Mark the music

From an enquiry in the OED on the word “savage” I was led to a line from The Merchant of Venice, which in turn led me to the broader context in Act V of the play. Here is a delightful part of Act V, sc. i about the effects of music.

The image above is from this edition, which exhibits such fine typography that I thought it worth giving as such, rather than retyping it; the same text can be found in the original-spelling edition from Oxford, p. 506, and here it is in modernized orthography (from here):

JESSICA

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

LORENZO

The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

I don’t know that this is one of the better known parts of the play, but it deserves to be.

Orpheus mosaic from Edessa (dated 194 CE)

Recent photos, mostly snow

This is on a very frozen lake. I like it because there is a focus on the children (all on the left side), but that it also gives a hint as to how huge the sky can seem in Minnesota.

Pre-de-corking of some French wine. Nothing particularly meaningful about 2006 as opposed to its neighboring years, but I thought it would make a cool shot.

I took this a few days ago for my mother, who lives in a place where snow rarely falls. It doesn’t quite show how the snow sparkled like glitter, both in the air and on the ground, but there is some of it. The morning sun is just peeking in at the top of the photo, and the tree casts its spreading shadow all the way to the viewer’s feet.

This ice-hole — be careful how you pronounce that — forms several times every winter at a place where melting snow and ice from the roof drip onto the inches of snow on the ground, itself too thick to be easily erased. This one, here full deep and reaching to the rocks below, even shows the no-longer-frozen snow giving in to gravity, a drop at a time.

A couple of large books, so large that they must rest supinely. If this doesn’t make you love old-style numerals, I don’t know what will.

This is one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken in the past year or so. Again on the frozen lake. He has stopped and seems to look at the chapel ahead, and he’s surrounded by snow, ice, cold. He stands out in his yellow mantle. No one else is near. Is he wondering what’s in the chapel, why it’s there, whether to go on ahead? Is he tired, glad, surprised, disappointed? Is he on a pilgrimage to this place, or does the planned end of his road lie elsewhere, this building in the woods an unexpected find? Is he the first one to come to it, or does he know there are others there?

Nullus locus dulcior

To begin with, for those that care, the title is a paraphrase of Cicero, “Nunc vero nec locus tibi ullus dulcior esse debet patria…” (Epist. Fam. IV.9.3, “Now, indeed, no place should be sweeter to you than your homeland…”). I borrow those fine words to talk about my homeland.

What it looks like in Minn. now.

I’m a native of Alabama, but I’ve lived in Minnesota for the past two and a half years. On the morning that I write this, at my northern residence, I saw, the temperature was 1°F. Snow has been on the ground since November and all of the water seen out-of-doors, most obviously Minnesota’s myriad lakes, have been solidly slick and frozen, and with Minnesota’s winter comes a cold unknown in Alabama, a coldness that the clichéd “bitter cold” doesn’t even ably describe. Lest, dear readers, you imagine that Minnesota’s charms, even in winter, have been lost on this writer, know well that I’ve found much to like there that will not easily escape my memory, but for now I dwell on things Alabam(i)an. Incidentally, being unable to avoid citing another line in Latin, there are occasions in Minnesota when I have empathy for Ovid, whose words

Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli (Tristia V.10.37)

Here, I’m a barbarian, because I’m understood by no one.

fit well my placement in a sometimes strange land, and I’m sure the feeling would be found mutual, if those Minnesotans with whom I have regular contact were asked. (I purposely do not quote the following line, lest I give the impression that I consider my current fellow-citizens of Minnesota are stolidi!)

I went back to my patria for a brief sojourn, the direct cause itself not being a welcome one, but one attended by a number of benefits, some foreseen, some unforeseen. It always lends refreshment to return home, and neither did this trip fail to refresh. The time spent with family members, the freedom from regular structured work, the blue — as opposed to gray, as commonly this time of year in Minnesota — sky, against which the bright clouds are sharply set, the more flavorful food; all these things made it a fine and needed trip for me, but not only for me, since my wife and children also reckon it a definite refuge of safety, sweetness, and deep recognition, even though they do not have the years of experience spent there that I have, years polished in a way that only childhood can. This solidarity makes visits there all the better.

Some IPA I like, hitherto not seen in Minn., but readily drinkable in Ala.!

Lunch with my mother.

I enjoyed several cigars and my pipe in the relatively warm weather, including one cigar with my grandfather, eighty-seven years old and whom I’ve not seen in too long a time. He is retired now, but worked most of his life as a carpenter. He went to school only through the eighth grade, and had to begin working all the time at a young age to provide for his family. I always enjoy talking with him, not only because of our shared familial history, but to hear of his experiences, and that in his accent and idiolect, which I appreciate both as his grandson and as a linguist. I confess that I was surprised to hear him use the word “brogue”, a word I don’t think I’ve heard anyone in my family use before, and a word rarely heard from the mouth of someone that reached only the eighth grade.

Talking with my grandfather.

A giant cow spotted on the way through Wisc.

Because the number in our traveling party was large, we traveled by road rather than air. As you can imagine, the road from central Minnesota to central Alabama is no short road. My children, fortunately, are usually hardy travelers who only rarely complain overmuch. The way down wasn’t eventful, but on the way back, we met some nasty roads in Illinois and Wisconsin, thanks to an assault of snow, which led to de-roaded cars left and right and a truck pulling two trailers on its side and blocking traffic south.

Snowy travel on the return trip.

I’m now back in Minnesota, but my eyes are patiently turned southward, looking forward to the next stay there, where there will surely again be more meetings of this and that person, of south and midwest, and of experiences all around of different ages and memories.

The characteristics of wine for body and soul

Reblogged from hmmlorientalia:

Well-known are the biblical praises of wine from the Psalter, "wine that maketh glad the heart of man" (Ps 104:15, ויין ישׂמח לבב אנוש, καὶ οἶνος εὐφραίνει καρδίαν ἀνθρώπου) and from the line in a parable, where a vine says, "Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man?" (Judges 9:13, החדלתי את תירושי המשׂמח אלהים ואנשים, B Μὴ ἀπολείψασα τὸν οἶνόν μου τὸν εὐφραίνοντα θεὸν καὶ ἀνθρώπους, but Α differently, Ἀφεῖσα τὸν οἶνόν μου, τὴν εὐφροσύνην τὴν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῶν ἀνθρώπων).

Read more… 187 more words

Here's a post I wrote a few weeks ago that I thought might interest other readers: it's on a short Arabic text (written in Syriac letters, a phenomenon known as Garshuni) that lists the effects of wine on the body and soul; English translation provided, along with images from the manuscript. Enjoy! Comments welcome.

Casting language into the atmosphere

While perusing the latest National Geographic this morning, I came across a notable photograph. Here it is from the website:

These two students, surrounded around and above by open air and light, project their voices out into this openness, their lungs, breath, throat, and mouth muscles, all eye- and brain-directed, catapult words of another language, a language becoming their own, right into the universe, not the least part of which is their own ears.

Two things struck me when I saw the photograph. First, I was reminded of the possibly legendary rhetorico-athletic exercises that Demosthenes supposedly practiced to overcome his natural difficulties in speaking:

…τὴν μὲν ἀσάφειαν καὶ τραυλότητα τῆς γλώττης ἐκβιάζεσθαι καὶ διαρθροῦν εἰς τὸ στόμα ψήφους λαμβάνοντα καὶ ῥήσεις ἅμα λέγοντα, τὴν δὲ φωνὴν ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις γυμνάζεσθαι καὶ ταῖς πρὸς τὰ σιμὰ προσβάσεσι διαλεγόμενον καὶ λόγους τινὰς ἢ στίχους ἅμα τῷ πνεύματι πυκνουμένῳ προφερόμενον· εἶναι δ᾽ αὐτῷ μέγα κάτοπτρον οἴκοι, καὶ πρὸς τοῦτο τὰς μελέτας ἐξ ἐναντίας ἱστάμενον περαίνειν.

