Whose Speech Fed Rome Even as the Tiber's Flow

 Tiber, Nile, and Thames
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The head and hands of murdered Cicero,
 Above his seat high in the Forum hung,
 Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung
Of a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,
 Fulvia, Mark Antony's shameless wife, with show
 Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,
 Bade her sharp needle pierce that god-like tongue
Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber's flow.
 And thou, Cleopatra's Needle, that hadst thrid
Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid
 Dead hope! -- hast thou too reached, surviving death,
 A city of sweet speech scorned, -- on whose chill stone
Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton,
 Breadless, with poison froze the God-fired breath?

Conviction and Illustration

  But the point, to which I chiefly advert, is the necessity of thoroughly understanding the distinction between analogous, and metaphorical language. Analogies are used in aid of Conviction: Metaphors, as means of Illustration. The language is analogous, wherever a thing, power, or principle in a higher dignity is expressed by the same thing, power, or principle in a lower but more known form. Such, for instance, is the language of John iii. 6. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit. The latter half of the verse contains the fact asserted; the former half the analogous fact, by which it is rendered intelligible. If any man choose to call this metaphorical or figurative, I ask him whether with Hobbes and Bolingbroke he applies the same rule to the moral attributes of the Deity? Whether he regards the divine Justice, for instance, as a metaphorical term, a mere figure of speech? If he disclaims this, then I answer, neither do I regard the words, born again, or spiritual life, as figures or metaphors. I have only to add, that these analogies are the material, or (to speak chemically) the base, of Symbols and symbolical expressions; the nature of which is always tautegorical, that is, expressing the same subject but with a difference, in contra-distinction from metaphors and similitudes, that are always allegorical, that is, expressing a different subject but with a resemblance.

[Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion, Aphorism VII, p. 136.]

I have been juggling quite a few things the past week and a half, and it looks like I will still be doing so for the next week at least, so things are likely to be light around here.

Deducing Claims from Claims

 ...whereas it has become a commonplace that one cannot legimitately deduce an 'ought' from an 'is', cannot prove a moral conclusion purely on the basis of some factual claim, it has been forgotten that this is only an instance of a wider principle. That wider principle is that one cannot legimtately deduce any claim simply from another: that Zebedee is married to Rahab does not, of itself, imply that Rahab is married to Zebedee nor that Zebedee is not married to Tamar. To reach such conclusions we need additional premisses, about the institution of marriage. If one claim were enough to establish what had seemed to be a different claim, that would be reason to consider that the second claim really was no other than the first, under some disguise.

[Stepen R. L. Clark, From Athens to Jerusalem, Clarendon Press (Oxford: 1984) p. 11.]

Fortnightly Book, November 10

 Diu Crône is a curious work. We know exactly who wrote it -- Heinrich von dem Türlin. We know nothing else about him, beyond his name; all attempts to trace down anything further have failed or led to doubtful results. We know it was written between about 1220 and 1240, but nothing about the circumstances. It is an Arthurian work that draws on a wide range of other Arthurian works; but its Grail story is unique in that it is Gawein (as it is spelled here) who achieves the Grail. (In the main traditions, as represented by, for instance, The Quest of the Holy Grail, Gawain fails because despite his promise he continually does not follow through.) The title, which means The Crown, refers to the poem itself, which compares itself to a crown full of gems. Like many works of its day, but perhaps more than most Arthurian works, the book has a reputation for trying to stuff everything and the kitchen sink into the story.

The Crown is, of course, the next fortnightly book. I will be reading J. W. Thomas's 1989 translation. It was somewhat difficult to find. Mine is a used library discard from Pine Manor College, which no longer exists, as such -- after some rocky years it was assimilated into Boston College in 2020, and then repurposed within Boston College under the name 'Messina College' earlier this year. I mention this, because I find it sometimes interesting to know the routes a book took to me, particularly when it's very much not the kind of book you can just grab off of Amazon at any time.