David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


25 July 2017

Double Hate


The polling analysts who worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had a name for the many Americans who didn’t like him but didn’t like Hillary Clinton either: “double haters.”

Many of these double haters seemed likely to vote anyway, given their long voting history. “They were a sizable bloc,” Joshua Green writes in his new book “Devil’s Bargain,” the first deeply insightful political narrative of the Trump era, “3 to 5 percent of the 15 million voters across 17 battleground states.”

The double haters spent much of the campaign unsure what to do. In the end, as Green told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross last week, “they broke to Trump.”


   David Leonhardt / New York Times


FIAPCE -1978- 
National Gallery of Australia 
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA