The Drink of the Damned

"First of all, as a show business professional, I noticed, just as anybody might, the minimal interest that the citizens of Europe, more than half of them, have shown in this Europe of yours. The public is sulking. It's turning its nose up and shying away from something, as the horse-riders say, which ought not rightly be a fence. We are here thanks to the will of some . . . but to the indifference of others."

[. . .]

"If you say 'pain' rather than 'bread' or 'pan' rather than 'pane' or 'psomi', you are conveying the rich tapestry of life which dazzles us with all the wonderful facets which reflect the cultural identity of each nation. Replacing all these words with one word will be suicide -- something of which even the humblest peoples are aware. It is very odd that throughout this Europe you are working on, one language, English, has become common currency, as it were by tacit agreement. I of course have nothing against the language that gave us Byron and Shelley and Bernard Shaw, but this initial phenomenon contains the seeds of a damaging effect and threats which hard press the unwary speakers of other languages, in spite of the fact that they seem to be attracted and tempted by the glass baubles of the invader."

[. . .]

"It is because a Dane uses the word 'roubreul' that Denmark gave us Iben and Strindberg. It is because an Italian says 'pane' that Italy gave us Dante and Pirandello and Spain gave us Cervantes. It is this diversity of national cultures which gave rise to our splendid European culture. This English which is becoming entrenched -- which is being entrenched -- in European minds and shovelling every national treasure into the current press of this vague cooperative of yours will, I should cordially point out, unavoidably bring the original cultures to an end. And if, by some mischance, the Europeans are already prepared in their mind for this pass, for this downfall and for the ultimate disappearance of this cultures, then it will happen very fast. That, in a nutshell, is what I came to tell you today."

[. . .]

"And that is not all! I shall say more about the perplexity of the voters. The example I have chosen comes from a very dear friend, a Christian -- although, there again, I am not keen on clericalism. Now, my friend says, look and see how Europe sees itself first and foremost. All those tradesmen! Doesn't it remind you of anything? I stop. No concern with anything spiritual or cultural. The triumph of the spirit of the merchant. I am an atheist and free of any metaphysical concerns and I was very touched, moved even, by the words of my Christian friend. No one doubts that the Europe to come will be a Europe of tradesmen and goods and markets. No one would even think it was a nuisance if that was all it was . . . although there may be some doubt as to the excellence of the transformation in view -- and I mean the real improvements that we would be entitled to expect for the people, the citizens. The citizen -- the word that the human rights merchants forget most of the time."

[. . .]

"I am a man of culture, so I am used to unleashing demons on screen and stage. And these demons may have their influence. They may have a considerable hold over the planet. The demon Alcestis, for example, the demon Tartuffe, the demon Figaro, the demons -- dressed up even -- of Marivaux, the demon Jacques le Fataliste and all of Voltaire's demons -- who also engendered the French revolution which we are being told, rather noisily perhaps, all about at the moment. But we have been imprudent in these final years of the century, not by unleashing the most fearful of all demons, but by rehabilitating it. Hitherto, that demon spread its pestilence, nut it was a little bit ashamed of its own breath. It was a demon which struck at night and hugged the walls and its victims despised it. But now, its victims have been converted to its law. The demon I am talking about is the demon profit and what I mean by profit is lucre."

[. . .]

"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that, of all the religions that exists, it is faith in profit which leads most inexorably and most surely to the worst kind of fanaticism of all. It was Montesquieu who said: put the economy at the top and the State is lost."

[. . .]

