Songs of Silence

 

Until the End of the World

 

y-cruncher - A Multi-Threaded Pi-Program

https://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/




The first scalable multi-threaded Pi-benchmark for multi-core systems...



How fast can your computer compute Pi?



y-cruncher is a program that can compute Pi and other constants to trillions of digits.

It is the first of its kind that is multi-threaded and scalable to multi-core systems. Ever since its launch in 2009, it has become a common benchmarking and stress-testing application for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts.



y-cruncher has been used to set several world records for the most digits of Pi ever computed.105 trillion digits - February 2024 (Jordan Ranous, Kevin O’Brien, and Brian Beeler - StorageReview)
100 trillion digits - June 2022 (Emma Haruka Iwao)
62.8 trillion digits - August 2021 (UAS Grisons)
50 trillion digits - January 2020 (Timothy Mullican)
31.4 trillion digits - January 2019 (Emma Haruka Iwao)
22.4 trillion digits - November 2016 (Peter Trueb)
13.3 trillion digits - October 2014 (Sandon Van Ness "houkouonchi")
12.1 trillion digits - December 2013 (Shigeru Kondo)
10 trillion digits - October 2011 (Shigeru Kondo)
5 trillion digits - August 2010 (Shigeru Kondo)

NASA Artemis Space lego

 

A Thousand Suns

Zappa - Hot Rats

 

Charles S. Peirce's Egyptological Studies

483

TRANSACTIONS OF THE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY

Vol. 52, No. 4 (2016) • doi: 10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.52.4.01


Abstract

The paper gives a survey and presents a

critical analysis of Peirce’s studies in Egyp-

tology from 1885 to 1904, as documented

mainly in MSS 1227, 1228, 1244, and

1294. It examines Peirce’s studies and

advances in the language and script of Phar-

aonic Egypt as well as his assessments of

the scientific achievements of the Ancient

Egyptians. Among the linguistic topics in

focus are Peirce’s assumptions concern-

ing the iconicity of hieroglyphic writing,

his conjectures on the origins of indexi-

cal words from nouns, and his hypotheses

concerning the proximity of Ancient Egyp-

tian to the ursprache of humans. The paper

traces some of Peirce’s hypotheses concern-

ing the structure of Egyptian to his fun-

damental assumptions about iconicity and

indexicality in language. Altogether, Peirce

was not only very familiar with the state

of the art of contemporary Egyptology, but

he also achieved a remarkable competence

of the Egyptian language and its hiero-

glyphic writing. While some of Peirce’s

insights into the language and civilization

of the Ancient Egyptians are still tenable,

others reflect certain misinterpretations of

the scholarship of his time, which call for

correction in light of the state of the art of

today’s Egyptology.

Keywords: Charles S. Peirce, Ancient Egypt,

Egyptology, history of science, hieroglyphs,

iconicity in language, origins of indexical

words, ursprache.

1. Introduction

In his Lowell Lectures on “Some Topics of

Logic,” Lecture VIII of 1903, Charles S.

T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 52 Number 4484

Peirce, looking back at his career as a historian of science, declared the

following:

On five occasions in my life, and on five occasions only, I have had an

opportunity of testing my Abductions about historical facts, by the

fulfillment of my predictions in subsequent archeological or other

discoveries; and on each one of those five occasions my conclusions,

which in every case ran counter to that of the highest authorities,

turned out to be correct. The last two cases were these. Prof. Petrie

published a history of Egypt in which he treated the first three dynas-

ties as mythical. I was just about writing a history of science and in

the first chapter I showed why those Dynasties including the name of

Menes and other facts ought to be considered historical. Before my

book was near completion, Petrie himself found the tomb of Menes.

(CP 7.182, fn. 7)

This remarkable retrospect shows that Egyptology was not simply a

hobbyhorse within Peirce’s extraordinarily broad spectrum of inter-

est but also a research field in which he made some discoveries that

anticipated later findings of Egyptology and outlasted his time. Peirce’s

approach to Egyptology was semiotic in the sense in which he charac-

terized his life’s work on 23 December 1908 in a letter to Lady Victoria

Welby. As he put it there, “it has never been in my power to study any-

thing, – mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynam-

ics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology,

phonetics, economic, the history of science, whist, men and women,

wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic” (SS 1977: 85–6).

None of Peirce’s manuscripts on Egyptological topics appeared in

print during the author’s lifetime, but some have become published since

1985, when Carolyn Eisele first included selected pages from them in

her two-volume edition Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science.

