Strabo: moral excellence of poets

January 2, 2017

οὐ γὰρ οὕτω φαμὲν τὴν τῶν ποιητῶν ἀρετὴν ὡσεὶ κττεόνωνχαλκέων: ἀλλ᾽ ἐκείνη μὲν οὐδενὸς ἔχεται καλοῦ καὶ σεμνοῦ, ἡ δὲ ποιητοῦ συνέζευκται τῇ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, καὶ οὐχ οἷόν τε ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι ποιητὴν μὴ πρότερον γενηθέντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθόν.

“Of course we do not speak of the excellence of a poet in the same sense as we speak of that of a carpenter or a blacksmith; for their excellence depends upon no inherent nobility and dignity, whereas the excellence of a poet is inseparably associated with the excellence of the man himself, and it is impossible for one to become a good poet unless he has previously become a good man.” Geography 1.17.

Year in Review/ Language, Shapes, “Notes”

December 12, 2016

French: Le gisement lui-même, (*) Ces hécatombes de régiments anéantis, Swann’s Way Water Lily Passage

Greek: λιαρός, Eumenides 746, Iliad 18.98, Crito 51c– 52δnever right to do wrong or requite wrong with wrong, Agamemnon, 88-91. καὶ κηρὸς καὶ πίττα καὶ κόκκος καὶ μίλτος, Iliad 6.301, Agamemnon, 92-96, Libation Bearers 505-507

Spanish: El trabajo sería

English: Valance Corbeil Cully Halloo

Latin: Wild Olive Tree (Ovid)

N-Grams Viewer: Meteoric Rise of ‘Robust’, ‘ground zero

Quotes: My Life, Swimming, a “devotee of equality” (Plato), Uncle Dick Postnatural from Federalist Papers 37 (*) * To be bad and to enjoy it

Shapes: 9/9 , 8/31, 6/ 19 * * * * *

Notes: a part of what I thought (editing needed) (page turning) running (legs as vials) knowledge and art pains programme to ‘A Leg Up’, Altars called for Nietzsche note *

Concordances: ‘Brown‘ in On The Road. Sun and Stars in Romeo and Juliet. Time in A Strange Commonplace [NOTES about this]

Year in Review / Various Shapes

December 3, 2016

Short story like: Grove ; Knees and Hands: are the gates ; A Leg Up; Form and Perform. Perhaps They Do. ; Trivial Questions; The Time Was 11 am ; WLK

Poem like: walking while hearing car alarm ; curtains around steam; Fresher and Fresher Paint ; bags of aeolous ; stained red end cushion; a granule

Absurd: To Cup (i) ; that’s so stupid but

A study: I didn’t intend to do any “projects” this year but inadvertantly arrived at a spot near a “project” into which I was subsequently sucked : Time in ‘A Strange Commonplace’.

Ces hécatombes de régiments anéantis

December 2, 2016

Proust: “Ils pensaient, en effet, à ces hécatombes de régiments anéantis, de passagers engloutis, mais une opération inverse multiplie à tel point ce qui concerne notre bien être et divise par un chiffre tellement formidable ce qui ne le concerne pas, que la mort de millions d’inconnus nous chatouille à peine et presque moins désagréablement qu’un courant d’air. ”

Andreas Mayor: “They thought certainly of these hecatombs of regiments annihilated and passengers swallowed by the waves; but there is a law of inverse proportion which multiplies to such an extent anything that concerns our own welfare and divides by such a formidable figure anything that does not concern it, that the death of unknown millions is felt by us as the most insignificant of sensations, hardly even as disagreeable as a draught.”

December 1, 2016

Libation Bearers 505-507 (English):

παῖδες γὰρ ἀνδρὶ κληδόνες σωτήριοι
θανόντι: φελλοὶ δ᾽ ὣς ἄγουσι δίκτυον,
τὸν ἐκ βυθοῦ κλωστῆρα σῴζοντες λίνου.

(Electra)

November 22, 2016

There are weather and climate records, and then there are truly exceptional events that leave all others in the dust. Such has been the case across Earth’s high latitudes during this last quarter of 2016, on track to be the planet’s warmest year on record. Sea ice extent and area have both plummeted to record lows for this time of year in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Such dramatic losses rarely occur at the same time, which means that the global total of sea ice coverage is phenomenally low for this time of year.

November 19, 2016

Breakfast at Tiffyany’s (movie). Emotional values are facts, not intellectual suppositions that may be altered until a convenient situation is arrived at, not airy trivialities to be ignored without consequences. Love is a fact, if you’ll acknolwedge it.

November 14, 2016

Phoenicia is really a Classical Greek term used to refer to the region of the major Canaanite port towns, and does not correspond exactly to a cultural identity that would have been recognised by the Phoenicians themselves, vaguely comparable to the Hanseatic League. The term in Greek means ‘land of purple’, a reference to the valuable murex-shell dye they exported. It is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single ethnicity and nationality. Their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to ancient Greece. However, in terms of archaeology, language, life style and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other Semitic cultures of Canaan. As Canaanites, they were unique in their remarkable seafaring achievements.Phoenicia

Halloo

November 11, 2016

Wallace Stevens (New England Verses X):

Ashen man on ashen cliff above the salt halloos

William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (I.viii.7):

If I fly, Marcius,/Halloo me like a hare.

Halloo:

Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (also holla, holloa, halloo, halloa). The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted: Fowler’s has it that “hallo” is first recorded “as a shout to call attention” in 1864.

