Beers & Books XLV – Julian Barnes

The Noise of Time

Julian Barnes *19 January 1949

In memoriam Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961)

All the Hemispheres

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.
Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Hafez (1316 – 1390)

Saturday Night Music

 

 Barcelona Gypsy Balkan Orchestra

[Capita Turciensis] Laughing Lhursday*

Recently [2008] - I was just reading the last chapter of The Bastard of Istanbul - I heard Tetrapilotomos chuckle, which induced following dialogue:

- Yes?

- Blimey, no wonder there's a steady increase of population in Turkey.

- What are you busy with, Tetrapilotomos?

- Merowinger time.

- I see. And what does this have to do with the population growth in Turkey?

- Do you know what aureum caput regni means?

- Golden head of the imperium, or so?

- Not bad. And caput orbis?

- Head of the world.

- Not bad. And what's a colloquial German word for broken?

- Kaputt. Spelled with one t less in English it means a) utterly finished, defeated, or destroyed and b) unable to function.

- Not bad. And do you know what a condom is being called in Turkish.

- No idea.

- Kaput.

* [For first time visitors]: Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Efficacy of the Death Penalty

The day before reading this and this
I had read the following about

Efficacy of the Death Penalty

Thucydides 3.45.3-7 (speech of Diodotus on the fate of the Mytilenaeans; tr. C.F. Smith): 

[3] All men are by nature prone to err, both in private and in public life, and there is no law which will prevent them; in fact, mankind has run the whole gamut of penalties, making them more and more severe, in the hope that the transgressions of evil-doers might be abated. It is probable that in ancient times the penalties prescribed for the greatest offences were relatively mild, but as transgressions still occurred, in course of time the penalty was seldom less than death. But even so there is still transgression.

[4] Either, then, some terror more dreadful than death must be discovered, or we must own that death at least is no prevention. Nay, men are lured into hazardous enterprises by the constraint of poverty, which makes them bold, by the insolence and pride of affluence, which makes them greedy, and by the various passions engendered in the other conditions of human life as these are severally mastered by some mighty and irresistible impulse.

[5] Then, too, Hope and Desire are everywhere; Desire leads, Hope attends; Desire contrives the plan, Hope suggests the facility of fortune; the two passions are most baneful, and being unseen phantoms prevail over seen dangers.

[6] Besides these, fortune contributes in no less degree to urge men on; for she sometimes presents herself unexpectedly and thus tempts men to take risks even when their resources are inadequate, and states even more than men, inasmuch as the stake is the greatest of all — their own freedom or empire over others — and the individual, when supported by the whole people, unreasonably overestimates his own strength.

[7] In a word, it is impossible, and a mark of extreme simplicity, for anyone to imagine that when human nature is wholeheartedly bent on any undertaking it can be diverted from it by rigorous laws or by any other terror.

Thucydides (ca. 490 – 429 BCE)

with thanks to Michael Gilleland at  Laudator Temporis Acti

Pollution

Tom Lehrer *9 April 1928

Una furtiva lacrima

 

Gaetano Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848)

Camille Thomas * May 1988

Auguri a un altro centenario – Leonardo Sciascia

Leonardo Sciascia
(8 January 1921 – 20 November 1989)

Saturday Night Music

 

Elīna Garanča *16 September 1976

The sawing goes on

Sie sägten die Äste ab, auf denen sie saßen
Und schrieen sich zu ihre Erfahrungen,
Wie man schneller sägen könnte, und fuhren
Mit Krachen in die Tiefe, und die ihnen zusahen,
Schüttelten die Köpfe beim Sägen und
Sägten weiter.

Humble attempt to translate as literally as possible.
Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

They sawed the branches on which they sat
and called out to eachother their experiences,
how one could saw faster, and fell
with crack into the depth, and those watching them
shook their heads while sawing and
went on sawing

 

Bertold Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956)

 

If stupidity is joined by power

"Der Ignorant missachtet die Belehrung.
Und wenn zur Dummheit sich noch Macht gesellt,
scheut er kein Mittel der Zerstörung."

The Ignorant disregards the instruction.
And if his stupidity is even joined by power
he does not shy away from any means of destruction.

Ivan Krylov (13 February 1769 – 21 November 1844)

Beers & Books XLIV – Friedrich Dürrenmatt

And not to forget "The Physicists".
He prefered wine.
Here's to 100 years!

 
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (5 January 1921 – 14 December 2000)