The Obstinate Old Way

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Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), The Land (lines 561-603 of section "Winter"):

He tills the soil to-day,
Surly and grave, his difficult wage to earn.
Cities of discontent, the sickened nerve,
Are still a fashion that he will not learn.
His way is still the obstinate old way,        565
Even though his horses stare above the hedge,
And whinny, while the tractor drives its wedge
Where they were wont to serve,
And iron robs them of their privilege.
Still is his heart not given        570
To such encroachments on a natural creed;
Not wholly given, though he bows to need
By urgency and competition driven,
And vanity, to follow with the tide.
Still with a secret triumph he will say,        575
"Tractor for sand, maybe, but horse for clay,"
And in his calling takes a stubborn pride
That nature still defeats
The frowsty science of the cloistered men,
Their theory, their conceits;        580
The faith within him still derides the pen,
Experience his text-book. What have they,
The bookish townsmen in their dry retreats,
Known of December dawns, before the sun
Reddened the east, and fields were wet and grey?        585
When have they gone, another day begun,
By tracks into a quagmire trodden,
With sacks about their shoulders and the damp
Soaking until their very souls were sodden,
To help a sick beast, by a flickering lamp,        590
With rough words and kind hands?
Or felt their boots so heavy and so swere
With trudging over cledgy lands,
Held fast by earth, being to earth so near?

Book-learning they have known.        595
They meet together, talk, and grow most wise,
But they have lost, in losing solitude,
Something,—an inward grace, the seeing eyes,
The power of being alone;
The power of being alone with the earth and skies,         600
Of going about a task with quietude,
Aware at once of earth's surrounding mood
And of an insect crawling on a stone.

579 frowsty: "Fusty; having an unpleasant smell." (OED)
592 swere: "Loth, reluctant, unwilling, disinclined (to do something)." (OED s.v. sweer)
593 cledgy: "Of the nature of cledge; clayey; stiff, tenacious, sticky." (OED; cledge = " A local name for clay or clayey soil, in Kent, etc.")

And instead of "the obstinate old way," here is the painless new way, as imagined by one of "the cloistered men," Kevin Kelly, "Better Than Human," Wired (December 24, 2012):

The real revolution erupts when everyone has personal workbots...at their beck and call. Imagine you run a small organic farm. Your fleet of worker bots do all the weeding, pest control, and harvesting of produce, as directed by an overseer bot, embodied by a mesh of probes in the soil. One day your task might be to research which variety of heirloom tomato to plant; the next day it might be to update your custom labels. The bots perform everything else that can be measured.

Isaak Levitan, Evening in the Field
Related posts:

• Out of the Cold and Heavy Soil
• Old Tully and His Grandson Erb
• Anachronists
• Lord Man on His Mechanical Juggernaughts

Content with Hips and Haws

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Robert Devereux (1565-1601), 2nd Earl of Essex, in Alexander B. Grosart, ed., Miscellanies of The Fuller Worthies' Library. The Poems of Thomas, Lord Vaux: (Died 1562.) Edward, Earl of Oxford: (Died 1604.): Robert, Earl of Essex: (Died 1601.) and Walter, Earl of Essex: (Died 1576.) (Printed for Private Circulation, 1872), pp. 94-95 (from Ashmole MS. 781, p. 83, and Chetham MS. 8012, p. 86):

Happy were he coulde finish forth his fate
In some vnhaunted desert, moste obscure
From all society, from loue and hate
Of worldly folkes; there might he sleepe secure
There wake againe, and giue God euer praise,        5
Content wth hippes and hawes, and brambleberrie,
In contemplacion passing still his dayes,
And change of holy thoughts to make him merrie;
That when he dyes his tombe might be a bush
Where harmles Robin dwels wth gentle thursh.        10

2 vnhaunted: "Not frequented; lonely, solitary" (Oxford English Dictionary, sense 2)
6 hippes = hips, fruit of the wild rose; hawes = haws, fruit of the hawthorn
10 wth = with; thursh = thrush

Devereux "finished forth his fate" by the punishment of beheading, in the courtyard of the Tower of London, on February 25, 1601.


Marcus Gheereaerts the Younger (1561–1636),
portrait of Devereux, in Trinity College, Cambridge

Heapes of Books our Food and Entertainment

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Letter from Mary Evelyn to Samuel Tuke (1670):

You will not expect an account in this season of the yeare, how the flowers and greens prosper in the garden, since they are candying in the snow to be preserved for the spring, and our delights confined to the little wooden Roome, which could your perspective reach would for variety be no unpleasing diversion, than to see a dull fire, circled with a philosopher [her son's tutor, Ralph Bohun], a woman, and a child, heapes of books our food and entertainment, silence our law soe strictly observed that neither Dog nor Cat dares transgresse it. The crackling of the ice and whistling winds are our Musica, which if continued long in the same quarter may possibly freeze our witts as well as our penns, though Apollo were himselfe amongst us.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Related posts:

• Winter Pursuits
• The Science of Happiness

Demand for Newspapers

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Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), The Greek Islands (1978; rpt. London: Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 145:

As for the science of statistics, I must report respect tempered by scepticism. There was a fine example in Rhodes, where I was saddled with a clerk who went to exaggerated lengths to secure statistics of sales for our little newspaper. Of course you must know who buys your paper and where, for distribution purposes, so I did not discourage his ardour. One day he came to me in some puzzlement and showed me the sales for one small island off Leros, which startled us. Apparently we sold five times more copies than the total population of the island, on which there was only one tiny hamlet. Moreover, I knew from a friend that there was almost nobody except the priest who could read in the place. How then came these prodigious sales?

