Trulla aurea

Les Grecs dont parle Juvénal mettaient au service de leur ambition une merveilleuse souplesse de caractère, leur devise était: Tout à tous, aussi le succès ne leur manquait guère. Habiles à composer leur visage sur celui du maître, ils flattaient; c’est le grand secret de plaire; ils applaudissaient en toute occasion, même dans des circonstances singulières :

Si bene ructavit, si rectum minxit amicus.

Les éructations, qu l’on dissimule avec tant de soin chez nous et dans beaucoup d’autres pays, ne sont pas considérées comme une incongruité chez les Arabes. Les gaz s’échappant de l’estomac sont l’indice d’une bonne digestion, d’une bonne santé, et les Orientaux diraient volontiers, à ceux qui rotent, comme nous à ceux qui éternuent : Dieu vous bénisse ! Quant au second chapitre, rectum minxit, il y a là un signe évident de vigeur, de jeunesse, et puisque ces actes s’accomplissaient en public, il n’est pas étonnant qu’ils fussent l’occasion de remarques de ce genre et de compliments analogues. Mais notre Grec ne se borne pas à cela; il félicite le patron qu’il encense d’une autre chose bien difficile à dire en français :

Si trulla inverso crepitum dedit aurea fundo.

Dusaulx n’a pas osé traduire ce vers, et bien d’autres ont fait comme lui. Une longue note latine de M. Achaintre donne tous les éclaircissements nécessaires sur ce passage si dégoûtant. Nous emprunterons encore à M. Constant Dubos deux vers de son excellente traduction. Nous l’avons dit, ce confrère se croit ici en plein clinique, il ne recule devant aucune expression, jugez-en :

De son anus béant si la charge élancée
Tombe avec bruit dans l’or de sa chaise percée.

C’est une paraphrase, mais elle dit tout; elle dit trop, sans doute, et nous regrettons les derniers mots qui ne rendent pas trulla aurea. Mais hâtons-nous de passer outre, car, si médecin que nous soyons, nous devons être discrets et ne pas abuser de ces particularités de garde-robe bonnes à réjouir les Purgon et les Diafoirus de Molière.

P. Menière, Études Médicales sur les Poètes Latins, Paris 1858

Logical lunacy

Victor Serge said, "I followed his argument

With the blank uneasiness which one might feel

In the presence of a logical lunatic."

He said it of Konstantinov. Revolution

Is the affair of logical lunatics.

The politics of emotion must appear

To be an intellectual structure. The cause

Creates a logic not to be distinguished

From lunacy.

Wallace Stevens, Esthétique du mal, part xiv

De Nihilo

As Nothing is not Something, so every thing which is not Something, is Nothing; and wherever Something is not, Nothing is (...) For instance; when a Bladder is full of Wind, it is full of Something; but when that is let out, we aptly say, there is Nothing in it. The same may be as justly asserted of a Man as of a Bladder. However well he may be bedaubed with Lace, or with Title, yet if he have not Something in him, we may predicate the same of him as of an empty Bladder. (...) Indeed some have imagined, that Knowledge, with the adjective human placed before it, is another word for Nothing. And one of the wisest Men in the world declared, he knew Nothing. But without carrying it so far, this I believe may be allowed: it is at least possible for a Man to know Nothing. And whoever hath read over many Works of our ingenious Moderns, with proper Attention and Emolument, will, I believe, confess, that if he understands them right, he understands Nothing.

Henry Fielding, "An Essay on Nothing", Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (London, 1743)

Lebens-Attrappen

To our grandparents, a ‘house’, a ‘well’, a familiar steeple, even their own clothes, their cloak, still meant infinitely more, were still infinitely more intimate; almost everything was a vessel in which they found something human and added something human to its store. Now, over here, there are encroaching from America empty, trivial things, sham-things, dummies of life... A house, in the American understanding of the word, an American apple or a vine from over there, have nothing in common with the house, the fruit, the grape into which the hope and reflection of our forefathers had entered... The life-infused, genuinely lived things, the things known to us, are waning and can no longer be replaced. We are perhaps the last still to know such things. Upon us rests the responsibility to preserve not only their memory (that would be too little and unreliable), but also their human and laral value (‘laral’ in the sense of the household deities [the Lares]).

Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Witold von Hulewicz, 13 November 1925

Noch für unsere Großeltern war ein ,Haus‘, ein ,Brunnen‘, ein ihnen vertrauter Turm, ja ihr eigenes Kleid, ihr Mantel: unendlich mehr, unendlich vertaulicher; fast jedes Ding ein Gefäß, in dem sie Menschliches vorfanden und Menschliches hinzusparten. Nun drängen, von Amerika her, leere gleichgültige Dinge herüber, Schein-Dinge, Lebens-Attrappen... Ein Haus, im amerikanischen Verstande, ein amerikanischer Apfel oder eine dortige Rebe, hat nichts gemeinsam mit dem Haus, der Frucht, der Traube, in die Hoffnung und Nachdenklichkeit unserer Vorväter eingegangen war... Die belebten, die erlebten, die uns mitwissenden Dinge gehen zur Neige und können nicht mehr ersetzt werden. Wir sind vielleicht die Letzten, die noch solche Dinge gekannt haben. Auf uns ruht die Verantwortung, nicht allein ihr Andenken zu erhalten (das wäre wenig und unzuverlässig), sondern ihren humanen und larischen Wert (,Larisch‘, im Sinne der Haus-Gottheiten.)



Photographs: Sergej Mixailovich Prokudin-Gorskij, Russia 1909-1912 (Library of Congress)

Stimmung

A patient noticed the waiter in the coffee-house; he skipped past him so quickly and uncannily. He noticed odd behaviour in an acquaintance which made him feel strange; everything in the street was so different, something was bound to be happening. A passer-by gave such a penetrating glance, he could be a detective. Then there was a dog who seemed hypnotised, a kind of mechanical dog made of rubber. There were such a lot of people walking about, something must surely be starting up against the patient. All the umbrellas were rattling as if some apparatus was hidden inside them.

In other cases patients have noticed transfigured faces, unusual beauty of landscape, brilliant golden hair, overpowering glory of the sunlight. Something must be going on; the world is changing, a new era is starting. Lights are bewitched and will not burn; something is behind it. A child is like a monkey; people are mixed up, they are imposters all, they all look unnatural. The house-signs are crooked, the streets look suspicious; everything happens so quickly. The dog scratches oddly at the door.

Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology, trans. J. Hoenig and Marian W. Hamilton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 100.

Einem Kranken fällt im Café der Kellner auf. Der hupfte so schnell und unheimlich an ihm vorbei. Bei einem Bekannten fiel ihm das seltsame Benehmen auf, so daß ihm nicht geheuer war. Auf der Straße war alles so anders. Es mußte etwas los sein. Ein vorübergehender Mann hatte einen so durchdringenden Blick, das war womöglich ein Detektiv. Dann kam ein Hund wie hypnotisiert war, wie ein Gummihund, als wenn er durch Maschinen bewegt wurde. Es waren so viele Menschen unterwegs: es war wohl etwas gegen den Kranken im Werke. Alle klapperten mit den Schirmen, als wenn ein Apparat darin wäre.

In anderen Fällen fallen den Kranken die verklärten Geschichter, die ganz ungewohnte Schönheit der Landschaft, dar auffällig goldene Haar, die überwältigende Schönheit der Sonne auf. Es muß etwas vor sich gehen. Es verändert sich die Welt. Es ist ein neues Zeitalter im Anbruch. Die Lichter sind verhext und wollen nicht brennen. Da steckt etwas Unnatürliches dahinter. Das Kind ist wie ein Affe geworden. Die Menschen sind ,,verwechselt‘‘, es sind ,,Figuranten‘‘, sie sehen alle unnatürlich aus. Die Schilder sind schief an den Häusern, die Straßen sehen so verdächtig aus. Es geht ,,alles so schnell‘‘. Der Hund kratzt so sonderbar an der Tür.

Karl Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie (Berlin, Heidelberg and New York: Springer-Verlag, 1923, 1973), p. 84

Die lyrische Stimmung

...Darum geht im Liede und der lyrischen Stimmung das Wollen (das persönliche Interesse des Zwecks) und das reine Anschauen der sich darbietenden Umgebung wundersam gemischt durch einander: es werden Beziehungen zwischen beiden gesucht und imaginirt; die subjective Stimmung, die Affection des Willens, theilt der angeschauten Umgebung und diese wiederum jener ihre Farbe im Reflex mit: von diesem ganzen so gemischten und getheilten Gemüthszustande ist das ächte Lied der Abdruck

Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819)

Ueber den Prozess seines Dichtens hat uns Schiller durch eine ihm selbst unerklärliche, doch nicht bedenklich scheinende psychologische Beobachtung Licht gebracht; er gesteht nämlich als den vorbereitenden Zustand vor dem Actus des Dichtens nicht etwa eine Reihe von Bildern, mit geordneter Causalität der Gedanken, vor sich und in sich gehabt zu haben, sondern vielmehr eine musikalische Stimmung („Die Empfindung ist bei mir anfangs ohne bestimmten und klaren Gegenstand; dieser bildet sich erst später. Eine gewisse musikalische Gemüthsstimmung geht vorher, und auf diese folgt bei mir erst die poetische Idee“).

Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik (1872)

Like another Sisyphus

... and giving to one of his old acquaintances his wallet, books, and opistographs, away went he out of town towards a little hill or promontory of Corinth called Craneum: and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he roll his jolly tub, which served him for an house to shelter him from injuries of the weather; there, I say, in a great vehemency of spirit, did he turn it, veer it, wheel it, whirl it, frisk it, jumble it, shuffle it, huddle it, tumble it, hurry it, justle it, jumble it, joult it, evert it, overthrow it, subvert it, beat it, thwack it, bump it, knock it, thrust it, push it, batter it, shock it, shake it, throw it, toss it, jerk it, overthrow it upside-down, topsy-turvy, arsiversy, tread it, trample it, stamp it, slamp it, tap it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it, resound it, shut it, unbung it, stop it, close it, unstopple it. He hurled it, slid it down the hill, precipitated it from the very height of the Craneum; heaved it, transfigured it, bespattered it, garnished it, furnished it, bored it, bewrayed it, parched it, bedashed, tottered it, adorned, staggered it, transformed it, brangled it, heaved it, carried it, bedashed it, hacked it; then from the foot to the top, like another Sisyphus with his stone, bore it up again, slid it down the hill, and every way so banged it and belaboured it that it was ten thousand to one he had not struck the bottom of it out.

François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart (1653, 1693)

The Seductiveness of the Interval

The Seductiveness of the Interval catalogue is available from the Renaissance Society Bookstore, at the University of Chicago

Encomium culicis

Caelius Calcagninus (1479-1541)

Ast ego magnanimum culicem quo carmine laudem?
Certe huius rara est gloria, rarus honor.
Cetera quaecunque a nobis insecta vocantur,
Furtim ex insidiis figere tela solent.
Ille, cave, exclamat, metuendaque classica pulsat:
Dissidiaeque nota, qui dolet, ille dolet.
In reliquis fraudem atque astum causabere: nemo
De culicis poterit vulnere jure queri.

l. 4 solent Buonaventura, Carmina illustrium poetarum italorum ] sonant Dornau, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Socraticae Joco-Seriae

But by which song might I praise the great-souled gnat? Assuredly, rare is its glory, rare its renown. Whatever other things we call insects are wont to lay traps, fastening their stings by stealth. The gnat cries out, "Beware!" and blares his fearful war-trumpet: "And mark the fray, whoever smarts will rue. As for the rest, you will allege trickery and cunning: but no one can justly accuse a gnat for the sake of a wound."

Latmia saxa

Politian (Angelo de'Ambrosini da Monte Pulciano) (1454-1494)

O mihi quanta datis fallacia gaudia, somni!
Invideo, Endymion, Latmia saxa tibi.
Iam si nil sopor est gelidae nisi mortis imago,
Omnia mors superat gaudia: vita, vale.

Oh, slumbers, how many illusive joys you give me! / I envy thee, Endymion, thy Latmian* rocks. / And if sleep is nought but the image of frigid death, / Then death doth surpass all other joys: life, farewell.

* Latmus, a mountain at the mouth of the Maeander, in Caria, where the Moon descended to kiss the sleeping Endymion

Melancholicorum risus

Georgio de Chirico, Mélancolie (1912)

Qua de caussa Melancholicorum risus rarior ille quidem, sed immoderatus esse solet?

Certum est: sicut iracundia non est in felle, cuius conceptaculum est in folliculo cavae parti hepatis adnascenti: Ita risum & facultatem ridendis etiam in splene non esse. Splen enim tam destinatus est a natura ad recipiendum ab hepate melancholicum sanguinem & excrementum: Melancholicus autem humor risui, sicut gaudio inimicus est. Risus igitur in ea parte non esse potest, in qua hic humor abundat. Unde igitur est, quod melancholicos effusius ridere contingit? Responsio vera ad hanc quaestionem haec est: Melancholici seu quorum sanguis valde melancholicus & crassus est, ut rariuscule rident, quia sunt natura frigidiores, ita incalescente humore melancholico, si quando in risum erumpunt, in hoc saepiuscule sunt nimii seu solent modum excedere, ob iam dictam calefactionem adventitiam.

Rodolphi Gocklenii De risu et ridiculo problemata (Frankfurt, 1607), cap. xvi

By what cause is the laughter of melancholics wont to be infrequent but immoderate?

It is certain that just as irascibility does not reside in the gall, whose receptacle is in the sac adjoined to the hollow part of the liver, so too laughing and the faculty of laughter do not reside in the spleen. For the spleen is designed by nature to collect melancholic blood and waste from the liver. But the melancholic humour is inimical to laughter, the same as to joy. Therefore laughter cannot reside in that part where this humour abounds. And so why is it that melancholics are seized with unrestrained laughter? The real answer to this question is that melancholics or those whose blood is exceedingly melancholic and incrassate very rarely laugh, because they are colder by nature, and so once the melancholic humour has been inflamed, if they burst out laughing they are very often excessive in this or wont to be immoderate, because of the said heating of the connective tissue.

Cur nullus possit seipse titillare?

Cur nullus possit seipse titillare?

