i'm reading over AC's preface to 777. At the beginning of Section 3 he observes
As a weary but victorious warrior delights to recall his battles - Forsitan haec olim meminisse juvabit - we would linger for a moment upon the difficulties of our task.
my latin being rusty i turned to our mutual friend G. who quickly revealed this quote to derive from the Aenied (Book I Line 203), in which Aeneas attempts to encourage his wearied comrades…
"perhaps this too will be a pleasure to look back on one day"
however, it seems Virgil's latin would have it "Forsan et haec meminisse juvabit"
Why the variance? Might it be that AC's copy of the Aeneid had 'Forsitan'? And which edition might that have been? Or did he recall it in error? or was he simply using Virgil as inspiration for his own attempt to encourage his weary comrades?
perhaps i'm the last kid on the playground to realize this - but - in searching around for the source of this Fichte quote used by AC in "A Brief Essay Upon the Nature and Significance of the Magical Alphabet"
the outburst of the aged Fichte; "If I had my life to live again, the first thing I would do would be to invent an entirely new system of symbols whereby to convey my ideas."
I chanced across a second source, Regardie's "Garden of Pomegranates". On examination it seems that Regardie lifted entire paragraph long passages from AC's Essay:
Crowley
In view of this Euroclydon of misunderstanding it is dearly necessary to establish a fundamental language. I saw this fact in my twenties. My extended travels throughout the world had brought me into contact with religious and philosophical thinkers of every shade of opinion; and the more I knew the greater became the confusion. I understood, with bitter approval, the outburst of the aged Fichte; "If I had my life to live again, the first thing I would do would be to invent an entirely new system of symbols whereby to convey my ideas." As a matter of fact certain people, notably Raymond Lully, have attempted this great work.
I discussed this question with Bhikkhu Ananda Metteya (Allan Bennett) in 1904. He professed himself completely satisfied with the Buddhist terminology. I could not concur with this opinion. Firstly, the actual words are barbarously long, impossibly so for the average European.
and further.....
Regardie
In view of this continual source of misunderstanding, it is clearly necessary to establish a fundamental and universal language for the communication ofideas, One understands with bitter approval the sad outburst of the aged Fichte: "If I had my life to live over again, the first thing I would do would be to invent an entirely new system ofsymbols whereby to convey my ideas." As a matter of fact, had he but known this, certain people-principally some of the early Qabalists, among whom we may include Raymond Lully, William Postel, etc.-had actually attempted this Great Work of constructing a coherent system. Those which were coherent were, sad to say, hardly comprehended or subscribed to.
It is sometimes claimed that the Buddhist terminology, as contained in the Abidhamma, provides a sufficiently complete philosophical alphabet. While there is much to be said in favour of the Buddhist system, we cannot wholly concur with this opinion for the following reasons: Firstly, the actual words are barbarously long, impossibly so for the average European
and further.....
given the intervening decades perhaps when Dr. Regardie was authoring the Introduction to the Weisers white one he forgot that he had used AC's material in 1932 to fertilize his 'Garden'...
Seems like a fair cop there - well spotted! People have lost their reputations for far less apparent plagiarism...
This “Euroclydon of misunderstanding” indeed! :-[
the outburst of the aged Fichte; "If I had my life to live again, the first thing I would do would be [...]"
Reminds me a little of that saying of the great Sir Henry of Rawlinson End fame (Vivian Stanshall, for those less cognisant amongst you): “Hmph! If I had all the money I’d spent on drink – I’d spend it on drink!”
That quote really rang a bell with me; "perhaps this too will be a pleasure to look back on one day"
Once a soldier always a soldier, whether for one week and you get killed in battle, or for two decades and you get retirement. I have been looking back; sometimes involuntarily, (the subconscious loves to bring random shit up in asana!) to my Army days and it is not just a military conundrum but a human one, that the past always looks brighter from a future perspective. 'Gee it sure was kind of bittersweet and swell sitting with my buddy at 0300 in the morning at guard duty reminiscing on life.' or 'all that exercise during the day was really shitty but I felt so good at the end of the day in a deeper sense and my energy was peaked' I dunno just thinking that the quote really hit me.
carry on! 😉
PS I am finally going to read my copy of Garden of Pomegranates as well as his Tree of life book (regardie) since I have just moved I chose them for my backpack books and they have been in my library for years. tsk .
Thank you for raising this question, William. You must have already found that Crowley also quotes it identically in Diary Of A Drug Fiend, bk. I, chapter V, “A Heroin Herione” (p. 74):
Sorry for the long interval between your post and my response, but first I had to learn something about the transmisison of Virgil (or Vergil, if you prefer) before I could make any kind of comment with confidence. It’s something I’ve wanted to do in any case.
Forsitan is not an attested variant in any manuscripts of Virgil nor the printed editions based on them.
Forsitan Is, however, attested in isolated quotations of this one sentence, found in diverse authors over the past thousand years. The sentiment it expresses took on a life of its own, and authors recalled it in ways slightly differing from the original.
The manuscript evidence, upon which all printed editions have been based, was first collated and put into a critical apparatus by Otto Ribbeck (1827-1898) and published in 1859 and following years. Ribbeck’s is the first critical edition of Virgil. https://archive.org/details/operavirg02virguoft
The pointers show the text, with the reading “forsam”, which Ribbeck takes from the 5th cenutry mansucript “R”= Vaticanus latinus 3867 (known as the “Vergilius Romanus”, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergilius_Romanus ), along with the “Testimonia” or witnesses from various ancient authors to this line, and finally the readings from the various manuscripts. Note especially that he finds “FORSAN” in ψ, which stands for “All or most of the rest of the manuscripts” (ceterorum librorum vel omnes vel plerique; see tables of sigla below).
Mynors
Mynors indicates his sources for this page (lines 189-220), the 4-5th century F, M, and R, along with the 9th century “γ” (gamma) = Guelferbytanus Gudianus lat. 2°. 70. He does not consider the variants “forsam” from R nor the absent “et” from F significant enough to mention.
Here is the line in two of the earliest manusripts, “F”= Vaticanus Latinus 3225, fol. Xir (4th century); and “M” = Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana XXXIX.1, fol. 51r (5th century).
MITTITEFORSANHAECOLIMMEMINISSEIUUABIT (note the ommitted “et” between “forsan” and “haec”, noted in the apparatus of Ribbeck’s editions; please excuse the Vatican’s digital watermark, which obscures the “F” of “FORSAN”)
MITTITEFORSANETHAECOLIMMEMINISSEIUUABIT
Key to the sigla (manuscript symbols) from Ribbeck (left) and Mynors (right). The pointers show the manuscripts used for Aeneid:
Here are some isolated citations of the line using “forsitan”, showing Crowley was in good company:
1. Gregory of Tours, 10th century manuscript of De Virtutibus Sancti Martini (c. 575), and idem in a 12th century manuscript.
Both of these variants are noted in the apparatus of Henri-Léonard Bordier (1817-1888) to Gregory of Tours (538-594), “Miracles of Saint Martin”, in Les Livres des Miracles et autres opuscules de Georges Florent Grégoire, évèque de Tours, vol. II (Paris, 1860), p. 90, as “Cl.-F.” and “Cott.”, respectively.
(Cl.-F. = Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont-Ferrand, ms. no. 11; Cott. = British Museum, Cotton Appendix XVIII.; for Bordier’s manuscripts and sigla, see op. cit., vol. 4, p. 280)
2. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), Della tranquillità dell’animo, 1442:
3. Jacopo Acciaioli (c. 1420-after 1487), letter to Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421-1498), 2 June, 1463:
5. Andreas Gerhard Hyperius (1511-1564), letter to Justus Didamar (1520-1580), 8 June 1555:
6. Robert Lowe (1811-1892), inscription in a diary:
“Journal kept by H.P. Lowe & R. Lowe during 3 months of the summer 1831, at Barmouth, North Wales. Forsitan haec olim meminisse juvabit.”
7. Anonymous contributor, “College Musings” (1845), Yale Literary Magazine, vol. XI (1846), p. 33:
8. David Urquhart (1805-1877), pamphlet Conscience in Respect to Public Affairs, containing letters between him and an unnamed correspndent, his of 5 September, 1867:
9. Gustave Doré, “Statistique de mes chevalettes du 10 mars, 1870”:
10. H. W. Kalliphronas, Bertha and Other Poems, 1871-1872 (1873), p. 88:
11. To this list can be added Crowley’s two citations, of course.
Being so widely separated in time and place, writing in different genres and with the quoted line in different forms, these authors are clearly not quoting from some sources unknown to scholarship, but, obviously, from memory. The explanation might be that “forsitan,” as the standard form of the word learned by heart when learning Latin, is retained in the mind over the much rarer “forsan”, and therefore in some cases this has been the word an author has recalled when trying to quote this famous line by Virgil from memory.
Note also that the meter works with either the canonical “forsan et haec” or the apocryphal “forsitan haec” , so if the author who is quoting the line from memory has memorized by dactylic hexameter prosody, the more natural “forsitan” has an obvious explanation. Thus Jacopo Acciaioli, Andreas Hyperius, Robert Lowe, Doré, Kalliphronas, and Crowley may be suspected of having correctly recalled the dactylic hexameter, but, perhaps through metathesis, transposed the “et” of “forsan et” into “forsitan”.
Another possibility is that Virgil school texts glossed “forsan” in this line with the more common “forsitan”, conflating the two in a boys’ mind, with the more frequent one ultimately dominating the memory.
many thanks belmurru - fascinating material. one question - was that single page the extent of the Kalliphronas poem or was there more?
