Miscelánea Babélica

 
PI -entonces, ahora, siempre

 César nos legó imágenes eternas de
 una Galia y una Britania que ya no son;
 expiró en Roma desafiando el vaticinio de Spurinna,
 el ruego de Calpurnia, el alboroto de los caballos,
 en los ojos sus manos jóvenes sobre el pecho
 desnudo de un tirano¹ del Mar Negro.

 Marco Polo vio o creyó ver los vastos
 dominios del Khan, el fuego de la pólvora,
 la sangre de los dragones de seda;
 murió junto a los canales de la infancia,
 en los ojos los ojos como hendijas en
 la cara como luna de una mujer ya sin nombre.

 Yo cargo con imágenes que no recordará nadie;
 moriré una muerte ignorada de la historia y
 de los poemas, lejos de casa,
 en los ojos tu paso resuelto,
 tu mano aferrada a un libro,²
 tu cara que besa el sol que brilla en la calle.

       - TG

¹El rey de Bithinia. Suetonio, Vida de los doce Césares.
²Tengo ese libro en mis manos. The Illiad of Homer, trans. A. Pope, The Heritage Press, NY, 1943.

Alegoría de un Triste Epistolario ¹

¹Acota el Bowie, en estilo délfico u oracular: "Tampoco en nada cabe interpretar nada. Cuánto se ignora de un libro? Lo de adentro o la ilusión?". La alegoría es gentileza suya.

 
Pianse ed amò per tutti

Ci nutrimmo di lui come dell'aria
libera ed infinita
cui dà la terra tutti i suoi sapori.
La bellezza e la forza di sua vita,
che parve solitaria,
furon come su noi cieli canori.
Egli trasse i suoi cori
dall'imo gorgo dell'ansante folla.
Diede una voce alle speranze e ai lutti.
Pianse ed amò per tutti.

-Gabriele D'Annunzio
  Per la morte di Giuseppe Verdi

  Highland Park, 1999

 Mi lámpara es una
 herida en la noche.
 Duermen. Podría
 lamerles los pies,
 golpear a sus puertas,
 mear el cuadrado donde
 abrevan sus árboles.
 Y nada: duermen la
 noche lastimosa.
 El viento trae un
 dictado de pitonisa
 que sangra. Desconozco
 las palabras, no el
 desgarro del vasto sueño
 de los sordos. Por la
 mañana dirán hola,
 nos vemos por la tarde:
 gestos de primavera
 que sucede al invierno.
 Yo escuché, y me resta
 poca noche para hacer
 primavera de un puñado
 de nieve sucia.

-TG

The Melancholy Child

Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might, thy grand in soul?
Gone -glimmering through the dream of things that were:
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,
They won, and passed away -is this the whole?
A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power!

Son of the morning, rise! approach you here!
Come -but molest not yon defenseless urn;
Look on this spot -a nation's sepulchre!
Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.
Even gods must yield -religions take their turn:
'T was Jove's -'t is Mahomet's -and other creeds
Will rise with other years, till man shall learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;
Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.

-Byron
   Childe Harold, Canto II

The Gloomy Academic ¹

The Glory that was Greece: put it in a syllabus, grade it
     Page by page
To train the mind or even to point a moral
     For the present age:
Models of logic and lucidity, dignity, sanity,
     The golden mean between opposing ills...

But I can do nothing so useful or so simple;
     These dead are dead
And when I should remember the paragons of Hellas
     I think instead
Of the crooks, the adventurers, the opportunists,
     The careless athletes and the fancy boys,
The hair-splitters, the pedants, the hard-boiled sceptics
     And the Agora and the noise
Of the demagogues and the quacks; and the women pouring
     Libations over graves
And the trimmers at Delphi and the dummies at Sparta and lastly
     I think of the slaves.

And how one can imagine oneself among them
     I do not know;
It was all so unimaginably different
     And all so long ago.

-Louis MacNeice
  Autumn Journal

¹From a  CLASSICS-L entry by Prof. David Lupher: "Lest we perpetuate a kind of 'virus' of mistitling here, we should note that the title 'The Gloomy Academic' appears to be Gustavo Gioia's own way of referring to the last third of sect. IX of 'Autumn Journal' (1938)." Prof. Lupher's surmise is correct.

 
The Brooding Emperor

The CHI, they say, had never harmed their city, nor the
KAPPA. And we, finding the explanation by chance,
were taught that these were initial letters of two
names; one stood for Christ, the other for Cosntantinius.
-Jullian
   Misopôgôn

Was it ever possible that they should renounce
their lovely way of life, the variety of their
daily amusement; their magnificient theater
where a union of the Arts was taking place
with the amorous tendencies of the flesh!

They were immortal to a point -and possibly to a great
degree. But they had the satisfaction of knowing
that their life was the much talked about life of Antioch,
rich in pleasures, perfectly elegant in every way.

To renounce all this, to turn to what after all?

To his airy chatter about false gods;
to his tiresome self-centered chatter;
to his childish fear of the theater;
his graceless prudery, his ridiculous beard?

Ah most certainly they preferred the CHI,
ah most certainly they preferred the KAPPA; a hundred times.

-Cavafy
   Julian and the people of Antioch
   Trans. R. Dalven

 
Memoria inmortal de don Pedro Girón,
Duque de Osuna, muerto en la prisión

Faltar pudo su patria al grande Osuna,
pero no á su defensa sus hazañas;
diéronle muerte y cárcel las Españas,
de quien él hizo esclava la fortuna.
Lloraron las invidias una á una
con las propias naciones las extrañas,
su tumba son de Flándres las campañas,
y su epitafio la sangrienta luna.
En sus exequias encendió al Vesubio
Partenope, y Trinacria al Mongibelo;
el llanto militar creció en diluvio.
Dióle el mejor lugar Marte en su cielo;
la Mosa, el Rhin, el Tajo y el Danubio
murmuraron con dolor su desconsuelo.

-Quevedo (el más grande, de la lengua que fuere)

 
 Cogitación sobre Don Giovanni, condenado, una vez más,
 en la Opera de St Paul, el 15 de marzo de 1996

 En algún vericueto del tiempo
 Don Giovanni reposa tristemente -piedra que es,
 como el burlado y tanto muerto
 ya sin habla-, impertérrito al castigo
 mezquino de la pluralidad de sus hacedores.
 Ya no rie; pondera en vez de reir, se mide
 contra los que lo hallan abyecto. Conoció
 el amor, y sabe que la llama que lo lame,
 obediente, no es más que la risa torpe que se repite
 acto tras acto, incapaz de morder su carne.

 Yo tengo para mi que aquel Don Juan
 fue más probable, que nada supo de amor
 y para quien irse al infierno fue el único respiro.
 

Harriers of the world, now that earth fails their all devastating hands they probe even the sea; if their enemy has wealth, they have greed; if he is poor, they are ambitious; East and West have glutted them; alone of mankind they behold with the same passion of concupiscence waste alike and want. To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire; they make a desolation and call it peace. Children and kin are by the laws of nature each man's dearest possession: they are swept away from us by conscription to be slaves in other lands; our wives and sisters, even when they escape a soldier's lust, are debauched by self-styled friends and guests: our goods and chattels go for tribute; our lands and harvests in requisitions of grain; life and limbs themselves are used up in levelling marsh and forest to the accompaniment of gibes and blows. Slaves born to slavery are sold once for all and are fed by their masters free of cost; but Britain pays a daily price for its own enslavement, and feeds the slaves.

-Tacitus, Agricola 30-31

From the Pages of the Master

The Follies of Elagabalus

A rational voluptuary adheres with invariable respect to the temperate dictates of nature, and improves the gratifications of sense by social intercourse, endearing connexions, and the soft colouring of taste and imagination. But Elagabalus (I speak of the emperor of that name), corrupted by his youth, his country, and his fortune, abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures with ungoverned fury, and soon found disgust and satiety in the midst of his enjoyments. The inflammatory powers of art were summoned to his aid: the confused multitude of women, of wines, and of dishes, and the studied variety of attitudes and sauces, served to revive his languid appetites.  New terms and new inventions in these sciences,¹ the only ones cultivated and patronized by the monarch, signalized his reign, and transmitted his infamy to succeding times. A capricious prodigality supplied the want of taste and elegance; and, whilst Elagabalus lavished away the treasures of his people in the wildest extravagance, his own voice and that of his flatterers applauded a spirit and magnificence unknown to the tameness of his predecessors. To confound the order of seasons and climates,² to sport with the passions and prejudices of his subjects, and to subvert every law of nature and decency, were in the number of his most delicious amusements. A long train of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a Vestal vergin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, were insufficient to satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers, one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he most properly styled himself, of the emperor's husband.³