Titillatio risus species esse videtur, etsi nesciam maximis quibusdam Philosophis placere verum risum non esse, sed huic similem. Alii ita loquuntur, ut dicant, ex titillatu in nobis excitari risum, sed haec nunc relinquentes in medio, quaerimus, cur nemo possit seipsum titillare? Respondit Vallesius lib. 5. controversiarum cap. 9. Titillatio fit ex fraudulento & clandestino tactu seu attrectatione partium acerrimi sensus, ad quas musculorum sunt capita. Eae sentiunt voluptatem ex tactu velut delintis carneis partibus, quem repente & latentur accedens transfundit gaudium ad cor cum quadam novitatis specie, atque ita risus fit. At nullus tactus potest sibi ipsi occulte seu latenter occurrere, Nemo igitur potest seipse titillare.

Rodolphi Gocklenii De risu et ridiculo problemata (Frankfurt, 1607), cap. v

Why is no man able to tickle himself?

Tickling can be seen to be a species of laughter, although in the opinion of certain great philosophers it is not true laughter, but merely similar to it. Likewise, others say that laughter is, as they argue, stimulated in us from a tickling, but leaving these things undecided we shall now ask why it is that no man is able to tickle himself. Vallesius, in Book 5, Chapter 9 of his Disputations, answers that tickling is produced by furtive and secret touching or by fingering of the parts of sharpest sense, present at the extremities of the muscles. These feel pleasure from the touching and the contraction of the fleshy parts, which the swiftly and secretly attendant delight transfers to the heart together with a certain kind of surprise, and thus laughter is produced. But no man is able to touch himself in secret or run up on himself and surprise himself. Therefore no man is able to tickle himself.

Tute, si recte vixeris

Aeschylus in Sicilia moenibus urbis, in qua morabatur, egressus, aprico in loco resedit: super quem aquila testudinem ferens, elusa splendore capitis (erat enim capillis vacuum) perinde atque lapidi eam collisit, ut fractae carne vesceretur: eoque ictu origo et principium fortioris tragoediae extinctum est.

La Mort est inévitable.

Ne crois pas éviter la mort,
Que la Loy divine t’apprête;
Car si ton propre toit ne t’écrase la tête,
Le toit d’un étranger accomplira le sort.

Othonis Vaeni [Otto van Veen's] Emblemata Horatiana (1684)

Clouds

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of small white clouds going slowly down the wind.

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922), Wandering Rocks

Мокрая осень летела над Петербургом; и невесело так мерцал сентябревский денек. Зеленоватым роем проносились там облачные клоки; они сгущались в желтоватый дым, припадающий к крышам угрозою. (Sodden autumn was flying over Petersburg; and joylessly gleamed the September day. Thence cloud-tatters were borne in a greenish swarm; they congealed into a yellowish smoke, tumbling down to the rooftops threat-wise.)

Andrei Bely, Petersburg (1913), A Wet Autumn

The wind began to moan in hollow murmurs, as the sun went down carrying glad day elsewhere; and a train of dull clouds coming up against it menaced thunder and lightning. Large drops of rain soon began to fall, and, as the storm clouds came sailing onward, others supplied the void they left behind and spread over all the sky.

Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Chapter 29

Небо было ужасно темное, но явно можно было различить разорванные облака, а между ними бездонные черные пятна. Вдруг я заметил в одном из этих пятен звездочку и стал пристально глядеть на нее. Это потому, что эта звездочка дала мне мысль: я положил в эту ночь убить себя. (The sky was frightfully dark, but it was possible to descry the ragged clouds clearly, and between them bottomless black spots. All of a sudden I noticed in one of these spots a little star and I began to stare at it fixedly. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I decided to kill myself that very night.)

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)

Становилось все темнее. Туча залила уже полнеба, стремясь к Ершалаиму, белые кипящие облака неслись впереди наполненной черной влагой и огнем тучи. Сверкнуло и ударило над самым холмом. (It was growing ever darker. Nearing Jerusalem, the cloud had already flooded half the sky. Seething white billows raced ahead of the cloud saturated with black moisture and flame.)

Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita (1931-1940), Chapter 16 'The Execution'

It was principally for these reasons that Watt would have been glad to hear Erskine’s voice, wrapping up safe in words the kitchen space, the extraordinary newel-lamp, the stairs that were never the same and of which even the number of steps seemed to vary, from day to day, and from night to morning, and many other things in the house, and the bushes without and other garden growths, that so often prevented Watt from taking the air, even on the finest day, so that he grew pale, and constipated, and even the light as it came and went and the clouds that climbed the sky, now slow, now rapid, and generally from west to east, or sank down towards the earth on the other side, for the clouds seen from Mr. Knott’s premises were not quite the clouds that Watt was used to, and Watt had a great experience of clouds, and could distinguish the various sorts, the cirrhus, the stratus, the cumulus and the various other sorts, at a glance.

