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| From Lorna Price, The Plan of St. Gall in Brief, an overview of the three volume work by Walter Horn & Ernest Born. UC Univ Press, Berkeley, 1982. Here I refer to the plan, whole, opposite p. 1, to the index drawing on pp. 10-11, to the reconstruc |
So the room where the monks sat to copy as well as the library space that housed Fulda's collection of manuscripts do not exist. For that matter, if you go to St. Gall, the architecture you see is Baroque (and later in details), but the Abbey Library owns the plan made for the abbot of St. Gall, evidently (from the dedication on it) in AD 820. We don't know if it was ever built in full this way, but it tells us more about Benedictine monastic organization and building north of the alps and the communal life lived in them than all the tomes of Mabillon. The scriptorium is labeled (and the sedilia are shown: see a on the Index drawing). It even tells us which buildings were provided with permanent privies, necessaria naturae, and how many posts were thought necessary in each outhouse (you can see those for the bloodletters' building, next to the infirmary, in the detail above at top left, and those for the abbot's mansio, at bottom left, by and large the same buildings that had rooms with a caminus (cheminée) built into a corner.
One of the great experiences of my student life was a seminar on the St. Gall plan under Prof. Walter Horn. I happened to be the only member of that seminar with enough Latin to read and interpret all the legends on this tabletop-size vellum document (yes, made from three skins). Everyone else had the task of enlightening me on the architecture. I no longer have my card file of every single word on the plan. On its web site, you can study and zoom and read everything for yourself, though I haven't found a list of the Latin yet. If you can find Lorna Price's book, it is invaluable (though the legends are not given in full or in Latin). The main point is that almost every novel or film or social studies textbook depends on the St. Gall plan for its evocation, if it has any substantial elements, of Benedictine monastic life, either from this plan or on the many studies, a few in English, many in German, based on it. Monte Casino itself was less informative. Notice the arcaded porticoes of the Abbot's house: at least this building had stone walls, as, of course, the church had, but Horn and Born are surely right that these monasteries had roofs steep enough to shed snow, and not tiled!
I do wish Greenblatt had shown the same familiarity with this material as Umberto Eco did in The Name of the Rose.
The example above suggests how the reading of Greenblatt's book is enhanced if one brings assorted bits of substantial knowledge to it. It also helps to know at least a little Latin and Greek and to have read, probably in translation, the three evidently authentic Letters of Epicurus preserved by Diogenes Laertius.
First, though, concerning the Invocation to Venus. I think that Greenblatt may make too much of its Venereal properties. That is to say, any long poem written in hexameters must have an invocation and it needn't be to the Muses as such. If Epicurus had chosen hexameters, he'd have felt obliged to have one, too. To address the force of Nature, of Physis, pervasive in everything (barring the atoms themselves), Nature which is generative and forcibly active in us all, is a sound Epicurean choice. And an invocation must be to mythological entities (not to Poetic Inspriation but to Muses, for example), so to Venus rather than to Physis. That is what Lucretius means by it, and he exploits it most gloriously for pages of poetry. Why, in an Ode to St. Cecilia, for example, Nicholas Brady (co-author with Nahum Tate of a new singable translation of the Psalms, Tate who wrote the libretto for Purcell's Dido and Aeneas) for Purcell's 1692 Ode does invoke Cecilia, though in terms that do not stress her martyrdom, then provides Purcell and the audience with a virtual Middle Baroque Guide to the Orchestra, whose verses illustrate the virtues of each section of instruments, as if evoking the provinces of all the Greco-Roman pantheon, after hymning the Soul of the World. That's just poetry, nothing to do with theology and not much to do with philosophy. No more, I think, does Lucretius mean to worship Venus (rather, to reverence Nature profoundly and provide an appropriate opening to de Rerum Naturae). But when "the jarring seeds of matter" kept singing in my head, recognizing the setting as just like that in the Frost Scene of King Arthur, I had to go and check on the Lucretian credentials of Nicholas Brady (which is fact are excellent). Also, by the end of the 17th century, those "jarring atoms" were a common trope. That is why I rather wish that Greenblatt had written one more chapter! If you like Henry Purcell, as I do, you will love the 1692 "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day".
