This Too Shall Pass

I happened across an evidently well-known Virgil quote yesterday on Laudator. It must be well known because I found it easy to get a translation of the phrase into English, not present where I saw it. On Laudator I always feel decidedly like a fellahin, and justly so. Here is the quote:

Dabit Deus his quoque finem.

God will also bring this to an end—which just happens to match one of our most basic sayings within Ghulfdom, and we are not alone.

The more we know the more humble we ought to be—because as knowledge expands so does awareness of the vast universes we’ve not even approached. Having read Dante a while back I couldn’t help but become very aware of Virgil, Dante’s guide right to the gates of heaven. In that connection I looked up the poet, read bits. Of course I’d also read or used other snippets from him (see this, for instance). With the Roman culture I am exactly in the same position as those who used bricks and stones from once splendid Roman architectural works to build their hovels. I meant to read the Aeneid, one of these days, the celebration of Rome’s foundation, but to speak of an urge here is incorrect. Whether in writing that work Virgil was celebrating the Augustan age or poetically critiquing it, that scholars are still debating. In any case his focus was the founding of what I view as a secular domain, which interests me not at all. And I don’t even have a child’s Latin any more, hence I can’t appreciate Virgil’s works in the original.

Nevertheless, like a child, having found that quote, I ran upstairs to read it to Brigitte with a manner, although camouflaged in a 75-year-old body, of a little boy: “Look, Ma! Look what I found!”

Stone Motto -- REVEALED!

No sooner wished than received. Herewith, then, the final word on that inscription. I have these pictures thanks to Joe Mills, Dunbarton Oaks' own photographer. The motto is on the outer circle of the figure, shown in the last post and, again, enlarged, in the last of this particular set.

As Brandon points out in his comment to the last post, I might very well have misread the words on the fourth photograph shown, especially with a mind that, in those days, was much focused on the gearing of our economy...

Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Dunbarton Oaks. This subject is, finally, set in stone, you might say!

Stone Motto Revisited ... Revised

Tief ist der Brunnen der Vergangenheit. Sollte man ihn nicht unergründlich nennen?
Deep is the well of the past. Shouldn’t we call it bottomless?
        [Thomas Mann, opening line of Joseph and His Brothers]

Thanks to Brigitte’s slow-working but extraordinary memory, I humbly return to two earlier postings here and here. Both dealt with a stone inscription somewhere in Georgetown, in Washington, DC. These posts were made on February 11 and 12. Three months later, on May 7, as I sat down to each my lunch, Brigitte settled across from me at our sunroom table and, her elbow on the table, her chin resting on her hand, she looked at me and said: “That stone motto, you know, the Maker of the Wheel?” I nodded. She went on. “Well, I woke up this morning, and I suddenly had it. The place where we saw it? The name of that place? It was there as I woke up. It was—Dumbarton Oaks!”

This stunned me. I simply knew that she was right—but still had no idea what that place was, beyond knowing it to be a library, a foundation. We had a brief talk about the mysteries of memory—how this name could possibly resurface and how my own could immediately assent, recognizing it but still failing to fetch much else. After that—this is the Age of the Web—I went to discover the details.

The upshot of this is that Brandon Watson of Siris fame—who responded to my February plea regarding the origin of that saying—turns out to have been dead on. And my insistence on the phrasing, assertively repeated in my comment on his, turned out to be dead wrong. Alas. Now it is time to set things right.

My remembered version was:

Oh Ye Maker of the Wheel
That Geareth the Heavens
And tourneth the Starres
In a Ravishing Sway.

The chief difference, here, of course, is my remembering gearing of the heavens and Brandon suggesting that the wheel was bearing, not gearing. Brandon was sure that the actual text came from Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, specifically:

Oh thou maker of the whele that bereth the sterres,
which that art fastned to thi perdurable chayre,
turnest the hevene with a ravyssyng sweighe
and constreinest the sterres to suffren thi law.

Obviously I had to agree. Having become doubtful therefore, I now went looking for Dumbarton Oaks on the web and found it here; next I applied by e-mail to Christine Blazina, that institution’s Docent Coordinator. I sent her my version and asked for the actual wording. Graciously, and rapidly, she responded as follows:

The inscription: “O thou maker of the whele that Bereth the sterres and tornest the hevene with a ravisshing sweigh” is from Chaucer’s Translation of Boethius Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius was a fascinating historical figure, philosopher, and statesman. This inscription is in the center of our Star Garden, a small garden lined with Azaleas and adjacent to the rear of the house, west of the Green Garden and Orangery. The lead saying is found surrounding the paved circle with the figures of Aries, Capricorn, Pegasus and Phoenix in it. It is a beautiful and peaceful space.

Well, well, well. Humbled. Okay, that “gearing” was obviously my own invention, transformation, updating of that ancient vision—you might say my own poetic license—either in originally copying the text or later, the slip having been lost, remembering what I had copied.

Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy has had a remarkable life, when you think about it. It was one of the most printed and translated secular works of antiquity in medieval times. In the second post referenced above, I showed Walter John Sedgefield’s 1900 translation of Boethius’ line as:

THOU Creator of heaven and earth, that rulest on the eternal throne, Thou that makest the heavens to turn in swift course, and the stars to obey Thee, and the sun with his shining beams to quench the darkness of black night…

In 1902 W.V. Cooper rendered it thus:

Founder of the star-studded universe, resting on Thine eternal throne whence Thou turnest the swiftly rolling sky, and bindest the stars to keep Thy law.

The Dumbarton Oaks people used a shortened version of Chaucer’s, omitting the phrase “which that art y-fastned to thy perdurable chayer.” By industrializing the phrase, substituting gearing for bearing, I thus join a long line of modifiers and translators of ancient texts. Which suggests the foolhardiness of literalism in the use of humanity’s written deposit. The amazing thing here, I would submit, is really the reach of memory, which Brigitte demonstrated on that night of May 6 and 7, recalling Dumbarton Oaks and thus correcting an impression made a ways down in that deep well of the past.

The picture, incidentally, shows the stone structure that bears this inscription around the inner or the outer circle. I cannot make out where, but I might get a better image from Dumbarton Oaks before long. If I do, I’ll revisit this subject yet again.

Stone Mottos

Two days ago at Costco we noted the rollout (as I think it’s called) of Spring: mounds of earth and gardening kits and bags of fertilizers piled on high. This morning in the hush of silence produced by the snowfall of the past two days thought continues in that same direction, and with a nudge from the fountain inscription found on Siris this morning, I was reminded of our favorite stone inscription. We chanced across it once  in the narrow interior garden of some foundation or museum in Georgetown, Washington, DC a hundred summers ago. We’ve never forgotten it—and have never seen the motto used by anyone anywhere since. It marked a circular plate held aloft by a slender stone column amidst dense greenery, half obscured, and said:

OH YE MAKER OF THE WHEEL
THAT GEARETH THE HEAVENS
AND TOURNETH THE STARRES
IN A RAVISHING SWAY.

If anyone can identify the author of these words, I would appreciate getting the word.