Samuel Beckett, Watt (1953)

There might be a line of spaced trees silhouetted against the horizon, and hot still noons above a wilderness of clover, and Claude Lorrain clouds inscribed remotely into misty azure with only their cumulus part conspicuous against the neutral swoon of the background.

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

A fitful light was breaking through the clouds, and the arches circumscribing the quadrangle cast pale shadows that weakened or intensified as the clouds stole across the sun.

Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (1946), 'The Sun Goes down Again'

De poenarum tartarearum latitudine

Etenim oculi, qui nunc colorum venustatem, concinnasque membrorum symmetrias studiose demirantur, multaque quae referre non lubet, nec licet, curiose simul et exitiose observant, tunc solis, lunae, caeterorumque astrorum splendore, suavissima Christi et Sanctorum omnium visione, omni denique quod oculorum sensum quoquo modo capere aut oblectare queat privati, tenebris, fletu, fumo, terrifioque daemonum et impiorum aspectu vehementissime offendentur. Aures, quae vocanti Christo male nunc occluduntur, diaboli suggestionibus late panduntur, musicis numeris ad ciendam voluptatem comparatis distenduntur, ineptas nugatorum facetias, facetasque ineptias, adulatores rursum, alienaeque famae corrosores avide excipiunt, quaeque miserorum clamoribus et fletibus, vivificoque Dei verbo fastidito, ad inanes fabulas se se convertunt, horribili impiorum clamore, ulutata, fletu, planctu, gemitu, suspiriis, maledictis, blasphemisque vocibus mire tunc obtundentur. [...] Gustatus, qui esculentis et poculentis plusque Sibariticis hic male sese oblectarat, quotidie splendide epulando, immoderateque helluando, omni cibariorum et potionum suavitate orbatus, perpetua isthic siti et fame excarnificabitur, aut certe felle et absynthio ex[s]atiabitur. [...] Odoratus, qui exquisitissimis aromatum et unguentorum odoribus hic ad luxum et lasciviam abutebatur, teterrimo foetore isthic affligetur. [...] Ad tactum quod spectat, ut is unus omnium latissime patet, ita ei nusquam non, unde offendi queat, ocurret. Nec impiorum corpora solum enim erunt segnia, crassa, obscura, foetida, deformiaque, verum etiam maxime patibilia. At vero sensuum exteriorum poenae, ad sensum communem, phantasiam, aestimativam, memoriam, caeterasque omnes tam organicas, quam inorganicas animae vires ordine quodam penetrantes atrocissimos isthic cruciatus excitaturae sunt.

Theodor Anton Peltanus, De Inferno et miserando impiorum statu (1569)

Truly, the eyes, which now eagerly marvel at the loveliness of colours and the pleasing symmetries of the limbs, which inquisitively yet perniciously gaze upon many things neither permissible nor decent to mention, but which then shall be bereft of the radiance of sun, moon and other stars, of the most sweet sight of Christ and all the Saints, and, in short, of all that the eyesight might seize upon or delight in howsoever, will be most violently assailed by darkness, lamentation, smoke, and the fearful sight of demons and sinners. The ears, which now are evilly shut to the call of Christ, which yawn wide to the insinuations of the devil, which gape to musical measures composed in order to excite lascivious pleasure, which avidly listen to the absurd witticisms of idle speeches, inane jokes, flatterers and those who gnaw away at others’ reputation, and which turn aside in disgust from the life-giving word of God, preferring vain stories, will then be deafened by the dreadful clamour of sinners, by wailing, lamenting, weeping, groaning, sighing, cursing and blaspheming voices. [...] The taste, which here evilly delights in Sybaritic foods and beverages, every day feasting ostentatiously, gormandising immoderately, there, deprived of the sweetness of nourishment and drink, shall be perpetually emaciated with thirst and hunger, or else glutted on gall and wormwood. [...] The smell, which here abuses the exquisite scents of perfumes and unguents for purposes of luxury and lust, there shall be afflicted with a most noisome stench. [...] With regard to touch, as this is the broadest of all [the senses] in extent, there will be no place it might run whence not to suffer mortification. Not only will sinners’ bodies be sluggish, heavy, darksome, foetid, and misshapen, but also sensitive to pain in the highest degree. And indeed the punishments of the external senses, penetrating in turn to the sensus communis, phantasia, instinctive judgement ([vis] aestimativa), memory and all the other faculties of the soul, both organic and inorganic, will in that place rouse unrelenting torments.