"I have some scruples in talking to young people, to young people of Europe. Yet there is something I should like to tell them, discreetly and affectionately, in the name of the most innocent feeling in the world, the instinct of preservation of what is essential and above all irrecuperable at the time it is being lost -- the national cultural identity. Lose that and there is nothing left to lose. Or win. It becomes what our friend Diderot called a satyr, a humanoid of a kind that can still understand an order but is not able to analyse it. Yes, I am speaking here of the instinct of preservation of all young people, if they still have it. No speeches, no sermons, no philosophy. Just one, simple wish, one which you may well find pathetic, but how symbolic it is. I solemnly call on all the young people of my country and of all countries to agree to a derogation from what has become for them, alas, a habit. I call on them, once, at least once, at drinking time, to abandon their coke and order in its place, shall we say, a little glass of French white wine, Alsace of course, Traminer or Riquewihr, and to hold it high, to look at it, golden and cloudless and to sniff the bouquet before they sip. That's all. If, by some misfortune, they go back to coke after this experience, nothing and no one can help them. It will have been the drink of the damned."

(Address by Mr Claude Autant-Lara, French film director, European Parliament, 25 July 1989)

Read the whole thing here.

Papini

The first "spirito eterno" of poetry which came to dwell with me in the days of my youth was Prince Hamlet. The first philosopher who made a profound impression on my mind was Berkeley, and later I translated his works into Italian. The first poet who took possession of my youthful soul was Walt Whitman. The first foreign review to which I contributed was the Monist, published in Chicago. the first thinker of a nation other than my own to whom I was bound by ties of genuine friendship was William James.

There must exist, therefore, a kind of foreordained harmony between the Anglo-Saxon culture and my own mind, and perhaps it id due to this special arrangement of fate that my works have had more readers in Great Britain and North America than in Italy itself.

I am happy that, at the moment when my book on Dante is about to be issued in the language of Shakespeare, an opportunity has been given me to express to this great group of English readers my sincere and fervent gratitude. If these my non-Italian readers may be taken as representing by anticipation the judgement of the future, I take pride in having had an honourable and favourable reception by that immense posterity who live on the shores of all the oceans, and who have always known how to mix in due proportions the venerable traditions of humanism with the bold pursuit of every modernity, to carry side by side a proper conservatism and a necessary radicalism.

No writer can say that he has created and thought for all men until his work has been translated into English, that is, into the language which represent to-day the most universal vehicle of the printed word. What the Greek language was from the time of Alexander the Great to St Paul, what the Latin was during all the Middle Ages and until the final splendours of the Renaissance, that the English language is to-day.

And for me, a Florentine and an Italian, it is a great satisfaction to see – thanks to the labour of Eleanor Hammond Broadus and Anna Benedetti – this book on Dante translated into English. Outside of Italy no other country has so greatly loved and studied the creator of the Divina Commedia as have England and America. Not only have they produced accomplished Dante scholars – like the English Lord Vernon, H. C. Barlow, Edward Moore, Paget Toynbee; and the American Longfellow, C. E. Norton, J. R. Lowell – worthy to stand on an equality with the Italian and the German; but the first-hand knowledge of Dante’s work, even among those of moderate culture, is more widespread than elsewhere. the English-speaking peoples not only know Dante, but they admire him, appreciate him, understand him, love him.

The literature in English about Dante is extraordinarily rich and abundant. Therefore I count it a great honour that this book of mine should be published in Great Britain and in North America. Perhaps it merited this fortune because, as the reader will see, it is a little different form other books on Dante in that it tries to bring out new elements through an untrammelled and dispassionate investigation of the secret soul of the divine Poet. Fanatical adulators and pedants with extravagant imagination have almost buried Dante for a second time under a massive and majestic mausoleum of criticism, erudition, interpretation, and rhetoric.

This book is an attempt to resurrect him. I am confident that its true import will be understood by English and American readers.

Giovanni Papini

1 May, 1934
Florence, Italy

(Giovanni Papini, Dante Vivo, translated from the Italian by Eleanor Hammond Broadus and Anna Benedetti, The Macmilllan Company, New York 1935, Foreword to English Readers)

Brahmins

"Ten years from now the Brahmins of media will probably not be the ones they were 10 years before." (Tina Brown)

[CT]

Mmmmoon

Fly me to the Moon, let me sing among those stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words . . .