He used to correct and drive away his mumbling and his speech disorder by putting pebbles in his mouth and then reciting speeches. He used to exercise his voice by discoursing while running or going up steep places, and by reciting sentences or verses at a single breath. Moreover, he had in his house a large mirror, and in front of this he used to stand and go through his speech-exercises. (Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes 11.1-2; translation adapted from that of Bernadotte Perrin)

Secondly, I was visually reminded of how important, not to mention fun, it is to read aloud, with care to the text’s meaning and even forcefully, both as regular practice in languages you know well, even your own, and also for languages you’re learning; in the second case, it is naturally needful to have some standard against which to compare your fledgling pronunciation and fluency of sound, granted the variety of voice that may occur even across the spectrum of one language. This vocal shadow-boxing, whether in your native language or another, really can be enlivening and helpful in knitting together eyes, brain, and ears.

Rather than writing anything more, I’m off to do some reading aloud.

Proust II

The next paragraph from À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, pt. I. Read on! As always, your responses to the passage are welcome in the comments section. And as an addendum to the previous post, here is the famous Summarize Proust Competition from Monty Python, which I neglected to mention there!

Quant au professeur Cottard, on le reverra, longuement, beaucoup plus loin, chez la Patronne, au château de la Raspelière. Qu’il suffise actuellement, à son égard, de faire observer ceci : pour Swann, à la rigueur le changement peut surprendre puisqu’il était accompli et non soupçonné de moi quand je voyais le père de Gilberte aux Champs-Élysées, où d’ailleurs ne m’adressant pas la parole il ne pouvait faire étalage devant moi de ses relations politiques (il est vrai que s’il l’eût fait, je ne me fusse peut-être pas aperçu tout de suite de sa vanité car l’idée qu’on s’est faite longtemps d’une personne bouche les yeux et les oreilles ; ma mère pendant trois ans ne distingua pas plus le fard qu’une de ses nièces se mettait aux lèvres que s’il eût été invisiblement dissous entièrement dans un liquide ; jusqu’au jour où une parcelle supplémentaire, ou bien quelque autre cause amena le phénomène appelé sursaturation ; tout le fard non aperçu cristallisa, et ma mère, devant cette débauche soudaine de couleurs déclara, comme on eût fait à Combray, que c’était une honte, et cessa presque toute relation avec sa nièce). Mais pour Cottard au contraire, l’époque où on l’a vu assister aux débuts de Swann chez les Verdurin était déjà assez lointaine ; or les honneurs, les titres officiels viennent avec les années ; deuxièmement, on peut être illettré, faire des calembours stupides, et posséder un don particulier qu’aucune culture générale ne remplace, comme le don du grand stratège ou du grand clinicien. Ce n’est pas seulement en effet comme un praticien obscur, devenu, à la longue, notoriété européenne, que ses confrères considéraient Cottard. Les plus intelligents d’entre les jeunes médecins déclarèrent – au moins pendant quelques années, car les modes changent étant nées elles-mêmes du besoin de changement – que si jamais ils tombaient malades, Cottard était le seul maître auquel ils confieraient leur peau. Sans doute ils préféraient le commerce de certains chefs plus lettrés, plus artistes, avec lesquels ils pouvaient parler de Nietzsche, de Wagner. Quand on faisait de la musique chez Mme Cottard, aux soirées où elle recevait, avec l’espoir qu’il devînt un jour doyen de la Faculté, les collègues et les élèves de son mari, celui-ci, au lieu d’écouter, préférait jouer aux cartes dans un salon voisin. Mais on vantait la promptitude, la profondeur, la sûreté de son coup d’œil, de son diagnostic. En troisième lieu, en ce qui concerne l’ensemble de façons que le professeur Cottard montrait à un homme comme mon père, remarquons que la nature que nous faisons paraître dans la seconde partie de notre vie n’est pas toujours, si elle l’est souvent, notre nature première développée ou flétrie, grossie ou atténuée ; elle est quelquefois une nature inverse, un véritable vêtement retourné. Sauf chez les Verdurin qui s’étaient engoués de lui, l’air hésitant de Cottard, sa timidité, son amabilité excessives, lui avaient, dans sa jeunesse, valu de perpétuels brocards. Quel ami charitable lui conseilla l’air glacial ? L’importance de sa situation lui rendit plus aisé de le prendre. Partout, sinon chez les Verdurin où il redevenait instinctivement lui-même, il se rendit froid, volontiers silencieux, péremptoire quand il fallait parler, n’oubliant pas de dire des choses désagréables. Il put faire l’essai de cette nouvelle attitude devant des clients qui, ne l’ayant pas encore vu, n’étaient pas à même de faire des comparaisons, et eussent été bien étonnés d’apprendre qu’il n’était pas un homme d’une rudesse naturelle. C’est surtout à l’impassibilité qu’il s’efforçait, et même dans son service d’hôpital, quand il débitait quelques-uns de ces calembours qui faisaient rire tout le monde, du chef de clinique au plus récent externe, il le faisait toujours sans qu’un muscle bougeât dans sa figure d’ailleurs méconnaissable depuis qu’il avait rasé barbe et moustaches.

