On Quotes
John K. Taber
Posters are fond of pithy quotes. One of my favorites was Homines id quod volunt credunt (Men believe what they want) supposedly from Caesar’s Commentaries. It doesn’t take long in a newsgroup to learn that Caesar was right. Oh, true, posters argue their point with logic or rage, but in the end, they believe what they want. I confess I used the quote to the point of exasperating my readers before I finally dropped it from my signature.
The problem using pithy quotes is that the poster has practically never read the work from which the quote is pulled. Sometimes the quote comes from another post or email. Sometimes from a web site providing quotes for any occasion so that the poster doesn’t have to do much reading to find a poet or statesman or philosopher to voice the poster’s view. Sometimes from an important personnage, living or dead, such as Petronius Arbiter, or Toqueville, or Ronald Reagan. And, I confess, I never read Caesar’s Commentaries, and I am simply unable to tell you if Caesar really wrote Homines id quod volunt credunt or not. I just liked what the quote seemed to say.
A frequent contributor to a mailing list I subscribe to used a quote that flabbergasted me. It was
Baudelaire happens to be one of my favorite poets, but I did not recognize the quote. There is no way, I thought to myself, that Baudelaire could write that. He didn’t write a lot, but the poems he did write sound nothing like that. One of his poems, "The Jewels", is one of the most sensuous poems in any language. When The Flowers of Evil was first published, Baudelaire was prosecuted by the French Government for harming public morals. He was fined, and The Jewels was one of several poems that had to be expunged from the book. He celebrated sensual pleasure, and here we have a banality in praise of work? No way.
I asked the mailing list contributor for the citation. After a few exchanges I learned he got the quote from a quote site, http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/t/time.html from its TIME category. Indeed, the quote truly was Baudelaire. It was taken from his Journaux Intimes (Intimate Journals), which I had not heard of. The web site used a translation by Christopher Isherwood.
So, it was off to the library for me. I got the most authoritative edition I could find, because for reasons beyond this post I felt that the Isherwood translation had textual problems.
It turns out that Intimate Journals is a collection of Baudelaire’s odds and ends. One part, , “My Heart Laid Bare”, in which the quote occurs, actually began as notes for a larger work that Baudelaire never finished. He was fond of Poe, and cribbed the title from one of Poe’s works. Baudelaire intended a shockingly honest work baring his soul and feelings, or at least interesting a publisher enough for an advance, but it never amounted to more than some notes to which Baudelaire added entirely unrelated jottings as the original purpose of the notebook was lost. He also kept notebooks with details of household expenses, angry outbursts against his mother, and so on. After Baudelaire’s death, these disparate notebooks were bought by a private collector, and after the collector’s death were forcibly united and published under the title of Intimate Journals.
Baudelaire had syphilis, was dying, and terrified of going insane. The entry after this quote is his prescription recipe from his doctor, which was laborious, but copied out with desperation, as if he meant to follow it scrupulously. In those days, prescriptions for syphilis were pretty imaginative if of little value.
Sartre wrote a scathing review of Baudelaire, drawing in large part from Intimate Journals damning it for its banality. He is quite right, it is banal, like the quote on work. But Sartre ignores Baudelaire’s mental agitation as his death neared (not to mention failing to judge Baudelaire’s poems as poems). The poet was literally frightened out of his wits, and willing to try “working hard” as his step-father must have often admonished the Parisian dandy, as if somehow that would help. It was as if Baudelaire were saying “Yes, Doctor, yes. I will follow your prescription recipe to the letter. Yes, Father, yes. I will work hard and forgo pleasures.” Plainly, Baudelaire was demoralized.
It would have been better to leave Intimate Journals unpublished out of respect for Baudelaire’s established greatness, but such is the appeal of any scrap written by one of the most important poets of modern times that I don’t suppose the poor man’s privacy could have been protected.
The quote that for good reason I doubted came from Baudelaire nevertheless was his. But the context was missing. Did the mail list contributor know anything about the context? I doubt that he ever read a word of Baudelaire’s poems. Perhaps he never heard of Baudelaire. I suspect he felt that quoting a “French poet” magically lent importance to his posts. The reader was supposed to be impressed.
However, great writers have better things to do than provide posters with banalities, even if conveniently arranged and categorized on a web site someplace.
Posters should not quote for decorative reasons without having read the work in question, and hopefully with an understanding of the whole thing. Perhaps Caesar never wrote the quote I used — there are a lot of bogus quotes on the internet. Perhaps Caesar did write it, but was quoting an adversary to refute his cynicism, for all I know, instead of commenting on internet practice.
If you don’t know the stuff don’t quote it.
