Category: Uncategorized

Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Travel (1625)

“It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, Sea Voyage from Naples to Sicily (1787)

At Sea, March 29. Throughout the night the ship made its quiet progress. The cabins below deck are pleasant and furnished with single berths. Our fellow passengers, opera singers and dancers with engagements in Palermo, are gay and well behaved.

At Sea, March 30. The sun sank into the sea accompanied by clouds and a streak of purple light a mile long… I was not to enjoy this gorgeous sight for long before I was overcome by seasickness. I retired to my cabin, assumed a horizontal position … and soon felt quite snug. Isolated from the outside world, I let my thoughts run freely on the inner one, and … set myself forthwith a serious task … the first two acts of Tasso. These, though roughly similar in plot and action to the ones I have now done, were written ten years ago in a poetic prose. I found them too weak and nebulous, but these defects vanished when, in accordance with my present ideas, I introduced a metre and let the form dominate.

At Sea, March 31. I remained in my horizontal position, revolving and reviving my play in my mind.

At Sea, April 1. By three in the morning, it was blowing a gale. Half awake, half asleep, I kept thinking about my drama… By noon we could make out the promontories and bays of the Sicilian coast, but the ship had fallen considerably to leeward. Now and then we tacked… Once in a while I ventured on deck but kept my poetic project always in mind – by now I had almost mastered the whole play.

At Sea, April 2. By eight in the morning we stood directly opposite Palermo. I was in high spirits. During these last days in the belly of the whale, I have made considerable progress in planning my play. I felt so well that I was able to stand on the foredeck and devote my attention to the coast of Sicily.

Palermo, April 2. Instead of hurrying impatiently ashore, we remained on deck until we were driven off. It might be long before we could again enjoy such a treat for the eyes from such a vantage point… For an artist, there was an inexhaustible wealth of vistas to me seen, and we studied them one by one with an eye to pointing them all.

Palermo, April 3. Here are a few more notes, hastily thrown together: If anything was ever a decisive event for me, it is this trip. No one who has never seen himself surrounded on all sides by nothing but the sea can have a true conception of the world and of his own relation to it… Forgive my scribbling with a blunt pen dipped in the sepia which my friend uses when he retraces his drawings. It will come to you like a whisper while I am preparing another memorial to these happy hours. I shan’t tell you what it is, and I can’t tell you when you will receive it.

. . . . .

OF TRUTH

“Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure… But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.”

OF SIMULATION AND DISSIMULATION

“The best composition and temperature is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.”

OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE

“It is often seen that bad husbands have very good wives; whether it be that it raiseth the price of their husband’s kindness when it comes; or that the wives take a pride in their patience. But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing against their friends’ consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.”

OF LOVE

“There is in man’s nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable; as it is seen sometime in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it.”

OF SEDITIONS AND TROUBLES

“Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread.”

OF TRAVEL

“It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation.”

OF EMPIRE

“It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear: and yet that commonly is the case of kings… We see also that kings that have been fortunate conquerors in their first years … turn in their latter years to be superstitious and melancholy… For he that is used to go forward, and findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favour, and is not the thing he was… And certain it is that nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much.”

OF THE TRUE GREATNESS OF KINGDOMS AND ESTATES

“There is not anything amongst civil affairs more subject to error, than the right valuation and true judgement concerning the power and forces of an estate… Let states that aim at greatness, take heed how their nobility and gentlemen do multiply too fast… For to think that an handful of people can, with the greatest courage and policy in the world, embrace too large extent of dominion, it may hold for a time, but it will fail suddenly… It was not the Romans that spread upon the world, but it was the world that spread upon the Romans; and that was the sure way of greatness.”

OF PLANTATIONS [COLONIES]

“I like a plantation in a pure soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others. For else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation.”

OF MASQUES AND TRIUMPHS

“Since princes will have such things, it is better they should be graced with elegancy than daubed with cost.”

OF STUDIES

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested… Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.”

. . . . .

From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 – 1651)

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.
[Here and there, in the vast abyss, a swimmer is seen.]

