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.

Descriptio Hiemis

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Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), Ambra, first three stanzas (tr. Jon Thiem et al.):

1.
Fled is the time of year that turned the flowers
Into ripe apples, long since gathered in.
The leaves, no longer cleaving to the boughs,
Lie strewn throughout the woods, now much less dense,
And rustle should a hunter pass that way,
A few of whom will sound like many more.
Though the wild beast conceals her wandering tracks,
She cannot cross those brittle leaves unheard.

2.
Among the leafless trees, the verdant laurel
Stands alongside the fragrant Cyprian myrtle,
And firs rise green against the alpine whiteness,
And bend their branches loaded down with snow.
The cypress hides within herself some birds.
The robust pine does battle with the winds,
and lowly junipers keep prickly leaves
yet spare the hand that plucks them carefully.

3.
On some mild sunny slope the olive seems
Now white, now green, according to the wind:
So nature in the olive tree sustains
The greenery that fails in other leaves.
Already with much toil the migrant birds
Have led their weary families beyond
The sea, and on the way had shown them Tritons
And Nereids and other prodigies.

The same, tr. Susanna Watts:

1.
Fled is that Season, which, with ripening ray,
To blushing fruit matur'd the blossoms gay;
No more the leaf its airy station keeps,
But strews th' impoverish'd groves in withering heaps;
Low rustling if, with hasty brushing feet.
The desolated path some hunter beat:—
No more in safety lurks the beast of prey,
The dry disorder'd leaves his track betray.

2.
Still blooms the Laurel 'mid the forest drear,
And the sweet shrub to Cytherea dear;
Mid the white Alps the Fir his verdure shows,
His branches bending with their weight of snows;
To some lone bird the Cypress shelter lends,
While with the winds the vigourous Pine contends;
The humble Juniper, though thorns surround,
The hand that gently crops forbears to wound;

3.
On some sweet sunny hill the Olive grows,
Now green, now silver, as the zephyr blows,
Distinguish'd high o'er all the sylvan scene,
Propitious Nature feeds its constant green.
The wand'ring Birds with strength of wing endued.
O'er trackless seas have led their weary brood;
And show'd them as they pass'd, the sea-born train,
Tritons and Nereids sporting in the main.

The Italian:

1.
Fugita è la stagion che avea conversi
e fiori in pomi già maturi e còlti;
in ramo non può più foglia, tenersi,
ma sparte per li boschi assai men folti
si fan sentir, se avvien che gli atraversi
el cacciatore, e i pochi paion molti;
la fera, se ben l'orme vaghe absconde,
non va secreta per le secche fronde.

2.
Tra li àlbor secchi stassi il läur lieto,
e di Ciprigna l'odorato arbusto;
verdeggia nelle bianche alpe l'abeto,
e piega e rami già di neve onusto;
tiene el cipresso qualche uccel secreto,
e co' venti combatte il pin robusto;
l'umil ginepro con le acute foglie
la man non punge altrui, chi ben lo coglie.

3.
La uliva in qualche dolce piaggia aprica
secondo el vento par or verde or bianca:
natura in questi tal serba e nutrica
quel verde che nell'altre fronde manca.
Già e peregrini uccei con gran fatica
hanno condotto la famiglia stanca
di là dal mare, e pel camin lor mostri
Nerëide, Tritoni et altri mostri.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

The Church of Unbent Knees

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Christopher Morley (1890-1957), "The Church of Unbent Knees," in Songs for a Little House (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1917), p. 39:

As I went by the church to-day
  I heard the organ cry;
And goodly folk were on their knees,
  But I went striding by.

My minster hath a roof more vast:
  My aisles are oak trees high;
My altar-cloth is on the hills,
  My organ is the sky.

I see my rood upon the clouds,
  The winds, my chanted choir;
My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,
  Are stained with sunset fire.

The stars, the thunder, and the rain,
  White sands and purple seas—
These are His pulpit and His pew,
  My God of Unbent Knees!

Related post: The Religion of the Fields.

