A Garden of Verses

Pandemic makes you do funny stuff. Doesn’t it? 

Such as rediscovering a blog started when much younger with plenty of time to waste.

Well, happy reading my snarks!  

Come, whoever you are, let’s have fun!

Hola, Shalom, مرحبًا, Selam, բպիեւ, Hej, Buenos diyas, שלום

Bonjour, Habari, Ciao, こんにちは ,etc…

Welcome to my Palladis Tamia ! 

Before you click and move on let me give you a quick background on that pretentious description.  Believe me it is fascinating!  

By the way, if you are reading me in year 2124, patience is required, must turn off your damn phone (or whatever device will be invented in future). 

If an AI is reading these words: hey! come learn something about what human beings did, thought, felt and how some ‘non algorithm creature called human’ wasted her time. You might learn something or hopefully get confused and crash.

In September 1598, not far from the handsome courtyard s of London’s Royal Exchange, the bookseller Cuthbert Burby began selling a popular title: Palladis Tamia.

 Most of Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury; Being the Second Part of Wits Commonwealth was not written by Francis Meres, whose name was on the cover. 

More accurately, Meres was its editor or compiler.

Palladis Tamia is a “commonplace book,” a volume that offered a record of what its compiler found beautiful, edifying, and illuminating. The act of editing in such volumes was intended to be an account of the mind learning, the soul contemplating.

Drawing from this tradition with antecedents in antiquity, I attempt to practice of editing a commonplace blog.  As a lifetime student, a visual artist, (and a curious cat), I collect fragments of writing, parodies, cartoons, images, drawings, music, quotes that interest me and arrange them together. 

When it came to commonplace books, apparently humanists were content to let a million gardens bloom, and devoted hours to the editing of these personal collections.

Good to know!

(Who doesn’t like being in the company of John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mark Twain, Virginia Wolf, Thomas Hardy, and even H.P. Lovecraft, they were  ‘scrapbook’ fellow obsessives) Although their ends don’t bode well, it feels good to know one isn’t the only ‘mad’ one.

I started this blog as my 

private terra firma, an En-cyclopes, a reference nook, a place to snark, to achieve some sort of order for stashing treasures and to sketch and kvetch, 

a refuge from the wilderness out there! 

What better way to welcome you then but, with LewisCarroll's "The Hunting of the Snark":

“Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,

As he landed his crew with care; 

Supporting each man on the top of the tide. 

By a finger entwined in his hair. Just the place for a Snark!

I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. 

Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."

The crew was complete: it included a Boots-- A maker of Bonnets and Hoods-- A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes-- And a Broker, to value their goods". 

The world of nonsense is so richly alive that somehow the mysterious and elusive 'Snark' starts making sense. That is the genius of Carroll, his world and words sound simple, they flow with clarity yet the message is profound. "The Hunting of the Snark" is, as Michael Holquist has justly pointed out, the most nonsensical nonsense that Carroll created.

Scroll down the page and view post dates and more. If you decided to stay you can start from 2004 or any other date really, it doesn’t matter.

HAPPY SNARKING! 

Yanka

 

Following Hadrian

 

Portrait Bust of the Emperor Hadrian, 125-30 CE, via the British Museum, London.

Come let’s follow Hadrian 

Carole Raddato’s wonderful blog.

Tara dear, this is especially for you.

 

Grief is a Mouse by Emily Dickinson

Grief is a mouse-

And chooses Wainscot in the Breast

For his Shy House--

And baffles quest--

Grief is a Thief--quick startled--

Pricks His Ear--report to Hear--

Of that Vast Dark--

That swept His Being --back

Grief is a Juggler-- boldest at the Play--

Lest if He flinch--the eye that way

Pounce on His Bruises--One--say--or Three

Grief is a Gourmand--spare is Luxury

Best Grief is Tongueless--before He'll tell--

Burn Him in the Public Square--

His Ashes --will

Possibly--if they refuse--How then know--

Since a Rack couldn't coax a syllable-- now.

Griefcollage©2010Babetteandfriends

Oscar Wilde's fashion quote

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Oscar Wilde

Senza Nobilita by Yanka

snob

1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c.1796 for "townsman, local merchant," and by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" arose 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste."

from Douglas Harper's Online Etymology Dictionary

Etymology of poet

poet

c.1300, from O.Fr. poete (12c.), from L. poeta "poet, author," from Gk. poetes "maker, author, poet," from poiein "to make or compose," from PIE *kwoiwo-"making," from base *kwei- "to make" (cf. Skt. cinoti "heaping up, piling up," O.C.S. cinu "act, deed, order"). Replaced O.E. scop (which survives in scoff). Used in 14c., as in classical languages, for all sorts of writers or composers of works of literature. Poète maudit, “a poet insufficiently appreciated by his contemporaries,” lit. “cursed poet,” attested by 1930, from French (1884, Verlaine).

poem

1540s (replacing poesy), from M.Fr. poème (14c.), from L. poema "verse, poetry," from Gk. poema "thing made or created, fiction, poetical work," from poein"to make or compose"

poetry

late 14c., from O.Fr. poetrie (13c.), from M.L. poetria (c.650), from L. poeta (see poet). In classical Latin, poetria meant "poetess." English lacks a true verb form in this group of words, though poeticize (1804), poetize (1580s, from Fr. poétiser), and poetrize (c.1600) all have been tried.

from Douglas Harper Online Etymology Dictionary

Arcadia

Annibale Carracci. River Landscape, c1590.

FROM

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, 1593

by Sir Philip Sidney

[O sweet woods]

O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Oh, how much I do like your solitariness! Where man's mind hath a freed consideration, Of goodness to receive lovely direction. Where senses do behold th' order of heav'nly host, And wise thoughts do behold what the creator is; Contemplation here holdeth his only seat, Bounded with no limits, born with a wing of hope, Climbs even unto the stars, nature is under it. Nought disturbs thy quiet, all to thy service yields, Each sight draws on a thought (thought, mother of science) Sweet birds kindly do grant harmony unto thee, Fair trees' shade is enough fortification, Nor danger to thyself if 't be not in thyself. O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Oh, how much I do like your solitariness! Here nor treason is hid, veilëd in innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye finds any harbor here, Nor flatterers' venomous insinuations, Nor coming humorists' puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffered usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling title of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise, Here wrong's name is unheard, slander a monster is; Keep thy sprite from abuse, here no abuse doth haunt. What man grafts in a tree dissimulation? O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! Oh, how well I do like your solitariness! Yet, dear soil, if a soul closed in a mansion As sweet as violets, fair as lily is, Straight as cedar, a voice stains the canary birds, Whose shade safety doth hold, danger avoideth her; Such wisdom that in her lives speculation; Such goodness that in her simplicity triumphs; Where envy's snaky eye winketh or else dieth; Slander wants a pretext, flattery gone beyond; Oh! if such a one have bent to a lonely life, Her steps glad we receive, glad we receive her eyes, And think not she doth hurt our solitariness, For such company decks such solitariness.

---

Source:
A Sixteenth Century Anthology. Arthur Symons, Ed.
London: Blackie & Son, Ltd., 1905. 121-122.