The subtitle of her edition, A History of Science, is indicative of one of

the reasons why Peirce began to study Egyptian Antiquity. The history

of science since Egyptian and Babylonian Antiquity was a research field

in which Peirce was “one of America’s most eminent scholars” of his

time (Eisele 1979: 143). However, Peirce’s Egyptological studies did

not remain restricted to inquiries into the role of the Egyptians in the

history of science for long. In 1892, he also began to study the lan-

guage and the hieroglyphic writing system of Ancient Egypt, and in

1904, he felt himself competent enough to pass a general judgment on

the “important advances” of Egyptology since the 1870s (Peirce 1904:

957). The importance that Peirce attributed to Egyptological studies in

general and to the rediscovery of the Ancient Egyptian language and

hieroglyphic script in particular can be gauged from the fact that Jean-

François Champollion, the decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and

founding figure of Egyptology, is included in Peirce’s list of the 300

485

Charles S. Peirce’s Egyptological Studies • Kammerzell, Lapčić & Nöth

“Great Men of History” of 1892 (see vol. 5 of his Writings) as the only

“linguist” or as one of only four linguists, if we count the three “philol-

ogists” in this list, F. C. Dietz, J. Grimm, and Sir W. Jones, among the

linguists, too.

Research in Peirce’s Egyptological studies has so far remained restricted

to editorial work. As a result, some of the papers dealing with the role of

Ancient Egypt in the history of science have become available in print.

However, Peirce’s manuscripts on the Egyptian language and its writing

have remained unpublished. They can only be consulted in their origi-

nal MS form or in the form of its microfilm edition. A research project

conducted at the Department of Northeast African Archaeology and

Cultural Studies of the Humboldt-University of Berlin, a successor to

the Berlin Egyptologists whose writings Peirce consulted in his time,

aims at a critical assessment of the results of Peirce’s studies on Pharaonic

Egypt.1 Its purpose is to offer a perspective on Peirce’s Egyptological

studies with a special focus on Peirce’s studies in the language and script

of Pharaonic Egypt, especially in MSS 1227, 1228, 1244, and 1294.

2. Chronology of unpublished manuscripts and published

papers

Robin’s Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce of 1967

is a first point of reference for a survey of Peirce’s Egyptological writ-

ings. It offers brief synopses and gives dates for manuscripts in which

Peirce deals with topics concerning Ancient Egypt, but its summary

descriptions and dates are not always reliable and up to date. The best

bibliographical information on Peirce’s unpublished manuscripts can

be found in the volumes of Peirce’s Writings edited so far, but these

cover only the time until the summer of 1893, if advance information

on contents of vol. 9 is included.2 From the fall of 1893 onwards,

Robin’s catalogue is still the only available source of bibliographical

reference.

In the following chronological list of Peirce’s published and unpub-

lished Egyptological writings, some of the inaccuracies of Robin’s dates

and descriptions are corrected in light of a study of the microfilm edi-

tion of Peirce’s manuscripts (MS) and of the editorial studies published

or prepared for publication by the Peirce Edition Project until 2017

(W1-W9). A chronological survey suggests that Peirce’s writings on

Ancient Egypt may be divided into a prelude and four research phases.

1885–86 (date according to W5, p. 498)

The unpublished MS 1089 is the first of Peirce’s MSS dealing with an

Egyptological topic, although only marginally so. Only the second of

its 12 pages contains a brief reference to the Egyptian “great Artab,”

a dry measure of Ancient Egypt, whose capacity Peirce describes as

amounting to 36.176 liters. The 1901 edition of the Century Dictionary

T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 52 Number 4486

(http://www.global-language.com/century/) contains an article by

Peirce on this measure under the entry artaba.

1892–93 (research phases I and II)

The papers of 1892–93 are mainly notes, drafts, and manuscripts for

the Lowell Lectures on the History of Science, which took place from

November 28, 1892, to January 5, 1893, on Monday and Thursday

evenings. Five of them have been included in the still unpublished

vol. 9 of Peirce’s Writings (W9), whose Table of Contents has been

made available to the authors of this article in its manuscript form.

For the other unpublished papers, the contents are summarized in

accordance with Robin’s Catalogue.

• August 1892 (MS 1287), pp. 43–52, publ. in W9 as item 22,

“Lecture II, Part 3, Section 3: Pyramid Measurements and the

Fabric of Theory] (R[obin] 1287: 43–52), August 1892.”

• Fall 1892 (MS 1297), pp. 2–3, 6–7, and 8–9, publ. in W9 as item

20, “[Lecture II, Part 3, Section 1: The Egyptian Mind] (R 1297:

2–3, 8–9, 6–7), fall 1892.”

• Fall 1892 (MS 1303), pp. 2–5, publ. in W9 as item 21, “[Lecture

II, Part 3, Section 2: The Character of Egyptian Intellect] (R 1303:

2–5), fall 1892.”

• December 3–5, 1892 (MS 1276), pp. 2–29, publ. in W9 as item

24, “[Lowell Lecture III: Egyptian Science] (R 1276: 2–29), 3–5

December 1892.”

• December 1892 (MS 1277), publ. in Eisele, ed. (1985: 201–215)

as “‘Further Ancient Science – Chaldean and Greek Astronomy’

(with remarks on the Chaldees’ scientific superiority over the

Egyptians) Lowell Lecture V.” Included in W9 as item 28, “[Lowell

Lecture V: Chaldean Science and Early Greek Science] (R 1277:

2–36, 38–53; R 1275: 45, 44, 46–56), 12 December 1892.”

• c. Dec 1892/Jan 1893 (MS 1298), unpublished: “Egyptian

History; Chaldean Astronomy,” 4 pp.