A little Proust’ll do you

There are sites or blogs for daily Talmud reading (see a consideration of the practice here), daily Bible, etc., and the reasoning, of course, is that a cycle of daily (or even weekly) readings will give you in relatively small snippets, not so large as to be indigestible, the whole of this or that text after a given period of time, assuming you possess and practice our all too absent quality of consistency. Whether you’re looking for spiritual direction, memory polishing, or simply a structured way to get through books, it works, assuming you can muster the discipline to keep at it. It’s also good for language practice: exposure to new words and forms along with frequent reinforcing of the commonest words, phrases, and forms. And for most people, “language in action” is rather more fun than looking at vocabulary lists and paradigms of nominal and verbal morphology. So how about a little Proust for French practice?

The obligatory and ubiquitous photograph of a mustachioed Proust

Marcel Proust (1871-1922; ici en français) is most well known for his long and unfinished novel À la recherche du temps perdu, published in seven parts from 1913-1927 (first English translation 1922-1930). There are websites (for example, here and here) on Proust and the novel, and I heartily recommend Patrick Alexander’s Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time: A Reader’s Guide to the Remembrance of Things Past — I’ve not read Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change your Life nor Roger Shattuck’s Proust’s Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time. — and for an early estimation, see Edmund Wilson’s here. The French text, either in HTML or PDF, will be found here hosted by the University of Adelaide, and also here; it is from the latter that the text below has been taken. Some readers may also be interested to know that Proust’s manuscripts have fueled a notable amount of study (see, for example, here [abstract only], here, and here).

I’m hardly ambitious enough to start calling this series “Daily Proust” or the like, but I do want to make it a regular appearance here. Each reading will only be a paragraph or two in length. It will be immediately obvious that I am not beginning with the novel’s first part, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way). The outline of the narrative, such as it is, of the novel can be had from the books mentioned above and some of the websites, but that is not really the point of these serial reading selections. Here the goal is simply getting to know and savoring Proust’s French and stimulating (in French) some philosophical reflection.

Here is the text, the beginning of À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur:

