Today is the 75th anniversary of the death of M. R. James, author of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and three other collections. There is a very readable webtext here. Here is a classical bit from “Count Magnus”:
“Like many solitary men, I have a habit of talking to myself aloud; and, unlike some of the Greek and Latin particles, I do not expect an answer.”
The subject’s habit of talking to himself aloud turns out to be very bad for his health.
My local movie theater has been serving delicious hors d’oeuvres (from this restaurant) at their showings of the Metropolitan Opera HD simulcasts. What should they have served for Richard Strauss’ last opera on April 23rd? Carpaccio, of course.
The professor is nothing if not a maker of card-indexes; he must classify or be damned.
(H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: First Series [1919], XVII. “George Jean Nathan”)
Call me a pedant, but I thought the most interesting thing about Terry Teachout’s Youtubed clip from a BBC film of The Cherry Orchard is that it seems to be subtitled in Catalan.
I wish I’d had my camera with me a week or two ago. A local grocery store had this special offer:
SHRIMP
BUY 1, GET 2
Limit 2
This was left as a comment – unapproved, of course. I have also redirected the link:
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I suppose the only one more pathetic than this spammer would be a blogger who fell for the plea and approved the comment out of pity.
Ada Spelvexit was one of those naturally stagnant souls who take infinite pleasure in what are called “movements”. “Most of the really great lessons I have learned have been taught me by the Poor”, was one of her favourite statements. The one great lesson that the Poor in general would have liked to have taught her, that their kitchens and sickrooms were not unreservedly at her disposal as private lecture halls, she had never been able to assimilate. She was ready to give them unlimited advice as to how they should keep the wolf from their doors, but in return she claimed and enforced for herself the penetrating powers of an east wind or a dust storm. Her visits among her wealthier acquaintances were equally extensive and enterprising, and hardly more welcome; in country-house parties, while partaking to the fullest extent of the hospitality offered her, she made a practice of unburdening herself of homilies on the evils of leisure and luxury, which did not particularly endear her to her fellow guests. Hostesses regarded her philosophically as a form of social measles which everyone had to have once.
(Saki, The Unbearable Bassington, VII)
. . . thinks a salmon-colored couch is nice, but a couch made entirely out of salmon would be nicer:
Please provide a ‘default’ or ‘override’ button on all copy machines. The machine is not smarter than the user, at least when I’m making copies. I’m sick and tired of using machines that won’t copy my stuff at normal size. Yes, I know the newspaper clipping on the platen only covers a small portion of the copy area for 8.5 x 11 originals. That doesn’t mean I want it done at 250% magnification, or 50% for that matter. Is is too much to ask to have it done without magnification or – what’s the opposite of that, parvification? If the machine had a ‘default’ button, it would speed things up enormously and avoid wasting paper on copies that are entirely the wrong size or cut off portions of the original. I also know that the workbook I’m copying a page of is slightly larger than 8.5 x 11. Just copy the part on the platen and don’t make me push four different buttons to tell the machine to do the copy at the default settings.
Please don’t send me an e-mail telling me my order is “on the way” at 11:18pm if the book was already on my porch when I got home from work roughly seven hours earlier. You do this a lot. It does help me illustrate the meaning of ‘otiose’. On the other hand, it does provide an opportunity to use the word ‘otiose’.
From the site of a bookseller whose name (and URL) I will kindly omit:
Cicero was a primate, and letters are no doubt symbols as well as collections of symbols, and Cicero’s letters are a “particularly highly-developed form of primate communication”, but I think the blurb is meant for the book pictured, not the bold-faced title.
I wonder which book you get if you click on the ‘buy’ link.
“The period of the winter solstice had been always a great festival with the northern nations, the commencement of the lengthening of the days being, indeed, of all points in the circle of the year, that in which the inhabitants of cold countries have most cause to rejoice. This great festival was anciently called Yule; whether derived from the Gothic Iola, to make merry; or from the Celtic Hiaul, the sun; or from the Danish and Swedish Hiul, signifying wheel or revolution, December being Hiul-month, or the month of return; or from the Cimbric word Ol, which has the important signification of ALE, is too knotty a controversy to be settled here: but Yule had been long a great festival, with both Celts and Saxons; and, with the change of religion, became the great festival of Christmas, retaining most of its ancient characteristics while England was Merry England; a phrase which must be a mirifical puzzle to any one who looks for the first time on its present most lugubrious inhabitants.
“The mistletoe of the oak was gathered by the Druids with great ceremonies, as a symbol of the season. The mistletoe continued to be so gathered, and to be suspended in halls and kitchens, if not in temples, implying an unlimited privilege of kissing; which circumstance, probably, led a learned antiquary to opine that it was the forbidden fruit.
“The Druids, at this festival, made, in a capacious cauldron, a mystical brewage of carefully-selected ingredients, full of occult virtues, which they kept from the profane, and which was typical of the new year and of the transmigration of the soul. The profane, in humble imitation, brewed a bowl of spiced ale, or wine, throwing therein roasted crabs; the hissing of which, as they plunged, piping hot, into the liquor, was heard with much unction at midwinter, as typical of the conjunct benignant influences of fire and strong drink. The Saxons called this the Wassail-bowl, and the brewage of it is reported to have been one of the charms with which Rowena fascinated Vortigern.”
