Concerning Pigs, Education, Monks, Nightingales etc.

Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust-- namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century--he was far profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also, a good deal more silent. 


-Nietzsche on l’abbé Galiani, "Beyond Good and Evil"


Galiani is the most hilarious Neapolitan you've never heard of. Here are some choice bits I translated from an obscure Google Books scan, for your pleasure and edification:


Porco Sacro


There are some monks in Naples who are allowed to raise a herd of pigs at the public expense. These privileged porkers are called by the saintly people who oversee them the porco sacro, or "sacred pigs". Highly respected, they promenade through all the streets; they go into houses, one receives them cordially and with niceties; if a sow goes into labour, one takes every possible care for her and the piglets: and too lucky whomever she has honoured with her lay-in!

 Whoever smacks a porco sacro commits sacrilege. Nevertheless, unscrupulous soldiers sometimes kill them. But such an assassination causes a huge uproar; the city and the senate pass the most severe ordinances possible. The malefactors, fearing discovery, buy two candles and place them at the two ends of the porco sacro, over which lies a great covering, with a baptismal font and sprinkler at its head and a crucifix by its feet. A visitor to the the city would see many on their knees praying around the deceased.

 One of them presents the sprinkler to the commissary; the commissary disperses it, gets on his knees,  prays, and asks who is it that has died.

And the reply:

"One of our comrades, and honest man! What a loss. Behold the way of the world; the good ones always go, while the wicked remain."

On Education

(from a letter to Louise d’Épinay)  

...My treaty on education is all but done: I prove that education is the same for men and for beasts. It reduces itself to these two points: 1) learning to tolerate injustice  2) learning to suffer ennui.

What does one do to train a horse? The horse naturally ambles, trots, runs; but it does it when it seems good to him, and subject to his own pleasure. We teach him to put on speed despite himself, both against his reason (here the injustice) and to do it for two whole hours (here the ennui).

Thus, one teaches Latin or Greek or French to a child; it's not the utility of the thing that interests us, it's that one must accustom him to follow the will of others (to be bored) and to be beaten by a being who was born his equal (to suffer).

When he is accustomed to these things, he's prepped, he's social: he goes into the world, he respects magistrates, ministers, kings, and he doesn't complain. He exercises the functions of his charge, whether he's at his desk, or in a meeting, or in a regiment, or at l'oeil-de-boeuf; he yawns, stays put and earns his living.

If he doesn't do this, he is of no worth to the social order. Thus, education is nothing but the pruning of natural talent to make room for social requirements. Education has to amputate and shave-off his talents. If it does not, you get a poet, the improvisateur, the bravo, the painter, the charmer, the original mind, who amuse themselves and starve, and cannot place themselves in any niche in the social order.

The English, the nation which has received the least education in the Universe, is consequently the grandest, the most embarrassing, and therefore the most miserable of all.

The rules of education are thus quite simple and short. One requires less education in a republic than in a monarchy, and under a despotic regime one must keep children in the seraglios, worse than women and slaves.

Take these theories, develop them, and you'll have a book absolutely contrary to the Emile, and so much the better...

The Monk and the Trunk


A coachman was summoned to a Bernadine monastery on behalf of a man of the cloth who was to take a long journey. The coachman stated his price, and it was agreed upon; he then asked to see the luggage trunk, and it was of a normal size. The next morning, he arrived at the appointed time with his horses and coach. He received the trunk and attached it, and opened the door of the coach for the monk to enter. He had yet to actually see the monk in question, but now he finally saw him: something of a flabby colossus in length, width, and breadth. The entirety of the coach-box was barely enough to contain him. At the sight of this massive pile of flesh, the coachman cried:

"Next time, I'll ask to see the monk instead of the trunk!"

Everyday we ask to see the trunk, and we forget the monk. A woman with charming eyes, the most beautiful mouth, and tits that make one recoil: voila the trunk!

The Cuckoo, The Nightingale, The Ass


One day in the depths of the forest there arose a dispute over musical tastes between the cuckoo and the nightingale. Each took the side of his own talent:

"What bird," said the cuckoo, "has a song so simple, so natural, and so measured as mine?"

"What bird," said the nightingale, "has a softer, more varied, more striking, more light, more touching song than mine?"

The cuckoo: "I say little, but it's got weight, order; one remembers it!"

The nightingale: "I love to talk, but it's always new, I never get tired. I enchant the forests, the cuckoo depresses them. He's so stuck on his mother's lesson that he doesn't dare try a peep he didn't learn from her. Me, I don't have any master; I play by my own rules. It's exactly because I break them that people admire me. What a comparison between his fastidious method and my happy ecstasies!"

The cuckoo tried several times to interrupt the nightingale, but nightingales sing non-stop and never listen; and that's their little fault. Ours, carried on by his own ideas, pursued them with rapidity, without caring at all about the replies of his rival. Meanwhile, after several arguments and counterarguments, they agreed to seek the judgement of some third beastie.

But where to find an animal equally instructed and impartial to judge? It was not without a bit of looking that they finally found the right adjudicator. While crossing a prairie they saw a most grave and solemn jackass. And since the creation of that particular species, none had ever had such long ears as this one.

"Ah!" said the cuckoo upon seeing them, "we are too lucky! Our dispute is an affair of the ear; there is our judge - God has delivered him expressly to us."

The jackass hee-hawed. He didn't really think that one day he'd be a music critic. But Providence has pleasured itself in stranger things. Our two birds began to debate in front of him, complimented him on his gravity and his judgement, exposed him to the subject of their dispute, and humbly begged him to listen and decide. But the ass, turning his heavy head from side to side and gnashing his teeth, made them understand with his ears that he was hungry and was not holding that day his seat of justice.

But the birds insisted, and the ass continued to bray. While braying his appetite curbed a bit, and there were a few cool shady trees planted about the edge of the prairie.

"Oh alright!," he said, "go there, I'll follow; you sing, I'll go along, I'll listen to you and then I'll tell you what I think."

The birds took off in the blink of an eye and perched; the ass followed them with the air and step of a president of mortar crossing the hall of the palace. Finally he arrived, plunked to the ground, and said:

"Commence! The court listens."

It was he who was the whole court.

The cuckoo said: "My lord, there is not a word to waste on my rationale. Grasp well the character of my song, and above all deign to observe its art and its method." And then, clearing its throat and beating its wings each time, he sung:

 "cuckoo! cuCkoo! cUUckoo! CUkoo! cucKoo! cuckOO! cuckoo! cuckoocoo!"

And after having combined this in every possible way, he stopped.

The nightingale, without preamble, deployed his voice, threw himself into the boldest modulations, followed by the most novel and profound songs; such cadences as catch the breath, followed by lowering tones and murmuring from the depths of his throat like the wave that dissipates itself softly between rocks, and thereupon it rose again, tittered a little, filled the extent of the air and remained as if suspended. It was successively soft, light, brilliant, pathetic, and, whatever character he fancied, he painted it; but his song was not made for everybody.

Carried away by his enthusiasm, he kept on singing, but the ass, who had already yawned several times, stopped him and said:

"No doubt everything you've just sung was wonderfully pretty, but I don't understand any of it; overall it seems rather bizarre to me, messy, unhinged. You might be more learned than your rival here, but he's more methodical than you...And as for myself, I'm all for method."

Things I Happen to Know

I know damn well wasps like ketchup,

I know a man by his cap,

I know an awesome time from a fuck up,

I know a pine tree’s got sap,

I know a hobo from a chap,

I know a Quebecois by his “oui?”

I know a wink from a slap.

I know it all, but not me.

I know the smoker by his smell,

I know the hipster by his taste,

I know a liar by his "well...",

I know the student’s life (a waste)

I know a slutty top from a chaste

I know a neckbeard goes with geeks

I know a hot wing by its glaze

I know it all, but not me.

I know a Costco from a Loblaws

I know a Mac from a PC

I know safe drugs by the bylaws

I know a pug dog is wheezy

I know a cat by my sneezing

I know a public servant’s card-key

I know a good book from a sleazy

I know it all, but not me.

Cheap or expensive, willing or loath,

Boss, I know everything, see?

I know Death comes for us both

I know it all, but not me.

From the Vault - Laforgue and the Sun

A word to the sun for starters....

Sun! Soldier patched up with orders and coughings

Poorly raised planter, know that the Vestales

To whom the Moon, in her equivocal cat-eyeings,

Is the rose of the Only Cathedral.

