September 6, 1651.
The Diary
“Of ladies, knights, of passions and of wars,
of courtliness, and of valiant deeds I sing.”
Le donne i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto.
Canto I, stanza 1 (tr. David R. Slavitt)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
Però che Amore è quel che dà la gloria,
E che fa l'omo degno ed onorato,
Amore è quel che dona la vittoria,
E dona ardire al cavalliero armato
Bk. 2, Canto 18, st. 3
Orlando Innamorato
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 8, section 5 (p. 904)
Walter Scott, manuscript note written in 1825; cited from J. G. Lockhart The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1896) p. 81 col. 2.
Criticism
The scene is a society ball in London.
Source: A Lodge in the Wilderness (1906), Ch. V, p. 145.
“It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.”
Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 159
Context: It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
“Then were they afeard when they saw a knight.”
Book I, ch. 23
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)
“The Development of Yeats’s Sense of Reality”, p. 89
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
