place amongst the pools and woodlands, wherever he heard of a particularly delightful spot. His object in this was by turning night into day to extend the six remaining years of his life to twelve, and so to convict the oracle of falsehood.

μετὰ δὲ τῆς θυγατρὸς τὸ πάθος δεύτερα τούτῳ τῷ βασιλέι τάδε γενέσθαι· ἐλθεῖν οἱ μαντήιον ἐκ Βουτοῦς πόλιος ὡς μέλλοι ἓξ ἔτεα μοῦνον βιοὺς τῷ ἑβδόμῳ τελευτήσειν....ταῦτα ἀκούσαντα τὸν Μυκερῖνον, ὡς κατακεκριμένων ἤδη οἱ τούτων, λύχνα ποιησάμενον πολλά, ὅκως γίνοιτο νύξ, ἀνάψαντα αὐτὰ πίνειν τε καὶ εὐπαθέειν, οὔτε ἡμέρης οὔτε νυκτὸς ἀνιέντα, ἔς τε τὰ ἕλεα καὶ τὰ ἄλσεα πλανώμενον καὶ ἵνα πυνθάνοιτο εἶναι ἐνηβητήρια ἐπιτηδεότατα. ταῦτα δὲ ἐμηχανᾶτο θέλων τὸ μαντήιον ψευδόμενον ἀποδέξαι, ἵνα οἱ δυώδεκα ἔτεα ἀντὶ ἓξ ἐτέων γένηται, αἱ νύκτες ἡμέραι ποιεύμεναι.

George Saintsbury, Matthew Arnold (Edinburgh: William Blackswood and Sons, 1902), p. 14:

The foolish good sense of Mr Toots would probably observe—and justly—that before six years, or six months, or even six days were over, King Mycerinus must have got very sleepy.

From Matthew Arnold, Mycerinus:

The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,
My sand runs short; and—as yon star-shot ray,
Hemm'd by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,
Now, as the barrier closes, dies away—
Even so do past and future intertwine,
Blotting this six years' space, which yet is mine.

Six years—six little years—six drops of time!
Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,
And old men die, and young men pass their prime,
And languid pleasure fade and flower again,
And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown,
Revels more deep, joy keener than their own.

Into the silence of the groves and woods
I will go forth; though something would I say—
Something—yet what, I know not; for the Gods
The doom they pass revoke not, nor delay;
And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all,
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

This post supplements Grand Teton.

Pausanias 2.26.4 (on Phlegyas' daughter, pregnant by Apollo, tr. W.H.S. Jones; see also 2.27.7):

In the country of the Epidaurians she bore a son, and exposed him on the mountain called Nipple at the present day, but then named Myrtium.

ὡς δὲ ἐν τῇ γῇ τῇ Ἐπιδαυρίων ἔτεκεν, ἐκτίθησι τὸν παῖδα ἐς τὸ ὄρος τοῦτο ὃ δὴ Τίτθιον ὀνομάζουσιν ἐφ᾽ ἡμῶν, τηνικαῦτα δὲ ἐκαλεῖτο Μύρτιον.

Eric Thomson tells me that Martin Martin, in A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (1703), was the first to mention the Paps of Jura:

The isle is mountainous along the middle, where there are four hills of a considerable height. The two highest are well known to sea-faring men by the name of the Paps of Jura. They are very conspicuous from all quarters of sea and land in those parts.

Joseph Epstein, "My Friend Edward," in Narcissus Leaves the Pool: Familiar Essays (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), pp. 287-321 (at 290):

A small number of people called him Ed, but it was generally a mistake to do so. He himself did not go to first names easily, and to diminutives never. I was always Joseph to him, he Edward to me. I am not sure how I was able to break through to address him by his first name, or why he early chose to call me by mine, though I am glad that this happened. He had students, acquaintances, really quite dear friends of several decades whom he continued to call Mr. or Mrs. or Miss; they usually called him Professor Shils. It was part of his formality; and Edward's formality was a reminder that the word formality has its root in the word formidable.

Not from an etymological point of view. Formality (from Latin fōrma) and formidable (from Latin formido), so far as I know, are unrelated, as Professor Shils probably could have told Mr. Epstein: "He was endlessly curious about the etymology of phrases and idioms." (p. 306.)

This is a barely discernible blemish on a charming essay. Would that I could write half so fluently and wittily as Epstein, who probably would put me in the same class as the following pedant, described in his essay "Ticked to the Min" (pp. 137-154, at 150):

I have a reader who, in a monotone voice, occasionally telephones to report that he has found another typographical error in one of my books. I believe he thinks he is doing me a good turn—maybe he is naïve enough to think that publishers, in new editions, take care to correct such errors....With a downcast heart, I thank this fellow for pointing out these typos. But before I hang up the phone, I find myself wanting to say, "Write if you find work."

As for me, I'm grateful whenever someone points out a typographical or factual error. Without a pleasing style, one should at least aspire to accuracy.

Related post: Fact Checking and Proofreading.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Czeslaw Milosz, Remembrance of a Certain Love:

The practical consequence of my passions was an extensive vocabulary for the plants, animals, and birds of my native, northern land. My emigration frm Europe, however, occurred when my attachments to names had long since forsake me, and recognizing the kinship of American species with these other, European ones only made me think of my own life—its migration away from obdurate divisions and definitions to a harmony with the fluid and the undefined. But the truth is that I am always annoyed by that sort of musical motif played with new variations. I had known only one sort of pine, a pine tree was a pine tree, but here suddenly there was the sugar pine, the ponderosa pine, the Monterey pine, and so on—seventeen species, all told. Five species of spruce, six of fir—the largest, a rival in size to the sequoias, was not entirely a fir and, thus, its Latin name was neither Picea nor Abies, but Pseudotsuga. Several species each of cedar, larch, juniper. The oak, which I had believed to be simply an oak, always and everywhere eternal and indivisible in its oakness, had in America multiplied into something like sixteen species, ranging from those whose oakness was beyond question to others where it was so hazy that it was hard to tell right off whether they were laurels or oaks. Similar but dissimilar, the same but not identical, all this only leads to nonsensical thoughts, but why not acknowledge them? For example, what force is at work here, what origin—a universal law, the essence of tree? And does it contain the principle, the essence of pine, oak? Oh, classifications! Do they exist only in the mind or, in spite of everything, outside the mind as well?