Devastation at Sayes Court

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William Henry Hart, "Peter the Great at Sayes Court, Deptford," Notes and Queries 2nd Series, Number 19 (May 10, 1856) 365-367 (at 365):

In the latter part of the seventeenth century, Sayes Court, Deptford, the seat of the celebrated John Evelyn, was honoured by the temporary residence of the Czar of Muscovy, Peter the Great, who was then on a visit to this country. He was desirous of obtaining a knowledge of shipbuilding, and consequently chose this spot in order that he might be near the dockyard at Deptford, where he would have ample opportunity for pursuing his studies in naval architecture. Until about this period Evelyn had made Sayes Court his residence, where he bestowed great pains in cultivating and laying out his garden. In 1696, he let the premises to Captain Benbow, afterwards Admiral, of whom he thus speaks in his Diary:

"I have let my house to Captain Benbow, and have the mortification of seeing every day much of my former labours and expense there impairing for want of a more polite tenant."

In the commencement of the year 1698, Benbow underlet the house, together with all his furniture, to the Czar, but he soon had to regret the accommodation he had afforded to his Majesty, for in the month of May in that year we find him petitioning the Lords of the Treasury that compensation be made him for the damage the Czar had done to his house, garden, and furniture.

An excerpt from the petition (id., p. 356):

May 9th, 1698.

Some observations made upon the gardens and plantations which belong to the honourable John Evelyn, Esquire, att his house of Sayes Court, in Deptford, in the County of Kent.

During the time the Zar of Muscovie inhabited the said house, severall disorders have been committed in the gardens and plantations, which are observed to be under two heads: one is what can be repaired again, and the other what cannot be repaired.

1. All the grass works is out of order, and broke into holes by their leaping and shewing tricks upon it.
2. The bowling green is in the same condition.
3. All that ground which used to be cultivated for eatable plants is all overgroune with weeds and is not manured nor cultivated, by reason the Zar would not suffer any men to worke when the season offered.
4. The wall fruite and stander fruite trees are unpruined and unnailed.
5. The hedges nor wilderness are not cutt as they ought to be.
6. The gravell walks are all broke into holes and out of order.

These observations were made by George London, his Majesties Master Gardener, and he certifies that to putt the gardens and plantations in as good repair as they were in before his Zarrish Majestie resided there will require the summe of fifty-five pounds, as is Justified by me.

                                                                                                           GEORGE LONDON.

Great dammages are done to the trees and plants, which cannot be repaired as the breaking the branches of the wall fruit trees, spoiling two or three of the finest true phillereas, breaking severall holleys and other fine plants.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Antipater's Lament for Corinth

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Greek Anthology 9.151 (Antipater), a prose translation by W.R. Paton (1857–1921):

Where is thy celebrated beauty, Doric Corinth? Where are the battlements of thy towers and thy ancient possessions? Where are the temples of the immortals, the houses and the matrons of the town of Sisyphus, and her myriads of people? Not even a trace is left of thee, most unhappy of towns, but war has seized on and devoured everything. We alone, the Nereids, Ocean's daughters, remain inviolate, and lament, like halcyons, thy sorrows.

Another prose translation, by J.W. Mackail (1859-1945):

Where is thine admired beauty, Dorian Corinth, where thy crown of towers? where thy treasures of old, where the temples of the immortals, where the halls and where the wives of the Sisyphids, and the tens of thousands of thy people that were? for not even a trace, O most distressful one, is left of thee, and war has swept up together and clean devoured all; only we, the unravaged sea-nymphs, maidens of Ocean, abide, halcyons wailing for thy woes.

The Greek:

Ποῦ τὸ περίβλεπτον κάλλος σέο, Δωρὶ Κόρινθε;
  ποῦ στεφάναι πύργων; ποῦ τὰ πάλαι κτέανα;
ποῦ νηοὶ μακάρων; ποῦ δώματα; ποῦ δὲ δάμαρτες
  Σισύφιαι λαῶν θ᾽ αἱ ποτε μυριάδες;
οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδ᾽ ἴχνος, πολυκάμμορε, σεῖο λέλειπται,
  πάντα δὲ συμμάρψας ἐξέφαγεν πόλεμος.
μοῦναι ἀπόρθητοι Νηρηίδες Ὠκεανοῖο
  κοῦραι σῶν ἀχέων μίμνομεν ἁλκυόνες.

