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her death.

    December 19, 1848.

    A Tuesday.

    You are no a de wrider, you are de espider, and we shoota de espiders in Mejico.

    The two small rough orange stones beside the Dante portrait are from Masada. Once brought to Reader as a souvenir by his daughter.

    The original Diotima was a presumably legendary priestess said to have been Socrates’ teacher. In the Symposium Plato lets her voice his metaphysic of love. There would appear to be no other classical references to her.

    Eliot was an anti-Semite.

    Ad majorem Dei gloriam.

    Ariosto wrote fifty-six versions of the opening of Orlando Furioso.

    A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own.

    Dead?

    She?

    Charles V once bent and picked up a paintbrush that Titian had dropped, at the time an extraordinary gesture of respect for an artist.

    Convinced he was being poisoned, Osip Mandelstam may have sometimes stolen food from other inmates in his Soviet prison camp. And been beaten for it. At the end he survived on scraps from a garbage heap.

    Twice, Remedios Varo lived with two lovers at the same time.

    Along the beach beyond the dimes. Flotsam. Odds and ends.

    A French word for such, is Reader trying to recall?

    A young child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or ragout.

    Verweihle doch, du hist so schön.

    Fray Bernardino de Sahagun.

    Lemmings from Norway have been reported to migrate to a particular area in the Atlantic and then swim in circles until they drown. Flocks of birds have gone to their deaths in the same spot. Is archaic instinct drawing them back to Atlantis?

    Of ladies, knights, of love and arms,
    Of chivalry and boldest deeds I sing.

    Velazquez painted Philip IV more than forty times.

    Longinus. About whom nothing whatever is known.
    Including his real name.

    Carole Landis committed suicide.

    Biographers who conclude at the death of their subject and do not at least briefly discuss the survivors.

    Joseph Severn, who would remain in Rome through most of the next six decades. Eventually even serving as British Consul.

    Claire Clairmont, who outlived Byron by fifty-five years.

    Dora Diamant, who died in England well after World War II.

    The historical Troy, aka Troy Vila. Specified as having fallen between 1240 and 1230 B.C. Bones of prototypal Hectors lie in the roadways, and there is evidence of step-by-step destruction.
    After which the site was entirely abandoned for centuries.

    Spinoza died at forty-four of tuberculosis, surely aggravated by glass dust in his lungs from twenty years of grinding lenses for a living.

    Ben Richards.

    The Aspern Papers.

    Juana de Asbaje was illegitimate.

    Hardy may have had an illegitimate son by a cousin named Tryphena Sparks.

    The Sangreal. And/or Sangrail.

    Dost know this water-fly?

    Torquato Tasso was twice locked away as insane.

    All of Plato came down from antiquity in less maimed form than any other writings, an undeniable sign of the esteem in which it was held.
    Nonetheless when Aquinas and other medieval thinkers referred to the philosopher, with no additional identification, it was universally understood that Aristotle was meant.

    Il maestro di color che sanno.

    Primo Levi committed suicide by throwing himself down a stairwell.

    Through much of her life, Marina Tsvetayeva was forced to endure practically a beggar’s existence. And with her nearest relatives repeatedly imprisoned.
    Akhmatova fared little better, confronted by the same family jailings, often subsisting for long periods on little more than black bread.

    Frangois Villon’s mother was illiterate.

    As Nietzsche saw it, the last Christian died on the Cross.

    Ebenezer Cooke.

    Tecumseh.

    The Wittgenstein pianist/brother, Paul, who lost his right arm in World War I, subsequently commissioned Prokofiev and Ravel and Richard Strauss to compose one-handed