Posters are fond of pithy quotes. One of my favorites was Homines id quod volunt credunt (Men believe what they want) supposedly from Caesar’s Commentaries. It doesn’t take long in a newsgroup to learn that Caesar was right. Oh, true, posters argue their point with logic or rage, but in the end, they believe what they want. I confess I used the quote to the point of exasperating my readers before I finally dropped it from my signature.
The problem using pithy quotes is that the poster has practically never read the work from which the quote is pulled. Sometimes the quote comes from another post or email. Sometimes from a web site providing quotes for any occasion so that the poster doesn’t have to do much reading to find a poet or statesman or philosopher to voice the poster’s view. Sometimes from an important personnage, living or dead, such as Petronius Arbiter, or Toqueville, or Ronald Reagan. And, I confess, I never read Caesar’s Commentaries, and I am simply unable to tell you if Caesar really wrote Homines id quod volunt credunt or not. I just liked what the quote seemed to say.
A frequent contributor to a mailing list I subscribe to used a quote that flabbergasted me. It was
We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), French poet.
Baudelaire happens to be one of my favorite poets, but I did not recognize the quote. There is no way, I thought to myself, that Baudelaire could write that. He didn’t write a lot, but the poems he did write sound nothing like that. One of his poems, "The Jewels", is one of the most sensuous poems in any language. When The Flowers of Evil was first published, Baudelaire was prosecuted by the French Government for harming public morals. He was fined, and The Jewels was one of several poems that had to be expunged from the book. He celebrated sensual pleasure, and here we have a banality in praise of work? No way.
I asked the mailing list contributor for the citation. After a few exchanges I learned he got the quote from a quote site, http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/t/time.html from its TIME category. Indeed, the quote truly was Baudelaire. It was taken from his Journaux Intimes (Intimate Journals), which I had not heard of. The web site used a translation by Christopher Isherwood.
So, it was off to the library for me. I got the most authoritative edition I could find, because for reasons beyond this post I felt that the Isherwood translation had textual problems.
It turns out that Intimate Journals is a collection of Baudelaire’s odds and ends. One part, , “My Heart Laid Bare”, in which the quote occurs, actually began as notes for a larger work that Baudelaire never finished. He was fond of Poe, and cribbed the title from one of Poe’s works. Baudelaire intended a shockingly honest work baring his soul and feelings, or at least interesting a publisher enough for an advance, but it never amounted to more than some notes to which Baudelaire added entirely unrelated jottings as the original purpose of the notebook was lost. He also kept notebooks with details of household expenses, angry outbursts against his mother, and so on. After Baudelaire’s death, these disparate notebooks were bought by a private collector, and after the collector’s death were forcibly united and published under the title of Intimate Journals.
Baudelaire had syphilis, was dying, and terrified of going insane. The entry after this quote is his prescription recipe from his doctor, which was laborious, but copied out with desperation, as if he meant to follow it scrupulously. In those days, prescriptions for syphilis were pretty imaginative if of little value.
Sartre wrote a scathing review of Baudelaire, drawing in large part from Intimate Journals damning it for its banality. He is quite right, it is banal, like the quote on work. But Sartre ignores Baudelaire’s mental agitation as his death neared (not to mention failing to judge Baudelaire’s poems as poems). The poet was literally frightened out of his wits, and willing to try “working hard” as his step-father must have often admonished the Parisian dandy, as if somehow that would help. It was as if Baudelaire were saying “Yes, Doctor, yes. I will follow your prescription recipe to the letter. Yes, Father, yes. I will work hard and forgo pleasures.” Plainly, Baudelaire was demoralized.
It would have been better to leave Intimate Journals unpublished out of respect for Baudelaire’s established greatness, but such is the appeal of any scrap written by one of the most important poets of modern times that I don’t suppose the poor man’s privacy could have been protected.
The quote that for good reason I doubted came from Baudelaire nevertheless was his. But the context was missing. Did the mail list contributor know anything about the context? I doubt that he ever read a word of Baudelaire’s poems. Perhaps he never heard of Baudelaire. I suspect he felt that quoting a “French poet” magically lent importance to his posts. The reader was supposed to be impressed.
However, great writers have better things to do than provide posters with banalities, even if conveniently arranged and categorized on a web site someplace.
Posters should not quote for decorative reasons without having read the work in question, and hopefully with an understanding of the whole thing. Perhaps Caesar never wrote the quote I used — there are a lot of bogus quotes on the internet. Perhaps Caesar did write it, but was quoting an adversary to refute his cynicism, for all I know, instead of commenting on internet practice.
If you don’t know the stuff don’t quote it.
posted by John | 4:55 PM
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