and another thing we won't get to...

LI is on a grueling editing schedule this week, so we can’t unroll the usual red carpet of delusional associations and retarded insights we do so like to give our readers. We are going to try to write a couple of posts about the sage and the divide between the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of sagacity, zeroing in on the seventeen century libertines, the rehabilitation of Epicurus, and that woman lost to French poetry and philosophy, Madame Deshoulieres, a seventeenth century French poet who translated Lucretius, ran a salon for neo-Epicurians, and fell back into the arms of the church as she was dying of breast cancer. And have you heard of Deshoulieres, reader of mine? I hadn’t until a couple of days ago, researching these posts. The lady was buried, and I suspect she was buried because she was a lady. She was still known to the 18th century philosophes, however. In her day, she was aggrieved by being ignored, and wrote this poem “To M. Bouhours on his book entitled The art of expert thinking (de bien penser): on works of the mind”:

“Dans une liste triomphante
De célèbres auteurs que votre livre chante
Je ne vois point mon nom placé.
A moi, n’est-il pas vrai? vous n’avez point pensé.
Mais aussi dans le même role
Vous avez oublié Pascal,
Qui pourtant ne pensoit pas mal.
Un tel compagnon me console.”

Such a poem, I hope, is consoling to the Werepoet.
…
In other news, we have received two emails regarding The Savage Detectives. Our friend K. told us that she actually kept people away because she just wanted time to read it. And from our far flung correspondent, Mr. T., who met the enchanting translator herself, Natasha Wimmer at our never to be forgotten LI party, has been reading it with equal delight, and told us this:

“So, last night S. and his lovely girlfriend R. came over for dinner. At a point, I asked S. to join me on a smoking excursion and as we descended the stairs I mentioned over my shoulder that I also wanted to tell him about a book. He asked: "Is this about The Savage Detectives?" Holy shit, said me, yes it is I said.

There is something in the air, in this time, I am there and I glad to be so.”