De Risu et ridiculo

from Johannes Kuhl Marpurgensus, Theses de risu, fletu, et locutione

Risus est diductio oris in transversum, facta ab homine, propter rei ridiculae sensum & considerationem, ad declarandam animi voluptatem. / Descriptio ex forma subiecto, obiecto, efficiente & fine. / Subiectum, recipiens Homo. / Obiectum res ridicula, sive sit factum sive dictum novum, insolens, inopinatum, argutum, admirabile, ludicrum, ineptum, indecorum. / Caussa efficiens externa est sensus rei ridiculae, motus musculorum, thoracis & buccarum. / Interna partim anima rationalis, partim facultas ridendi, partim imaginatio & consideratio rei ridiculae, partim affectus cordis inde resultans. / Forma diductio oris in transversum, seu extensio rictus in facie. / Finis, declaratio voluptatis ex re percepta. / RISUS Sonorus vel Insonorus. / Sonorus, qui fit cum sonitu excitao a spiritu e pulmonibus per guttur exeunte, propter illius ad partes oris internas allisionem. Hic fit Sine clamore vel Cum clamore, & dicitur Cachinnus.

Laughter is a drawing apart of the mouth crosswise, made by a man, on account of the meaning and consideration of a laughable thing, in order to make known the soul's delight. / Description according to form, subject, object, cause and end: / Subject: a receptive Man. / Object: a laughable thing, be it a deed or a thing that is novel, unusual, unexpected, witty, surprising, trifling, inappropriate, unseemly. / The external efficient cause is the meaning of the laughable thing, the movement of the muscles, chest, and mouth. / The internal [cause] is partly the rational soul, partly the faculty of laughter, partly the imagination and a consideration of the laughable thing, partly the favourable mood of the heart thence resulting. / The form is the drawing apart of the mouth crosswise, or the spreading of the opened mouth across the face. / The end is the expression of delight on account of the thing observed. / LAUGHTER is either resounding or soundless. / Resounding laughter is produced from the lungs by the breath and comes out of the throat with a sound, on account of its striking against the internal parts of the mouth. This might be without loud noise or with loud noise, and is called Cacchinus (loud or cackling laughter).

from Rodolphus Goclenius, De Physiologia Risus & Ridiculi

Goclenius divides laughter into two species: laughter properly speaking (proprie dictus) and laughter improperly speaking (improprie dictus). Laughter properly speaking can be simple/absolute or κατά τι [at something]. Simple laughter is more unrestrained (effusior) and is also called Cachinnus [loud laughter]. Laughter κατά τι is called subrisus [literally 'sub-laughter', also with the meaning 'a smile']. Laughter improperly speaking arises from tickling (e titillatione); it is the laughter of the monkey, a simulacrum of laughter. Laughter is also to be defined according to the species of the laughable thing (rei ridiculae). These species include the strange or novel (insolentia), the unshapely or uncouth (deformitas), the unsightly or shameful (turpitudo), the unbecoming or indecent (indecorum), witticisms (argutiae), and things unexpected or surprising (inopinata).

Exempla Ridiculi sunt Ludicrum Depositionis Scholasticae crepitus ventris, cum quaeritur apud Aristophanem in nubibus, orene, an podice sonum edant culices, & sexcenta id genus alia.

Examples of the laughable are the jest of the scholastic deposition on the fart, as when in Aristophanes' The Clouds there is an inquiry into whether gnats emit noise through their mouth or their anus, and innumerable others of the same kind.

Stimmung

Stimmung, A.I. Blyth, 2006

Hieronymi Angeriani Erotopaegnion De Pulice

Ctenocaphalides felis, A. I. Blyth, 2007

Hieronymi Angeriani Erotopaegnion De Pulice

Pulchra pulex tenerae penetrat dum membra puellae;
Clamque subit niveum dente premente femur:
Comprimitur digitis, et nigro clauditur orco:
Sed dedit hoc illi distichon alma Venus:
Mortuus hic iaceo, sed non hic mortuus; ardens
Dum premor albenti pollice, vivo pulex.

Girolamo Angeriano (1470-1535), Erotopaegnion On a Flea

A flea makes its way over the fair limbs of a tender girl,
And stealthily, with squeezing tooth, he closes in on snowy thigh.
By fingers he is gripped, and in hellish blackness confined,
But bountiful Venus to him this couplet yields:
Here lie I dead, but here not dead; blazing
As I am squeezed by whitening thumb, I live a flea.

Stultifera navis mortalium

Hi sunt qui descendunt mare in navibus, facientes operationes in aquis
multis. Ascendunt usque ad coelos, & descendunt usque ad abyssos:
anima eorum in malis tabescebat. Turbati sunt & moti
sunt sicut ebrius: & omnis sapientia eorum
devorata est.


They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters:
They mount up to the heavens, they go down again to the depths:
their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro,
and stagger like a drunken man, and are at
their wit's end.

An Tartarus sit aliquid, utrum vero nihil?

Q. An Tartarus sit aliquid, utrum vero nihil?

R. Est aliquid nempe locus cruciatus Luc. 6 [sic.]. Est nihil de quo Plato in Phaedone. Sic ᾅδης est aliquid; ut cum dicitur, descendit ἐις ᾅδην. Est etiam nihil: ut fingitur esse domus Plutonis. Plasmata enim rationis, quae Aristot. opponit πράγμασιν, referimus ad nihil.

