[Artemisia] Of Serendipity, Giants, Primary Sources, and the like....

[Bruce Padget]

For a while I've been reading secondary works about a
great Italian Renaissance book on manners and
etiquette, _Galateo_.  (It's had such a lasting
influence that Italians today will say that an
ill-mannered person, "doesn't know his galateo.")  Of
course, the primary source is always best, so to
amazon.com I went.  My galateo arrived yesterday, and
I was a few minutes late to work in my eagerness to
taste the real deal.

And lo, the first passage I flipped to said:
 
"Yet you should know that those who humble themselves
beyond all measure in their speech and refuse all
honours that are their obvious due show far greater
arrogance in this than those who usurp those honors
without real merit....  [I]t is clear that a man who
despises what other men desire shows that he
reproaches or despises other men....  For this reason,
we should neither boast of our blessings nor despise
them, for to boast of them is to chastise others for
their failings, and to despise them is to deride their
virtues."

(Giovanni Della Casa, _Galateo_, ch. 13, K.
Eisenbichler and K.R. Bartlett, trans. p. 52)

Regards,
Niccolo
Abbastanza Buon Non E Abbastanza Buono
bapadget at yahoo.com