A verse translation by Edward Dodwell (1776-1832):

Where is thy grandeur, Corinth! shrunk from sight,
Thy ancient treasures, and thy ramparts' height;
Thy god-like fanes and palaces! Oh where
Thy mighty myriads and majestic fair!
Relentless war has pour'd around thy wall,
And hardly spared the traces of thy fall!

By Henry Wellesley (1794-1866):

Where are thy splendours, Dorian Corinth, where
  Thy crested turrets, thy ancestral goods,
The temples of the blest, the dwellings fair,
  The high-born dames, the myriad multitudes?
There's not a trace of thee, sad doomed one, left,
By rav'ning war at once of all bereft.
We, the sad Nereids, offspring of the surge,
Alone are spared to chant thy halcyon dirge.

By Goldwin Smith (1823–1910):

Where, Corinth, are thy glories now,
Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow,
Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state,
Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?
There's not a ruin left to tell,
Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.
The Nereids of thy double sea
Alone remain to wail for thee.

By John Addington Symonds (1840-1893):

Where is thy splendour now, thy crown of towers,
  Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes,
  The gold and silver of thy treasuries,
Thy temples of blest gods, thy woven bowers
Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours,
  Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies?
  All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies
Bare to the night. The elemental powers
Resume their empire: on this lonely shore
  Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea,
  Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly,
Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar,
Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore:
  These plunging waves are all that's left to thee.

By Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer (1841-1917):

Where is thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, where
  The crown of towers, which of old was thine?
The halls once crowded by the brave and fair,
  The throng which flocked to many a gorgeous shrine?
Thy beauty's wrecked. It ne'er can rise again,
  'Tis wasted by the stern, relentless foe,
And only we, the Nymphs from out the main,
  Abide, like halcyons, wailing o'er thy woe.

By F.L. Lucas (1894-1967):

Where are the towers that crowned thee, high-throned between thy waters?
  Thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, thy fame of ancient days?
Thy temples of the Blessed, thy palaces, thy daughters
  Far-sprung from ancient Sisyphus, thy myriad-trodden ways?
Not a trace, not a trace, unhappy, hast thou left behind in falling—
  All has been seized and ravened by the wild throat of war:
We only, Ocean's children, still hover calling, calling,
  The sea-birds of thy sorrows, along thy lonely shore.

By Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982):

Where is your famous beauty,
Corinth of the Dorians?
Where is your crown of towers?
Where are your ancient treasures?
Where are the temples of the
Immortals, and where are the
Houses and the wives of the
Lineage of Sisyphos,
All your myriad people?
Most unhappy city, not
A trace is left of you. War
Has seized and eaten it all.
Only the inviolate
Sea nymphs, the daughters of the
Ocean, remain, crying like
Sea birds over your sorrows.

A Disappointed Scholar

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Francis Lucas, "Nightingale—In Memoriam / J.S. (a disappointed scholar)," in Sketches of Rural Life and Other Poems (London: Macmillan and Co., 1889), pp. 117-118:

Sing on, brave bird. He cannot chide thee now
For adding night to sadness. In the deeps
Of an unfathomable quiet sleeps
The spirit which once mantled on that brow,
And spoke in those sad eyes. Nor ever creeps
Into his sweet forgetfulness the gall
Of disappointment, slights, and unsuccess,
Nor the despondency at matin-call
When needs still multiplied as means grew less.
Well, there were hours which even he could bless,
Oddments of time which found him at his ease,
By the loved stream or in the cool recess,
Under the shadow of his garden trees,
With Goethe, Molière, or Sophocles.

J.S. was John Sugars, master of the Free School in Hitchin. See Reginald L. Hine, Confessions of an Un-common Attorney (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1945), pp. 221-222:

Sometimes, there flits by me the pallid spectre of John Sugars, Niblock's most promising pupil, a man of brilliant parts and strikingly handsome appearance who also became master of that school. But a hopeless love affair broke his heart and snapped the mainspring of his ambition. Under him the school went on dwindling and decaying, until its doors were closed and the prematurely old master sank into private life. Now at long last, 'equilibrious in adversitie,' he could bury himself in his books, with no disturbing clangour of the school-house bell. Often, they said, he would sit up talking with his old scholars, John Gatward or John Widdows, until the stars paled at the first flush of dawn. Once, as he stood on Widdow's doorstep, saying a last good-bye, the birds were already in song. 'Do you like to hear them sing?' he asked his friend, 'I hate it.' It was that sad utterance that echoed in Francis Lucas's memory when he sat down some months later to write his touching elegy for 'J.S., a disappointed scholar'...

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Upon Christ His Birth

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John Suckling (1609-1642), "Upon Christ His Birth," in his Works: The Non-Dramatic Works, ed. Thomas Clayton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 9-10:

Strange news! a Cittie full? will none give way
To lodge a guest that comes not every day?
Noe inne, nor taverne void? yet I descry
One empty place alone, where wee may ly:
In too much fullnesse is some want: but where?
Mens empty hearts: let's aske for lodgeing there.
But if they not admit us, then wee'le say
Their hearts, as well as inn's, are made of clay.

Antipater's Lament for Corinth

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Greek Anthology 9.151 (Antipater), a prose translation by W.R. Paton (1857–1921):

Where is thy celebrated beauty, Doric Corinth? Where are the battlements of thy towers and thy ancient possessions? Where are the temples of the immortals, the houses and the matrons of the town of Sisyphus, and her myriads of people? Not even a trace is left of thee, most unhappy of towns, but war has seized on and devoured everything. We alone, the Nereids, Ocean's daughters, remain inviolate, and lament, like halcyons, thy sorrows.

Another prose translation, by J.W. Mackail (1859-1945):

Where is thine admired beauty, Dorian Corinth, where thy crown of towers? where thy treasures of old, where the temples of the immortals, where the halls and where the wives of the Sisyphids, and the tens of thousands of thy people that were? for not even a trace, O most distressful one, is left of thee, and war has swept up together and clean devoured all; only we, the unravaged sea-nymphs, maidens of Ocean, abide, halcyons wailing for thy woes.

The Greek:

Ποῦ τὸ περίβλεπτον κάλλος σέο, Δωρὶ Κόρινθε;
  ποῦ στεφάναι πύργων; ποῦ τὰ πάλαι κτέανα;
ποῦ νηοὶ μακάρων; ποῦ δώματα; ποῦ δὲ δάμαρτες
  Σισύφιαι λαῶν θ᾽ αἱ ποτε μυριάδες;
οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδ᾽ ἴχνος, πολυκάμμορε, σεῖο λέλειπται,
  πάντα δὲ συμμάρψας ἐξέφαγεν πόλεμος.
μοῦναι ἀπόρθητοι Νηρηίδες Ὠκεανοῖο
  κοῦραι σῶν ἀχέων μίμνομεν ἁλκυόνες.

A verse translation by Edward Dodwell (1776-1832):

Where is thy grandeur, Corinth! shrunk from sight,
Thy ancient treasures, and thy ramparts' height;
Thy god-like fanes and palaces! Oh where
Thy mighty myriads and majestic fair!
Relentless war has pour'd around thy wall,
And hardly spared the traces of thy fall!

By Henry Wellesley (1794-1866):

Where are thy splendours, Dorian Corinth, where
  Thy crested turrets, thy ancestral goods,
The temples of the blest, the dwellings fair,
  The high-born dames, the myriad multitudes?
There's not a trace of thee, sad doomed one, left,
By rav'ning war at once of all bereft.
We, the sad Nereids, offspring of the surge,
Alone are spared to chant thy halcyon dirge.

By Goldwin Smith (1823–1910):

Where, Corinth, are thy glories now,
Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow,
Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state,
Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?
There's not a ruin left to tell,
Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.
The Nereids of thy double sea
Alone remain to wail for thee.

By John Addington Symonds (1840-1893):

Where is thy splendour now, thy crown of towers,
  Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes,
  The gold and silver of thy treasuries,
Thy temples of blest gods, thy woven bowers
Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours,
  Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies?
  All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies
Bare to the night. The elemental powers
Resume their empire: on this lonely shore
  Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea,
  Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly,
Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar,
Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore:
  These plunging waves are all that's left to thee.

By Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer (1841-1917):

Where is thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, where
  The crown of towers, which of old was thine?
The halls once crowded by the brave and fair,
  The throng which flocked to many a gorgeous shrine?
Thy beauty's wrecked. It ne'er can rise again,
  'Tis wasted by the stern, relentless foe,
And only we, the Nymphs from out the main,
  Abide, like halcyons, wailing o'er thy woe.

By F.L. Lucas (1894-1967):

Where are the towers that crowned thee, high-throned between thy waters?
  Thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, thy fame of ancient days?
Thy temples of the Blessed, thy palaces, thy daughters
  Far-sprung from ancient Sisyphus, thy myriad-trodden ways?
Not a trace, not a trace, unhappy, hast thou left behind in falling—
  All has been seized and ravened by the wild throat of war:
We only, Ocean's children, still hover calling, calling,
  The sea-birds of thy sorrows, along thy lonely shore.

By Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982):

Where is your famous beauty,
Corinth of the Dorians?
Where is your crown of towers?
Where are your ancient treasures?
Where are the temples of the
Immortals, and where are the
Houses and the wives of the
Lineage of Sisyphos,
All your myriad people?
Most unhappy city, not
A trace is left of you. War
Has seized and eaten it all.
Only the inviolate
Sea nymphs, the daughters of the
Ocean, remain, crying like
Sea birds over your sorrows.

More Uses for Newspapers

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Dear Mike,

I showed your posting on the many uses of Greek newspaper to an old college friend, of an Irish family that has been (as she says) Catholic since the seventh century. She tells me that her father, William Gilmartin, used to subscribe to the Jewish Community Bulletin, a San Francisco weekly newspaper. It came in the mail, and the Jewish postman, Mr. Stern, naturally noticed. After a few years, he happened to see Mr. Gilmartin while delivering that week's copy and praised him for his wonderfully ecumenical spirit. Her father hadn't the heart to tell him that the Jewish Community Bulletin was exactly the size of his parrot's cage, and was bought expressly for the purpose of lining the bottom. The publication schedule was just right for a weekly change of paper. The newspaper went straight from the mailbox to the floor of the cage. He didn't even need to unfold it. Fortunately, neither he nor the parrot were still alive when the Bulletin became an e-paper a few years ago.

As ever,

Ian Jackson

In Praise of Books

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al-Jāḥiẓ (776-868), "In Praise of Books," in The Life and Works of Jāḥiẓ: Translations of Selected Texts, by Charles Pellat. Translated from the French by D.M. Hawke (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 130-132:

A book is a receptacle filled with knowledge, a container crammed with good sense, a vessel full of jesting and earnestness. It can if you wish be more eloquent than Sahbān Wā'il, or less talkative than Bāqil: it will amuse you with anecdotes, inform you on all manner of astonishing marvels, entertain you with jokes or move you with homilies, just as you please. You are free to find in it an entertaining adviser, an encouraging critic, a villainous ascetic, a silent talker or hot coldness.

....

Moreover, have you ever seen a garden that will go into a man's sleeve, an orchard you can take on your lap, a speaker who can speak of the dead and yet be the interpreter of the living? Where else will you find a companion who sleeps only when you are asleep, and speaks only when you wish him to?

....

You denigrate books, whereas to my mind there is no pleasanter neighbour, no more fair-minded friend, no more amenable companion, no more dutiful teacher, no comrade more perfect and less prone to error, less annoying or importunate, of a sweeter disposition, less inclined to contradiction or accusation, less disposed to slander or backbiting, more marvellous, cleverer, less given to flattery or affectation, less demanding or quarrelsome, less prone to argument or more opposed to strife, than a book.

I know no companion more prompt to hand, more rewarding, more helpful or less burdensome, and no tree that lives longer, bears more abundantly or yields more delicious fruit that is handier, easier to pick or more perfectly ripened at all times of the year, than a book.

I know no animal product that despite its youth, the short time that elapsed since its birth, its modest price and its ready availability brings together so much excellent advice, so much rare knowledge, so many works by great minds and keen brains, so many lofty thoughts and sound doctrines, so much wise experience or so much information about bygone ages, distant lands, everyday sayings and demolished empires, as a book.

....

For all its smallness and lightness, a book is the medium through which men receive the Scriptures, and also government accounts. Silent when silence is called for, it is eloquent when asked to speak. It is a bedside companion that does not interrupt when you are busy but welcomes you when you have a mind to it, and does not demand forced politeness or compel you to avoid its company. It is a visitor whose visits may be rare, or frequent, or so continual that it follows you like your shadow and becomes a part of you.

A book is a companion that does not flatter you, a friend that does not irritate you, a crony that does not weary you, a petitioner that does not wax importunate, a protégé that does not find you slow, and a friend that does not seek to exploit you by flattery, artfully wheedle you, cheat you with hypocrisy or deceive you with lies.

A book, if you consider, is something that prolongs your pleasure, sharpens your mind, loosens your tongue, lends agility to your fingers and emphasis to your words, gladdens your mind, fills your heart and enables you to win the respect of the lowly and the friendship of the mighty. You will get more knowledge out of one in a month than you could acquire from men's mouths in five years—and that at a saving in expense, in arduous research by qualified persons, in standing on the doorsteps of hack teachers, in resorting to individuals inferior to you in mortal qualities and nobility of birth, and in associating with odious and stupid people.

A book obeys you by night and by day, abroad and at home; it has no need of sleep, and does not grow weary with sitting up. It is a master that does not fail you when you need him and does not stop teaching you when you stop paying him. If you fall from grace it continues to obey you, and if the wind sets fair for your enemies it does not turn against you. Form any kind of bond or attachment with it, and you will be able to do without everything else; you will not be driven into bad company by boredom or loneliness.

Even if its kindness to you and its benevolence towards you consisted merely in saving you from the tedium of sitting on your doorstep watching the passers-by—with all the aggravations that posture entails: civilities to be paid, other people's indiscretions, the tendency to meddle in things that do not concern you, the proximity of the common people, the need to listen to their bad Arabic and their mistaken ideas and put up with their low behaviour and their shocking ignorance—even if a book conferred no other advantage but this, it would be both salutary and profitable for its owner.

Salomon Koninck (1609-1656), The Hermit
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Love of Country

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Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), "Native Land" (tr. A. Myers):

I love my native land with such perverse affection!
My better judgement has no standing here.
Not glory, won in bloody action,
nor yet that calm demeanour, trusting and austere,
nor yet age-hallowed rites or handed-down traditions;
not one can stir my soul to gratifying visions.

And yet I love — a mystery to me —
her dreary steppelands wrapped in icy silence,
her boundless, swaying, forest-mantled highlands,
the flood waters in springtime, ample as the sea;
I love to jolt along a narrow country byway
and, slowly peering through the darkness up ahead
while sighing for a lodging, glimpse across the highway
the mournful trembling fires of villages outspread.
I love the smoke of stubble blazing,
heaped wagons on the steppe at night,
a hill mid yellow cornfields raising,
a pair of birch trees silver-bright.
With pleasure few have yet discovered,
a laden granary I see,
a hut with straw thatch neatly covered,
carved window shutters swinging free.
On feast nights with the dew descending,
I'll watch till midnight, never fear
the dance, the stamps and whistles blending
with mumbling rustics full of beer.

The same (tr. Michael Wachtel):

I love my homeland, but with a strange love!
My reason cannot vanquish it.
Not glory, bought with blood,
Not peace full of proud faith,
Not the cherished legends of dark antiquity
Stir in me a joyous dream.

But I love — I know not why —
The cold silence of its steppes,
The swaying of its boundless forests,
The flooding of its rivers, which are like seas;
I love to gallop in a cart down a country road
And, penetrating the shadow of night with my slow gaze,
Sighing for night lodgings, to encounter off to the side
The quivering lights of sad villages;
I love the smoke of the burning field after harvest,
The caravan of carts spending the night in the steppe
And on the hill among the yellow meadows
A pair of birch trees showing white.
With a joy unfamiliar to many
I see a full barn,
A hut, covered with thatch,
A window with carved shutters;
And on a holiday, of a dewy evening,
I am ready to look until midnight
At the dance with stamping of feet and whistling
Accompanied by the speech of drunken peasants.

The same (tr. Dimitri Obolensky):

I love my country, but with a strange love. My reason cannot fathom it. Neither glory, purchased with blood, nor peace, steeped in proud confidence, nor the cherished traditions of the dim past will stir pleasant fancies within me.