(Thomas Love Peacock, The Misfortunes of Elphin, Chapter XII)
The “roasted crabs” of the third paragraph are surely crab-apples rather than crustaceans.
Laudator Temporis Acti quotes Basil L. Gildersleeve:
Platonic scholars, with rare exceptions, are roughly to be divided into two classes, those who can understand the thought but not the Greek and those who can read the Greek but cannot understand the thought . . .
According to Palladas (A.P. 11.305) there is, or was in his day, a third kind, who belongs to neither class but pretends to belong to both:
Child of shamelessness, most ignorant, foster-child of stupidity, tell me, why do you hold your head high, though you know nothing? Among the grammarians you are a Platonist, but if someone asks about Plato’s teachings, you are once again a grammarian. You flee from the one to the other, but neither do you know the grammatical art nor are you a Platonist.
Here is the Greek:
Τέκνον ἀναιδείης, ἀμαθέστατε, θρέμμα μορίης,
εἰπέ, τί βρενθύηι μηδὲν ἐπιστάμενος;
ἐν μὲν γραμματικοῖς ὁ Πλατωνικός· ἂν δὲ Πλάτωνος
δόγματά τις ζητῆι, γραμματικὸς σὺ πάλιν.
ἐξ ἑτέρου φεύγεις ἐπὶ θάτερον· οὔτε δὲ τέχνην
οἶσθα γραμματικήν, οὔτε Πλατωνικὸς εἶ.
If the Greek text is unintelligible, try the PDF version at my long-abandoned Ioci Antiqui page: scroll down to Joke 43 on page 13 (December 13th, 2000).
I wonder if Gildersleeve was thinking of Palladas: he does write “roughly”.
Last week I drove down I-97 from Baltimore to Annapolis and found that part of it is named “Senator John A. Cade Memorial Highway” after a long-time state legislator. Having seen and enjoyed Henry VI, Part 2 at the Blackfriars Playhouse last spring, I wondered whether his friends called him ‘Jack’. Google suggests that they did (examples here and here [PDF]). Of course, Shakespeare’s Jack Cade was not a Republican, or not a Republican in the contemporary American sense, so the coincidence of names is not as appropriate as it might have been.
In all the discussion of the Stuxnet worm (here is one recent example) many have noted the bit of code ‘DEADF007’, though they can’t agree whether it means “Dead Fool” or “Dead F***in [Secret Agent] 007” or something else to do with death or deadness or killers. No one I have read has noted that ‘Stux’ is an equally valid transliteration of the Greek name usually spelled ‘Styx’ in English, the Underworld river whose name means ‘Hate’ or ‘Hateful’ or something to do with hatred. That seems a very appropriate name for a destructive worm, and ‘-net’ is a plausible enough suffix, though not the most appropriate imaginable.
A few weeks ago, Bryn Mawr Classical Review published revised guidelines for authors. At the end, they also gave a list of the most visited reviews and replies to reviews from the previous year. I found it interesting that no fewer than seven of the fifteen were wholly (2, 4, 5, 6, 12) or partly (9, 13) on sex and gender issues, and two more (3, 11) on race.
A very easy one, I’m afraid. Which play did I see at the Blackfriars Playhouse tonight? One that reminded me of something I hadn’t thought of in many years. Back in 1985 or so, I was working for a ‘beltway bandit’ at Tysons Corner, and one of the other companies in the same mid-rise office building had an executive who always parked her car diagonally in the far corner of the parking lot so she could take up two spaces and avoid ‘dings’ without offense (though not without envy). After all these years, I don’t recall whether it was a Porsche or an MG or what, but it was a very shiny and very expensive-looking red convertible with vanity plates. What message best befits an executive on her way to the top, already far along but with quite some distance left to go, and willing to do almost anything to get there? Select the parentheses to see the answer, which will also tell you the play I saw tonight: (CAWDOR). It’s been a quarter of a century, and I never met the owner of the car, so my analysis of her reasons is pure speculation, but it seems plausible. What else could such a license plate reasonably imply?
Staunton, Virginia has a one-unit hotel, The Storefront, “a very small hotel”. Is this sort of thing found in other cities as well? It’s certainly a clever idea. Guests receive a certificate good for breakfast at either of two eateries less than a block away. Presumably the owner or a representative comes by once a day to change the bedclothes and restock the refrigerator. If I didn’t already live in Staunton, I would certainly try it out.
There are more than nine, but this School is Hell cartoon covers the most important ones (þ Colby Cosh). I link it here partly for you, dear readers, partly so I can find it again myself, since Cosh’s twittery link is evanescent. The fifth and seventh types seem to overlap a bit.
I had never seen or heard of the Cambridge Translations from Greek Drama series until I picked up Ajax and Philoctetes at the Green Valley Book Fair on Saturday. They look quite useful for monoglot students of tragedy, and not entirely useless for scholars and teachers. I’m wondering how I managed to miss a whole series of books whose first title (of ten) came out ten years ago. Does Focus completely dominate this particular segment of the market for translated tragedies? I should probably mention that the Book Fair only had one copy of each, so no one will waste time looking for them there.