Back to Epicurus. I had not read the only substantial surviving works, and I still have to find myself a good text of Diogenes Laertius, heaven help me (even for the 3rd century AC he is not the most inspiring writer). But the Epistle to Herodotus is easily obtainable in Perseus, on line, even if you have trouble getting the Greek text there, and in The Epicurus Reader, inexpensive on Kindle. Both of these include all the scholia (and distinguish them, too, from proper Epicurus); the Perseus** is the nicer translation, and the Reader doggedly excludes any Greek words, but the Kindle word-search comes up with all the swerve references.
Now, 'swerve' not only provides Greenblatt with his title. It translates clinamen (both the i and the a are 'long'), which proves to be a strictly Lucretian Latin word, though in its meaning plain as all the other -clin- stem words). The dictionaries cite an "obsolete" Latin verb, *clinare, which per se does not occur in preserved texts. Given that it is obviously cognate to Greek klino, one immediately suspects that Lucretius has done just what Cicero would have done: taken the Greek, formed from a Middle Voice participle, and used it, as we do such French as "de luxe" and "souvenir". Consider, too, that LSJ (Liddell, Scott, and Jones, the big lexicon), in one of its citations uses the English swerve as a translation: eklínthê, he swerved. We usually use that word for what an vehicle does to avoid hitting another vehicle, or a pothole. As an absolute noun it is unusual, even rare, and poetic. So clinamen would have seemed to Romans reading de Rerum Natura. Besides, the Notes in the Kindle Epicurus Reader cite two studies on the Epicurean 'swerve', and by that name: "Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action," Atlanta, 1987, and H. Jones, "The Epicurean Tradition", London, 1989, AA Long.
** Under Epicurus in Perseus, the reference is D. L. 10.1, sections 55—83, where D.L. stands for Diogenes Laertius.
So my immediate suspicion that Greenblatt had not personally chosen 'swerve', though he made it his title, is borne out even by these elementary inquiries, and the range of translations for all the forms from klino in LSJ made clear why Lucretius had chosen clinamen (wherever it would scan) to explain why atoms in motion sometimes colliding and prior to space or distinguishable matter do account for...well, for everything. And this is why the Church couldn't stomach Lucretius. It isn't just that no gods are accessible (though their names can be invoked). And, Lucretius got pretty nearly all of the Epicurean material from Epicurus himself. Epicurus's dissolution of the soul at death is utterly antipathetic to any stretch of Christian philosophy. The Church rather cherished the Stoics and certainly wallowed in neo-Platonism, but Epicurus and Lucretius are pure and serene atheism. Like many moderns today, good Epicureans in antiquity could happily enjoy the art and architecture, the poetry and rhetoric of traditional religion (and they had no need for personal salvation), without believing in anything in them. I mean, if Epicurus and Lucretius were alive today they'd be passionate about the Higgs boson.
It is more astonishing than I had ever dreamt: Epicurus realized that there was no beginning, because there was no 'what' to be a beginning of. He had no mathematics relevant to the tasks at CERN. He had no instruments to speak of. He had a most remarkable human brain and in its exercise developed a most exceptional human mind. Lucretius was his greatest disciple, evidently, and he barely escaped extinction; the two Carolingian Mss that we have seem to be the basis of the later medieval ones such as that found by Poggio Bracciolini.
To me, being able to read some of Epicurus and consider the questions in his language and the lack of mathematics beyond plane geometry, is profoundly reassuring; to be human surely is enough and more.
And the conscious mind is what makes one human.
I want to celebrate the New Year by making this post in time for it. If I find more in further reading, I'll write another post. For now, once again, I thank Stephen Greenblatt for his book and the Loeb library for endless good things and Perseus for surviving so many evolutions of formats.
And a Happy New Year to all readers.
CLINAMEN addendum
My excuse for fascination with the noun clinamen was its being the rarest, to my knowledge, of the “bare” neuter nouns formed on verb stems, that all are declined like nomen. All are neuter 3rd declension. “Bare” because there is no qualifying element and nothing to suggest agency: nomen barely names the ‘know’ stem.