¹The invention of a new sauce was liberally rewarded: but if it was not relished, the inventor was confined to eat of nothing else, till he had discovered another more agreeable to the Imperial palate.
²He never would eat sea-fish except at a great distance from the sea; he then would distribute vast quantities of the rarest sorts, brought at an immense expense, to the pleasures of the inland country.
³Hierocles enjoyed that honor; but he would have been supplanted by one Zoticus, had he not contrieved, by a potion, to enervate the powers of his rival, who, being found on trial unequal to his reputation, was driven with ignominy from the palace. A dancer was made præfect of the city, a charioteer præfect of the ward, a barber præfect of the provisions. These three ministers, with many inferior officers, were all reccommended enormitate membrorum.

 
The Followers of Anthony of Egypt in The Eyes of The Age of Newton

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon Stylites have been immortalized by the singular invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. ¹ In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty- four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh ² might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics, who torment themselves, are susceptible of any lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguiseed the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition.

¹The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three feet, which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column is inconsistent with reason, with facts, and with the rules of architecture. The people who saw it from below might be easily deceived.
²I must not conceal a piece of ancient scandal concerning the origin of this ulcer. It has been reported that the Devil, assuming an angelic form, invited him to ascend, like Elijah, into a fiery chariot. The saint too hastily raised his foot, and Satan seized the moment of inflicting this chastisement on his vanity.
 

The Master at His Most Sarcastic

A chosen society of philosophers, men of a liberal education and curious disposition, might silently meditate, and temperately discuss, in the gardens of Athens or the library of Alexandria, the abstruse questions of metaphysical science. The lofty speculations which neither convinced the understanding, nor agitated the passions, of the Platonists themselves were carelessly overlooked by the idle, the busy, and even the studious part of mankind.¹ But, after the Logos had been revealed as the sacred object of the faith, the hope, and the religious worship of the Christians, the mysterious system was embraced by a numerous and increasing multitude in every province of the Roman world. Those persons who, from their age, or occupations, were the least qualified to judge, who were the least excercised in the habit of abstract reasoning, aspired to contemplate the economy of the Divine Nature; and it is the boast of Tertullian that a Christian mechanic could readily answer such questions as had perplexed the wisest of the Grecian sages. Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence. These speculations, instead of being treated as the amusement of a vacant hour, became the most serious business of the present, and the most useful preparation for a future, life. A theology, which it was incumbent to believe, which it was impious to doubt, and which it might be dangerous, or even fatal, to mistake, became the familiar topic of private meditation and popular discourse. The cold indifference of philosophy was inflamed by the fervent spirit of devotion; and even the metaphors of common language suggested the fallacious prejudices of sense and experience.

¹In a treatise which professed to explain the opinions of the ancient philosophers concerning the nature of the gods we might expect to discover the theological Trinity of Plato. But Cicero very honestly confessed that, though he had translated the Timæus, he could never understand that mysterious dialogue.

 
The Master at His Best

The division of Europe into a number of independent states, connected, however, with each other, by the general resemblance of religion, language and manners, is productive of the most beneficial consequences to the liberty of mankind. A modern tyrant, who should find no resistance either in his own breast or in his people, would soon experience a gentle restraint from the example of his equals, the dread of present censure, the advice of his allies, and the apprehension of his enemies. The object of his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his dominions, would easily obtain, in a happier climate, a secure refuge, a new fortune adequate to his merit, the freedom of complaint, and perhaps the means of revenge. But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and, when the empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary place for his enemies. The slave of Imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair.¹ To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable desert, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the emperor's protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive.²  ``Wherever you are, '' said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, ``remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror."

