Saturday, June 29, 2019

Saturday commute clxxiii: Image to epigram


The passage, with which we are
all familiar, of an image to 
an epigram is so ethically ex-
pensive that this must play a
large part in fatigue with the
President's endless proof of it.
Never seeing straight, one el-
ement of evidence, he frames a
whole world from fancies of the
timid wretch extracting his re-
venge by the propagation of myth.




              Europa of Athens can be had for a drachma
                    with nothing to fear, no resistance,
                         clean sheets,
              a fire in winter. So, my friend Zeus,
                    you had no business turning yourself
                         into a bull.




















Antipater of Thessaloniki
11 BC - 15 AD
  Edmund Keeley
  translation
Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas,
  Edmund Keeley and Karen van Dyck
  editors
The Greek Poets
  Homer to the Present
op. cit.





Friday, June 28, 2019

Suppose it were Friday clxxiv: In the last week of June





Oh, my, yes. Tell you the truth,
I do, too. The final day of any
annual term of the American high
court always encourages one to
kick back on the deck, and savor
the strands of mental majesty in
all their interweaving splendor,
even as we steel ourselves for a
deprivation for ever so long, to
tantalize the thoughts with vi-
sions of undiscovered postures.

Just today, to bask in the anci-
ently unheralded, not to say em-
phatically contradicted revela-
tion, that it's no business of a
Federal Court how a State may a-
buse the right to vote, is both
to know the bluntest stupefaction
and the keenest delectation of a
latitude in jurisprudence in de-
nial of its definition, bestowed
to our humble porch since corpor-

If this is not a wondrous burning
of a bush, it is at least a cel-
ebration of intellectual torsion
at its contrapposto finest. Yet if
quirement for a census which fol-
lows its inscribed prescription, 
it is that no one need be granted
a vote just because he is counted.

































Rucho v. Common Cause

Department of Commerce
  v. New York






Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Origins of Wednesday xcvi: Unblinking at mastery


This Fall, Knopf are issuing a new
edition of the late John Richard-
son's memoir, The Sorcerer's Appren-
tice: Picasso, Provence, and Douglas
Cooper. The introduction to the new
edition has been written by Jed Perl,
whose Antoine's Alphabet, often cited
here, and whose New Art City, which
captures post-War New York with the
spirit of discovery which impelled it,
are but two highlights in a career of
criticism spanning nearly 50 years, 
with infectious illuminations which
ravish the mind with the sweet exper-
ience of discernment. We will lack
the final volume of Richardson's own
biography of the artist, but we'll
possess his ardor to face him front-
ally, with boldness unleashed by
guidance we imbibe with relish. We
are so fortunate, to know we are.



                     Nil parvum aut humili modo,
                     nil mortale loquar.

                     I shall speak nothing mean
                       or ordinary,
                     Nor what is only mortal.




































Sir John Richardson

  x Francis Goodman
  1947
National Portrait Gallery

Horace

The Odes of Horace
  iii, 25
  [fragment]
David Ferry
  translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1997©





Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Resistance is meant to be tiring


And then the littlest kids are 
expected to be taken care of by 
the older kids, but then some of 
the oldest children lose inter-
est in it, and little children 
get handed off to other children. 
And sometimes we hear about the 
littlest children being alone by 
themselves on the floor.




   Every now and again, who hasn't
   complained of the price of con-
   ditioning to govern oneself? In
   the matter of the present Amer-
   ican President, his own default
   state of lassitude is less in-
   fectious than it is contemptib-
   le, yet it sets an infamous ex-
   ample. I read Eugene Robinson,
   but tell me, how do you go on?


















Isaac Chotiner
The New Yorker
22 June 2019


Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
24 June 2019




Monday, June 24, 2019

What do the Drones say?



   Shoots Brazil nuts, does he?
   You stir me strangely.




Of all the moral disappointments,
possibly as many as three at last
count, which one must lay at the
door of the previous Presidency,
the blithe debasement he brought
upon the Drones by casual resort
to their employment in one char-
after of offense or another, will
surely be remembered as unworthy
of the well-read head of State.

In the hands of his successor,
so ostentatiously immune from
that characterization as to ap-
pease the idlest trifler in mor-
als, a temptation to over-exert
Drones may be accorded, rather,
to statistical accident of his
knowing about them at all. Yet
as we see, still the offense re-
mains, pleading for depiction,
hostile as it is, to etiquette.

Is it the drone's deprivation
of the human element, or its re-
lief of human culpability, which
more affronts the scruples of an
inhabitant of life? Half the fun
of being a Drone is to triumph
under risk, not over it; and the
other half is like unto it, a
serene nap in revealed triumph,
not compromised by deniability.
No sportsman can would content
himself with a secret bulls-eye. 




Probably, therefore, it is the
suspense of the target which ap-
peals to our present President,
having much acquaintance with a
fly's protectiveness of its wings
under his omniscient espionage.
Regard the trembling infant, now
borrowed from a mother's arms
at that ballot-rich border of in-
terest; consider the bankrupting
farmer, deprived of markets by 
his tariffs; the Masters Champion,
tarnished by the embrace of his
commercialization of the Medal of
Freedom. Who might not be next -
the unsuspecting balloteer in the
subverted sanctity of the polls?




It wasn't ever thus, of course,
at the Drones, and retired to the
Smoking Room for digestive coffee
amidst the merry trajectories of
cubes of sugar, hurled only occas-
ionally to effect, and never with
the sordidness of malice. A pity
our President cannot recall the
impetuous Earl, reveling in the
sport of his childhood, catapult-
ing a Brazil nut at the top hat
of a snobbish barrister in the
street below. With his genius for
losing legal representation, the
President might take heart from
a tidier style of their disposal.




But for the Drones, what relief?
What study of their humanity can
salvage it from the debasement of
ignorance, that wellspring of des-
peration so apotheosized in our
President's style of play? To've
heard of the Drones is one thing.
Not to know them in their world,
is to lack humane habitation,
and to careen into satiric range.

   It was apparent to the Egg 
   that the old gentleman had
   missed the gist.

   He shoots with Brazil nuts.




















Iasonas Lalos

Tom Hiddleston

P.G. Wodehouse
Cocktail Time
Simon & Schuster
1958