• c. Dec 1892/Jan 1893 (MS 1228), unpublished: “Notes on

Egyptian Hieroglyphs.” Written in parallel with MS 1294.

• January 1893 (MS 1294), pp. 2–6, 15–20, 24 publ. in W9 as item

41, “Egyptian Science (R 1294: 2–6, 15–20, 24), January 1893.”

• not before Jan. 1893 (MS 1296), unpublished: “Thothiana,” 7 pp.

This MS contains the beginning of a paper for the Bulletin of the

American Mathematical Society on “Aahmes” and Egyptian math-

ematics. “Aahmes” is a 19th century transcription of the name of

the copyist of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (pBM EA 10058),

JoH-msj.w /ˌjaʕħə-ˈmasjəw/, ‘The-moon-is-born.’

• c.1893 (MS 595), pp. 16–17, unpublished section of the “Short

Logic,” partially published as CP 2.286–291, 2.295–296, 2.435–

443, 7.555–558.3

487

Charles S. Peirce’s Egyptological Studies • Kammerzell, Lapčić & Nöth

1898–99 (research phase III)

The manuscripts of 1898–99 were mainly written in the context of

Peirce’s plan to write a History of Science in one volume (MSS 1269–

1273), as first announced in a letter of 1898 (cf. Eisele, ed. 1985:

297–411). At that time, Peirce intensified his studies in the language

and writing system of Ancient Egypt, begun in January 1893. Robin’s

estimate for MSS 1269–1271 is “c.1892,” but since MS 1227 is dated

“March 22, 1898” and contains notes for MSS 1269–1271, and MS

1269 contains a reference to Budge (1898), Robin’s date must be

corrected to 1898. Only two of these MSS have been published so

far. The corrected chronological order of these MSS from 1898–99

is the following:

1. MS 1227, “Notes on Egyptian Hieroglyphs,” dated “March 22,

1898,” a notebook.

2. MS 1271, “A Sketch of the General History of Science,” 6 pp.

3. MS 1270 is a partial copy of MS 1271. “Egyptian Science and the

Typical Egyptian,” 3 pp.

4. MS 1272 of is an earlier draft of MS 1269. Among its topics are

“Egyptian science: the Great Pyramid; the lack of theoretical inter-

est among the Egyptians reflected in their failure to advance scien-

tific knowledge, and the ‘irrefragable’ proof of Egyptian stupidity.”

5. MS 1269 is the first chapter of Peirce’s unfinished “History of

Science.” It has been published in Eisele, ed. (1985: 310–47)

under the title “Egypt and Science.”

6. MS 1292, of 1899, is the draft of an article on “How Did Science

Originate?” in which Peirce argues that science originated in

Babylon, not Egypt, and that there was a lack of scientific interest

in Ancient Egypt.

1902–1904 (research phase IV)

• L 75. Peirce’s 1902 application to the Carnegie Institution con-

tains, in the alternative version edited by J. Ransdell as Version 2,

Part 3 (L 75, Draft C, pp. A46–47), two pages with remarks on

the morphology and iconicity of the Egyptian Language.

• MS 1244, related to MS 1263, is “On Egyptian and other ancient

languages and other topics.”

• MS 1263 has been published in Eisele, ed. (1985: 956–961)

under the title “Chronology of Arithmetic with references to the

collection of Mr. George A. Plimpton, to the Astor Library, and to

other available collections.”

This bibliographical survey shows that Peirce’s Egyptological stud-

ies, after the first rather marginal note on a topic of metrology in

1885, began in 1892 with his notes for the Lowell Lectures on “The

History of Science.” With respect to their contents, roughly but not

T R A N S A C T I O N S Volume 52 Number 4488

The Anagarika’s Lists: Time, Space and Emotions in the ‘Sarnath Notebooks’

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Circles

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essays : First Series[1841]


Circles 





Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here.

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced, in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace; that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.

This fact, as far as it symbolizes the moral fact of the Unattainable, the flying Perfect, around which the hands of man can never meet, at once the inspirer and the condemner of every success, may conveniently serve us to connect many illustrations of human power in every department.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea: they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice; here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts, in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence, and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity.

You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible thought which wrought through it; and thus ever, behind the coarse effect, is a fine cause, which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known. A rich estate appears to women a firm and lasting fact; to a merchant, one easily created out of any materials, and easily lost. An orchard, good tillage, good grounds, seem a fixture, like a gold mine, or a river, to a citizen; but to a large farmer, not much more fixed than the state of the crop. Nature looks provokingly stable and secular, but it has a cause like all the rest; and when once I comprehend that, will these fields stretch so immovably wide, these leaves hang so individually considerable? Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial. Moons are no more bounds to spiritual power than bat-balls.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the inert effort of each thought, having formed itself into a circular wave of circumstance,--as, for instance, an empire, rules of an art, a local usage, a religious rite,--to heap itself on that ridge, and to solidify and hem in the life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with attempt again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to immense and innumerable expansions.

Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story,--how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures, of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world, as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.

Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions; the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and judged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the revelation of the new hour.

Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material, threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much.

There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.

The continual effort to raise himself above himself, to work a pitch above his last height, betrays itself in a man's relations. We thirst for approbation, yet cannot forgive the approver. The sweet of nature is love; yet, if I have a friend, I am tormented by my imperfections. The love of me accuses the other party. If he were high enough to slight me, then could I love him, and rise by my affection to new heights. A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better. I thought, as I walked in the woods and mused on my friends, why should I play with them this game of idolatry? I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits of persons called high and worthy. Rich, noble, and great they are by the liberality of our speech, but truth is sad. O blessed Spirit, whom I forsake for these, they are not thou! Every personal consideration that we allow costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent pleasure.

How often must we learn this lesson? Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations. The only sin is limitation. As soon as you once come up with a man's limitations, it is all over with him. Has he talents? has he enterprise? has he knowledge? it boots not. Infinitely alluring and attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; now, you have found his shores, found it a pond, and you care not if you never see it again.

Each new step we take in thought reconciles twenty seemingly discordant facts, as expressions of one law. Aristotle and Plato are reckoned the respective heads of two schools. A wise man will see that Aristotle Platonizes. By going one step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease.

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We learn that God IS that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of him. The idealism of Berkeley is only a crude statement of the idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact, that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and the state of the world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual classification then existing in the minds of men. The things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the termini which bound the common of silence on every side. The parties are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even express under this Pentecost. To-morrow they will have receded from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping under the old pack-saddles. Yet let us enjoy the cloven flame whilst it glows on our walls. When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker, to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men. O, what truths profound and executable only in ages and orbs are supposed in the announcement of every truth! In common hours, society sits cold and statuesque. We all stand waiting, empty,--knowing, possibly, that we can be full, surrounded by mighty symbols which are not symbols to us, but prose and trivial toys. Then cometh the god, and converts the statues into fiery men, and by a flash of his eye burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest. The facts which loomed so large in the fogs of yesterday,--property, climate, breeding, personal beauty, and the like, have strangely changed their proportions. All that we reckoned settled shakes and rattles; and literatures, cities, climates, religions, leave their foundations, and dance before our eyes. And yet here again see the swift circumspection! Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it. The length of the discourse indicates the distance of thought betwixt the speaker and the hearer. If they were at a perfect understanding in any part, no words would be necessary thereon. If at one in all parts, no words would be suffered.

Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, through which a new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it. We fill ourselves with ancient learning, install ourselves the best we can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that we may wiselier see French, English, and American houses and modes of living. In like manner, we see literature best from the midst of wild nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to find the parallax of any star.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline to repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the power of change and reform. But some Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eye on my own possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber of the world, and I am capable once more of choosing a straight path in theory and practice.

We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. We can never see Christianity from the catechism:--from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds, we possibly may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear to the best of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church, by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially prized:--"Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out of the book itself.

The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric circles, and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations, which apprize us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding. These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods only,--are words of God, and as fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a partial or approximate statement, namely, that like draws to like; and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to you, and need not be pursued with pains and cost? Yet is that statement approximate also, and not final. Omnipresence is a higher fact. Not through subtle, subterranean channels need friend and fact be drawn to their counterpart, but, rightly considered, these things proceed from the eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man will not be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so much deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead. Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril. In many years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to me, that, with every precaution you take against such an evil, you put yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose that the highest prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from the centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many times we shall fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides, your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be nothing," and "the worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty, another's ugliness; one man's wisdom, another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty, and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker! there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's?

There is no virtue which is final; all are initial. The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

"Forgive his crimes, forgive his virtues too,
Those smaller faults, half converts to the right." [Edward Young]It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves of God flow into me, I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievement by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done, without time.

And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would fain teach us that, if we are true, forsooth, our crimes may be lively stones out of which we shall construct the temple of the true God!

I am not careful to justify myself. I own I am gladdened by seeing the predominance of the saccharine principle throughout vegetable nature, and not less by beholding in morals that unrestrained inundation of the principle of good into every chink and hole that selfishness has left open, yea, into selfishness and sin itself; so that no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme satisfactions. But lest I should mislead any when I have my own head and obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.

Yet this incessant movement and progression which all things partake could never become sensible to us but by contrast to some principle of fixture or stability in the soul. Whilst the eternal generation of circles proceeds, the eternal generator abides. That central life is somewhat superior to creation, superior to knowledge and thought, and contains all its circles. For ever it labors to create a life and thought as large and excellent as itself; but in vain; for that which is made instructs how to make a better.

Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no preservation, but all things renew, germinate, and spring. Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one. We call it by many names, --fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity, and crime; they are all forms of old age; they are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia, not newness, not the way onward. We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing, and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young. Let them, then, become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power. This old age ought not to creep on a human mind. In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of lower states,--of acts of routine and sense,--we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universal movements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. The new position of the advancing man has all the powers of the old, yet has them all new. It carries in its bosom all the energies of the past, yet is itself an exhalation of the morning. I cast away in this new moment all my once hoarded knowledge, as vacant and vain. Now, for the first time, seem I to know any thing rightly. The simplest words,--we do not know what they mean, except when we love and aspire.