¹Seriphus was a small rocky island in the Ægean Sea, the inhabitants of which were despised for their ignorance and obscurity. The place of Ovid's exile is well known by his just but unmanly lamentations. It should seem that he only received an order to leave Rome in so many days, and to transport himself to Tomi. Guards and gaolers were unnecessary.
²Under Tiberius, a Roman knight attempted to fly to the Parthians. He was stopt in the straits of Sicily; but so little danger did there appear in the example, that the most jealous of tyrants disdained to punish it.

The Glory that Was Cordova

A province is assimilated to the victorious state by the introduction of strangers and the imitative spirit of the natives; and Spain, which had been successively tinctured with Punic, and Roman, and Gothic blood, imbibed, in a few generations, the name and manners of the Arabs. The first conquerors, and the twenty successive lieutenants of the caliphs, were attended by a numerous train of civil and military followers, who preferred a distant fortune to a narrow home: the private and public interest was promoted by the establishment of faithful colonies; and the cities of Spain were proud to commemorate the tribe or country of their Eastern progenitors. The victorious though motley bands of Tarik and Musa asserted, by the name of Spaniards, their original claim of conquest; yet they allowed their brethren of Egypt to share their establishments of Murcia and Lisbon. The royal legion of Damascus was planted at Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Kinnisrin or Chalcis at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered round Toledo and the inland country, and the fertile seats of Grenada were bestowed on ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the purest and most noble of the Arabian tribes. A spirit of emulation, sometimes beneficial, more frequently dangerous, was nourished by these hereditary factions. Ten years after the conquest, a map of the province was presented to the caliph: the seas, the rivers, and the harbors, the inhabitants and cities, the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of the earth. In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were improved by the agriculture, the manufactures, and the commerce, of an industrious people; and the effects of their diligence have been magnified by the idleness of their fancy. The first of the Ommiades who reigned in Spain solicited the support of the Christians; and in his edict of peace and protection, he contents himself with a modest imposition of ten thousand ounces of gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten thousand horses, as many mules, one thousand cuirasses, with an equal number of helmets and lances. The most powerful of his successors derived from the same kingdom the annual tribute of twelve millions and forty-five thousand dinars or pieces of gold, about six millions of sterling money; a sum which, in the tenth century, most probably surpassed the united revenues of the Christians monarchs. His royal seat of Cordova contained six hundred moschs, nine hundred baths, and two hundred thousand houses; he gave laws to eighty cities of the first, to three hundred of the second and third order; and the fertile banks of the Guadalquivir were adorned with twelve thousand villages and hamlets. The Arabs might exaggerate the truth, but they created and they describe the most prosperous era of the riches, the cultivation, and the populousness of Spain.

The Solitude of the Greeks

In all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the emulation of states and individuals is the most powerful spring of the efforts and improvements of mankind. The cities of ancient Greece were cast in the happy mixture of union and independence, which is repeated on a larger scale, but in a looser form, by the nations of modern Europe; the union of language, religion, and manners, which renders them the spectators and judges of each other’s merit; the independence of government and interest, which asserts their separate freedom, and excites them to strive for preeminence in the career of glory. The situation of the Romans was less favorable; yet in the early ages of the republic, which fixed the national character, a similar emulation was kindled among the states of Latium and Italy; and in the arts and sciences, they aspired to equal or surpass their Grecian masters. The empire of the Caesars undoubtedly checked the activity and progress of the human mind; its magnitude might indeed allow some scope for domestic competition; but when it was gradually reduced, at first to the East and at last to Greece and Constantinople, the Byzantine subjects were degraded to an abject and languid temper, the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state. From the North they were oppressed by nameless tribes of Barbarians, to whom they scarcely imparted the appellation of men. The language and religion of the more polished Arabs were an insurmountable bar to all social intercourse. The conquerors of Europe were their brethren in the Christian faith; but the speech of the Franks or Latins was unknown, their manners were rude, and they were rarely connected, in peace or war, with the successors of Heraclius. Alone in the universe, the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit; and it is no wonder if they fainted in the race, since they had neither competitors to urge their speed, nor judges to crown their victory. The nations of Europe and Asia were mingled by the expeditions to the Holy Land; and it is under the Comnenian dynasty that a faint emulation of knowledge and military virtue was rekindled in the Byzantine empire.

His Most Celebrated Sentence

I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion .