[lit-ideas] Loeb's Labour Lost (And Found)

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. 
 



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