Chastenings

  Anyone who undertakes an inquiry

  of such a [forensic] kind is

  soon made aware of one important

  fact: the worthlessness of human

  testimony. It is a chastening

  thought to a historian to consider

  how much of history is written on

  the basis of statements no more 

  reliable than those of Admiral

  Doenitz .. If such statements had

  been made and recorded with refer-

  ence to the disputed death of the

  Czar Alexander I in 1825, plenty

  of historians would have been ready

  to take them seriously. 

         

         What might I be ready

         to take seriously, if

         not a gentle teaching

         that frees me from a-

         lienation of distrust?

 

         

Hugh Trevor-Roper

Student [Fellow] of

  Christ Church, Oxford

Late Regius Professor 

  of Modern History

The Last Days of Hitler

1947

  Introduction to the 

    Third Edition

  1956

University of Chicago Press 

  Sixth Edition, 1987©

             

Gabriel

 Florentino Ariza, who had never lost

 the timidity of a novice even in com-

 fortable circumstances, risked a super-

 ficial caress on her neck with the tips

 of his fingers, and she writhed and

 moaned like a spoiled child and did not

 stop crying. Then he kissed her on the

 same spot, just as softly, and he could

 not kiss her a second time because she

 turned toward him with all her monumen-

 tal body, eager and warm, and they roll-

 ed in an embrace on the floor. The cat

 on the sofa awoke with a screech and

 jumped on top of them. They groped like

 desperate virgins and found each other

 any way they could, wallowing in the

 torn albums, fully dressed, soaked with

 sweat, and more concerned with avoiding

 the furious claws of the cat than with 

 the disastrous love they were making.

  

  But beginning the fol-

  lowing night, their

  scratches still bleed-

  ing, they continued to

  make love for several

  years.

Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Love in the Time of Cholera

1985

Edith Grossman

  translation

Knopf, 1988©

ii Photograph Laurent

    Leica M-6, 50mm Summicron

    op. cit.

Docile carousel

Rock-lavender full of small pious birds

On precipices torn from old sky,

Promiscuous as the goddess of the grove.

No wonder the wise men listening pondered why

If speech be an involuntary response to stress,

How about song, then? Soft verbs, hard nouns

Confess the voice's submission to desire.

A theology of insight going begging.

Lawrence Durrell

Sicilian Carousel

  Birdsong: Erice

  [fragment]

op. cit.

Spiffy news from Mailhos

     This is what it was like for the Sabines then,
     And for Romulus and Remus, in the old days.
     This must be how Etruria grew strong,
     And Rome became the most beautiful thing there is.
























Virgil
Georgics ii
30 BC
David Ferry
  translation
op. cit.

All this time, we feared, it might be over

This page has only it-

self to blame, need one

say, for arousing dread

that a parvenu collector

of buildings might yank

the curtain of Tricorne

from 375 Park Avenue -

possibly, a trophy too

vast to smuggle across

the borders of even our

adulation of the gross.

Will someone, please,

stand up and say what 

about Pablo Picasso,

could nail a vampire 

in his tracks?

Phyllis Lambert has

done so. Friends are

encouraged to acquire

a uniquely competent

and necessary memoir

of a prior civilisa-

tion in this land, of

such a forgotten amal-

gam of industry, op-

portunity, privilege,

genius, decency, and

taste as might strew

a boulevard of bucks

with instruction in

benevolence.

Doesn't one take pride 

in the gorgeousness of 

the good derived from 

any person? The greater

the gorgeousness, is no

matter: the good is im-

mutable. But the master-

piece is needed, because 

we forget how we hunger.

Ich hab genug.

Phyllis Bronfman Lambert

Building Seagram

Yale University Press, 2013©

Whose shirt is this

They saw history as a process, and a process, moreover, of improvement, of progress. Thereby they gave to its study a new value, not merely moral and political, but intel-lectual and social.

The men of the past entered their story

only indirectly, as the agents or vic-

tims of 'progress': they seldom appear-

ed directly, in their own right, in 

their own social context, as the legit-

imate owners of their own autonomous

centuries.

The romantic writers changed all that.

Seing the doctrine of progress convert-

ed from a gospel of humanity into a

slogan of conquest, they .. tried to

look on the past direct .. they resol-

ved, at all costs, to make the past

live.

    

Hugh Trevor-Roper

Lord Dacre of Glanton

Regius Professor of Modern History

History and the Enlightenment

  The Romantic Movement and

  the Study of History

  op. post.

John Robertson, editor

Yale University Press, 2010©

  

Functions of style v: gps

I have expatiated on the loss
of my literary maidenhead, a
memorable era in the life of
a student when he ventures to
reveal the measure of his mind.

  His hopes and fears
  are multiplied by the
  idea of self-importance
  and he believes for a
  while that the eyes of
  mankind are fixed on his
  person and performance.




Whatever may be my present rep-
utation .. I may appreciate my
juvenile work with the imparti-
ality, and almost the indiffer-
ence, of a stranger.

Edward Gibbon
1737 - 1794
Autobiography
op. post.
Dero A. Saunders, editor
Meridian Books, 1961©