On my next trip north I called in and the mystery was revealed to me. The price of ordinary brown paper, such as tradesmen use for wrapping, had become very high, because of shortage; they were using my precious newspaper to wrap up their fish because it was cheaper than any other. It was not the prose or the layout or the information which it carried that made them buy; it was a godsend to them for wrapping fish. This was a salutary lesson and I often think of it when I study the circulation of a big London paper. Who is wrapping fish in it? Every editor should ask himself the question at least once a day.

Study in Prison

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Elizabeth Sears, "The Life and Work of William S. Heckscher: Some Petites Perceptions," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53.1 (1990) 107-133 (at 122, on a prison camp in Farnham, Quebec, where Heckscher was an inmate for eighteen months):

Heckscher was coffee maker; he had garbage detail (which meant periodic excursions extra muros); he knit socks in a knitting factory (all but the heels, which were the responsibility of the next man in line). After a time he added to his duties by organizing a school for the younger inmates in which he taught English literature, especially Shakespeare⁸². In time it was arranged that students in the camps would be allowed to take the McGill University matriculation examinations. The impressive performance of students from the Farnham Camp School was owed to instructions by a small but distinguished faculty⁸³.

⁸²During World War I Heckscher watched his grandfather, Wilhelm Foerster, teach mathematics to French prisoners. Says Heckscher: »If you live long enough much of what happens is repeat performances...I can imagine life goes in convolutions or waves.« (Interview, 1 March 1987). »Things never seem to break off, but reincarnate. That is very important to my way of thinking.« (Interview, 18 February 1987).

⁸³In his account of the prison schools (Deemed Suspect, 146-54) Eric Koch draws upon Heckscher's article »Studies in Concentration: A Released Schoolmaster Speaks,« The Canadian Student 21, 2, 1942, 9. Koch writes: »The academic talent assembled in [Major] Kippen's camp - Farnham - exceeded that of many Canadian universities« (146).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), The Gulag Archipelago (tr. Thomas P. Whitney):

At the Samarka Camp in 1946 a group of intellectuals had reached the very brink of death: They were worn down by hunger, cold, and work beyond their powers. And they were even deprived of sleep. They had nowhere to lie down. Dugout barracks had not yet been built. Did they go and steal? Or squeal? Or whimper about their ruined lives? No! Foreseeing the approach of death in days rather than weeks, this is how they spent their last sleepless leisure, sitting up against the wall: Timofeyev-Ressovsky gathered them into a "seminar," and they hastened to share with one another what one of them knew and the others did not — they delivered their last lectures to each other.

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), letter written from from prison to his brother Carlo (December 19, 1929):

Even if I were condemned to die, I think that I might be serene. The night before the execution I might even study a bit of Chinese!

Free Association

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Elizabeth Sears, "The Life and Work of William S. Heckscher: Some Petites Perceptions," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53.1 (1990) 107-133 (at 129):

In his writing, as in his conversation, Heckscher proceeds indirectly to his end. He does not set out to defend a position or to plead a case. He sees it as a danger when scholars behave as lawyers, struggling to convince judge and jury and to defeat a prosecutor: under these circumstances »scholarship turns into a kind of sic et non story, where you try to prove your point, where you are desperate to suppress subconsciously arguments which might not be favorable«¹²¹. Airtight arguments are inherently suspect; Heckscher is convinced that common sense makes little sense in historical study. The critical thing is to build associatively, to construct bridges between ideas.

¹²¹ Interview, 29 May 1987. Heckscher is always on the alert to recognize and avoid these mechanisms of repression. When he learned about the ascetic ideal of custodia oculorum — guarding the eyes against that which should not be seen — he found a moral in it: an art historian must be a voyeur. Gula oculorum is, for the artist, a virtue (»Biography and Evaluation of the Artist,« in An Exhibition of the Sculpture and Drawings of Raimondo Puccinelli (exhib. Duke University Museum of Art, 29 September-12 November, 1974, 3). Heckscher, who says, »I try to avoid lying in any form in my research,« draws a lesson from Freud, who, only after agonies, was able to face the evidence for infant sexuality. (Interview, 25 February 1987). Life in Hitler's Germany bred in Heckscher a fear of any kind of thought control.