Rodolphus Goclenius, Disputatio de nihilo, quae non est de nihilo,
vagans per omnes disciplinas

Q. Whether Tartarus is something or in fact nothing

A. The place of torment is surely something (Luke [16.23]). It is the nothing about which Plato [tells] in the Phaedo. Thus ᾅδης [Hades] is something; as when it is said, he descended ἐις ᾅδην [into Hades]. It is also nothing: as it is imagined to be the house of Pluto. For, the fictions of reasoning, which Aristotle opposed πράγμασιν [to concrete realities], we ascribe to nothing.

Labour sub tecto

Both S. Basil, and S. Chrysostome put this difference in that place, between the labour of the Ant, and the Bee, That the Ants worke but for themselves, the Bee for others: Though the Ants have a Commonwealth of their own, yet those Fathers call their labour, but private labour; because no other Common-wealths have benefit by their labour, but their own. Direct thy labours in thy calling to the good of the publique, and then thou art a civill, a morall Ant; but consider also, That all that are of the houshold of the faithfull, and professe the same truth of Religion, are part of this publique, and direct thy labours, for the glory of Christ Jesus, amongst them too, and then thou art a religious and a Christian Bee, and the fruit of thy labour shall be Hony. The labour of the Ant is sub Dio, open, evident, manifest; The labour of the Bee is sub Tecto, in a house, in a hive; They will doe good, and yet they will not be seene to doe it; they affect not glory, nay they avoyd it. For in experience, when some men curious of naturall knowledge, have made their Hives of glasse, that by that transparency, they might see the Bees manner of working, the Bees have made it their first work to line that Glasse-hive, with a crust of Wax, they they might work and not be discerned. It is a blessed sincerity, to work as the Ant, professedly, openly; but because there may be cases, when to doe so, would destroy the whole worke, though there be a cloud and a curtaine betweene thee, and the eyes of men, yet if thou doe them clearely in the sight of God, that he see his glory advanced by thee, the fruit of thy labour shall be Honey.

John Donne, Sermon preached at White-hall, 8 April 1621 (Prov. 25.16 Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it)

A Dish of Dainties for the Devil

A godly father sitting on a draught,
To do as need and nature hath us taught,
Mumbled (as was his manner) certain prayers,
And unto him the Devil straight repairs,
And boldly to revile him he begins,
Alleging that such prayers are deadly sins;
And that it showed he was devoid of grace,
To speak to God from so unmeet a place.
The reverent man, though at first dismayed,
Yet strong in faith, to Satan thus he said:
"Thou damned spirit, wicked, false and lying,
Despairing thine own good, and ours envying:
Each take his due, and me thou canst not hurt,
To God my prayer I meant, to thee the dirt.
Pure prayer ascends to him that high doth sit,
Down falls the filth, for fiends of hell more fit."

Sir John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (London, 1596), Ed. Elizabeth Story Donno (London, 1974), p. 94 [spelling and punctuation modernised]

A streame of brimstone

That then there is damnation, and why it is, and when it is, is cleare enough; but what this damnation is, neither the tongue of good Angels that know damnation by the contrary, by fruition of salvation, nor the tongue of bad Angels who know damnation by a lamentable experience, is able to expresse it; A man may saile so at sea, as that he shall have laid the North Pole flat, that shall be fallen out of sight, and yet he shall not have raised the South Pole, he shall not see that; So there are things, in which a man may goe beyond his reason, and yet not meet with faith neither: of such a kinde are those things which concerne the locality of hell, and the materiality of the torments thereof; for that hell is a certaine and limited place, beginning here and ending there, and extending no farther, or that the torments of hell be materiall, or elementary torments, which in naturall consideration can have no proportion, no affection, nor appliablenesse to the tormenting of a sprit, these things neither settle my reason, nor binde my faith; neither opinion, that it is, or is not so, doth command our reason so, but that probable reasons may be brought on the other side; neither opinion doth so command our faith, but that a man may be saved, though hee thinke the contrary; for in such points, it is alwaies lawfull to thinke so, as we finde does most advance and exalt our owne devotion, and Gods glory in our estimation; but when we shall have given to those words, by which hell is expressed in the Scriptures, the heaviest significations, that either the nature of those words can admit, or as they are types and representations of hell, as fire, and brimstone, and weeping, and gnashing, and darknesse, and the worme, and as they are laid together in the Prophet, Tophet, (that is, hell) is deepe and large, (there is the capacity and content, roome enough) It is a pile of fire and much wood, (there is the durablenesse of it) and the breath of the Lord to kindle it, like a streame of Brimstone, (there is the vehemence of it:) when all is done, the hell of hels, the torment of torments is the everlasting absence of God, and the everlasting impossibility of returning to his presence.