The difference between talents and character is adroitness to keep the old and trodden round, and power and courage to make a new road to new and better goals. Character makes an overpowering present; a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the company, by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of. Character dulls the impression of particular events. When we see the conqueror, we do not think much of any one battle or success. We see that we had exaggerated the difficulty. It was easy to him. The great man is not convulsible or tormentable; events pass over him without much impression. People say sometimes, `See what I have overcome; see how cheerful I am; see how completely I have triumphed over these black events.' Not if they still remind me of the black event. True conquest is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing.

The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful: it is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason, they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.



Selected Criticism on "Circles"

Jack Null, "Strategies of Imagery in 'Circles'," ESQ 69 (1972), 265-70.
Albert H. Tricomi, "The Rhetoric of Aspiring Circularity in Emerson's 'Circles',"ESQ 69 (1972), 271-83.
Cox, James M. "R. W. Emerson: The Circles of the Eye." In Levin, pp. 57-81.
Wyatt, David. "'Spelling Time': The Reader in Emerson's 'Circles.'" American Literature 48 (May 1976): 140-51. Also in Cady and Bloom.
Steele, H. Meili. "Romantic Epistemology and Romantic Style: Emerson's Development from Nature to the Essays." In Studies in the American Renaissance 1983, pp. 187-202. Charlottesville: UP of VA, 1983.
Neufeldt, Leonard N. and Christopher Barr. "'I Shall Write Like a Latin Father': Emerson's 'Circles.'" New England Quarterly 59 (March 1986): 92-108.
Ronnick, Michele Valerie. Seneca's Epistle 12 and Emerson's 'Circles'. Emerson Society Papers, 7:1 (1996 Spring), 4; 8.
von Frank, Albert J. "Essays: First Series (1841)." Cambridge Companion to Emerson, 106-20.

my man Gukesh!

 

Slang and its analogues past and present. A dictionary, historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years. With synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc

THE LAST ILLNESS OF LORD BYRON

MapSCII - the whole world in your console!

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, A Romaunt

 

Preface to Cantos 1-2

L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre, que j'ai trouvé également mauvaises. Cet examen ne m'a point été infructueux. Je haïssais ma patrie. Toutes les impertinences des peuples divers, parmi lesquels j'ai vécu, m'ont réconcilié avec elle. Quand je n'aurais tiré d'autre bénéfice de mes voyages que celui-là, je n'en regretterais ni les frais, ni les fatigues.

LE COSMOPOLITE.

[The universe is a sort of book, whose first page one has read when one has seen only one's own country. I have leafed through a great many that I have found equally bad. This inquiry has not been at all unfruitful. I hated my country. All the oddities of the different people among whom I have lived have reconciled me to it. Should I gain no other benefit from my travels than this, I will have regretted neither the pains nor the fatigues.

Fougeret de Monbron (1753)]

PREFACE

The following poem was written, for the most part, amidst the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author's observations in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece. There for the present the poem stops: its reception will determine whether the author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital of the East, through Ionia and Phrygia: these two cantos are merely experimental.

A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connexion to the piece; which, however, no pretension to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, 'Childe Harold', I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage: this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim -- Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever.

It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation 'Childe', as 'Childe Waters', 'Childe Childers', etc. is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted. The 'Good Night', in the beginning of the first canto, was suggested by 'Lord Maxwell's Good Night', in the Border Minstrelsy, edited by Mr Scott.

With the different poems which have been published on Spanish subjects, there may be found some slight coincidence in the first part, which treats of the Peninsula, but it can only be casual; as, with the exception of a few concluding stanzas, the whole of this poem was written in the Levant.

The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our most successful poets, admits of every variety. Dr Beattie makes the following observation: 'Not long ago I began a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in which I propose to give full scope to my inchnatlon, and be either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as the humour strikes me; for, if I mistake not, the measure which I have adopted admits equally of all these kinds of composition.' -- Strengthened in my opinion by such authority, and by the example of some in the highest order of Italian poets, I shall make no apology for attempts at similar variations in the following compo- sition; satisfied that, if they are unsuccessful, their failure must be in the execution, rather than in the design sanctioned by the practice of Ariosto. Thomson, and Beattie.

