More on Bush on Conservatism

The other day I defended W for saying that he needed to destroy the free market in order to save it (link). I suggested that it sounded vaguely Rooseveltian. Maybe, but in any event sinnce then, I've stumbled on a couple more references int he same vein. One is the excellent Saving Capitalism from Capitlists by Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales.

The other is more portentous. It is from Chapter One of Il Gattopardo, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa's great Italian novel about his grandfather, the old Prince di Lampedusa. We pass the mike to Nigel Rees, who develops the point in the current issue of The "Quote...Unquote" Newsletter:

Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi [If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change.] In the first chapter, this ‘ambiguous’ observation is said to be well-understood by Prince Fabrizio but to have originated with his nephew and heir, Tancredi. In an introductory title to some versions of Luchino Visconti’s film (Italy/US 1963), it is indeed given as the Prince’s own credo, but translated into English as ‘Things will have to change in order that they can remain the same.’ In the course of the film, the Prince (played by Burt Lancaster) also gets to ‘speak’ the words (in dubbed Italian) when referring to Garibaldi’s victory. The subtitles relay these as: Something had to change so that everything might remain as it was before.’

--The "Quote...Unquote" Newsletter 7, Vol. 18, No. 1, January 2009

Or as they say in the Oval Office, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Scarlet Letters

“My book might be filthy, but my life is blameless.”—has a certain Victorian ring, not so? But the new issue of The “Quote, Unquote” Newsletter traces it the Latin writer Martial: Lasciva* est nobis pagina, vita proba. Wonder where Martial pinched it.

I confuse it in my mind with “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read”—not, as you might think, Dorothy Parker but (if you believe Google) Hilaire Belloc. It was a favorite of my mother's; she always did enjoy a saucy one-liner. But I think she usually said “Her sins,” etc., which sounds more appropriate, somehow.

I believe it was Dorothy Parker who wrote these “Words of Comfort to Be Scratched on a Mirror" (link):

Helen of Troy had a wandering glance;
Sappho's restriction was only the sky;
Ninon was ever the chatter of France;
But oh, what a good girl am I!

Source for the Martial ref: The “Quote, Unquote” Newsletter, vo. 17, No. 2, April 2008, Item A3853, p6.

*As corrected. I had written "lascivia," but I am corrected by a guy who knows an adjective from a noun (link). The error was mine, not QU.