EDIT: nevermind, checked the link myself and it seems that one page was it --- short and sweet.
Yes, that's all of it.
I spent some time searching for the real identity of the obviously pseudonymous "Kalliphronas" - which I suppose should be translated as "Beautiful Mind" - but I couldn't find it.
His poem was one of the first "forsitan" examples I found, and, being poetry, I thought Crowley might have taken it from there. But after finding so many others (including many I did not include), I realized it was a well-established tendency, and Crowley surely knew his Latin Vergil well enough that he doesn't need a specific secondary borrowing to explain his usage.
Some impressive scholarship, belmurru, and i am sure you are right that AC is quoting a schoolboy "tag" from Latin class (memorizing quotations was a big pedagogical tool at the time), rather than Virgil directly.
i am sure you are right that AC is quoting a schoolboy "tag" from Latin class (memorizing quotations was a big pedagogical tool at the time), rather than Virgil directly.
Yes, I was hoping to find a passage in a Victorian school Virgil like that in the recent Vergil’s Aeneid: Selected Readings from Books 1, 2, 4, 6, 10 and 12 , by Barbara Weiden Boyd (2nd edition, 2008), where she gives the word in the glossary to this line (p. 31) in the form of “fors(it)an”, which would be a tempting way to understand how the two words might be considered identical in a student’s mind, and become conflated in the memory.
But so far I haven’t had any luck to guess at Crowley’s school text of Virgil. The name that comes up frequently with Virgil in public schools is Benjamin Hall Kennedy (1804-1889), so I was hoping to find something in either his Primer or Grammar resembling Boyd:
But he makes no remark about this passage (p. 74), neither in an editorial comment, nor in his commentary on the section (p. 401).
On page 386 he does, however, explain the word forsitan in a case where it occurs in the Fourth Georgic, lines 116-119 (p. 59), as being composed of fors sit an, to be translated fully as “there might be a chance that.”
Just a word of acknowledgement & appreciation: the fine example of your scholarship, care & presentation of your research should stand as an inspiration to all members of the Society, belmurru: if only more could duplicate your template, if only (but particularly) with regard to the correct manner of attributing sources! I also greatly appreciate the “pointing finger” which appears on various reproductions you’ve uploaded (although lacking in the necessary technology skills & up-to-date equipment, I’m unfortunately unable to duplicate it or upload anything myself.)
@belmurru Maybe a lead on the identity of Kalliphronas... if still interested after five years:
H.W. Kalliphronas. Bertha, And other Poems. 1871-2. London: Provost & Co., 1873.
First edition. Octavo. 127 pages. Inscribed in ink on title page: “J.T. Green/ from his [?] Brother/ HWG/ the Author/ here of.” Dedicated to T.D., identified in pencil as “Theresa Donovan”.
@belmurru Maybe a lead on the identity of Kalliphronas... if still interested after five years:
H.W. Kalliphronas. Bertha, And other Poems. 1871-2. London: Provost & Co., 1873.
First edition. Octavo. 127 pages. Inscribed in ink on title page: “J.T. Green/ from his [?] Brother/ HWG/ the Author/ here of.” Dedicated to T.D., identified in pencil as “Theresa Donovan”.
Thanks very much, Durga! I'm always interested in solving mysteries. Even that strange scribble between "his" and "brother."
And I wonder, then, if the "G" is the beginning of a relatively normal name that is translated into "Kalliphronas"?
You bet! I was assuming that J.T. was his actual factual brother (although that squiggle taunts me still! 🤔 ) and that his name was therefore "H.W. Green". Couldn't find much searching that name, of course - or actually maybe too much - thanks, Google 😉
I purchased the book itself a few years ago from the collection of the late Pre-Raphaelite scholar William E. Fredeman - so it had some significance to him....unfortunately, he didn't leave many notes regarding his books.
Fascinating. How intriguing. From the tenor of the poetry, it would seem that Kalliphronas (perhaps Green) and Theresa Donovan had a love affair years before, but for some reason it had to end, and he spent a long time abroad, perhaps in military service. I have only skimmed them once, looking for an acrostic, which I did not find.
Since he only uses her initials, and a pseudonym for himself, must mean that he wants to save the lady some embarrassment.
This is a very curious quote. I have elsewhere expressed the idea that the entire Aeneid could be mined for Thelemic mysteries similar to Parzifal by Achad. Learning Latin provides a lifetime worth of enjoyment and there seems to be quite a few primary sources in British literature using forsitan. I suppose AC liked the look of forsitan as we know he he uses similar puns all throughout his writings, it can be read phonetically as "For satan." Perhaps a coded message exists such as replacing "we" with "For Satan would linger for a moment upon the difficulties of our task." Satan lingering about to tempt sin is a common christian motif and probably very common in Brethren households.
In Prophetes Veritas Venit. Quod ambulas cum Thelema et Agape est semper fidelis pietas.
