For the post on the first song, see here.
Poul Anderson quotes four lines of an Italian song, then attributes it to Lorenzo the Magnificent. Googling reveals this to be Lorenzo de Medici. Google also gives information, in Italian, about the song which begins:
"Quant' e bella giovinessa..."
- and I also found an English translation. See here.
"What beauty lies in youth..."
Thus, read detective fiction by Poul Anderson and learn some history.
Blog readers might notice that I post about whatever interests me even if it is not the main point of a text. I am not summarizing the plot of the murder mystery so far. I might or might not do that later. Here, I read back through three texts set on the fictional planet, Avalon, in order to summarize background information about the planet, the sort of information that we usually skip past to get to the action. As yet, I am three pages into Chapter 6 of Murder In Black Letter but this pace suits me fine. Reading, rereading and discussing Poul Anderson is a life-long project and I rarely know what the next post will be about.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
We can learn history and philosophy from reading the works of Poul Anderson? I agree!
Your remarks about Lorenzo the Magnificent reminded as well of Pericles, the de facto dictator of Athens at the height of its glory, before the Peloponnesian War. Lorenzo and Pericles both ruled their cities thru allies and proxies, and were content with fairly modest official roles. And they were both patrons of the arts.
Sean
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