Pages and Words and Personality

"If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always stronger than the lying crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality."

(Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer)

Good Night

I learned, too, the serious lessons of daily journalism. The need for accuracy, for instance. (Walter Cronkite, A Reporter's Life)

The former US TV news anchor Walter Cronkite has died at the age of 92.

He was the face of CBS News from 1962 to 1981, but he started his career as a newspaperman -- and closed it as a newspaper columnist.

He failed to complete his studies, dropping out in 1935 to start a series of reporting jobs with local newspapers.

Karajan Forever

Conductor Herbert von Karajan (5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989)

Underworld

Of course, certain tabloid newspapers have always operated in a sleazy, subterranean world. Of course, their reporters ("correspondents") and informants ("sources") slink around boudoirs and bordellos in pursuit of scoops ("truth"). Of course they pay dubious characters to procure voyeuristic information ("news"). How else, and where else, would they so regularly obtain the dirt they publish week in and week out? From the Government Gazette? [Eric Beecher, Crikey]

Irish Blessings

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be ever at your back.
May the sunshine warm upon your face,
And the rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again.
May God hold you, May God hold you
Ever in the palm of his hand.

[The Priests]

Swiss Notebook

A five/four time at three a.m.

and Old Hermann sleeps
the sleep of man . . .
Little Mountain on the Golden Hill
where cypresses play the blues of trees

and Cupid strolls through Via Nassa . . .
Meanwhile, in Piazza Riforma
Miss Love drinks
beer and waits and thinks:

Jazz unties the mooring ropes
and sails lake Lugano
with drums, bass and piano.

(Léon Bertoletti, 5/4 and Other Things)

And They Say...

"No inquiries, no charges, no evidence"

Last week the News of the World was the subject of some ferocious and, at times, hysterical attacks on its credibility, integrity and journalistic standards.

The onslaught was led by a series of reports in the Guardian newspaper and hastily followed by the BBC, Sky News, and ITN.

The essence of their campaign was that members of our staff have engaged in a widespread and unlawful conspiracy to access "thousands" of mobile phones.

However, as Andy Hayman - a former Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, who headed an exhaustive nine-month inquiry into our journalistic conduct - says today: "My recollection is different."

He adds: "As I recall the list of those targeted, which was put together from records kept by Glen Mulcaire, ran to several hundred names.

"Of these," writes Hayman, "there was a small number - perhaps a handful - where there was evidence that the phones had actually been tampered with."

And of claims that the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was a victim of hacking, Hayman declares they are "without any clear evidence".

Despite purporting to represent the highest standards in journalism, the Guardian's reporting was inaccurate, selective and purposely misleading.

It is a fact that one former News of the World journalist - Clive Goodman, the Royal Editor - tapped into telephone voicemails.

A private investigator, Glen Mulcaire, contracted to the paper, did the same.

That happened in 2006. Both men went to prison. Goodman was subsequently dismissed and the editor at the time, Andy Coulson - now David Cameron's Press chief - honourably resigned.

As a result of these actions, this newspaper, in April last year, resolved a legal case brought against us by Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, after it was discovered that his voicemail had been illegally hacked into by Mulcaire.

On Thursday, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, one of Scotland Yard's most experienced detectives, confirmed that the police would not be reopening their inquiry into the affair - because no new evidence had come to light.

So let us be clear. Neither the police, nor our own internal investigations, has found any evidence to support allegations that News of the World journalists have accessed voicemails of any individuals.

Nor instructed private investigators or other third parties to access voicemails of any individual.

Nor found that there was any systemic corporate illegality by any executive to suppress evidence to the contrary.

If the police, or ourselves, had uncovered such evidence, charges would have been brought.

The Guardian slyly linked a separate investigation by the Information Commissioner to allegations of phone tapping.