John Donne, sermon Preached to the Earle of Carlile and his company, at Sion [? 1622], Mark 16:16 "He that beleeveth not, shall be damned"

Fresco in the porch of the Church of St. Nicholas - Udricani (1735), Bucharest

St. Symeon the New Theologian

12 March, the Repose of St. Symeon the New Theologian

Dorotheos of Gaza on encystment within the passions

Doctrina XII, De timore et poenis inferni (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 88, 1752)

Through the body, the soul is distracted from its passions and is comforted, it eats, drinks, lays itself down to rest, keeps company, finds diversion in loved ones. But when it goes out of the body, the soul remains alone with its passions, and ultimately it is tormented by them forever, dwelling upon them, consumed with their agitation, rent asunder by them, so that it is no longer able to remember God. For remembrance of God comforts the soul, as it says in the psalm: I remembered God and was gladdened [Ps. 76:4]. But the passions do not allow the soul even this. Will you learn by a parable what it is I say? Let one of you go and shut himself up alone in a dark cell, and for three days let him not eat, drink, lay himself down to rest, meet anyone, sing psalms, pray, or remember God in any wise. Then shall he learn what the passions do to him. And this while he is yet here, but how much more so after the soul goes out of the body, and will have given itself up to the passions and will be alone with them.

Infinitely less than nothing

That great Library, those infinite Volumes of the Books of Creatures, shall be taken away, quite away, no more Nature; those reverend Manuscripts, written with Gods own hand, the Scriptures themselves, shall be taken away, quite away; no more preaching, no more reading of Scriptures, and that great School-Mistress, Experience, and Observation shall be remov'd, no new thing to be done, and in an instant, I shall know more, than they all could reveal to me. I shall know, not only as I know already, that a Bee-hive, that an Ant-hill is the same Book in Decimo sexto, as a Kingdom is in Folio, That a Flower that lives but a day, is an abridgment of that King, that lives out his threescore and ten yeers; but I shall know too, that all these Ants, and Bees, and Flowers, and Kings, and Kingdoms, howsoever they may be Examples, and Comparisons to one another, yet they are all as nothing, altogether nothing, less than nothing, infinitely less than nothing, to that which shall then be the subject of my knowledge, for, it is the knowledge of the glory of God.

John Donne, from A Sermon preached at the Spittle, upon Easter-Monday, 1622

Hê thlipsis hê aporrhêtos

As to those that fall away from God, I wonder where it is they exist, those that are far removed from Him that is everywhere, and verily, O brothers, is it a wonder full of great trembling, one that requires the reasoning of an illumined mind,



in order properly to understand this thing and not to fall into heresy as a result of ignorance of the words of the Holy Ghost. They, too, will wholly have existence within the universe, but outside of the divine light and even outside of God.



For, just as those that cannot see the shining sun, although they are wholly bathed in its light, end their days outside of the light, severed from any sense or sight of it, so too in this universe is the divine light of the Trinity,



and in its midst the sinners that are enclosed in darkness, unseeing, bereft of any divine sense, but consumed and chastised by their conscience, will know for all eternity unspeakable affliction and ineffable pain.

St. Symeon the New Theologian, Hymns, I, 215-231

(English translation: Alistair Ian Blyth)

Two sub-hells: Nyôfunjo and Nôketsujo

Depiction of the torments of the damned in the Buddhist sub-hell of Nyôfunjo (Dung Pit), or the shifunsho (place of excrement), one of the paintings in the Jigokuzôshi (Illustrated Stories of Hell) found in a Heian period (794-1185) emakimono (picture scroll) kept in the Nara National Museum ("Genkahon"; height 26.66 cm, length 433.42 cm). The text of the emakimono describes the sins and the torments of those who wallow in the Dung Pit as follows:

While these men lived, they considered dirty what in reality was not; they also considered clean what was not, due to the foolishness of their heart. (...) The pit in which they are is deep, and they are sunk in it up to their necks; it smells very bad there. This filth is beyond comparison with anything of this world, and the pains of the damned are unbearable.

(translated by Fernando G. Guttiérez, "Emakimono Depicting the Pains of the Damned," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 22, No. 3/4 (1967), p. 285)

The scroll also illustrates the sub-hell called Nôketsujo (Place of Pus and Blood):

Those who suffer eternal anguish therein are said to have been of foolish heart and wicked intent during their lives, and to have forced others to eat filthy things:

This is why they are in hell now. An enormous amount of pus fills this place up to the mouth and nose of the damned. There are also terrible insects called Saimôshô that devour the damned to the marrow of their bones, and break their tendons. It is impossible to describe how terrible this pain is.

(translated by Fernando G. Guttiérez, "Emakimono Depicting the Pains of the Damned," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 22, No. 3/4 (1967), p. 286)