There are amongst you, I do ingeniously confess, many well deserving patrons, and true patriots, of my knowledge, besides many hundreds which I never saw, no doubt, or heard of, pillars of our commonwealth, whose worth, bounty, learning, forwardness, true seal in religion, and good esteem of all scholars, ought to be consecrated to all posterity: but of your rank there are a debauched, corrupt, covetous, illiterate crew again, no better than stocks, mere cattle… There is no hope, no good to be done without money. If after long expectation, much expense, travel, earnest suit of ourselves and friends, we obtain a small benefice at last: our misery begins afresh, we are suddenly encountered with the flesh, world, and devil, with a new onset, we change a quiet life for an ocean of troubles… Honest men make the best of it, as often it falls out, from a polite and terse academic, he must turn rustic, rude, melancholize alone, learn to forget, or else, as many do become maltsters, graziers, chapmen, &c. (now banished from the academy, all commerce of the Muses, and confined to a county village, as Ovid was from Rome to Pontus), and daily converse with a company of idiots and clowns.

Ovid writes, from exile on the Black Sea:

ipse mihi-quid enim faciam? –
scriboque legoque, tutaque ivdicio
littera nostra suo est

[I write for myself –
What else can I do? –
and I read to myself,
and my writing is
secure in its own criticism]

OVID, Tristia IV
. . . . .

From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 – 1651)

Burton, a most Ciceronian of stylists, tries to convince us otherwise: I am aqua potor [a water drinker], drink no wine at all, which so much improved our modern wits, a loose, plain rude wri-ter, ficum voco ficum, & ligonem ligonem [I call a spade a spade]… As a river runs sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and slow; now direct, then per ambages [windingly]; now deep, then shallow; now muddy, then clear; now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow: now serious, then light; now comical, then satirical; now more elaborate, then remiss, as the present subject required.

There be many other subjects, I do easily grant… I was fatally driven upon this rock of melancholy, and carried away by this by-stream, which as a rillet, is deducted from the main channel of my studies, in which I have pleased and busied myself at idle hours.

‘Tis the common tenet of the world, that learning dulls and diminisheth the spirits, and so produceth melancholy… [Students] live a sedentary, solitary life, subbi & musis [to themselves and letters], free from bodily exercise… Only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and spirits (I mean) which they daily use, and by which they range over all the world, which by much study is consumed… [Contemplation] dries the brain, and extinguisheth natural heat; for whilst the spirits are intent to meditation above in the head, the stomach and liver are left destitute… Students are commonly troubled with gouts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradiopepsia, bad eyes, stone and colic, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, cramps, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by overmuch sitting; they are most part lean, dry, ill coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times their lives and all through immoderate pains, and extraordinary studies… How many poor scholars have lost their wits, or become dizards, neglecting all worldly affairs, and their own health, wealth, esse and benne esse, to gain knowledge? for which, after all their pains in the world’s esteem they are accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and (as oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, dotting, and mad… Go to Bedlam and ask.

No labour in the world like unto study… To say truth, ‘tis the common fortune of most scholars, to be servile and poor, to complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless patrons… Poverty is the Muses’ patrimony, and as that poetical divinity teacheth us, when Jupiter’s daughters were each of them married to the Gods, the muses alone were left solitary… Ever since all their followers are poor, forsaken and left unto themselves… Let us give over our books, and betake ourselves to some other course of life. To what end should we study? … I say, let’s turn soldiers, sell our books, and buy swords, guns, and pikes… leave all, and rather betake ourselves to any other course of life, than to continue longer in this misery. It would be better to make toothpicks, than by literary labours to try and get the favour of the great.

. . . . .

From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 – 1651)

We can say nothing but what hath been said, the composition and method is ours only, and shows a scholar… And for those other faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies, confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, fantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull and dry; I confess all (‘tis partly affected) thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself… I am afraid I have over-shot myself, Laudare se vani, vituperare sulti [the vain praise themselves, the foolish blame themselves]… Our style betrays us… Our writings are as so many dishes, our readers guests; our books like beauty, that which one admires another rejects; so are we approved and men’s fancies are inclined.

Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli [The reader’s fancy makes the fate of books]… He respects matter, thou are wholly for words, he loves a loose and free style, thou are all for neat composition, strong lines, hyperboles, allegories; he desires a fine frontispiece, enticing pictures… how shall I hope to express myself to each man’s humour and conceit, our to give satisfaction to all? … I resolve, if you like not my writing, go read something else. I do not much esteem thy censure.
. . . . .

From The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621 – 1651)

I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, mihi & musis [to myself and letters]… I had a great desire (not able to attain to a superficial skill in any) to have some smattering in all, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis [something in everything, no authority in anything]… I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui ubique est, nusquam est [he who is everywhere is nowhere]… I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of art, order, memory, judgement. I never travelled but in map… I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil… I hear news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged… A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, please, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts… Thus I daily hear, and suchlike, both private, and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world.

I did for my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but make some little observation… I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness… This I aimed at; vel ut lenirem animum scribendo, to ease my mind by writing… Besides I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itcheth… ‘Tis most true, many are possessed by an incurable itch to write, and “there is no end of writing of books.” [Ecclesiastes 12:12] Bewitched with this desire of frame, etiam mediis in morbis, to the disparagement of their health, and scarce able to hold a pen, they must say something, have it out… They turn authors lest peradventure the printers should have a holiday, or they must write something to prove they have lived… Quis tam avidus librorum helluo [what a glut of books!], Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
. . . . .

All those top secret months at Trinity
of steady hands and guess work,
touch safer than instruments –

Of course they had to test it.
Sometimes to know a thing
you have to blow it up.

Crossed fingers counted down.
Amulets clutched and names of saints
whispered in the silence before the roar.

There goes the pride of Los Alamos.
They filmed the detonation and shipped the reels,
along with the second bomb, off to the Pacific.

When they attempted to show that film to
the airmen who would drop the next one,
the projector jammed.

There were only words left to describe
the silence then the sound, the heat and
a white light brighter than the noon sun.

The Enola Gay had a shadow, flying over Japan.
A second plane carried the photographic crew.
That plane was called the Necessary Evil.
. . . . .

the only thing happy
in this humidity
is the baguette.

three days fresh
on the kitchen counter
we don’t even have to bag it.
. . . . .

Literary naturalism best describes my current condition. The wind has shifted. Now we smell the spruce stand beyond the pond instead of the shit from the horse field. These horses here are nothing but trouble. They escape – who ever hear of such a thing! Then people from all up and down the road call to say There are some horses in my field, are they yours? There is a horse on my front porch, do you know anything about it? But the horses are not ours, they are only renting. The dog is a wild animal. It tries to round up the horses. It tries to round up the cars passing. The dog is no help to anyone and one day it is going to get itself killed. The cat, on the other hand, is a great proponent of literary naturalism: it climbs on me while I am writing, is on me right now in fact, and is useful for knocking over the great stacks of used books I’ve collected in Boston and Montpellier – the cat thinks I’m thinking too much about the order I’m reading things in and has dedicated itself to shaking things up. Yesterday: Hrabal, Too Long a Solitude (or too Loud? I’ve forgotten already) and Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte (again, I am paraphrasing with titles and spelling in general). Today: Beckett and or Lish. Have to see what the cat says. Trying to tidy up the MIT paper for a call for final submissions for possible publication in a book on the conference. No way my paper will get in with all the brainiac essays, but what the heck. But I can only stand an hour or two of footnote tweeking before I dive right back into the novel. And then at night I drink and eat and talk with my friends. Last night Marge uncovered a stack of first edition autographed limited print run books by Anis Nin, with hand printed images by Ian Hugo from 1944. I’ve long known that this whole house is a library. The fiction section spans two floors. There are walls of all German books down in the basement, and stack of periodicals dating back to before I was born. But I did not know there was a rare book section. Okay, the cat suggests I should get back to work.
. . . . .

Boston did not sleep – rainy wind and cold.
I am in Vermont at last, and so is the sun.
Reading, with a view of the white mountains.
Cats and dogs and bugs and birds and horses.
Tactors’ desiel engines struggle up the crest.
What freaks the horses? A certain kind of wind.
The winds sends whiffs of horseshit scent my way.
. . . . .