Id. (p. 133):

Heckscher is a student of the human mind and its workings. To understand creative products of the past, he suggests, the scholar must himself be a creative thinker. By cultivating the art of free association, he may acquire that liberation which provides a balance to scholarly discipline. Once recently Heckscher decided to take the phrase »free association« and translate it into Latin as a way of gaining insight into the nature of the concept. He devised 23 different ways of expressing the idea, among them: conjunctio idearum; sententiarum nexus; disjecta membra — quasi metallica — magnete servitio apte interconnecta; cogitationes irrepresse emblematizatae; liberatio idearum et notionum jam misere inhibitarum quae nunc per vim affirmativam, quae — per viam mutuae attractionis — tute et argute, aequabiliter et eleganter (sine ullo artificio) nova nobis monstrant reperta¹⁴⁸.

¹⁴⁸ Letter, 8 April 1987.

Thanks to Dr. John Lavagnino for drawing my attention to Sears' very interesting biographical essay on Heckscher.

Begin With the Index

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Elizabeth Sears, "The Life and Work of William S. Heckscher: Some Petites Perceptions," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53.1 (1990) 107-133 (at 132-133, footnotes omitted):

A founding member of the Society of Indexers, organized in 1957, Heckscher is a theorist of indexing whose unusual gifts were recognized in 1987 when he was given the Carey Award for being an »explorer of the frontiers of indexing as an art form«. The classic example of a Heckscherian index is that which accompanies Heckscher's commentary on Camerarius's description of Dürer's Melencolia I. Heckscher later prepared a commentary on this index, »The Unconventional Index and its Merits,« which he published in The Indexer. An index, he argues, should be a self-sufficient entity which »balances« the text: he observes that the text of his article runs to some 40 pages, notes and index (set in small type) to some 27 and 18 pages respectively.

A Heckscherian index is arranged alphabetically, but the last-name-first rule is abandoned: »Heckscher, William Sebastian« is conventional and dull: »William [Bill] Sebastian H e c k s c h e r« is preferable. Entries are information-rich, and are intended to relieve the text of encumbering detail. Cross-references are lavish. The index Heckscher admires is a »child of the imagination«: it may be »so readable that one may begin with the index, deriving from it such pleasure as will stimulate eagerness to turn back to the text, perhaps piecemeal rather than as a continuous whole«.

Heckscher distinguishes this sort of analytical index from »the index that precedes the work-to- come or that may be an end in itself«. His personal indexes, containing entries beyond number, are of the latter type. Here are stored the fruits of his voluminous and patient reading. Extracted passages and engendered thoughts (petites perceptions) are recorded on 3 x 5 cards, given iconographical headings, cross-indexed, and filed along with various kinds of ephemera — postcards, newspaper clippings, papiers trouvés. »Up to a point,« he says, »I have been extremely conscientious in tending to my filing system, which has the following divisions:

1. An English into Latin vocabulary
2. A list, chronologically arranged from B.C. into eternity (I have prophecies for many centuries) in chronological order.
3. An alphabetical listing of everything under the sun which sometimes yields astonishing treasures».

Here is a photograph of Heckscher's workroom, from Charlotte Schoell-Glass and Elizabeth Sears, Verzetteln als Methode: Der humanistische Ikonologe William S. Heckscher (1904-1999) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008 = Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte, VI), p. 111 (thanks to Ian Jackson for sending this):

---

Arthur Stanley Pease, quoted in J.P. Elder et al., "Arthur Stanley Pease 1881-1964," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 69 (1965) ix:

I will confess that I am by nature a collector, that I began with marbles and horse-chestnuts, advanced to postage stamps, continued with botany and books, and at all times have gathered facts and occasionally ideas.

These two latter items, in lack of sufficient cranial space for dead storage, I enter methodically on 3 x 5 slips of paper. When enough of a kind are amassed, they are outspread, classified, digested, written down, dehydrated, and lo! an article, or more rarely a book, to be perused by some lone watcher in Czechoslovakia or beside the Bay of Biscay.

Our Calling

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Metrodorus, fragment 41 Körte (from Plutarch, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 16 = Moralia 1098 C, tr. Benedict Einarson and Philip H. De Lacy):

We are not called to save the nation or get crowned by it for wisdom; what is called for, my dear Timocrates, is to eat and drink wine, gratifying the belly without harming it.

οὐδὲν δεῖ σῴζειν τοὺς Ἕλληνας οὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ σοφίᾳ στεφάνων παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τυγχάνειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐσθίειν καὶ πίνειν οἶνον, ὦ Τιμόκρατες, ἀβλαβῶς τῇ γαστρὶ καὶ κεχαρισμένως.

A Secret Beauty

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Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), The Land (lines 362-370 of section "Winter"):

Now in the radiant night no men are stirring:
The little houses sleep with shuttered panes;
Only the hares are wakeful, loosely loping
Along the hedges with their easy gait,
And big loose ears, and pad-prints crossing snow;
The ricks and trees stand silent in the moon,
Loaded with snow, and tiny drifts from branches
Slip to the ground in woods with sliding sigh.
Private the woods, enjoying a secret beauty.

A Wanawizzi World

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Dear Mike,

'Wan-' is a curmudgeon's prefix par excellence, just as 'wane' must be one of the guild's pet verbs. Hardly surprising then in this wanawizzi world that it's all but gone by the board. 'Wannabe' is an open invitation to Heideggerian etymologizing.

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. WAN-, prefix:

a prefix expressing privation or negation (approximately equivalent to UN- prefix¹ or MIS- prefix¹), repr. Old English wan-, wǫn-, corresponding to Old Frisian. wan-, won-, Old Saxon wan- (only in wanskefti misfortune = Old English wansceaft), Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wan- (modern Dutch in many new formations, esp. in the sense 'wrong', 'mis-', as in wanbestuur misgovernment, wanluid discordant sound), Old High German wan-, wana (only in wanwâfan unarmed, wanaheil unhealthy, infirm, wanawizzi lacking wit, insane), Middle High German wan- (only in wanwitze inherited from Old High German), modern German wahn- (in wahnwitz, wahnsinn insanity, commonly apprehended as compounds of wahn n., delusion; also in some dialect words, chiefly adopted from Low German); ON., Swedish, Danish van- (in many old formations, to which modern Swedish and Danish have added many more, chiefly adopted from Low German). The prefix is in origin identical with WANE adj.

In Old English the number of words formed with the prefix is considerable, but none of them has survived into modern English, and only one (wanspéd, ill-success) into Middle English. Of the many new formations that arose in Middle English, only wantoȝen, undisciplined, WANTON adj. and n., still survives in use (with no consciousness of its etymological meaning); wanhope and wantrust may have been suggested by the equivalent Middle Dutch forms. It was in the north that the prefix was most prolific, and it probably continued to be productive far into the modern period. The following words, peculiar to the Scottish and northern dialects, are recorded in the Eng. Dial. Dict., mostly with examples (or references to glossaries etc.) from the 18th c., but few if any of them are now in current use:—wancanny adj., WANCHANCY adj., wancheer grief, sadness, wancouth adj. = uncouth, wandeidy adj., mischievous, WANDOUGHT n. and adj., wanearthly adj., WANEASE n., WANFORTUNE n., wanfortunate, adj. WANHAP n., WANLIESUM adj., wanlit adj., wanluck, wanown't adj. = unowned, wanreck 'mischance, ruin', WANREST n., WANTHRIVEN adj., wanuse misuse, waste, WANWEIRD n., WANWORTH adj. and n.

wannabe, n. and adj.
Pronunciation: /ˈwɒnəbɪ/
Forms: Also wannabee.
Etymology: WAN- prefix + epenthetic a + BE v.
A. n.
         = WAN-A-BE n.; an inadequate individual with a defective sense of his or her identity.

Season's greetings,
Eric Thomson

Beds for All Who Come

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Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), Up-Hill:

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
    Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
    From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
    A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
    You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
    Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
    They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
    Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
    Yea, beds for all who come.

The Beau Idéal of Human Nature

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Sydney Smith, "Professional Education" in his Works, Vol. I (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859), pp. 166-175 (at 170-171):

The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it is no uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their grey hairs and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for school-boys. Their talk is of Latin verses; and it is quite clear, if men's ages are to be dated from the state of their mental progress, that such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their minds have been so completely possessed by exaggerated notions of classical learning, that they have not been able in the great school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness. Attend, too, to the public feelings—look to all the terms of applause. A learned man!—a scholar!—a man of erudition! Upon whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are they given to men acquainted with the science of government? thoroughly masters of the geographical and commercial relations of Europe: to men who know the properties of bodies, and their action upon each other? No: this is not learning; it is chemistry, or political economy—not learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of Scholar, is reserved for him who writes on the Æolic reduplication, and is familiar with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in ω and μι. The picture which a young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of knowledge, draws—his beau idéal of human nature—his top and consummation of man's powers—is a knowledge of the Greek language. His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws for himself, are the detection of an anapaest in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to observe. If a young classic of this kind were to meet the greatest chemist or the greatest mechanician, or the most profound political economist of his time, in company with the greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between them ever come across his mind?—would he ever dream that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the same utility as, Bentley and Heyne? We are inclined to think, that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the praises of the great King of Prussia, who entertained considerable doubts whether the King, with all his victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in μι.