Première partieAutour de Mme Swann

Ma mère, quand il fut question d’avoir pour la première fois M. de Norpois à dîner, ayant exprimé le regret que le professeur Cottard fût en voyage et qu’elle-même eût entièrement cessé de fréquenter Swann, car l’un et l’autre eussent sans doute intéressé l’ancien ambassadeur, mon père répondit qu’un convive éminent, un savant illustre, comme Cottard, ne pouvait jamais mal faire dans un dîner, mais que Swann, avec son ostentation, avec sa manière de crier sur les toits ses moindres relations, était un vulgaire esbrouffeur que le marquis de Norpois eût sans doute trouvé, selon son expression, « puant ». Or cette réponse de mon père demande quelques mots d’explication, certaines personnes se souvenant peut-être d’un Cottard bien médiocre et d’un Swann poussant jusqu’à la plus extrême délicatesse, en matière mondaine, la modestie et la discrétion. Mais pour ce qui regarde celui-ci, il était arrivé qu’au « fils Swann » et aussi au Swann du Jockey, l’ancien ami de mes parents avait ajouté une personnalité nouvelle (et qui ne devait pas être la dernière), celle de mari d’Odette. Adaptant aux humbles ambitions de cette femme, l’instinct, le désir, l’industrie, qu’il avait toujours eus, il s’était ingénié à se bâtir, fort au-dessous de l’ancienne, une position nouvelle et appropriée à la compagne qui l’occuperait avec lui. Or il s’y montrait un autre homme. Puisque (tout en continuant à fréquenter seul ses amis personnels, à qui il ne voulait pas imposer Odette quand ils ne lui demandaient pas spontanément à la connaître) c’était une seconde vie qu’il commençait, en commun avec sa femme, au milieu d’êtres nouveaux, on eût encore compris que pour mesurer le rang de ceux-ci, et par conséquent le plaisir d’amour-propre qu’il pouvait éprouver à les recevoir, il se fût servi, comme un point de comparaison, non pas des gens les plus brillants qui formaient sa société avant son mariage, mais des relations antérieures d’Odette. Mais, même quand on savait que c’était avec d’inélégants fonctionnaires, avec des femmes tarées, parure des bals de ministères, qu’il désirait de se lier, on était étonné de l’entendre, lui qui autrefois et même encore aujourd’hui dissimulait si gracieusement une invitation de Twickenham ou de Buckingham Palace, faire sonner bien haut que la femme d’un sous-chef de cabinet était venue rendre sa visite à Mme Swann. On dira peut-être que cela tenait à ce que la simplicité du Swann élégant n’avait été chez lui qu’une forme plus raffinée de la vanité et que, comme certains israélites, l’ancien ami de mes parents avait pu présenter tour à tour les états successifs par où avaient passé ceux de sa race, depuis le snobisme le plus naïf et la plus grossière goujaterie, jusqu’à la plus fine politesse. Mais la principale raison, et celle-là applicable à l’humanité en général, était que nos vertus elles-mêmes ne sont pas quelque chose de libre, de flottant, de quoi nous gardions la disponibilité permanente ; elles finissent par s’associer si étroitement dans notre esprit avec les actions à l’occasion desquelles nous nous sommes fait un devoir de les exercer, que si surgit pour nous une activité d’un autre ordre, elle nous prend au dépourvu et sans que nous ayons seulement l’idée qu’elle pourrait comporter la mise en oeuvre de ces mêmes vertus. Swann empressé avec ces nouvelles relations et les citant avec fierté, était comme ces grands artistes modestes ou généreux qui, s’ils se mettent à la fin de leur vie à se mêler de cuisine ou de jardinage, étalent une satisfaction naïve des louanges qu’on donne à leurs plats ou à leurs plates-bandes pour lesquels ils n’admettent pas la critique qu’ils acceptent aisément s’il s’agit de leurs chefs-d’oeuvre ; ou bien qui, donnant une de leurs toiles pour rien, ne peuvent en revanche sans mauvaise humeur perdre quarante sous aux dominos.

Reactions to the passage here are especially welcome, so please post them in the comments below!

Driving with a few CDs

I’m just off of a 640-mile driving trip today. I’d been a few states away with family and I drove back home by myself. I listened to a little bit of music on the radio, but mostly CDs; I had no way to play the music on my phone, but fortunately I had a few physical albums with me. Here they are, in the order I listened to them:

• Metallica, Ride the Lightning

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to this one all the way through. Excellent from the unique beginning to the ever-appreciable “Call of Ktulu.”

• Dylan, Nashville Skyline

A lot of fun (“Is it rolling, Bob?”), as one might guess even from the album cover; very much worth listening to beside this one is the Dylan-Cash Sessions, from the same time period, and even though it’s not really a consistent album, the next one, Self Portrait almost always gets me singing.

• Dylan, Street Legal

This is not my most recent Dylan purchase (Time out of Mind and Tempest), but it wasn’t too long ago that I bought it. One of my favorite lines so far is from “Where Are You Tonight (Journey through Dark Heat)”:

I fought with my twin,
That enemy within,
Till both of us fell by the way.

• Dylan, No Direction Home soundtrack

I actually like most of the alternate versions (on disc 2 especially) more than the original releases. (Who can fail to find remarkable a phrase like “the boiled guts of birds”?)

