[lit-ideas] Loeb's Labour Lost (And Found)
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:38:11 EDT
Sorry for bothering the list about this again, but you haven't met Dr.
Speranza until you've met him in one of his obsessive modes!
Yes, I intend to build this library at St. Michael Hall, which I call, "The
Swimming Pool Library" after that joke in Alan Holingshurst's eponymous novel
-- alla R. Firbank:
"I'm the Swimming Pool Librarian"
"And what kind of books do you keep at that library, may I ask?"
-- The Swimming Pool Library is part of the mythology around Winchester -- a
so-called 'public school'. I just like the title of it.
Actually, since my family comes from Liguria, I was doing some research on
the area, and to my surpirse, I found that there is a
"Speranza Villa"
-- website online --
which shows an _excellent_ swimming-pool. The name, however, or alas,
derives from a Mr. "Hope" -- a retired British ambassador, who thought
'Speranza'
rang a nicer bell in Bordighera.
-- Anyway, this James Loeb founded the Library officially in 1911, but I
think the first titles started to appear in 1912, or 1913.
Interestingly, the first titles were published -- by William Heinemann in
London always, up to 1989 -- in the US by different publishers, notably
Macmillan (I think the first was), Putnam, and -- finally, Harvard University
Press.
I must confess that it's the format -- 'suitable for a gentleman's pocket --
the sexist description by Loeb ran -- that attracts me. Not so much the size,
but the fact that you have in one same library things so disassociate as
Sophocles, and Plotinus.
-- As part of my role of a 'cultural ambassador' in my own land -- sounds
pretentious, but it's not -- I think it's good that people realize that in fact
there is a lot in common between Sophocles and Plotinus, viz. that both wrote
in Greek.
I count myself as fortunate in having learnt (or so I think) Greek (and,
'course, Latin). As R. Paul well knows, nothing beats a classical education --
or 'training', as Geary prefers.
It's not so much the privilege it entails (it don't! [sic]), but the feeling
of 'belonging' to a class of classically educated people -- that you feel
when you met someone who's been into learning the aorist, and the '-menos' and
'-menon' forms and the rest of it.
Grice, for one, was surprised, when he settled in the Bay Area of
California, that Classics was not regarded as mandatory for the graduate
philosophy
students he taught. He tried to convince himself that 'there were good
translations', but personally, I don't think you _can_ do philosophy without
immersing
yourself into the vagaries of the Greek language.
Andreas learned about Heidegger in Heidelberg -- and he must agree with me.
Heidegger was _obsessed_ with the Greek language -- and indeed ventured that
'philosophos' was the 'wizard of love', not the 'lover of wisdom' -- and I'd
agree.
The Bibliotheca Graeca in the Loeb is pretty good, or so it seems. Perhaps
too much emphasis on the Historiae by Herodotus and Thucydides (Don't you hate
when people want to be ultra-clever and spell that "Herodotos" and
"Thoukydides" -- or is it "Thucydides"? And why does Greek upsilon sometimes
transliterates as 'u', sometimes as 'y'? I suppose that it has to do with
diphtong, so
"Euripides" is _never "Eyripides").
I have ordered the authors from A to Z, and it's nice to have in one same
format people as Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, Xenophon, and the rest
of
them.
When it comes to the Bibliotheca Latina -- R. Paul says the Romans are
boring ("They never had anything but a 'legend'") and I'd agree. I'm surprised,
and grateful to, though, the fact that the Romans felt so _inferior_ to the
Greeks that they idolized them. As an Argentine, I feel that I wouldn't
idiolize
the Greeks so much if it were not for the fact that the _Romans_ idiolized
them. This feeling, I don't detect in Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-oriented people, as
strong as I do in some 'Victorian' gentlemen or some educated
Romance-language speaker).
If you think of it, -- and there's a timeline in the Loeb Classical Library
-- website --, the latest author they include is "Venerabilis Bede", who I
would _not_ call a Classic, but since I'm such an Anglophile, I will include
in
the Library -- I have ordered vol. 1 of the 2-volume series). (I already
possess the very _Anglo-Saxon_ Bede in various editions).
I note that Harvard University Press is now engaged also in what I think
they think will be a competitor to the Loeb Classical Library. This is what
they
call the "I Tatti Library" -- blue volumes, and slightly bigger, it seems --
dedicated to LATIN works but from the ITALIAN renaissance. Why they have to
stick to ITALIAN authors beats me. I think there is a lot of academic politics
there, as the thing is supposed to revere (and more importantly,
commercially promote) this villa, "I Tatti" owned by the Anglo-Jewish-American
'scholar' (for lack of a better word) Bernard Berenson.
Loeb left the USA quite early in his life, I believe, and settled in
Germany, and married a German (woman). His father owned the Loeb bank in New
York
which I don't know if still exists.
When I mentioned that Loeb considered Harvard his 'alma mater' and made a
reference to the 'houses' -- as they are called in Harvard, I was wrongly
transferring an Oxonian attitude to Harvard. As I learned from Grice (I think),
an
Oxonian's first loyalty is towards HIS college. For Grice, it was CORPUS
CHRISTI. And _that_ is what his 'alma mater' was. His postgraduate fellowship
--
the Harmondworth, through which he met his wife -- at Merton did not quite
count, and less so -- in loyalty terms -- the College of St.John, on St. Giles
street, where he taught for more than 30 years.
But then, the whole Anglo-American thing does not seem to fit so perfectly.
I was reading that what an Englishman (or -woman) would consider his or her
alma mater would really be his or her _public school_. So, for Grice that
would
be "Clifton".
The thing does not quite work for places like Clifton -- a reasonably newish
public school, post-Dr.Arnold --. But Eton is different, and indeed has this
aurea around it, that an Old Etonian would be being _rude_ to Eton if he
were to consider his Oxford college his "alma mater" -- and I'd agree.
Apparently, in the USA, the prep schools (as I think they are called) don't
quite
count as "alma mater" -- what's the plural for that Geary?
This I was reading, as I recall, in that excellent book, called, simply, the
"Harvard Book", which is an old-fashioned kind of book with readings and
things and which provides with reminiscences by students, and usual
comparisons
with Oxford -- There are readings in the Book by Oscar Wilde, and other Brits
who visited Harvard way back then.
In far-away places like Buenos Aires, mind, Loeb's Labour is sometimes
discredited. Or so it was by a few of my pompous professors ("ah, to be a
university professor", Krueger sighs -- you wouldn't enjoy as many nice
choices as
you have, Julie, and no, curiosity did not Necessarily killed ALL CATS --
Socrates was one, and it was CURIOSITY he said ('wonder' -- what's Greek for
that,
Geary?) that could only lead -- and had led him -- to philosophy.
These professors would encourage you to stick to the Oxford editions --
PLATONIS OPERA for example -- never the Loeb, which as Virginia Woolf rather
crudely puts it -- and it's quoted on the Loeb site -- were meant for the
_amateur_.
By _amateur_ I think Virginia meant what _she_ was as opposed to his father,
but I don't know much about Dr. Stephen. I like the word _amateur_, I prefer
'gentleman' or 'gentlewoman', though.
What pompous professors mean by _losing_ Loeb's Labour is the lack -- in the
Loeb -- of what they call the 'critical apparatus'. When I first heard that
expression, I was reminded of a television set. What has _apparatus_ to do
with it all? By it, it's meant the various codices and MSS with the various
editorial distinctions, between "lusei" and "lusein" and "leisin", etc, in,
say,
a Platonic dialogue on beauty.
Mind, English is for me as furrin a language as Greek or Latin, so that
amateur ring that Mrs. Woolf found in it I don't. To me a bilingual Loeb
edition
is a book in _two_ foreign languages, and for which I have to find my own
personal interpretation.
_NOT_ having English as your first, or 'native' as you may call it,
language, may _improve_ the value of the Loeb. Remember that while the French
do have
their "Pleyade"? bilingual editions of Plato, say, in Greek and French --
and that _MANY_ Argentines use, finding French more akin to Spanish than
English
-- nothing like what Loeb was having in mind existed in England.
The reason for that was the received opinion -- which I received too -- that
Latin and Greek are not worth _translating_.
That is why Horne Tooke has this book called "Epea Pteroenta", sic in Greek
characters, and -- that L. Helm mentions when discussing the language that
Arendt finds worth commenting in her book.
Anyway, this is getting long enough -- Talking of Long, and LongOS, I was
surprised that the Greek for that is "Loggos", where the 'gg' transliterates in
Latin as "ng". I guess we knew that when we remember the archangel (Gk.
arkhaggelos).
I think Andreas said I was allowed _five_ posts a day -- I'll re-read his
post --. I only have access to the files, and I've seen that there has not been
much traffic, as far as the posts archived in the files is concerned, so here
goes my night (or nocturnal) meditation (or 'emission', as Geary prefers).
Eros ... (or "Love or what you will", as E. Waugh, of Hertford, would have
it)
Good night,
J. L.
-- at the Swimming Pool
(Library)
Calle 58, No. 611
La Plata B1900BPY
Buenos Aires, Argentina.
ps. You don't need a pocket to fit your Loeb when you come, as
'togas'
don't _carry_ pockets.
************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
Other related posts:
