Angels...

...and their high opinion of the world, according to the Syrians if you can trust Voltaire.

Les Syriens imaginèrent que l'homme et la femme ayant été créés dans le quatrième ciel, ils s'avisèrent de manger d'une galette au lieu de l'ambroisie qui était leur mets naturel. L'ambroisie s'exhalait par les pores; mais, après avoir mangé de la galette, il fallait aller à la selle. L'homme et la femme prièrent un ange de leur enseigner où était la garde-robe. «Voyez-vous," leur dit l'ange, "cette petite planète, grande comme rien, qui est à quelque soixante millions de lieues d'ici, c'est là le privé de l'univers; allez-y au plus vite.» Ils y allèrent, on les y laissa; et c'est depuis ce temps que notre monde fut ce qu'il est.

From the "It's all good" (Bien (Tout est)) entry in the Dictionnaire Philosophique portatif, tome premier, the 1892 edition from the Oeuvres choisies de Voltaire edited by Georges Bengesco, pp. 65-66.

Myself, I'd be inclined to render it

The Syrians imagined that man and woman, having been created in the fourth heaven, decided to eat a pastry instead of the ambrosia that was their natural food. Whereas the ambrosia was exhaled through the pores, after eating the pastry they had to find a bathroom. The man and woman prayed an angel to tell them where to find the toilet. "You see," the angel said to them, "this tiny planet, hardly a speck, which is about sixty million miles from here, that is the privy of the universe; go there as quickly as possible." They went there; they were left there. And our world has been so ever since.

Having recently been rereading Dr. Dee's diaries from the 1580s, it seems some of his angels frequently had the same opinion of the Earth.

I confess, watching too much of the news these days, I begin to agree with them.

Are you a writer?

A few years ago I bought John Hodgman's The Areas of my Expertise, where he discussed "The Six Essentials" of being a writer. I'll quote the pertinent bit here:

Even once you have chosen a Dramatic Situation, however, writing a book can still be a tedious process. According to my own observation, every writer must have six essentials at his command. Some are born with them. Others must develop them over many years, or hire a professional to provide them.⁷ They are...

Figure 5: Can You Describe Capt. Thompson's Facial Hair?

empathy the willingness to endure solitude the belief that the world cares about what you have to say the ability to describe facial hair accurately a large desk in a quiet room of your own in which to chase your demons (preferably a circular room, so that the demons have no place to hide) special stationery with pictures of typewriters and/or quills on top

---

7. This is most common for "empathy," and it is not unusual for even the finest novelists to hire a ghost empathizer for their third or fourth book.

While there are many today who test their writerly mettle by participating in things like NaNoWriMo, by Hodgman's standard the real test is in writing about this event! How do you fare? Are you a writer? As a quiz, can you describe this lot?

In other matters of pogonotrophy, today I also discovered this chart on "The Trustworthiness of Beards"—and discovered that according to this chart and my g/f, I'm something of a "questionable" sort! Pity for the gents in the above images, many of them don't seem to rate at all.

γῆρας, ὅ τ' αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ καλὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ

Τίς δὲ βὶος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης;
τεθναίην, ὅτε μοὶ μηχέτι ταῦτα μέλοι,
χρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή.
ἄνθεα τῆς ἥβης γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα
ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξίν· ἐπὴν δ' ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ
γῆρας, ὅ τ' αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ καλὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ.
αἰεὶ μὲν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,
οὐδ' αὐγας προσορῶν τέρπεται ἠελίου,
ἀλλ' ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν.
οὕτως ἀργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.

—Mimnermus (c. 625 BCE), first fragment

What life or delight exists without love?
Let me die when I've no more interest
in quiet trysts, tender gifts or the marriage bed.
These are the alluring blossom of youth
for men and women, but when arduous age approaches,
which makes a man ugly and useless,
awful anxieties wear always on his mind:
he takes no delight in sunlight;
to children he's abhorrent; by women, scorned.
How grievous a thing has god made old age.

(2010/01/21)

“I have started to say…”

I have started to say
"a quarter of a century"
or "thirty years back"
about my own life.

It makes me breathless
like falling and recovering
in huge gesturing loops
through an empty sky.

All that's left to happen
is some deaths (my own included).
Their order, and their manner,
remain to be learnt.

 

—Philip Larkin

Vivre en silence...

Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux, Jean-Luc Godard, 1962. Tableaux 11, "Place du Châtelet - L'inconnu - Nana fait de la philosophie sans le savoir"

Mais pourquoi est-ce qu’il faut toujours parler ? Moi je trouve que très souvent je devrais me taire. Vivre en silence.

"You ignorant moron!"

It's nice to be reminded of some of the reasons I love Romania.

Tagged

Wasting time on the road—my first blog from a phone, and perhaps my last as this is an annoying medium. At any rate, received an email that I'd been "tagged in a note" on Facebook for a meme, but as I seldom do anything of note on FB, I've opted to post here.

15 Books Meme

Instructions: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Copy the instructions into your own note, and be sure to tag the person who tagged you.

Well, as ever, I'm not much for following instructions, so I haven't tagged anyone, though feel free to fill it out if it suits or interests you, but here are my answers, in no particular order.

1. The Bible, by divers hands. What can I say? I was raised on it and spent childhood immersed in it; it's unlikely something I'll ever forget.

2. Poems & Ballads, 1st series, A.C. Swinburne

3. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

4. Diaspora, Greg Egan

5. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco

6. Noctuary, Thomas Ligotti

7. Carmen, Catullus

8. Duineser Elegien, Rainer Maria Rilke

9. Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke

10. Livro do desassossego, Fernando Pessoa

11. Also sprach Zarathustra, F. Nietzsche

12. The Dosadi Experiment, Frank Herbert

13. den Sisdst Messias, P.W. Zapffe

I would have to say Crowley and Borges for the last two, but I can't think of either of them in terms of a single work as their large corpus comes to mind as a single large entity rather than individual titles.