These (and my thoughts) were all good company as I drove, but I did miss Tom Waits’ “Diamonds on my Windshield,” especially as I went through Wisconsin:

Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head
Wishing he was home in a Wiscosin bed
Fifteen feet of snow in the East
Colder then a well-digger’s ass
Colder then a well-digger’s ass

We’re not quite to snow-time yet here in the north, but we’re close.

P.S. As I write this, I’ve got the soundtrack to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Spotify. No sense in being musically stagnant, is there? (I’ve not seen the new film yet, but I’ve read the books and seen the Swedish films.)

A poem by Mīḫāʾīl Nuʿaymah

Mīḫāʾīl Nuʿaymah (1889-1988) — his last name is sometimes spelled Naimy in English — was born of Christian heritage in Lebanon in the village of Baskinta. He was educated early on in Russian Orthodox schools and later spent around twenty years in America (1911-1932) where he was closely associated with Al-Rābiṭah al-qalamiyyah, “The Pen League,” whose most well-known member was Kahlil Gibran. Nuʿaymah later returned to Lebanon and to this day is considered a luminary of Arabic letters. He is known for The Book of Mirdad, which, I confess I’ve not read yet, but when I was first learning Arabic I studied closely his short story Sāʿat al-kūkū (“The Cuckoo Clock”), of which, as far as I know, there is still unfortunately no English translation. Finally, I will say that there is available here a paper on Nuʿaymah, in particular his views on America and the west, which (despite some irksome typos) is worth the half hour it will take to read it. Nuʿaymah’s work is often of a mystical and pantheistic bent, and whether one is moved by his general philosophical approach or not, there are probably some good hints and reminders for everyone in it, almost all of it in very fine language (at least in Arabic).

This poem comes from a collection titled Hams al-ǧufūn (The Whispering of Eyelids). An English translation of it by Roger Monroe (along with the Arabic text) will be found in Mounah A. Khouri and Hamid Algar, An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry (1974). Here I offer my own translation, not because there’s anything wrong with the aforementioned one, but as an exercise for myself and because there’s often merit in variety of renderings. I include the Arabic text in transliteration so that those who don’t know Arabic or its script can at least have some idea of the poem’s sound patterns, notably the line-ending -a/āk.

daḫala ‘l-šayṭānu qalbī fa-raʾá fīhi malʾak
wa-bi-lamḥi ‘l-ṭarfi mā baynahumā ‘štadda ‘l-ʿirāk
ḏā yaqūlu ‘l-baytu baytī fa-yuʿīdu ‘l-qawla ḏāk
wa-ʾanā ʾašhadu mā yaǧrī wa-lā ʾubdiya ḥarāk

sāʾilan rabbī ʾa-fī ‘l-ʾakwāni min rabbi siwāk
ǧabalat qalbī mina ‘l-badʾi yadāhu wa-yadāk

wa-ʾilá ‘l-yawmi ʾarānī fī šukūkin wa-’rtibāk
lastu ʾadrī ʾa-raǧīm fī fuʾādī ʾam malʾak

Satan entered my heart and saw there an angel,
And in the blink of an eye a quarrel intensified between them.
One said, “This house is mine!” and the other answered back,
I watching without movement,

Asking my Lord, “Is there in all that exists a Lord like you,
Whose hand, and yours, formed my heart?”

Till today I see myself in doubt and bewilderment,
Not knowing whether the Cursed or an angel is in my mind.

A few remarks: The first line about Satan entering the heart may be a reflection of Luke 22:3 (Εἰσῆλθεν δὲ σατανᾶς εἰς Ἰούδαν τὸν καλούμενον Ἰσκαριώτην), John 13:2 (τοῦ διαβόλου ἤδη βεβληκότος εἰς τὴν καρδίαν ἵνα παραδοῖ αὐτὸν Ἰούδας Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου), and/or 13:27 (εἰσῆλθεν εἰς ἐκεῖνον ὁ σατανᾶς). The phrase at the beginning of the second line may hark back to 1 Corinthians 15:52 (but the widely propagated Smith-Van Dyke version differently hasفي لحظة في طرفة عين, which strikes me as rather unnatural). In the last line, the word Cursed is an old epithet of Satan in Arabic. The theme of conflicting influences or presences in one’s mind or heart (two words are used in the poem here: qalb in lines 1 and 6, fuʾād in line 8) is, of course, not unique. I’m not in a philosophical enough temperament at the moment to muse on the subject much, so I’ll leave the poet’s words with you for you to have the opportunity to do so when it suits you!