That report, which named almost all national news- papers and covered activities as far back as 2001, referred to 23 journalists from the News of the World and The Sun.

Along with banks and government agencies, they had received confidential information through a private investigator which, the Commissioner deemed, breached the Data Protection Act.

The News of the World has a long and distinguished tradition. But we also accept that there have been times in our 165-year history when, like the rest of the media, we have made mistakes.

When we have done so, we have admitted to them.

No newspaper, least of all the Guardian, is perfect. Nor is our craft a perfect science.

Its practitioners are human. They misbehave and make mistakes for which they - rightly - pay a heavy price.

So let us remember that it was the Guardian that knowingly, deliberately and illegally forged a cabinet minister's signature to get an exclusive story.

It was the Guardian that cynically abandoned one of journalism's most fundamental and sacred covenants by revealing the identity of a confidential informant.

As a result of that betrayal, a Foreign Office civil servant - a 23-year-old woman - was sent to prison.

So, if the Guardian has any fresh evidence to support their claims against us, we invite them to pass it on to the police without delay.

Yesterday, in their editorial column, they proclaimed: "Decent journalism has never been more necessary . . . "

We couldn't agree more. It's time they practised what they preach.

Aristotle's Lyceum (Peripatos)

The archaeological site of the 4th century BC Lyceum of Aristotle, in downtown Athens, will open to the public in late July, according to Athens News Agency.

The Lyceum, named after its 6th century BC sanctuary to Apollo Lyceus (the "wolf-god," from the word "lykos," or wolf), had long been a place of philosophical discussion and debate, and had had been the meeting place of the Athenian assembly before the establishment of a permanent meeting area on Pnyx hill in the 5th century BC.

But the Lyceum is mostly renowned for the philosophical school founded there by Aristotle upon his return to Athens in 335 BC after being the private tutor of the then young prince Alexander of Macedon, the future Alexander the Great, since 343 BC.

After his return to Athens in 335 BC and up to his death in 322 BC, Aristotle rented some buildings in the Lyceum and established a school there where he lectured, wrote most of his philosophical treatises and dialogues, and systematically collected books that comprised the first library in European history. Since Aristotle liked to walk around the grounds as he lectured, surrounded by his students, the philosophical school he founded was called Peripatetic (from "peripatos," which means stroll or walkabout in Greek).

Situated just outside the walls of ancient Athens, the Lyceum was brutally sacked and razed to the ground by the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 86 BC, but was later rebuilt.

The site's location remained unknown for centuries until it was rediscovered in 1996 during excavations for Athens' new Museum of Modern Art.

The King of Accordion

Richard Galliano...

Brig, Switzerland

Quella notte a Briga, sotto le torri
dei tre magi orientali nitide,
un gatto brigò tra i nostri piedi.

Era svizzerotedesco - ciarliero
zero, diffidente, nero:

la buonanima forse di Stockalper
trasmigrata (se ci credi) perfino
nel felino portinaio vicario
del mio grigio residence milanese.

Sta imparando a dirmi gute Nacht.

(Léon Bertoletti, Taccuino Elvetico)

Of All the Loves

Mikol Ha'Ahavot (Of All the Loves): Idan Raichel, Maya Avraham...

[The Idan Raichel Project]

Cluck Trent, Reporter

...and superhero...

Widespread Slogan

The words "adult faith" in recent decades have formed a widespread slogan. It is often meant in the sense of the attitude of those who no longer listen to the Church and her Pastors but autonomously choose what they want to believe and not to believe hence a do-it-yourself faith. And it is presented as a "courageous" form of self-expression against the Magisterium of the Church. In fact, however, no courage is needed for this because one may always be certain of public applause. Rather, courage is needed to adhere to the Church's faith, even if this contradicts the "logic" of the contemporary world. This is the non-conformism of faith which Paul calls an "adult faith".

(B16, here)

Quietly...

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns. [NYT]

In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

Sound strange? God exists, after all.