I do wish Greenblatt had shown the same familiarity with this material as Umberto Eco did in The Name of the Rose.
The example above suggests how the reading of Greenblatt's book is enhanced if one brings assorted bits of substantial knowledge to it. It also helps to know at least a little Latin and Greek and to have read, probably in translation, the three evidently authentic Letters of Epicurus preserved by Diogenes Laertius.
First, though, concerning the Invocation to Venus. I think that Greenblatt may make too much of its Venereal properties. That is to say, any long poem written in hexameters must have an invocation and it needn't be to the Muses as such. If Epicurus had chosen hexameters, he'd have felt obliged to have one, too. To address the force of Nature, of Physis, pervasive in everything (barring the atoms themselves), Nature which is generative and forcibly active in us all, is a sound Epicurean choice. And an invocation must be to mythological entities (not to Poetic Inspriation but to Muses, for example), so to Venus rather than to Physis. That is what Lucretius means by it, and he exploits it most gloriously for pages of poetry. Why, in an Ode to St. Cecilia, for example, Nicholas Brady (co-author with Nahum Tate of a new singable translation of the Psalms, Tate who wrote the libretto for Purcell's Dido and Aeneas) for Purcell's 1692 Ode does invoke Cecilia, though in terms that do not stress her martyrdom, then provides Purcell and the audience with a virtual Middle Baroque Guide to the Orchestra, whose verses illustrate the virtues of each section of instruments, as if evoking the provinces of all the Greco-Roman pantheon, after hymning the Soul of the World. That's just poetry, nothing to do with theology and not much to do with philosophy. No more, I think, does Lucretius mean to worship Venus (rather, to reverence Nature profoundly and provide an appropriate opening to de Rerum Naturae). But when "the jarring seeds of matter" kept singing in my head, recognizing the setting as just like that in the Frost Scene of King Arthur, I had to go and check on the Lucretian credentials of Nicholas Brady (which is fact are excellent). Also, by the end of the 17th century, those "jarring atoms" were a common trope. That is why I rather wish that Greenblatt had written one more chapter! If you like Henry Purcell, as I do, you will love the 1692 "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day".
Back to Epicurus. I had not read the only substantial surviving works, and I still have to find myself a good text of Diogenes Laertius, heaven help me (even for the 3rd century AC he is not the most inspiring writer). But the Epistle to Herodotus is easily obtainable in Perseus, on line, even if you have trouble getting the Greek text there, and in The Epicurus Reader, inexpensive on Kindle. Both of these include all the scholia (and distinguish them, too, from proper Epicurus); the Perseus** is the nicer translation, and the Reader doggedly excludes any Greek words, but the Kindle word-search comes up with all the swerve references.
Now, 'swerve' not only provides Greenblatt with his title. It translates clinamen (both the i and the a are 'long'), which proves to be a strictly Lucretian Latin word, though in its meaning plain as all the other -clin- stem words). The dictionaries cite an "obsolete" Latin verb, *clinare, which per se does not occur in preserved texts. Given that it is obviously cognate to Greek klino, one immediately suspects that Lucretius has done just what Cicero would have done: taken the Greek, formed from a Middle Voice participle, and used it, as we do such French as "de luxe" and "souvenir". Consider, too, that LSJ (Liddell, Scott, and Jones, the big lexicon), in one of its citations uses the English swerve as a translation: eklínthê, he swerved. We usually use that word for what an vehicle does to avoid hitting another vehicle, or a pothole. As an absolute noun it is unusual, even rare, and poetic. So clinamen would have seemed to Romans reading de Rerum Natura. Besides, the Notes in the Kindle Epicurus Reader cite two studies on the Epicurean 'swerve', and by that name: "Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action," Atlanta, 1987, and H. Jones, "The Epicurean Tradition", London, 1989, AA Long.
