Being better acquainted with the man

Now if there are any who think that I am vainglorious, that I set myself up above others and crow over their low estate, let me tell them that I could tell a pitiful story respecting myself as well as them, if my spirits held out to do it; I could encourage them with a sufficient list of failures, and could flow as humbly as the very gutters themselves; I could enumerate a list of as rank offenses as ever reached the nostrils of heaven; that I think worse of myself than they can possibly think of me, being better acquainted with the man. I put the best face on the matter. I will tell them this secret, if they will not tell it to anybody else.

(Henry David Thoreau's journal, today in 1852)

With all your brother Anons

W.H. Auden, Ode to the Medieval Poets:

Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your
brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage,
without anaesthetics or plumbing,
in daily peril from witches, warlocks,

lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries
burning as they came, to write so cheerfully,
with no grimaces of self-pathos?
Long-winded you could be but not vulgar,

bawdy but not grubby, your raucous flytings
sheer high-spirited fun, whereas our makers,
beset by every creature comfort,
immune, they believe, to all superstitions,

even at their best are so often morose or
kinky, petrified by their gorgon egos.
We all ask, but I doubt if anyone
can really say why all age-groups should find our

Age quite so repulsive. Without its heartless
engines, though, you could not tenant my book-shelves,
on hand to delect my ear and chuckle
my sad flesh: I would gladly just now be

turning out verses to applaud a thundery
jovial June when the judas-tree is in blossom,
but am forbidden by the knowledge
that you would have wrought them so much better.

When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.

(Lord Alfred Tennyson)

Ecos na Catedral

Madredeus & Flemish Radio Orchestra.



Os teus olhos são vitrais
Que mudam de cor com o céu
E quando sorriem iguais
E quando sorriem iguais,
Quem muda de cor sou eu.

Tomara teus olhos vissem
O amor que trago por ti
Nem o entardecer me acalma,
Nem o entardecer me acalma,
Na ânsia de te ter aqui.

E o teu perfume, o incenso,
Os ecos de uma oração
Misturam-se num esboço imenso,
Afogam-se na solidão.

Fui para um templo de pedra,
Escolhi um recanto isolado
Que me faça esquecer tua voz,
Esquecer-me da tua voz,
Que me faça acordar do passado.

Escondida em sítio sagrado,
E não me apetece o perdão
Devo estar enfeitiçada
Devo estar enfeitiçada,
Náufrago do coração.

E o teu perfume, o incenso.
Os ecos de uma oração
Misturam-se num esboço imenso.
Afogam-se na solidão.

Não sei se perdoo o meu fado,
Não sei se consigo enfim
Um dia esquecer que teus olhos
Sorriem, mas não para mim.

Os teus olhos são vitrais
Que mudam de cor com o céu...

Pear's soap

I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.

***

To know whether you are enjoying a piece of music or not you must see whether you find yourself looking at the advertisements of Pear’s soap at the end of the programme.

(Samuel Butler)

Now that was a sweet play

A lady, whom I meet frequently in the British Museum reading-room and elsewhere, said to me the other day:

“Why don’t you write another Erewhon?”

“Why, my dear lady,” I replied, “Life and Habit was another Erewhon.”

They say these things to me continually to plague me and make out that I could do one good book but never any more. She is the sort of person who if she had known Shakespeare would have said to him, when he wrote Henry the IVth:

“Ah, Mr. Shakespeare, why don’t you write us another Titus Andronicus? Now that was a sweet play, that was.”

And when he had done Antony and Cleopatra she would have told him that her favourite plays were the three parts of King Henry VI.

(Another excerpt from The Notebooks of Samuel Butler. I find his notes very interesting, though I haven't read any of his books yet.)

The youth of an art

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

(From The Notebooks of Samuel Butler.)