Computer translation of 'Ships with Butterfly Wings'

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Une larme tombe pour le sableVagues et vent soupirent en deuilAu-dessus de la mer dans un pays lointainJusqu'à l'horizon, puis une pauseEt puis il est partiLa chaleur du soleil n'a jamais cesséCris plaintif de goélands sans causeEspoir, desesperee, ne s'arrête jamais de chanterClignotant dans l'éblouissement, elle attendLe résultat doit avoir une causeLorsque les navires avec papillon ailesBat dans le vent sur une quête fineAmants déchirés pendant un certain tempsPersonne ne peut dire le pourquoi de ces chosesLes liaisons ont été libérés Chacun est libre d'être leur propreC'est une graine qui doit être seméeEt personne ne peut dire à son destinParfois, il n'y a aucun moyen de gagnerMais seulement à endurer.Lorsque les navires avec papillon ailesCoups dans le ventTransporter votre cœur à travers l'océanC'est tout que vous pouvez faire, parfoisD'attendre et de présenter un grief et à prier.

Art for art's sake.

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As a boy, I wanted to be a great painter.
Even now canvases like Monet’s “Water Lilies,” impress my soul although there’s not much clarity. I can even paint – I have sketches like old naval victories, paintings in the style of Picasso or Cezanne,  Thompson, although Rembrandt’s detailed soul-analysis is a stretch. It’s not even that hard. Not really.

Where is the market? I mean, why bother?
Art teachers, jealous as they were, always assumed I was some kind of expert, a “ringer” who just showed up to show off and make fun of the untalented but sincere persons who take lessons and pay the bills.
They were right. Like the guy who can really play the drums, but makes a living selling shoes – not enough courage to get out there in the trenches, or get one’s head stomped in by critics and fans alike. I figure in order to succeed, i.e. make money, one would have to grab the world’s attention and hold it long enough for someone important to decide you are “in fashion” as a painter. That you are “marketable,” and “collectible” and “in vogue.” Like as in “Good Investment.” Maybe I was just too lazy to do it—to put the time into learning the craft.
Hey! If I was to get some frames, and stretch huge expanses of white cotton over them. Rent the Public Library and Art Gallery – how much could it cost? Bolt or screw them up on the walls, put paint in pots on tables, or on the floor in buckets. O.K. I know what you’re thinking. “It’s already been done! Lots of artists have public participation in their painting projects, and the Old Masters had half of their work done by apprentices…and so called installation art consisting of neat rows of bricks, toilet seats, or even buckets of paint on a table is old hat.”
Yeah, you’re right. But then…you always are. (I’ve never heard you ask a question, or even express an opinion. You know everything.) It is abstract, and expressionistic, and therefore derivative. It’s even nihilistic, and therefore anti-Canadian.
The very first guy that walks in there and says, “Bleep! Any bleep-bleep could do that!” I’m going to grab him by the scruff of the neck, dip his head in the paint pot and bounce the mouthy bleep off the bleeping walls for a while.
It may not be entirely original. One heck of a piece of performance art, eh?
“I couldn’t do it without your help.” Eventually we’ll get this work of art finished.
I may even be able to sell a couple of them. But that’s not really important right now. 
Try to think of it as “art for art’s sake,” and you have to admit; the medium of performance art has really been lacking in some essential quality lately. You know – like violence? Think of it as a great naval victory without the water; ships and smoke and stuff.
                                                     From quiet contemplation comes chaos.

Coming November 1. 'The Art of Murder.'

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Marketing image for my new mystery novel, 'The Art of Murder,' which will be published November 1/2012.

I would love a critique, an impression, a scathing commentary, a few words on a related subject,* for someone to go off on a tangent, or even a few unsolicited compliments on this, my first attempt at a marketing image.

Ahem. That bein' said, (and I'm just sayin',) please tell me all about how bad covers don't sell good books, and all that short-story long crap.

Hello to all of you in Russia. Russia is a great country, and I hope you all learn English very, very soon, so that you all can read a whole bunch of my books. Spacebo comrades.

More on this later.

Thank you very much and good day. Oh, and I promise to put the skull back in the ROM tomorrow before Curly the minimum-wage unarmed security guard wakes up just in time to go home.) -louis


P.S. Yes I know my signature begins with a lower case letter. It's like a little peccadillo.

*But I ain't going to get it, am I?

This is the end of this post. Stop reading it.

Alone

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G.W. Bowersock, "Ronald Syme (March 11, 1903-September 4, 1989)," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 135.1 (March 1991) 118-122 (at 120):

Like most great humanistic scholars, he worked entirely alone—apart from the solace of a cheap cigar. He had no interest in collaborative research projects and specious programs for which funding could easily be raised. It was more with pride than bitterness that he wrote in the preface to his Tacitus,

The task has been long and laborious (for all that ostensible drudgery can be sheer delight). It has been hampered by various delays and vexations. Nor, in making the written text fit for publication and compiling the vast index, can aid or alleviation be recorded from any academic body, from any fund or foundation dedicated to the promotion of research in history and letters.