ADDITION TO THE PREFACE

I have now waited till almost all our periodical journals have distributed their usual portion of criticism. To the justice of the generality of their criticisms I have nothing to object; it would become me to quarrel 7with their very slight degree of censure, when, perhaps, if they had been less kind they had been more candid. Returning, therefore, to all and each my best thanks for their liberality, on one point alone shall I venture an observation. Amongst the many objections justly urged to the very indifferent character of the 'vagrant Childe' (whom, notwithstanding many hints to the contrary, I still maintain to be a fictitious personage), it has been stated, that besides the anachronism, he is very unknightly, as the times of the Knights were times of love, honour, and so forth. Now it so happens that the good old times, when 'I'amour du bon vieux tems, l'amour antique' flourished, were the most profligate of all possible centuries. Those who have any doubts on this subject may consult St Palaye, passim, and more particularly vol. ii. page 69. The vows of chivalry were no better kept than any other vows whatsoever, and the songs of the Troubadours were not more decent, and certainly were much less refined, than those of Ovid. -- The 'Cours d'amour, parlemens d'amour ou de courtesie et de gentilesse' had much more of love than of courtesy or gentleness. -- See Rolland on the same subject with St Palaye. -- Whatever other objection may be urged to that most unamiable personage Childe Harold, he was so far perfectly knightly in his attributes -- 'No waiter, but a knight templar.' By the by, I fear that Sir Tristram and Sir Lancelot were no better than they should be, although very poetical personages and true knights 'sans peur', though not 'sans reproche'. -- If the story of the institution of the 'Garter' be not a fable, the knights of that order have for several centuries borne the badge of a Countess of Salisbury, of indifferent memory. So much for chivalry. Burke need not have regretted that its days are over, though Maria Antoinette was quite as chaste as most of those in whose honours lances were shivered, and knights unhorsed.

Before the days of Bayard, and down to those of Sir Joseph Banks (the most chaste and celebrated of ancient and modern times), few exceptions will be found to this statement, and I fear a little investigation will teach us not to regret these monstrous mummeries of the middle ages.

I now leave 'Childe Harold' to live his day, such as he is; it had been more agreeable, and certainly more easy, to have drawn an amiable character. It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him do more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further than to show that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature, and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected. Had I proceeded with the Poem, this character would have deepened as he drew to the close; for the outline which I once meant to fill up for him was, with some exceptions, the sketch of a modern Timon, perhaps a poetical Zeluco.

To Ianthe

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deem'd;
Not in those visions to the heart displaying
Forms which it sighs but to have only dream'd,
Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seem'd:
Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
To paint those charms which varied as they beam'd --
To such as see thee not my words were weak;
To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?

Ah! may'st thou ever be what now thou art,        10
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,
As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
Love's image upon earth without his wing,
And guileless beyond Hope's imagining!
And surely she who now so fondly rears
Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
Beholds the rainbow of her future years,
Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.

Young Peri of the West!-'tis well for me
My years already doubly number thine;             20
My loveless eye unmov'd may gaze on thee,
And safely view thy ripening beauties shine;
Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline,
Happier, that while all younger hearts shall bleed,
Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign
To those whose admiration shall succeed,
But mixed with pangs to Love's even loveliest hours decreed.

Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle's,
Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,
Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,        30
Glance o'er this page; nor to my verse deny
That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh,
Could I to thee be ever more than friend:
This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why
To one so young my strain I would commend,
But bid me with my wreath one matchless lily blend.

Such is thy name with this my verse entwin'd;
And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast
On Harold's page, Ianthe's here enshrin'd
Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:        40
My days once number'd, should this homage past
Attract thy fairy fingers near the lyre
Of him who hail'd thee, loveliest as thou wast,
Such is the most my memory may desire;
Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?

Biography of Old Dragon-beard (虯髯客傳) by Du Guangting (杜光庭, 850-933)

At the time of the last emperor of the Sui dynasty, the power was in the hands of the emperor’s uncle, Yang Su. He was proud and extravagant. In his halls stood choruses of singers and bands of dancing girls, and serving-maids stood ready to obey his least sign. When the great lords of the empire came to visit him he remained comfortably seated on his couch while he received them.

In those days there lived a bold hero named Li Dsing. He came to see Yang Su in humble clothes in order to bring him a plan for the quieting of the empire.

He made a low bow to which Yang Su did not reply, and then he said: “The empire is about to be troubled by dissension and heroes are everywhere taking up arms. You are the highest servant of the imperial house. It should be your duty to gather the bravest around the throne. And you should not rebuff people by your haughtiness!”

When Yang Su heard him speak in this fashion he collected himself, rose from his place, and spoke to him in a friendly manner.

Li Dsing handed him a memorial, and Yang Su entered into talk with him concerning all sorts of things. A serving-maid of extraordinary beauty stood beside them. She held a red flabrum in her hand, and kept her eyes fixed on Li Dsing. The latter at length took his leave and returned to his inn.

Later in the day some one knocked at his door. He looked out, and there, before the door, stood a person turbaned and gowned in purple, and carrying a bag slung from a stick across his shoulder.

Li Dsing asked who it was and received the answer: “I am the fan-bearer of Yang Su!”

With that she entered the room, threw back her mantle and took off her turban. Li Dsing saw that she was a maiden of eighteen or nineteen.

She bowed to him, and when he had replied to her greeting she began: “I have dwelt in the house of Yang Su for a long time and have seen many famous people, but none who could equal you. I will serve you wherever you go!”

Li Dsing answered: “The minister is powerful. I am afraid that we will plunge ourselves into misfortune.”

“He is a living corpse, in whom the breath of life grows scant,” said the fan-bearer, “and we need not fear him.”

He asked her name, and she said it was Dschang, and that she was the oldest among her brothers and sisters.

And when he looked at her, and considered her courageous behavior and her sensible words, he realized that she was a girl of heroic cast, and they agreed to marry and make their escape from the city in secret. The fan-bearer put on men’s clothes, and they mounted horses and rode away. They had determined to go to Taiyuanfu.

On the following day they stopped at an inn. They had their room put in order and made a fire on the hearth to cook their meal. The fan-bearer was combing her hair. It was so long that it swept the ground, and so shining that you could see your face in it. Li Dsing had just left the room to groom the horses. Suddenly a man who had a long curling mustache like a dragon made his appearance. He came along riding on a lame mule, threw down his leather bag on the ground in front of the hearth, took a pillow, made himself comfortable on a couch, and watched the fan-bearer as she combed her hair. Li Dsing saw him and grew angry; but the fan-bearer had at once seen through the stranger. She motioned Li Dsing to control himself, quickly finished combing her hair and tied it in a knot.

Then she greeted the guest and asked his name.

He told her that he was named Dschang.

“Why, my name is also Dschang,” said she, “so we must be relatives!”

Thereupon she bowed to him as her elder brother.

“How many are there of you brothers?” she then inquired.

“I am the third,” he answered, “and you?”

“I am the oldest sister.”

“How fortunate that I should have found a sister to-day,” said the stranger, highly pleased.

Then the fan-bearer called to Li Dsing through the door and said: “Come in! I wish to present my third brother to you!”

Then Li Dsing came in and greeted him.

They sat down beside each other and the stranger asked: “What have you to eat?”

“A leg of mutton,” was the answer.

“I am quite hungry,” said the stranger.

So Li Dsing went to the market and brought bread and wine. The stranger drew out his dagger, cut the meat, and they all ate in company. When they had finished he fed the rest of the meat to his mule.

Then he said: “Sir Li, you seem to be a moneyless knight. How did you happen to meet my sister?”

Li Dsing told him how it had occurred.

“And where do you wish to go now?”

“To Taiyuanfu,” was the answer.

Said the stranger: “You do not seem to be an ordinary fellow. Have you heard anything regarding a hero who is supposed to be in this neighborhood?”

Li Dsing answered: “Yes, indeed, I know of one, whom heaven seems destined to rule.”

“And who might he be?” inquired the other.

“He is the son of Duke Li Yuan of Tang, and he is no more than twenty years of age.”

“Could you present him to me some time?” asked the stranger.

And when Li Dsing has assured him he could, he continued: “The astrologers say that a special sign has been noticed in the air above Taiyuanfu. Perhaps it is caused by the very man. To-morrow you may await me at the Fenyang Bridge!”

With these words he mounted his mule and rode away, and he rode so swiftly that he seemed to be flying.

The fan-bearer said to him: “He is not a pleasant customer to deal with. I noticed that at first he had no good intentions. That is why I united him to us by bonds of relationship.”

Then they set out together for Taiyuanfu, and at the appointed place, sure enough, they met Dragonbeard. Li Dsing had an old friend, a companion of the Prince of Tang.

He presented the stranger to this friend, named Liu Wendsing, saying: “This stranger is able to foretell the future from the lines of the face, and would like to see the prince.”

Thereupon Liu Wendsing took him in to the prince. The prince was clothed in a simple indoor robe, but there was something impressive about him, which made him remarked among all others. When the stranger saw him, he fell into a profound silence, and his face turned gray. After he had drunk a few flagons of wine he took his leave.

“That man is a true ruler,” he told Li Dsing. “I am almost certain of the fact, but to be sure my friend must also see him.”

Then he arranged to meet Li Dsing on a certain day at a certain inn.

“When you see this mule before the door, together with a very lean jackass, then you may be certain I am there with my friend.”

On the day set Li Dsing went there and, sure enough he saw the mule and the jackass before the door. He gathered up his robe and descended to the upper story of the inn. There sat old Dragonbeard and a Taoist priest over their wine. When the former saw Li Dsing he was much pleased, bade him sit down and offered him wine. After they had pledged each other, all three returned to Liu Wendsing. He was engaged in a game of chess with the prince. The prince rose with respect and asked them to be seated.

As soon as the Taoist priest saw his radiant and heroic countenance he was disconcerted, and greeted him with a low bow, saying: “The game is up!”

When they took their leave Dragonbeard said to Li Dsing: “Go on to Sianfu, and when the time has come, ask for me at such and such a place.”

And with that he went away snorting.

Li Dsing and the fan-bearer packed up their belongings, left Taiyuanfu and traveled on toward the West. At that time Yang Su died, and great disturbance arose throughout the empire.