November 8, 2016

When Freddie Gray was 22 months old, he had a tested blood lead level of 37 micrograms per deciliter. This is an absolutely astronomical amount. Freddie never even had the slightest chance of growing up normally. Lead poisoning doomed him from the start to a life of heightened aggression, poor learning abilities, and weak impulse control. His life was a tragedy set in motion the day he was born.Kevin Drum (4.30.15)

November 5, 2016

……q……g
.au………..ra
lia…..
P……vel
swinangines
ging..siron.. sand
Maryof Egypthami
rrida bashitru Mar
gUAr dnnel
S o-da
.BubbsaltpanBubb..
..BubbetycooBubb….
………..edirbong…….mohanneyillsuion
……………….hane……….pibocontinental
aos benth ici
.au………..ra
lia…..P……vel
swinangines
ging..siron.. sand
Maryof Egypthami
rrida bashitru Mar
gUAr dnnel
S o-da
.BubbsaltpanBubb..
..BubbetycooBubb….
………..edirbong…….mohanneyillsuion
……………….hane……….pibocontinental
aos benth ici
esse l.eess..
.saltpa n..
..ty.oo….

November 5, 2016

“You may not like what Democrats stand for, but they aren’t engaging in widespread official vote suppression, chanting that should their candidate win her opponent should be tossed in jail, promising to prevent any Republican president from filling vacancies on the Supreme Court, suggesting that they’ll try to impeach their opponent as soon as he takes office, cheering when a hostile foreign power hacks into American electronic systems, and trying to use the FBI to win the election.

“Only one party is doing all of that. And we should all be very worried about what Republicans will do after November 8, whether they win or lose….” Paul Waldman

November 3, 2016

The See’r
The See’r
The See’r
r.nhu pro
r.m h.n
e..o…….. i………..n
h……r……… p….e
T………d………. aj
E……..r……….. p……..c
G…..i………… e…….c
*……….O……h………. r..t……….*
*……….*……….t……………*…………*
mirror not made of glass but of other people’s remarks


……………

November 2, 2016

“And does he not, said I, also live out his life in this fashion, day by day indulging the appetite of the day, now winebibbing and abandoning himself to the lascivious pleasing of the flute and again drinking only water and dieting, and at one time exercising his body, and sometimes idling and neglecting all things, and at another time seeming to occupy himself with philosophy. And frequently he goes in for politics and bounces up and says and does whatever enters his head. And if military men excite his emulation, thither he rushes, and if moneyed men, to that he turns, and there is no order or compulsion in his existence, but he calls this life of his the life of pleasure and freedom and happiness and cleaves to it to the end? That is the perfect description, he said, of a devotee of equality.”

~The Republic

October 31, 2016

*

Spanish demonstrative pronouns this morning— throughout my endeavoring through an introductory Spanish grammar book I consistently conflated este and ese in my written exercises. Now I wrote them repeatedly on a sheet of paper, este, esta, esto/ ese, esa, eso,/ aquel, aquella, aquello/– the stubborness with which I would not, could not understand; the stubbornness with which I nevertheless attempted understanding –looked again, looked again, wrote down–; and these two resolves, one intentional and one not, one supposedly intelligent one supposedly idiotic, never meeting to form an actual understanding of basic Spanish — not any understanding at all. —I lived in Peru for a year/ I was living in Peru for a year. —

*

What are the criticisms of the character of the writer as expressed in The Cain Mutiny (the movie) (1) the writer speaks of what he does not really know (or “knows” in some amateur way — in this case, about psychology); (2) the writer misleads others by doing this; (3) the writer doesn’t stand with those he has mislead, but hides behind ambiguity, his “mights”, “may haves”, and other such disingenuous qualifying remarks. … (Brings to mind somewhat the falsifying journalist of The Wire.)

October 26, 2016

Interesting, the use of ‘ground zero’ was in the ascendant well before 9-11. (n-gram viewer)

Nietzsche note

October 24, 2016

Idea that instead of contrasting Nietzsche with other philosophers, especially those he speaks of most often, he is to be best contrasted with the literary figures of around his time –Joyce, Kafka, Proust, I’m thinking of (perhaps a generation after)– in being “autobiographical.”

But where Joyce, Kafka, Proust, etc. are (you could say) “autobiography plus the novel” (their lives and manners and situations are the subject, the novel is their means or form or excuse) (that is a debatable proposition yet it’s at least clear that their novels resemble their own biographies more than they do some other person’s biography and it may well be asked why should that be?), Nietzsche is –and perhaps just as explicitly as they are– “autobiography plus the philosophical treatise.”

Idea that he was giving us first and foremost a personal philosophy, a return to something more like Montaigne; a philosophy about his person; that it is his christianity he addressed; his Kant (“Kant qua Nietzsche”), his Christ, Stendhal, and so forth; — the idea that Nietzsche never actually addresses a thing outside his own thought or a person who is not himself.
*

October 22, 2016

The String Quartet in D major is the only string quartet composed by César FranckString Quartet in D major (Virtuoso Quartet, 1925)

October 20, 2016

Dreams. John Latta at his computer (he’s cheerfully erasing material that seems to me very good) — an extraordinary cliff face and a palace or carving upon it — Jacopo curled up in the round cat litter box — he fits there perfectly though way too large — looks sheepish and shakes the litter off as I order him to get out. No, Jacopo, no!

October 17, 2016

Agamemnon, 92-96 [Chorus]:

….. ……… ἄλλη δ᾽ ἄλλοθεν οὐρανομήκης
….. ……… λαμπὰς ἀνίσχει,
….. ……… φαρμασσομένη χρίματος ἁγνοῦ
….. ……… μαλακαῖς ἀδόλοισι παρηγορίαις,
….. ……… πελάνῳ μυχόθεν βασιλείῳ.

Smyth:

“Now here, now there, the flames rise high as heaven, yielding to the soft and guileless persuasion of holy ointment, the sacrificial oil itself brought from the inner chambers of the palace.”

….. ………