Computer translation of 'Ships with Butterfly Wings'

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Une larme tombe pour le sableVagues et vent soupirent en deuilAu-dessus de la mer dans un pays lointainJusqu'à l'horizon, puis une pauseEt puis il est partiLa chaleur du soleil n'a jamais cesséCris plaintif de goélands sans causeEspoir, desesperee, ne s'arrête jamais de chanterClignotant dans l'éblouissement, elle attendLe résultat doit avoir une causeLorsque les navires avec papillon ailesBat dans le vent sur une quête fineAmants déchirés pendant un certain tempsPersonne ne peut dire le pourquoi de ces chosesLes liaisons ont été libérés Chacun est libre d'être leur propreC'est une graine qui doit être seméeEt personne ne peut dire à son destinParfois, il n'y a aucun moyen de gagnerMais seulement à endurer.Lorsque les navires avec papillon ailesCoups dans le ventTransporter votre cœur à travers l'océanC'est tout que vous pouvez faire, parfoisD'attendre et de présenter un grief et à prier.

Art for art's sake.

To contact us Click HERE



































As a boy, I wanted to be a great painter.
Even now canvases like Monet’s “Water Lilies,” impress my soul although there’s not much clarity. I can even paint – I have sketches like old naval victories, paintings in the style of Picasso or Cezanne,  Thompson, although Rembrandt’s detailed soul-analysis is a stretch. It’s not even that hard. Not really.

Where is the market? I mean, why bother?
Art teachers, jealous as they were, always assumed I was some kind of expert, a “ringer” who just showed up to show off and make fun of the untalented but sincere persons who take lessons and pay the bills.
They were right. Like the guy who can really play the drums, but makes a living selling shoes – not enough courage to get out there in the trenches, or get one’s head stomped in by critics and fans alike. I figure in order to succeed, i.e. make money, one would have to grab the world’s attention and hold it long enough for someone important to decide you are “in fashion” as a painter. That you are “marketable,” and “collectible” and “in vogue.” Like as in “Good Investment.” Maybe I was just too lazy to do it—to put the time into learning the craft.
Hey! If I was to get some frames, and stretch huge expanses of white cotton over them. Rent the Public Library and Art Gallery – how much could it cost? Bolt or screw them up on the walls, put paint in pots on tables, or on the floor in buckets. O.K. I know what you’re thinking. “It’s already been done! Lots of artists have public participation in their painting projects, and the Old Masters had half of their work done by apprentices…and so called installation art consisting of neat rows of bricks, toilet seats, or even buckets of paint on a table is old hat.”
Yeah, you’re right. But then…you always are. (I’ve never heard you ask a question, or even express an opinion. You know everything.) It is abstract, and expressionistic, and therefore derivative. It’s even nihilistic, and therefore anti-Canadian.
The very first guy that walks in there and says, “Bleep! Any bleep-bleep could do that!” I’m going to grab him by the scruff of the neck, dip his head in the paint pot and bounce the mouthy bleep off the bleeping walls for a while.
It may not be entirely original. One heck of a piece of performance art, eh?
“I couldn’t do it without your help.” Eventually we’ll get this work of art finished.
I may even be able to sell a couple of them. But that’s not really important right now. 
Try to think of it as “art for art’s sake,” and you have to admit; the medium of performance art has really been lacking in some essential quality lately. You know – like violence? Think of it as a great naval victory without the water; ships and smoke and stuff.
                                                     From quiet contemplation comes chaos.

Coming November 1. 'The Art of Murder.'

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Marketing image for my new mystery novel, 'The Art of Murder,' which will be published November 1/2012.

I would love a critique, an impression, a scathing commentary, a few words on a related subject,* for someone to go off on a tangent, or even a few unsolicited compliments on this, my first attempt at a marketing image.

Ahem. That bein' said, (and I'm just sayin',) please tell me all about how bad covers don't sell good books, and all that short-story long crap.

Hello to all of you in Russia. Russia is a great country, and I hope you all learn English very, very soon, so that you all can read a whole bunch of my books. Spacebo comrades.

More on this later.

Thank you very much and good day. Oh, and I promise to put the skull back in the ROM tomorrow before Curly the minimum-wage unarmed security guard wakes up just in time to go home.) -louis


P.S. Yes I know my signature begins with a lower case letter. It's like a little peccadillo.

*But I ain't going to get it, am I?

This is the end of this post. Stop reading it.

Payoff.

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(British Formula Ford. Wiki Commons 3.0)

I want it all. You remember me. I was the kid who wanted to be a professional scuba diver, and a private detective, and a cowboy, or rather, a gunfighter/rancher. I was the kid who wanted that 1967 Triumph Spitfire, for only $350.00 way back when—I was sixteen, and I had my license. I’m the kid who wanted to play ball, and hockey, and God knows what all. I’m the kid who wanted the parents to drop everything and scrape up $1,400.00 for the Jim Russell Racing School.Yeah, I’m the kid that wanted to be an archaeologist. As I recall, I was going win the Medal of Honour, and I’m the kid who wanted to invent his own religion. I’m the kid who had tennis lessons, and swimming lessons, and sailing lessons, and Saturdays at the YMCA climbing up ropes and jumping over saddle horses, and I’m the kid with the new red bike.I’m the kid who had those long summer vacation drives to a campground way off in the middle of nowhere, with little brother, little sister, feuding in the back seat while necks and faces became heated and voices were raised in the front seat. Some kids don’t even get that, when you think of it. Travel does broaden the mind, that much is true.I’m the kid who sent off, long before the internet, for information on how to stake a gold claim in Northern Ontario, and I’m the kid who wanted to run off and live in a cave and feed myself with a muzzle-loading musket and black powder. I’m the kid who grew up in a house full of books, music, and adults with brains in their heads and some ideas of their own…I’m the kid who should have taken flying lessons, I suppose. I’m the kid who was actually turned down by the recruiting office—not quite so much demand for cannon fodder back then, and I’m the kid who went off to be a newsman, and I’m the kid who went back to school fifteen times and still never finished. Yeah, I’m the guy who wanted to be a wildlife photographer, and I’m the guy who was planning to buy a sailboat and live on a desert island somewhere. I probably should have taken in a good university or two along the way, but of course I was too busy wasting time.All that precious time.                                                                                               I’m the kid who still has that grubby coin collection, and a few stamps. I’ve still got that pocketknife that my Uncle John left behind.I think at some point that I made up my mind that I would never get married—otherwise, how in the hell was I going to find time to do all these other things? People just laughed. Look who’s laughing now, for surely you people are the ones doing all the interesting stuff, all of the above in fact, whereas I’m still sort of hung up on what might have been. You even got some posterity to show for it.I suppose at some point we just have to let it go, and get on with what’s left of the rest of our lives. You want to know something funny? I still want it all. It’s true. I even think I can have it all; I mean, when you think of all them kids around the world who will never have what I have had and enjoyed. I guess that’s maybe the lesson in all of this—shit happens and we make the best of it. Yet the streets really are paved with gold around here. I firmly believe that. It’s a question of what do you want to do?There’s nothing stopping me from taking flying lessons, or canoeing to Belize for that matter.It’s a question of how bad you want it, and how hard you’re willing to work for it. It’s a matter of how much you are willing to sacrifice for it. And I guess I sacrifice much for the dreams that I do still cherish.But I will tell you this: if this really is a business, that is to say the business of writing books, which I have set myself to do, then at some point there had better be a payoff. Because anything else is just nonsense.“Oh, the vast bulk of writer’s have unreasonable expectations.”Yeah, they do.But I don’t.I think it’s a perfectly reasonable perception, and that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it through thick and thin.

Enough

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Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960), "Enough," in As the Wind Blows (London: Elkin Matthews, 1920), p. 32:

The larch, the birch and the eagle fern
And granite grey;
The cry of the kine and the song of the burn
Down Dartmoor way.

A league-long tramp to a lifted stone
Under the sky;
Long lustral hours superbly alone—
My soul and I.

For you be the kingdoms that you list,
The seas you will;
And mine a white rainbow in the mist
On a heather hill.

Benevixitist

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A learned and reclusive friend calls himself a "benevixitist." The coinage is inspired by Ovid, Tristia 3.4.25:

Crede mihi, bene qui latuit, bene vixit.

That is, "Believe me, he who has concealed himself well has lived well."

When I announced that I wanted to publicize the word "benevixitist," my friend replied:

I'm glad you're willing to give the word an airing. Perhaps it will be condemned to remain a hapax or will the benevixitists among us at last be tempted to break cover, come out of the closet/hut/burrow/attic/cellar/lair (briefly) and whisper "My name is _________ and I'm a benevixitist". I hope in any case that no factional strife will break out with the more radical lathebiosasts. In matters latuitarian I'm latitudinarian. An anchorite's as good as an eremite and we can all live happily apart under our respective stones.

Towards a glossary of benevixitist heraldry:

lion couchant (in very tall grass)
mantled helm (visor lowered)
moon decrescent
castle triple towered

Mottoes: latenter vivendum; cavendo tutus

Jean Baudoin, Recueil d'emblèmes divers
(Paris: Jacques Villery, 1638),
pp. 580-581 (De la solitude)
Related post: Live Unknown.

Man's Days

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Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960), "Man's Days," The Cornish Magazine 1 (1898) 41:

A sudden wakin', a sudden weepin';
A li'l suckin', a li'l sleepin';
A cheel's full joys an' a cheel's short sorrows,
Wi' a power o' faith in gert to-morrows.

Young blood red-hot an' the love of a maid;
One glorious day as'll never fade;
Some shadows, some sunshine, some triumphs, some tears;
An' a gatherin' weight o' the flyin' years.

Then auld man's talk o' the days behind 'e;
Your darter's youngest darter to mind 'e;
A li'l dreamin', a li'l dyin',
A li'l lew corner o' airth to lie in.

Related post: The Life of Man.