Know that the Pierrots, moths of the dolmens

And the white lilies of the lake where rests Gommorrah

And all of the benefactors who graze Eden

(Always springlike with renounciations) - abhor ya.

And these especially despise you,

The Hunk, the Indian Giver, the Desperado, the Ruffian,

For the charms of gold eggs that raise them so high to

The world and their lunar Orphan.

Continue to furnish those drunken sunsets

The vomit of tommorrow's national showbiz

To style your seasons, to damn well trounce us

From the dramas of the Umbilical Apotheosis!

Get on, Phoebus! But, Deva, god of wakening riot,

Take a look time to time at these Port-Royal aesthetes ahead

Who, in their lunar decamerons outside

Speak of no less than putting a price on your head.

Certainly, you've got many nice days above;

But of the old customs, it grows, that senate

For what good? who will dream of art and love

At the far door of the inorganic Aggregate.

-Know that we'll say a fine phrase, sonorous

Bone, but quite weak as wet medullary ,

Of all hollow-in-the-end prattle: it's pathos,

It's from Pheobus! - Ah! No need for commentary...

O vision of a time that was punished sufficiently,

From a: "Hey! Get on, Phoebus!"will return your prayer soon

Of old Crescite and multiplicamini,

To inoculate yourself forever against the fresh moon.

A little Rimbaud Blitzkrieg

Recovering from a wisdom tooth extraction. Rimbaud is appealing to a sick person:

LIGHTNING

Human works! it's an explosion that lightens my abyss from time to time.

"Nothing is vanity! To science, foward!" cries the modern Ecclesiastes, that is, everybody. And yet the corpses of the wicked and lazy fall on the hearts of others.... Ah! Quick, quick a little; there, beyond the night, future, eternal recompense...Shall we flee them? ...

-What can I do? I know work; and science is too slow. How prayer gallops and how light scolds I see well. It's too simple, and it is too hot; that happens to me. I have my duty, I will be proud in the way of the many, setting it aside.

My life is worn. Let's go! Let's pretend, laze about-what a pity! And we'll live in amusing ourselves, in dreaming monstrous loves and fantastic universes, in complaining and fighting about the appearances of the world, acrobat, mendicant, artist, bandit, - priest! On my hospital bed, the odour of incense hits me very strongly; guardian of sacred aromas, confessor, martyr... I recognize my dirt childhood education. And more!... Get on, my twenty years, if others will be twenty years...

No! No! now I revolt against that death! The work seems too light for my pride; my treachery to the world would be a torture too short. At the last moment, I'll attack to the left, right...

So, - oh ! - dear poor soul, eternity won't be lost for us!

Fall: Rilke, Laforgue, Luther

Lord: it is time. The summer was damn long.

Lay your shadows on the Sun's hour

Let them winds loose on the fields.

Demand the last fruits ripen;

Give them only 2 southern days

Push em down to completion and speed

the last sweets in the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, build no more.

Who's now alone, it'll last awhile

will wake, read, write long letters,

and will in alleys back and forth

wander fitful, if the leaves rush.

*

Here comes the fall of miserable downpours

Drowning the banal summer of lovers

Who stupid and slow go to crossroads

Plotting the progeny of their filthy neuroses.

G'bye lilacs, gold wheat, dusts, red skirts.

In the spleen despairing of painful organs,

Fire pretty much pokes the regrets of happy days,

We keep the incurable sadness of things...

Enjoy! Immortal glory! O season!

Spleen! Glory! Love, moneys.

Some striking bugles

Some heroes, nude and hot

Attacking the fiery Olympos of the Iliad!

O! Why was I born in this sad century,

Why am I here below?

Does the Universe know?

O! If I had a goal!

To love! To love! To enjoy!

Is my life a dream?

I exist! Is this really true?

To glory! To love! To exhuast my unique life!

(The dead

It's good buried ;

It don't leave

Hurried.)

*

Enjoy yourselves with the BOSS, you righted; the Pious should hail him rightly.

Give thanks to the BOSS with harps; praise sing him on psalms and instruments of 10 stings!

Sing him a new song; play pretty on the strings with cheery sounds!

Cuz the BOSS's word is truthful, and what he says, that he'll do for sure.

He loves righteousness and the right; the Earth's chock full of the BOSS's goods.

