I have made up a one-page handout cross-referencing Seneca’s Epistulae Morales against the various 20th-century commentaries, each of which covers a different selection. The Word 2000 for Windows (.doc) version is here, the Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) version here.

Besides showing at a glance which commentaries cover which letters, and (very interesting) which letters are more or less popular among commentators, I also use it as a check-off list to keep track of which ones I’ve read. With 124 letters and a substantial fragment of another, it’s easy to lose track. If anyone wants to see how I did it, or is curious about which ones I’ve read, the color-coded personalized versions are here (.doc) and here (.pdf).

Feel free to print out any of these files and use them yourselves. As always, comments and queries are welcome. I should probably mention that the unfortunate language in 47 and 56 is a purely coincidental result of listing commentators by the first letters of their last names and in order of publication.

The first two are well-known, but I’m particularly (perversely?) fond of the third. I ran across it years ago in a four-volume edition of Belloc’s verse, and have been looking for it ever since. The weblogger who calls herself The Rat recently quoted the second poem, which reminded me to look for the third once again. I was delighted to find that it has finally turned up on the web, though I don’t much care for the I Love Poetry site where I found it (too cutesy for my taste, even if the snuggly polar bears would make an excellent wedding card for one particular blogger):

I. Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), from Sonnets pour Hélène:

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant:
Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j’estois belle.

Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille resveillant,
Benissant vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seray sous la terre et fantaume sans os:
Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos:
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain:
Cueillez d´s aujourd’huy les roses de la vie.

If you can’t handle 16th-century French, there are English translations here (Humbert Wolfe) and here (Anthony Weir — scroll down past the Albanian stuff).

II. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), “When you are old”:

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

III. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), “The Fragment”:

Towards the evening of her splendid day
Those who are little children now shall say
(Finding this verse), ‘Who wrote it, Juliet?’
And Juliet answer gently, ‘I forget.’

I always have a mild urge to call them ‘feetnotes’ . . . .

Two things that surprised me about Der Rosenkavalier at the Met yesterday:

1. I don’t think I’d ever heard a non-ironic non-metaphorical use of the word ‘lackey’ before, but the Met’s surtitles used the word dozens of times. Perhaps they use an archaic translation? If so, how to explain the first verb in this passage:

“Lerchenau’s men are stoned on brandy. They’re molesting our maids worse than Turks or Croatians. Fetch the lackeys!”

Any translation that uses both ‘stoned’ (except in reference to collective punishment) and ‘lackeys’ is having trouble maintaining a consistent stylistic register.

By the way, I wonder how long before the unapologetic ethnic slurs in some operas cause trouble. As I recall, the other Strauss’s Die Fledermaus mocks gypsies and Hungarians as well as lawyers, stutterers, and a couple of other groups I’ve forgotten. Not Jews, though, unless my memory deceives me, which is a pleasant surprise, now that I think about it — perhaps Johann thought that had been overdone.

2. No one else laughed when the three orphan girls begging for charity from the Marschallin sang

“Father fell on the field of honor. Following him is our goal.”

Am I wrong in seeing a mildly obscene pun? Surely a woman in 1911 could only ‘fall’ on the field of ‘honor’ by engaging in premarital sex. I suppose I should check the German text, but I’m guessing that the metaphor of ‘fallen woman’ and the restriction of ‘honor’ in women to chastity transcended linguistic boundaries.

A book I’m indexing reports that the 19th century mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy was so prolific that he sometimes published papers at the rate of two per week. When the editors of his favorite journal imposed a quota, he persuaded a family member to create a new journal containing nothing but his own work. The book does not give the name of the journal, which is annoying but leaves room for plausible conjecture. How about Cauchiana ? Revue de Cauchy ? Études Cauchiennes ? Le contenu, c’est moi ? Moi, moi, moi ? Of course, today he wouldn’t need a family member in publishing, he could just start up Cauchyblog.

Update: (April 5, 9:34 PM)

My brother the engineer tells me that the first journal did not ban Cauchy, just imposed a four-page limit on articles, when his sometimes ran to hundreds of pages. His source reports that the journal that imposed the limit was the weekly Comptes rendus of the French Academy of Sciences. Another site (I’ve already forgotten which) says that the limit is still in force today. I have been unable to find on the web what his supposed family journal was titled. Perhaps an urban legend? This site reports that Cauchy liked to take credit for the ideas of others, who called him ‘cochon’ (pig). They do not observe that ‘cochon’ is also a pun on Cauchy’s similar-sounding name.