Unheard, Unseen, and Unconcerned

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Matthew Hale (1609-1676), paraphrase of Seneca, Thyestes 391-403, in Contemplations Moral and Divine (London: Printed for William Shrowsbury, 1699), p. 158:

Let him that will, ascend the tott'ring Seat
Of Courtly Grandeur, and become as great
As are his mounting Wishes; as for me,
Let sweet Repose, and rest my portion be;
Give me some mean obscure Recess; a Sphere
Out of the Road of Business, or the fear
Of falling lower, where I sweetly may
My self and dear Retirement still enjoy:
Let not my Life, or Name, be known unto
The Grandees of the Times, tost to and fro
By Censures, or Applause; but let my Age
Slide gently by, not overthwart the Stage
Of Publick Action; unheard, unseen,
And unconcerned, as if I ne'er had been.
And thus while I shall pass my silent days
In shady Privacy, free from the Noise
And bustles of the World, then shall I
A good old Innocent Plebeian die.
Death is a meer surprize, a very Snare
To him that makes it his lifes greatest care
To be a publick Pageant, known to All,
But unacquainted with Himself doth fall.

Seneca's Latin:

Stet quicumque volet potens
aulae culmine lubrico:
me dulcis saturet quies.
obscuro positus loco
leni perfruar otio,
nullis nota Quiritibus
aetas per tacitum fluat.
sic cum transierint mei
nullo cum strepitu dies,
plebeius moriar senex.
illi mors gravis incubat
qui, notus nimis omnibus,
ignotus moritur sibi.

Related posts:

• Beatus Ille
• The Fall of Princes
• In Leisure and Obscurity
• In Calm Leisure Let Me Rest

Dirt

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Charles Conrad Abbott (1843-1919), The Ramblers of an Idler (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1906), pp. 159-160:

The tirade against dirt so constantly heard is probably the most tiresome item of the stock in trade of housekeepers' communications. Poor dirt! Pulverized rock, tried by frost, purified by fire, washed by the rain and dried by the innocent sunshine, and yet more roundly abused than anything else in Nature. Thank Goodness, I love the dirt! Love to walk on it, to play in it; yes, to burrow waist-deep in it and, emerging into the light of day, feel that I am not an unfit object for the blessed sun to see. Better still, I am duly thankful that I am comparatively free from the restraints of those habitations where a speck of dirt is held in as great horror as a crime.

Abbott was an archaeologist, so his words "to burrow waist-deep in it" aren't just hyperbole.

Related post: The Dark Fat Earth.

Man's Days

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Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960), "Man's Days," The Cornish Magazine 1 (1898) 41:

A sudden wakin', a sudden weepin';
A li'l suckin', a li'l sleepin';
A cheel's full joys an' a cheel's short sorrows,
Wi' a power o' faith in gert to-morrows.

Young blood red-hot an' the love of a maid;
One glorious day as'll never fade;
Some shadows, some sunshine, some triumphs, some tears;
An' a gatherin' weight o' the flyin' years.

Then auld man's talk o' the days behind 'e;
Your darter's youngest darter to mind 'e;
A li'l dreamin', a li'l dyin',
A li'l lew corner o' airth to lie in.

Related post: The Life of Man.

Against Melancholy

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"Against Melancholy," in The Harmony of the Muses: or, The Gentlemans and Ladies Choisest Recreation; Full of various, pure, and transcendent Wit (London: Printed by T.W. for William Gilbertson, 1654), p. 101:

Go damned Melancholy, get thee hence,
Thou hell-bred fury, torment of the mind,
Weakner of wit, abuser of the sence,
Within whose bounds al mischiefs are confin'd
Thou sullen sin, souls torture day and night,
Health-killing humour, Harbinger of Death,
Grave to content, darkner of beauties light,
Unto all good thou art the floud of Leath;
A waking dream, a spur to jealousie;
A fond conveyer of a thousand toyes;
The ready path which leads to Lunacie,
Is this bereaver of our earthly joyes:
  The Gods, I think, when we deserv their curse,
  Inflict this plague, because there is no worse.

Computer translation of 'Ships with Butterfly Wings'

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Une larme tombe pour le sableVagues et vent soupirent en deuilAu-dessus de la mer dans un pays lointainJusqu'à l'horizon, puis une pauseEt puis il est partiLa chaleur du soleil n'a jamais cesséCris plaintif de goélands sans causeEspoir, desesperee, ne s'arrête jamais de chanterClignotant dans l'éblouissement, elle attendLe résultat doit avoir une causeLorsque les navires avec papillon ailesBat dans le vent sur une quête fineAmants déchirés pendant un certain tempsPersonne ne peut dire le pourquoi de ces chosesLes liaisons ont été libérés Chacun est libre d'être leur propreC'est une graine qui doit être seméeEt personne ne peut dire à son destinParfois, il n'y a aucun moyen de gagnerMais seulement à endurer.Lorsque les navires avec papillon ailesCoups dans le ventTransporter votre cœur à travers l'océanC'est tout que vous pouvez faire, parfoisD'attendre et de présenter un grief et à prier.