The classical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may “level up” by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application.

(Part III, Letter VIII of The Intellectual Life by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. archive.org free book link)

http://piratelibrary.com/library.htm

This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.

Collections included so far:

Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive

To come:

Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them

I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I normally read at, I’ve had a binge this month on short novels, and am currently have completed 10. Ha!

I also spruced up this website a little, adding actual widgets and Gargle Analytics. I’m not completely happy with them yet, I can feel a little tinkering with the CSS coming on, but still, close enough.

And finally, it was suggested to me that it might be much fun to Wordle the recordings I produce when I announce them here. Which is definitely a plan. I’ve already made the picture for the next (very short) piece I plan to record, which I know will have an audience of about one, assuming I listen to it myself. But perhaps that’s what Posterity is all about. Talking to ourselves and hoping mebbe someone else will want to overhear. We shall see.

‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’ said the King, ‘you are very welcome’ (very welcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so, in chains or without a head).

Get edumacated here: http://librivox.org/a-childs-history-of-england-by-charles-dickens/

From Bartleby.com:

By departing from conventional meaning, grammar and syntax, she attempted to capture “moments of consciousness,” independent of time and memory.

Or to put it another way, in Stein’s own words:

A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and more than that it has singular crusts. A season of more is a season that is instead. A season of many is not more a season than most.

It’s my cake day.  I’m hoping my present to the world is going to be catalogued in time.  It’s being proof-listened against the clock right now …

http://librivox.org/tender-buttons-by-gertrude-stein/

One other thing, this is where people adding to the public domain are doing such an amazing service.  The translator here has produced various other Kafka stories too (mostly also in the LibriVox catalogue) and they’re recent translations which makes them very readable and accessible.  Without him, I’d know nothing about this story, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to read it into the public domain myself.  Many thanks, Ian.

Listen below … or visit the link above to download a higher-quality recording.
Download audio file (hunger_artist_kafka_cs_64kb.mp3)
64kbps, 29mins

In the Articles of War established for the government of the English Navy, in Art. 32, after providing with respect to this offence [sodomy] and other species of impurity that they “shall be punished with death” it is added without mercy. [...] Of all the offences of which a man in the maritime service can be guilty, burning a fleet, betraying it to the enemy and so forth, this is the only one which it was thought proper to exclude from mercy. The safety of the fleet and of the Empire were in the eyes of the legislator objects of inferior account in comparison with the preservation of a sailor’s chastity.

Offences against One’s Self by Jeremy Bentham (c. 1785) The passage above is from the section of notes for the essay.

(No offence intended to modern sailors of any leaning.  Note, the essay is entirely concerned with the suggested decriminalisation of homosexual acts a very long time ago - and has nothing to do with children, its subtitle not withstanding.)

“The diminutive oaths, mentioned at the close of [a previous quote], were, unfortunately, considered as ornaments of conversation, and adopted by both sexes, in order to give spirit and vivacity to their language; a shocking practice, which seems to have been rendered fashionable by the very reprehensible habit of the Queen [Elizabeth I], whose oaths were neither diminutive nor rare; for it is said, that she never spared an oath in public speech or private conversation when she thought it added energy to either. After this example in the highest classes, we need not be surprised when Stubbes tells us, speaking of the great body of the people, that, ‘if they speake but three or four words, yet they must be interlaced with a bloudie oath or two.’”

But who comes here? What is the meaning of these roars of laughter that greet the last mask who runs into the market-place? Why do all the women and children hurry together, calling up one another, and shouting with delight? What is this thing? Is it some new species of bird, thus covered with feathers and down? In a few minutes the little figure is surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a magpie, whistles like a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his natural character showers a mass of funny nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides ache. The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized. The women pluck him behind and before; he dances round and tries to evade their fingers. This is impossible; he breaks away, runs down the market pursued by a shouting crowd, is again surrounded, and again subjected to a plucking process. The bird must be stripped; he must be discovered. Little by little his back is bared, and little by little is seen a black jerkin, black stockings, and, wonder upon wonder! the bands of a canon. Now they have cleared his face of its plumage, and a cry of disgust and shame hails the disclosure. Yes, this curious masker is no other than a reverend abbé, a young canon of the cathedral of Mans! ‘This is too much–it is scandalous–it is disgraceful. The church must be respected, the sacred order must not descend to such frivolities.’ The people, lately laughing, are now furious at the shameless abbé and not his liveliest wit can save him; they threaten and cry shame on him, and in terror of his life, he beats his way through the crowd, and takes to his heels. The mob follows, hooting and savage. The little man is nimble; those well-shaped legs–qui ont si bien dansé–stand him in good stead. Down the streets, and out of the the town go hare and hounds. The pursuers gain on him–a bridge, a stream filled with tall reeds, and delightfully miry, are all the hope of refuge he sees before him. He leaps gallantly from the bridge in among the oziers, and has the joy of listening to the disappointed curses of the mob, when reaching the stream, their quarry is nowhere to be seen. The reeds conceal him, and there he lingers till nightfall, when he can issue from his lurking-place, and escape from the town.Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbé Scarron of the use of his limbs for life. His health was already ruined when he indulged this caprice; the damp of the river brought on a violent attack, which closed with palsy, and the gay young abbé had to pay dearly for the pleasure of astonishing the citizens of Mans. The disguise was easily accounted for–he had smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, and rolled himself in it.

The Wits and Beaux of Society, by Grace And Philip Wharton (1890).

We don’t have as much fun as they did in 1635, I reckon. Just on the offchance, though, do try donating a jar of honey to your local clergyperson. Let me know how they get on …

My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts–the crowds of camels, the crowds of elephants–all being driven along by the little, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, “Why don’t their elephants turn around on them and chase them?”I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute.

Our elephants chase us–most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming quietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry whether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great cities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of times, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing them–chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands of little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen ordering around people–who pay them for it–in any city of our modern world.

Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is a gentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often.

Crowds: Gerald Stanley Lee (1913).