French with the poets I

I’ve given here before some poems in other languages — I don’t know if anyone else appreciates these little presentations, but at least they’re fun for me! — and having just read through Jean de La Fontaine‘s (1621-1695) fable (in verse) on the tortoise and the hare (“Le lièvre et la tortue” [VI, 10], also in Aesop, but I don’t think it’s in the Panchatantra) with my two oldest sons, it occurred to me that it would be a nice one to do in French. The Fables are, of course, quite fun, and you’ll find the French text of all of them with some annotations (in French) here. The text follows immediately below, followed by some remarks on grammar and vocabulary; the rhymes will be obvious. As always, read aloud!

Let’s begin: first the texte intégral, followed by some hints, mostly lexical, tied to the text. I confess that I’d like to give more commentary than I am giving, but time and tiredness make me settle for what’s here; hopefully it will be useful to someone.

Rien ne sert de courir ; il faut partir à point.
Le Lièvre et la Tortue en sont un témoignage.
Gageons, dit celle-ci, que vous n’atteindrez point
Si tôt que moi ce but. Si tôt ? Êtes-vous sage ?
Repartit l’Animal léger.
Ma Commère, il vous faut purger
Avec quatre grains d’ellébore.
Sage ou non, je parie encore.
Ainsi fut fait : et de tous deux
On mit près du but les enjeux.
Savoir quoi, ce n’est pas l’affaire ;
Ni de quel juge l’on convint.
Notre Lièvre n’avait que quatre pas à faire ;
J’entends de ceux qu’il fait lorsque prêt d’être atteint
Il s’éloigne des Chiens, les renvoie aux calendes,
Et leur fait arpenter les landes.
Ayant, dis-je, du temps de reste pour brouter,
Pour dormir, et pour écouter
D’où vient le vent, il laisse la Tortue
Aller son train de Sénateur.
Elle part, elle s’évertue ;
Elle se hâte avec lenteur.
Lui cependant méprise une telle victoire ;
Tient la gageure à peu de gloire ;
Croit qu’il y va de son honneur
De partir tard. Il broute, il se repose,
Il s’amuse à toute autre chose
Qu’à la gageure. À la fin, quand il vit
Que l’autre touchait presque au bout de la carrière,
Il partit comme un trait ; mais les élans qu’il fit
Furent vains : la Tortue arriva la première.
Eh bien, lui cria-t-elle, avais-je pas raison ?
De quoi vous sert votre vitesse ?
Moi l’emporter ! et que serait-ce
Si vous portiez une maison ?

Gageons. “to wager”; the related noun la gageure occurs later. Ma Commère, il vous faut purger//Avec quatre grains d’ellébore. The last word, which derives from Greek and occurs in English as “hellebore”, refers to a variety of medicinal plant sometimes mentioned in folklore of various cultures; it was thought to cure madness. Surely these lines might serve as a fine reprimand to ambitious or boasting interlocutors, but of course they’d need to get it to be meaningful! je parie. parier is “to bet.” les enjeux. An enjeu is a “stake”. aux calendes. Oftener, I think, aux calendes grecques, as in English, an idiom referring to a point in time that will never come. arpenter. to go up and down. brouter. to nibble, graze; the verb comes again a few lines later. s’évertue. to try one’s best. la carrière. Not really “career” as commonly now, but the meaning is pretty clear from the context. un trait. “line, stroke, dash”; the phrase means something like “straightaway”. les élans. “momentum, impetus, rush”. emporter. “to sweep away”; the expression here expresses surprise, perhaps somewhat feigned.

So much for this fun little tale. The poetry itself is nothing stellar, but it’s not bad. I learned some new vocabulary myself, and perhaps you did, too. Maybe the lesson itself will also come in useful for us all someday!
Till next time!