This is a blade that cuts both ways. Are you imagining yourself Homer or
Ramus?
Sorry, that's unkind. Hard to resist an easy shot.
At 02:08 PM 4/14/98 PDT, you wrote:
> The discussion of my translation from Theocritus, which I have
>followed with the liveliest interest, has not only been enlightening but
>has also given me the very great pleasure of enabling me to feel as if
>I were enacting in actuality one of my favorite scenes from Swift, in
>which Gulliver asks the Governor of Glubbdubdrib, The Island of
>Sorcerers, to use his necromantic powers to invoke the fabled figures of
>antiquity:
>
> Having a desire to see those ancients, who were most
> renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on
> purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might
> appear at the head of all their commentators; but these
> were so numerous that some hundreds were forced to
> attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. I
> knew and could distinguish those two heroes at first
> sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other.
> Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two,
> walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were
> the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle
> stooped much, and made use use of a staff. His visage
> was meager, his hair lank and thin, and his voice
> hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were
> perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had
> never seen or heard of them before. And I had a
> whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless, that these
> commentators always kept in the most distant quarters
> from their principals in the lower world, through a
> consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so
> horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to
> posterity. I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to
> Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than
> perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a
> genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But
> Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I
> gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to
> him, and he asked them whether the rest of the tribe
> were as great dunces themselves.
>
> I shall certainly stay with this list. Who knows what other
>fantasies of mine it may eventually incarnate?
>
>To: BRITPOE([log in to unmask])
>
>
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