Preferred participants of this blog

April 20, 2019

Preferred participants of this blog: retired people. People who are retired because they have finished their working life. People who are retired in the sense they wish they were retired. People who are retired in their nature, who are perpetually in retirement. People who are retiring in their nature (which is something only slightly different).

Other preferred participants: young people. Young people who are anxious to attain to the better elements of the old people. Young people who are patient with others of all types. All young people. (Anybody young or old is hereby admitted and preferred.)

Other preferred participants: teachers who are students, students who are teachers, long-winded talkers who, after a painful period of conversion, are now “the world’s greatest listeners”, who won’t say a word, and such like.

Other preferred participants: everyone. (Everyone is hereby admitted).

Preferred activities: polite civil dispassionate discourse (policy preferred over politics, and “what’s truly enjoyed” over pop or high culture); solid jokes, involuntary poems –sincerity/ logic/ mockery / wit– comments that reflect an earnest wish for the improvement of mankind, for the dismantlement of its delusiveness; for the improvement of the individual before one; for the improvement of the group of which one is a part; — anything effusively positive or constructively negative is hereby preferred. Anything — Your personal best, is hereby preferred.

Being Struck by a Wall

April 18, 2019

Seeing a character who falls on the floor or who is knocked against a wall described as having been struck by the wall or floor in Hammett’s work a couple times, my ears perked up when I saw it in Faulkner’s Pylon too, knowing he and Hammett to have been friendly. But probably it is not so uncommon to express things like that. Pylon (originally published 1935) page 103:

“Yes!” he cried. “Yes!” flinging himself backward and crossing his arms before his face at the same time; at first he did not even realize that it was only the floor which struck him until he lay prone again, his arms above his face and head and looking between them at the feet of the parachute jumper who had not moved.

Inevitable — Ineluctable

April 17, 2019

Refreshing or otherwise enhancing my understanding of the difference here, seems that with inevitable the suggestion is you can’t get out of the way of it, of something impending, while with ineluctable (eluctor) you can’t get yourself out of it, out of a situation you’re already in the midst of. (Ngrams shows ineluctable to be not very frequently used relatively.)

April 16, 2019

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April 15, 2019

An ancient four-legged whale with hooves has been discovered

April 14, 2019

such is my desire to have superhands I can go on for paragraphs and paragraphs in this manner …. SUPERHANDS

*


how would Henry Fielding view modernism — (Fielding making a History while modernism strives to recreate a moment, maybe a moment of history, maybe the interstices or glue of historical of events, the “nonhistorical historical” or ordinary)– (History the upholstery while the ordinary is the joinery) (the orinary is the joinirary) perhaps easier to see Love over the course of a lifetime (or a story) than over the course of a day ?(or over the fragment of a story?– ordinary “dark matter” of history/ “dark matter” of space, the utterly utterly unremarkable about it

April 11, 2019

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hl……………,,,,,a i
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e. c ………….,,,,,.v a
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o.. i …………..,,,,,.vair
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April 10, 2019

2.1 / eng

ἐν ᾧ νοσήματι ὕπνος πόνον ποιέει, θανάσιμον: ἢν δὲ ὕπνος ὠφελέῃ, οὐ θανάσιμον.

ὠφελέῃhelps, assists

April 9, 2019

fâcheuses. “Les plus fâcheuses circonstances vous ont mis en présence d’un homme qui a rompu avec l’humanité. Vous êtes venu troubler mon existence”

April 8, 2019

it is an unthinkable burden to put on my shoulders, to demand that I be as alert as I am, as fresh as one must be, while one’s insides, neglected by sleep, lay coiled within one like a tossed aside dirty shirt.

April 8, 2019

A boor and a timeserver in life, but never a boor in his musicStrauss

Clinker

April 7, 2019

Melville, the Encantadas, (sketch nine):

Brooding among the ruins of his hut, and the desolate clinkers and extinct volcanoes of this outcast isle, the insulted misanthrope now meditates a signal revenge upon humanity, but conceals his purposes.

Clinker.

April 5, 2019

Even after the enslaved people on whom their wealth was built were freed, Southern elites passed their advantages to their children through personal networks and social capital.POST

April 4, 2019

,,, jusqu’aux chauffeurs qui abandonnèrent leurs fourneaux. {x} seems that ‘chauffer’ means literally ‘stoker’ — of a steam engine:

1896, “a motorist,” from French chauffeur, literally “stoker,” operator of a steam engine, French nickname for early motorists, from chauffer “to heat,” from Old French chaufer “to heat, warm up; to become hot” (see chafe). The first motor-cars were steam-driven. Sense of “professional or paid driver of a private motor car” is from 1902.

Reverse engineering “An Octopus” into “Agamemnon”

April 2, 2019

If Agamemnon, say, could be interpreted as a work of self-expression — toss out the characters and action and setting and then imagine these lines are from the pages of Rimbaud or from Walt Whitman, how would it look? Could you reverse engineer Leaves of Grass into a Greek Tragedy?

Stated otherwise: in order to turn Agammemnon into Saison Enfer, what would you need to do? In order to turn Agamemnon into An Octopus, what would you need to do?

Libation Bearers

April 1, 2019

Many are the horrors, dread and appalling, bred of earth, and the arms of the deep teem with hateful monsters. Likewise between heaven and earth lights hung high in the air draw near; and winged things and things that walk the earth can also tell of the stormy wrath of whirlwinds.

………………………..πολλὰ μὲν γᾶ τρέφει
………………………..δεινὰ καὶ δειμάτων ἄχη,
………………………..πόντιαί τ᾽ ἀγκάλαι κνωδάλων
………………………..ἀνταίων βρύουσι:
………………………..πλάθουσι βλαστοῦσι καὶ πεδαίχμιοι
………………………..λαμπάδες πεδάοροι,
………………………..πτανά τε καὶ πεδοβά
………………………..μονα κἀνεμοέντ᾽ ἂν
………………………..αἰγίδων φράσαι κότον.

………………………..ἀλλ᾽ ὑπέρτολμον ἀν-
………………………..δρὸς φρόνημα τίς λέγοι
………………………..καὶ γυναικῶν φρεσὶν τλαμόνων καὶ
………………………..παντόλμους ἔρωτας
………………………..ἄταισι συννόμους βροτῶν;
………………………..ξυζύγους δ᾽ ὁμαυλίας
………………………..θηλυκρατὴς ἀπέρ-
………………………..ωτος ἔρως παρανικᾷ
………………………..κνωδάλων τε καὶ βροτῶν.

But who can tell of man’s overweening spirit, and of the reckless passions of women hardened of soul, partners of the woes of mortals? Inordinate passion, overmastering the female, gains a fatal victory over the wedded unions of beasts and humans alike.


Translation, Smyth, Libation Bearers 585602 (English) ).

March 30, 2019

ENCHIRIDION OF EPICTETUS

17

Remember that you are an actor in a play, and the Playwright chooses the manner of it: if he wants it short, it is short; if long, it is long. If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well; the choice of the cast is Another’s.

Wikipedia edit

March 29, 2019

This is the passage from Osiris & Isis that should contain (according to this wikipedia page) mention of the tamarisk, but I’m not seeing it, and edited it from the page. Here is English, story of the ark begins here.

ἐκ δὲ τούτου πυθέσθαι περὶ τῆς λάρνακος, ὡς πρὸς τὴν Βύβλου χώραν ὑπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης ἐκκυμανθεῖσαν αὐτὴν ἐρείκῃ τινὶ μαλθακῶς ὁ κλύδων προσέμιξεν ἡ δ᾽ ἐρείκη κάλλιστον ἔρνος ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ καὶ μέγιστον ἀναδραμοῦσα περιέπτυξε καὶ περιέφυ καὶ ἀπέκρυψεν ἐντὸς ἑαυτῆς: θαυμάσας δ᾽᾽ ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῦ φυτοῦ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ περιτεμὼν τὸν περιέχοντα τὴν σορὸν οὐχ ὁρωμένην κορμὸν ἔρεισμα τῆς στέγῃ ὑπέστησε.

March 28, 2019

1er avril 1824… J’ai vu le masque moulé de mon pauvre Géricault. Ô monument vénérable ! J’ai été tenté de le baiser… sa barbe… ses cils… Et son sublime Radeau ! Quelles mains ! Quelles têtes ! Je ne puis exprimer l’admiration qu’il m’inspire.

March 27, 2019

[English]

1.30.4:

κατὰ τοῦτο τῆς χώρας φαίνεται πύργος Τίμωνος, ὃς μόνος εἶδε μηδένα τρόπον εὐδαίμονα εἶναι γενέσθαι πλὴν τοὺς ἄλλους φεύγοντα ἀνθρώπους.