What is regarded in the Eurocentric west as the first recorded solar eclipse took place today in 648 BCE, known as Archilochus' Eclipse, though my entry on June 4 is a full century earlier. Herodotus claims there was one during the battle between the Medians and Lydians in 585, which of course is a century later as we are counting years BCE. The NASA website in my link suggests there were several earlier than Archilochus, and that is logical, because there must have been regular lunar and solar eclipses ever since the cosmos came into being, as much as 12 billion years ago, or just under 6,000 if you use the Biblical calendar.
"Yehoshu'a spoke to YHVH on the day when YHVH delivered up the Emori before the children of Yisra-El, and he said in the sight of Yisra-El: Sun, stand still upon Giv-On; and you, Moon, in the valley of Ayalon. And the sun stood silent, and the moon stayed still, until the people had avenged themselves against their enemies. Is this not written in the book of Yashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for an entire day.…"
(Joshua 10:12-13)
Romulus was supposedly conceived at the moment of an eclipse; which makes for good mythology, but lousy anthropology; even if they were doing it outside, you would have thought the parents would have been too pre-occupied at that precise instant to notice what was happening in the heavens.
I am drafting this blog-entry on August 21st 2017, while a full solar eclipse is taking place across the United States; not visible in Europe alas, but my North American friends are all posting Facebook photos, mostly of their dogs with special goggles to protect them from going blind. Full details of that apparently magnificent event are also on the NASA website - click here.
No eclipse can last longer than seven minutes, and they are usually less. Predictions for the longest in history are worth a bet now: July 16th 2186 at seven minutes twenty-nine seconds. My mother’s 257th birthday. I’m afraid she’ll miss it.
Some human moments that probably should be amber, but why spoil such a divine page by dwelling on them? Today in
Biographical details concerning a certain Monna Bice, daughter of Messer Folco Portinari, encountered by Dante on the 1st May 1274 at one o’clock in the afternoon, married to a certain Messer Simone de Bardi and dying on the 8th June 1290; or concerning a certain Lady de Noves, wife of Sir Hugues de Sade, to whom she bore about a dozen children, or about one a year, seen by Messer Petrarch on the 6th April 1327, Good Friday, in the Church of Sainte-Claire, situated in the city of Avignon, in the county of Venaissin72 - all such particulars and a thousand more can add nothing to the likelihood of the story. When one proposes to dedicate a sonnet or a whole sequence of sonnets to a lady who must fulfill certain conditions prescribed by the rules of art, there is no need to be a great poet or a great lover to find, by delving into one’s memories, some incident or other which more or less conforms to the conditions required. The lady herself may do her best to fall in with the demands of the poetic passion, but she nevertheless plays quite a minor part in the affair. She is not the occasion of the lyrical work nor does she inspire it; on the contrary, it is the creation of the poet which assigns her a part which she is under the obligation of assuming.
72: The case of Petrarch and Laura is a very curious example of a literary “canard.” None of the rather numerous authors, many of whom were Petrarch’s contemporaries, such as Domenico Aretino, Coluccio Salutati, Vergerio, Filippo Villani, Manetti, Leonardo Bruni, who wrote on Petrarch during the century after his death, made any mention of an actual Laura. The notion that the poetic effusions of the grave clerk were related to a flesh-and-blood lady did not occur to them. Undoubtedly it would have seemed to them far too ridiculous a contrast to the character and habits of the worthy canon. It was only around a century later, at the court of the Medicis, that the question was debated for the first time. The role of Petrarch’s “Laura” was assigned, indeed with little conviction, to various ladies. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the abbot de Sade proposed one of his female ancestors, Lady Laura de Sade, as a candidate for the role (Mémoires de la vie de Pétrarque, Amsterdam, 1764-1767). The abbot unearthed all of the identification papers of the Lady Laura, her baptismal certificate, her marriage contract, etc.; he even insisted on showing her ashes to prove that she was really dead. Obviously none of this had anything to do with Petrarch. The only item that appears to have even the slightest relation to the affair is a note on the margin of a manuscript of Virgil, relating to the death of “Laura,” which is said to be in Petrarch’s handwriting. Tassoni and Vellutello claimed that it was not. Even assuming that it were, it does not prove anything with respect to the Lady de Sade. Nevertheless, while Petrarch was reputed to have been distraught with love for “Laura,” he was in the process of fathering two children on an unknown lady at Vaucluse - probably a lady of low birth, likely his housekeeper or cook. It may be that the note on the Virgil manuscript refers to the death of this person; or indeed it could with equal likelihood simply be a literary memorandum noting that it was time to kill “Laura.” This would appear reasonable enough after the production of some 207 sonnets and a number of canzoni, sestinas, and madrigals.
Amber pages
1908: Admiral Robert Edwin Peary - click here - reached the North Pole (good to see that finally acknowledged on an American website!)
If this blog is, at least in part, a catalogue of some of my heroes of "The Immaculate Failure", there are few who more deserve a place in that particular Hall of Fame than does Robert Edwin Peary, of whom I am absolutely certain you have never heard, but should have done.
But rather than repeat myself, click here for my poem about him, "Ninety Degrees North", though it is also available in book-form, published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013" by The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.
The form is known as a "dramatic
monologue". No one ever did it better than Robert Browning, though Max
Sebald made several wonderful attempts. The problem with a dramatic monologue,
when you read it anyway, is that you have to get the accent right. I'm a Brit,
Peary was an American - what more can I say! I also realise that
"realised" in line 7 should have been spelled "realized",
and I guess that "parlours" should have gone without its
"u". Too late now for the book version, though I guess I could update the blog.
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