H. P. Lovecraft Does Carpe Diem.

Flavia, of Ferule & Fescue, recently posted Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" on ye Occasion of Her Third and Thirtieth Yeere. Herrick's poem uses graceful language and broad metaphors to make his multifarious point: Time's a-wastin', so be happy! I couldn't help being reminded by "To the Virgins" of a poem that makes a similar point, "Gaudeamus," by the New England fantasist and epistolarian H. P. Lovecraft. Though the latter brindisi is rather more obvious and raucous than the former lyric, it's worth repeating here.

"Gaudeamus"*

Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,
And drink to the present before it shall fail;
Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,
For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:
  So fill up your glass,
  For life will soon pass;
When you're dead ye'll ne'er drink to your king or your lass!

Anacreon had a red nose, so they say;
But what's a red nose if ye're happy and gay?
Gad split me! I'd rather be red whilst I'm here,
Than white as a lily and dead half a year!
  So Betty, my miss,
  Come give me a kiss;
In hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this!

Young Harry, propp'd up just as straight as he's able,
Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table,
But fill up your goblets and pass 'em around
Better under the table than under the ground!
  So revel and chaff
  As ye thirstily quaff:
Under six feet of dirt 'tis less easy to laugh!

The fiend strike me blue! l'm scarce able to walk,
And damn me if I can stand upright or talk!
Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair;
l'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there!
  So lend me a hand;
  I'm not able to stand,
But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land!

* Gaudeamus. [L., let us rejoice.]

For those keeping track, this poem was first published as part of Lovecraft's short story "The Tomb" (1917).

"To be honest with you …"

Recently, I've come to hear a lot of people around me prefacing workaday or banal speech with the phrase "to be honest with you.…" The phrase has never caused me to give much notice before, so either it's gained more currency or I'm listening differently. I often stop now for a moment and think, Wait! was everything that you said previously without the phrase attached not given in honesty? How often should I trust anything you say that doesn't carry the disclaimer? Half of the time? And later on in the day, when you say, "To be perfectly honest with you …," should I just dismiss it as meaningless verbiage, or start to wonder about the truth of your less-qualified "honest" statements of the morning?

To be honest with you, I don't know!

Inaugural Post.

I've been using the name "Priscian" online for various purposes for about ten years now. I adopted the name from the now uncommon phrase "breaking Priscian's head"; that is, smashing the bust of the Roman grammarian, a metaphor for violating the rules of grammar. At the time I was teaching grammar for the English department at SUNY Brumal, and since there are no famous grammarians of English (name one!), I took the name of a Latin one (fl. 500 CE). Unfortunately, my intentions of learning Latin better than the hodgepodge of it I do know became forgotten when ideally imagined life was waylaid by reality. But these are different times, and Latin may see a place in them yet.

Upon flipping through Dante's Inferno last year, I was surprised to find Priscian consorting with the sodomites (i.e. those "violent against nature") in the Seventh Circle, and couldn't imagine why. Such questions are why the Internet exists, and I googled my way to a nicely jesuitical answer in a compelling essay by Arnd Bohm: "Since grammarians should be the ones most aware of the grave implications of linguistic deviation, anyone who tolerated deviations, including the innovations that languages ordinarily generate, could be accused of sodomitical sympathies.… Conversely, Richard Kay has argued that for Dante the grammarians like Priscian violated nature because they did not accept that it was natural for language to change and evolve." There you go, and poor Priscian screwed either way!