But I love — I know not why — the cold silence of her plains, the swaying of her boundless forests, her flooded rivers, wide as the seas; I love to gallop along a country track in a cart and, peering slowly through the darnesss of night and longing for a shelter, to come across the scattered light of sad villages, flickering in the distance. I love the wispy smoke of the burnt stubble-field, the string of carts standing in the steppe at night, and a couple of birches, gleaming white in the yellow cornfield on the hill. With a pleasure unknown to many I see a well-stocked barn, a cottage covered with thatch, a window with carved shutters. And on a holiday, one dewy evening, I am ready to watch until midnight the dance, with its stamping and whistling, to the hum of drunken peasants' voices.

Isaak Levitan, House with Broom Trees

Very Many People

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Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), "Very Many People":

On the Downs, in the Weald, on the Marshes,
  I heard the Old Gods say:
"Here come Very Many People:
  "We must go away.

"They take our land to delight in,        5
  "But their delight destroys.
"They flay the turf from the sheep-walk.
  "They load the Denes with noise.

"They burn coal in the woodland.
  "They seize the oast and the mill.        10
"They camp beside Our dew-ponds.
  "They mar the clean-flanked hill.

"They string a clamorous Magic
  "To fence their souls from thought,
"Till Our deep-breathed Oaks are silent,        15
  "And Our muttering Downs tell nought.

"They comfort themselves with neighbours.
  "They cannot bide alone.
"It shall be best for their doings
  "When We Old Gods are gone."        20

Farewell to the Downs and the Marshes,
  And the Weald and the Forest known
Before there were Very Many People,
  And the Old Gods had gone!

8: A dene (or dean) is a valley.
10 oast: "A kiln; (in later use) spec. one used to dry hops or malt; a building housing this." (Oxford English Dictionary)
13 "They string a clamorous Magic": telegraph or telephone wires?

The Divine Presence

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Plutarch, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 21 = Moralia 1102 A (tr. Benedict Einarson and Philip H. De Lacy):

Rich men and kings have a constant round of one banquet or full-spread dinner after another; but when it is a feast held on the occasion of some sacred rite or sacrifice, and when they believe that their thoughts come closest to God as they as they do him honour and reverence, it brings pleasure and sweetness of a far superior kind. Of this a man gets nothing if he has given up faith in providence. For it is not the abundance of wine or the roast meats that cheer the heart at festivals, but good hope and the belief in the benign presence of the god and his gracious acceptance of what is done.

καὶ πλουσίοις τε καὶ βασιλεῦσιν ἑστιάσεις καὶ πανδαισίαι τινὲς ἀεί πάρεισιν, αἱ δ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ἱεροῖς καὶ θυηπολίαις, καὶ ὅταν ἔγγιστα τοῦ θείου τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ ψαύειν δοκῶσι μετὰ τιμῆς καὶ σεβασμοῦ, πολὺ διαφέρουσαν ἡδονὴν καὶ χάριν ἔχουσι. ταύτης οὐδὲν ἀνδρὶ μέτεστιν ἀπεγνωκότι τῆς προνοίας. οὐ γὰρ οἴνου πλῆθος οὐδ᾽ ὄπτησις κρεῶν τὸ εὐφραῖνόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐλπὶς ἀγαθὴ καὶ δόξα τοῦ παρεῖναι τὸν θεὸν εὐμενῆ καὶ δέχεσθαι τὰ γιγνόμενα κεχαρισμένως.

Related post: Holidays.

Philological Isolation

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Milman Parry (1902-1935), "The Historical Method in Literary Criticism," in The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers, ed. Adam Parry (1971; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 408-413 (at 413):

I have seen myself, only too often and too clearly, how, because those who teach and study Greek and Latin literature have lost the sense of its importance for humanity, the study of those disciplines has declined, and will decline until they quit their philological isolation and again join in the movement of current human thought.

Antipater's Lament for Corinth

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Greek Anthology 9.151 (Antipater), a prose translation by W.R. Paton (1857–1921):

Where is thy celebrated beauty, Doric Corinth? Where are the battlements of thy towers and thy ancient possessions? Where are the temples of the immortals, the houses and the matrons of the town of Sisyphus, and her myriads of people? Not even a trace is left of thee, most unhappy of towns, but war has seized on and devoured everything. We alone, the Nereids, Ocean's daughters, remain inviolate, and lament, like halcyons, thy sorrows.