Heaven is, through the BOSS's word, done up and all his Host through the breath of his mouth.

He holds the water of the seas together like a canteen, and collects the Floods in his cupboard.

All the World fears the BOSS, and before him quivers everybody who dwells on the Earthcrust.

Cause when he speaks, so goes it; if he asks, so it is.

The BOSS makes obliterate the Heathen Wit and straddles the thoughts of the people.

But the conclusion of the BOSS remains for all time, the thoughts of his heart forever and ever.

Well to the folk, of whom the BOSS is the god, to the folk, that he has raised to legacy.

The BOSS looks from Heaven and sees all Men are children.

From his stuck Throne he sees em all, who dwell on the Earth.

He drives the heart of em all, he perks up at all their work.

To a King, his big might don't help; A hero can't save himself from his might craft.

Horsies also don't help; there would ya be betrayed; and their big power wouldn't save nuthin.

Look, the eyes of the BOSS peeks at everyone who's scared of him, who hope out of his goods

that he might save em from Death and preserves their life from Hunger's knot.

Our souls await the BOSS; he's our help and shield.

Cause our Heart enjoys itself in his, and we trust his Holy Name.

Your good, BOSS, be upon us, as we hope from ya.

Thinking of Stendhal

At the least, the active life begins again for me;

Charms of youth, what they name vigour.

Cascades, hills over "dales" over lakes, indoors

From the rain, soup, and promenades, I see.

Sometimes, surging thoughts hide things from selves,

But not on purpose for the purposes of cowardice.

It was, above all, a woman of strong faith in herself,

Adieu, my fine Scala, my beautiful lake Como, adieu, adieu!

-

Can you not memorize this theology

Like the rules to a game of whist?

Do not Rousseau about it; nor hold (if you

happen to fall into it and believe) your old boys,

Your encyclopedic boys in disdain. No,

Have no spirit, my lad, until you graduate.

-

An Italian heart (what makes

Him less lovable, pardon):

No vanity but as adornment,

No guard against still, sole, gorgeous sights.

Sitting on an island rock,

No longer on edge,

Protected by deep night,

And the vast silence,

Some tears in the eyes,

Fresh moments not tasted

For a long time.

He swore never again to lie.

-

That religion steals the courage

to think of unusual things, and holds

above all personal examination the highest

of sins; a foot in the door of protestantism.

To know of what we are guilty, ask the priest, or read

the catalogue of sins, printed in books titled

Prepration for the Sacrement of Penitence.

Read murder; skipped passed simony.

(O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci!)

-

He was still young, still damn far

from spending his time to seek out

with patience particular realities of

things, thereby to figure out their causes.

dealers of antiques,

brokers, archaeologists,

You are not, as you think, alive.

For we are ever weak;

Always weakness entered

In the calculations

(come face al mancar dell' alimento)

The Other, Other Ballade of Villon

And what more, where is the third Calixte

Darn near last dead of that name,

Who four years tended the papists?

Alphons, the royal Arragon

The graceful duc of Bourbon

And Artus duc of Bretaigne,

And Charles Seven the hon. ?

But where is the pert Charlemaigne?

Similarly, the royal Scottish

Whose half-face was, says one,

Vermillion as an amethyst

Right down the chinstrap from the front?

The King of Chippre, of reknown,

Helas! and the good king of Spain

Of whom I do not know the name?

But where is the pert Charlemaigne?

But of more talking I desist;

The world is nought but illusion.

There's none who against death resists

Nor who finds provision.

And yet ask a question:

Lacelot the king of Bretaigne,

Where is he? Where is his old man?

But where is the pert Charlemaigne?

Where is Claquin the bonny Breton?

Where is the count Dauphin of Auvergne

And the late good duc of Alencon?

But where is the pert Charlemaigne?

Coeur de Lion

Coeur de Lion

no || jailbird || sings || his || heartmost

be honest || unless || hes || sad || about || it

but || for || fun & profit || why || not || sing-a-long

many || friends || poor || though

shame || if || my || ransom

lasts || 2 || winters

they || know || my men || my barons

english || norman || poitevin || gascon

they || know || no || poor || pal

whom || Id || leave || bail-less || in || jail

aint || no || hard || feelings

but || I'm || still || here