-for Carlo Ginzburg

1.
In his comparison of poetry to history, Aristotle points out that their difference is not one between verse and prose. After all, the writings of Herodotus would be a species of history with meter no less than without it. The real difference that distinguishes them is between telling what might be and what has been. ( Read more... )

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Citing Orwell to the effect that the mixing of incompatible metaphors is “a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying”, is a hackneyed excuse for failing to think independently. Mixed metaphors are as venerable as Plato, whose dialectic gently draws forth and leads up the soul sunk in the barbaric slough of the Orphic myth, ( Read more... )

MAXIME. Jamais neuve mais toujours consolante.
MAXIM. Never new but always consoling.
МАКСИМА. Никогда не нова но всегда утешительна.
- Gustave Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues

This publication inaugurates the translation of the maxims of François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld in their final and definitive edition of 1678. It will ( Read more... )

Il n’existe que trois êtres respectables :
    Le prêtre, le guerrier, le poète. Savoir, tuer et créer.
    Les autres hommes sont taillables et corvéables, faits pour l’écurie, c’est-à-dire pour exercer ce qu’on appelle des professions.
    - Charles Baudelaire, Mon cœur mis à nu

There exist but three respectable beings ( Read more... )