Another prose translation, by J.W. Mackail (1859-1945):

Where is thine admired beauty, Dorian Corinth, where thy crown of towers? where thy treasures of old, where the temples of the immortals, where the halls and where the wives of the Sisyphids, and the tens of thousands of thy people that were? for not even a trace, O most distressful one, is left of thee, and war has swept up together and clean devoured all; only we, the unravaged sea-nymphs, maidens of Ocean, abide, halcyons wailing for thy woes.

The Greek:

Ποῦ τὸ περίβλεπτον κάλλος σέο, Δωρὶ Κόρινθε;
  ποῦ στεφάναι πύργων; ποῦ τὰ πάλαι κτέανα;
ποῦ νηοὶ μακάρων; ποῦ δώματα; ποῦ δὲ δάμαρτες
  Σισύφιαι λαῶν θ᾽ αἱ ποτε μυριάδες;
οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδ᾽ ἴχνος, πολυκάμμορε, σεῖο λέλειπται,
  πάντα δὲ συμμάρψας ἐξέφαγεν πόλεμος.
μοῦναι ἀπόρθητοι Νηρηίδες Ὠκεανοῖο
  κοῦραι σῶν ἀχέων μίμνομεν ἁλκυόνες.

A verse translation by Edward Dodwell (1776-1832):

Where is thy grandeur, Corinth! shrunk from sight,
Thy ancient treasures, and thy ramparts' height;
Thy god-like fanes and palaces! Oh where
Thy mighty myriads and majestic fair!
Relentless war has pour'd around thy wall,
And hardly spared the traces of thy fall!

By Henry Wellesley (1794-1866):

Where are thy splendours, Dorian Corinth, where
  Thy crested turrets, thy ancestral goods,
The temples of the blest, the dwellings fair,
  The high-born dames, the myriad multitudes?
There's not a trace of thee, sad doomed one, left,
By rav'ning war at once of all bereft.
We, the sad Nereids, offspring of the surge,
Alone are spared to chant thy halcyon dirge.

By Goldwin Smith (1823–1910):

Where, Corinth, are thy glories now,
Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow,
Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state,
Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?
There's not a ruin left to tell,
Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.
The Nereids of thy double sea
Alone remain to wail for thee.

By John Addington Symonds (1840-1893):

Where is thy splendour now, thy crown of towers,
  Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes,
  The gold and silver of thy treasuries,
Thy temples of blest gods, thy woven bowers
Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours,
  Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies?
  All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies
Bare to the night. The elemental powers
Resume their empire: on this lonely shore
  Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea,
  Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly,
Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar,
Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore:
  These plunging waves are all that's left to thee.

By Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer (1841-1917):

Where is thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, where
  The crown of towers, which of old was thine?
The halls once crowded by the brave and fair,
  The throng which flocked to many a gorgeous shrine?
Thy beauty's wrecked. It ne'er can rise again,
  'Tis wasted by the stern, relentless foe,
And only we, the Nymphs from out the main,
  Abide, like halcyons, wailing o'er thy woe.

By F.L. Lucas (1894-1967):

Where are the towers that crowned thee, high-throned between thy waters?
  Thy beauty, Dorian Corinth, thy fame of ancient days?
Thy temples of the Blessed, thy palaces, thy daughters
  Far-sprung from ancient Sisyphus, thy myriad-trodden ways?
Not a trace, not a trace, unhappy, hast thou left behind in falling—
  All has been seized and ravened by the wild throat of war:
We only, Ocean's children, still hover calling, calling,
  The sea-birds of thy sorrows, along thy lonely shore.

By Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982):

Where is your famous beauty,
Corinth of the Dorians?
Where is your crown of towers?
Where are your ancient treasures?
Where are the temples of the
Immortals, and where are the
Houses and the wives of the
Lineage of Sisyphos,
All your myriad people?
Most unhappy city, not
A trace is left of you. War
Has seized and eaten it all.
Only the inviolate
Sea nymphs, the daughters of the
Ocean, remain, crying like
Sea birds over your sorrows.