In the course of a few days Li Dsing and his wife reached the meeting-place appointed by Dragonbeard. They knocked at a little wooden door, and out came a servant, who led them through long passages. When they emerged magnificent buildings arose before them, in front of which stood a crowd of slave girls. Then they entered a hall in which the most valuable dowry that could be imagined had been piled up: mirrors, clothes, jewelry, all more beautiful than earth is wont to show. Handsome slave girls led them to the bath, and when they had changed their garments their friend was announced. He stepped in clad in silks and fox-pelts, and looking almost like a dragon or a tiger. He greeted his guests with pleasure and also called in his wife, who was of exceptional loveliness. A festive banquet was served, and all four sat down to it. The table was covered with the most expensive viands, so rare that they did not even know their names. Flagons and dishes and all the utensils were made of gold and jade, and ornamented with pearls and precious stones. Two companies of girl musicians alternately blew flutes and chalameaus. They sang and danced, and it seemed to the visitors that they had been transported to the palace of the Lady of the Moon. The rainbow garments fluttered, and the dancing girls were beautiful beyond all the beauty of earth.

After they had banqueted, Dragonbeard commanded his servitors to bring in couches upon which embroidered silken covers had been spread. And after they had seen everything worth seeing, he presented them with a book and a key.

Then he said: “In this book are listed the valuables and the riches which I possess. I make you a wedding-present of them. Nothing great may be undertaken without wealth, and it is my duty to endow my sister properly. My original intention had been to take the Middle Kingdom in hand and do something with it. But since a ruler has already arisen to reign over it, what is there to keep me in this country? For Prince Tang of Taiyuanfu is a real hero, and will have restored order within a few years’ time. You must both of you aid him, and you will be certain to rise to high honors. You, my sister, are not alone beautiful, but you have also the right way of looking at things. None other than yourself would have been able to recognize the true worth of Li Dsing, and none other than Li Dsing would have had the good fortune to encounter you. You will share the honors which will be your husband’s portion, and your name will be recorded in history. The treasures which I bestow upon you, you are to use to help the true ruler. Bear this in mind! And in ten years’ time a glow will rise far away to the South-east, and it shall be a sign that I have reached my goal. Then you may pour a libation of wine in the direction of the South-east, to wish me good fortune!”

Then, one after another, he had his servitors and slave-girls greet Li Dsing and the fan-bearer, and said to them: “This is your master and your mistress!”

When he had spoken these words, he took his wife’s hand, they mounted three steeds which were held ready, and rode away.

Li Dsing and his wife now established themselves in the house, and found themselves possessed of countless wealth. They followed Prince Tang, who restored order to the empire, and aided him with their money. Thus the great work was accomplished, and after peace had been restored throughout the empire, Li Dsing was made Duke of We, and the fan-bearer became a duchess.

Some ten years later the duke was informed that in the empire beyond the sea a thousand ships had landed an army of a hundred thousand armored soldiers. These had conquered the country, killed its prince, and set up their leader as its king. And order now reigned in that empire.

Then the duke knew that Dragonbeard had accomplished his aim. He told his wife, and they robed themselves in robes of ceremony and offered wine in order to wish him good fortune. And they saw a radiant crimson ray flash up on the South-eastern horizon. No doubt Dragonbeard had sent it in answer. And both of them were very happy.


Note: Yang Su died in the year 606 A.D. The Li Dsing of this tale has nothing in common with Li Dsing, the father of Notscha (No. 18). He lived as a historical personage, 571-649 A.D. Li Yuan was the founder of the Tang dynasty, 565-635 A.D. His famous son, to whom he owed the throne, the “Prince of Tang,” was named Li Schi Min. His father abdicated in 618 in his favor. This tale is not, of course, historical, but legendary. Compare with the introduction of the following one.

THE FIRST CHINESE PERPETUAL CALENDAR

 

Conan on hot wings

 

Just posting Morrowind screenshots

 

Tenochtitlan

 https://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/index.html

Kangaroo - DH Lawrence

A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass of the park beside Macquarie Street, in the dinner hour. It was winter, the end of May, but the sun was warm, and they lay there in shirt-sleeves, talking. Some were eating food from paper packages. They were a mixed lot—taxi-drivers, a group of builders who were putting a new inside into one of the big houses opposite, and then two men in blue overalls, some sort of mechanics. Squatting and lying on the grassy bank beside the broad tarred road where taxis and hansom cabs passed continually, they had that air of owning the city which belongs to a good Australian.

Thrones of Decay

 

Morrowind in Unreal Engine

 

Qianlong Emperor’s favorite cats as painted by Ignatius Sichelbart 艾啓蒙 (1708-1780)

https://www.burninghou.se/p/the-emperors-cats 

Eclipse New Mexico 2024

 

Solar eclipse. Chiapas, Mexico. Antonio Turok, 1991.

 

A Humument

Thames & Hudson · A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel 1966-2016, read by Tom Phillips

https://www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument


A Humument has been a work in progress since 1966 when artist Tom Phillips set himself a task: to find a second-hand book for threepence and alter every page by painting, collage and cut-up techniques to create an entirely new version. The book he found was an 1892 Victorian obscurity A Human Document by W.H. Mallock and Phillips transformed it into A Humument. The first version was printed by the Tetrad press in 1973, and Phillips has continued to transform it, revise it and develop it ever since.

Samurai William

 

Tokyo's incredible EIGAKAN

Chang'an

 

Shakespeare's "Antony & Cleopatra" Act I Scene I-II (Timothy Dalton and Lynn Redgrave)