** Under Epicurus in Perseus, the reference is D. L. 10.1, sections 55—83, where D.L. stands for Diogenes Laertius.
So my immediate suspicion that Greenblatt had not personally chosen 'swerve', though he made it his title, is borne out even by these elementary inquiries, and the range of translations for all the forms from klino in LSJ made clear why Lucretius had chosen clinamen (wherever it would scan) to explain why atoms in motion sometimes colliding and prior to space or distinguishable matter do account for...well, for everything. And this is why the Church couldn't stomach Lucretius. It isn't just that no gods are accessible (though their names can be invoked). And, Lucretius got pretty nearly all of the Epicurean material from Epicurus himself. Epicurus's dissolution of the soul at death is utterly antipathetic to any stretch of Christian philosophy. The Church rather cherished the Stoics and certainly wallowed in neo-Platonism, but Epicurus and Lucretius are pure and serene atheism. Like many moderns today, good Epicureans in antiquity could happily enjoy the art and architecture, the poetry and rhetoric of traditional religion (and they had no need for personal salvation), without believing in anything in them. I mean, if Epicurus and Lucretius were alive today they'd be passionate about the Higgs boson.
It is more astonishing than I had ever dreamt: Epicurus realized that there was no beginning, because there was no 'what' to be a beginning of. He had no mathematics relevant to the tasks at CERN. He had no instruments to speak of. He had a most remarkable human brain and in its exercise developed a most exceptional human mind. Lucretius was his greatest disciple, evidently, and he barely escaped extinction; the two Carolingian Mss that we have seem to be the basis of the later medieval ones such as that found by Poggio Bracciolini.
To me, being able to read some of Epicurus and consider the questions in his language and the lack of mathematics beyond plane geometry, is profoundly reassuring; to be human surely is enough and more.
And the conscious mind is what makes one human.
I want to celebrate the New Year by making this post in time for it. If I find more in further reading, I'll write another post. For now, once again, I thank Stephen Greenblatt for his book and the Loeb library for endless good things and Perseus for surviving so many evolutions of formats.
And a Happy New Year to all readers.
CLINAMEN addendum
My excuse for fascination with the noun clinamen was its being the rarest, to my knowledge, of the “bare” neuter nouns formed on verb stems, that all are declined like nomen. All are neuter 3rd declension. “Bare” because there is no qualifying element and nothing to suggest agency: nomen barely names the ‘know’ stem.
I have never shed my adolescent pleasure in inflections and
etymologies. I suppose it is due
to having begun Greek, Latin, and German at about the same time and in that
order.
Later, in that St. Gall seminar, dealing with the
hypercorrect spelling, toregma for toreuma, only cemented it.
How wonderful that Latin has the consistently adverbial
ablative case to help make sense of Greek use of the remaining oblique cases,
not least genitive ‘absolutes’.
That Greek has the middle voice of the verb to explain Latin
deponents. Not to mention each
other’s sequences of moods / tenses.
Anyhow:
• clinamen, n. ‘swerve’
is perfect for Epicurean atoms (or sub-atomic particles, for that matter) that
in their unqualified, undirected state of motion prior to time and space (and shape) may
bump into one another, to be propped by one another, without any purpose or
will or agency;
• flamen, n., cf.
‘blast’ as well as compounds like ‘inflate’ (unrelated in its stem to the
masculine gender ‘flamen’ for a young priest), is the name for the motion of
air;
• certamen, n. is the
name, contest, for matching;
• flumen, n.,
memorized as meaning ‘river’, and, of course, the same as Italian fiume, is the name of streaming or (liquid) flowing.
Those are the ones that come to mind. Like the stem verbs themselves they are
intransitive, i.e., without agency.
The apparent Greek form from which the noun clinamen may derive (this
is why I need to read the Epicurus epistles in Greek) is a Middle Voice
participle, i.e., a verbal adjective of the Middle Voice of klinô, in Greek a very common noun both bare
and in compounds.
I decided not to make this part of my Essay, proper, because
my infatuation with the comparison of the bare bones of languages, at their
most elementary, might not interest everyone. But is it fatuus when
it dawns on a young mind that the stuff in grammars is not the invention of
schoolteachers or philologists but rather the natural science of language?
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