Faux Pascal
Had to read him in school. In the original French. And be prepared to give what my polymath French teacher (Naval officer, intelligence analyst, 6 radar patents, art connoisseur, kind but demanding pedagogue) called a “literary translation” when called upon. Meaning no stumbles, no poor word choices, no errors of any kind. He graded from 5 to 10, each instant decision delivered in a phrase that never varied: Silence = 5, “Just passing” = 6, “Fair” = 7, “Very Good” = 8, “Very Good Indeed” = 9, and “Top Drawer” = 10. Two slight stumbles for an 8, one for a 9, and none at all for a 10. His tone of voice reflected the grade from whisper on up to hearty congratulation. We did this every day, first thing before we discussed the material we’d been assigned. Why I still remember the French for “Man is a reed, the weakest in all nature; but he is a thinking reed.” Which I memorized just 56 years ago. Thank you Mr. miller, who also taught us that Pascal was multilingual at 3, and when his tutor gave him Euclid’s first postulate at 7, he worked out the rest of Euclidean geometry in a single afternoon. Then he did an amazing amount of amazing stuff before he died at 39, even younger than Lenny Bruce. If God hadn’t created Pascal, pretty sure none of us would have thought to do it in His place, reeds notwithstanding.
We also had to read a lot of Voltaire and La Rochefoucauld, who may have disappeared from awoke syllabuses but are still hanging out in those big Dictionaries of Quotations political speechwriters spend much of their working lives buried in. The kind of immortality that might survive even a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Look how far Sappho has gotten on a few line fragments of her poetry somebody found in the shards of a shattered wine jug many years ago. All they’d have to do to rediscover the Frenchies, and even Shakespeare, Poe, Wilde, Twain, and Churchill is find a single not quite atomized volume of the wit and wisdom of western civilization. Or all the wit and wisdom that was pithy enough to make it into the book.
So, seeking my own immortality, like any scribe desperately ferreting out excuses not to write that next sentence in the problem paragraph, I have daydreamed about concocting my own entry ticket into Bartlett's dictionary.
Writing a pithy epigram is easier than you might think. It’s the deathless part that’s something of a problem. You be the judge. Found this buried in the ‘Note’ app of my iPad. I think it’s got a certain “je ne salis quoi” about it, n’est-ce pas?
Faux Pascal
A man is only a reed. But he's a reed with a temper.
Women should be watched and listened to. By no man.
Poetry. Why do we need rhymes about copulation when it comes so naturally and lugubriously?
Women talk. Men don't listen. Why homo sapiens survived.
2 + 2 = 5++++++++++++. Or hadn't you heard?
Handling in cars is basically a function of camber.
The hardest position in baseball is 3rd base. You throw him out faster than the pitcher could or it’s a triple.
Quarterbacks are almost always unknown quantities. Much akin to pianists, violinists, and pointilists.
No Star Wars movie has ever been any good.
Fortune cookies and astrology readings are always wrong.
You don't have to believe me but this is art. Because I said so.
Writers put all their wisdom into one sentence when they don't have any left. Don't blame me; I stole it from La Rochefoucauld.
Women talk. Men don't listen. Why homo sapiens survived.
When you start to repeat yourself, that’s probably enough Pensées for one day.
Bonne nuit, mes pauvres.
Okay. Maybe not there yet. I’m sure there’s some TNW else I’d rather not be working on tomorrow. Where there’s life there’s hope and all that. Or is that already taken?
Comments
Post a Comment