From dlupher@ups.edu Mon Mar  6 16:19:58 2000
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Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 16:21:36 -0800
To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: David Lupher <dlupher@ups.edu>
Subject: Re: beautiful language 

I enjoyed Al Kriman's response to my query about Ezra Pound's claim
that Golding's Ovid is "the most beautiful book in the language."
Does anyone else know any other interesting "most beautiful" claims?
I can think of a couple, one very odd, one somewhat less so.

The odd one is Richie Goulding telling Leopold Bloom in the Ormond
Hotel Restaurant and Bar on June 16, 1904, that Elvino's brief
ejaculation beginning "Tutto e sciolto" at the beginning of Act 2 of
"La Sonnambula" is "the most beautiful tenor air ever written"
("Ulysses," ch. 11)

Slighly less eccentric is A.E. Housman's famous declaration, to a
Cambridge class in May 1914, that Horace Odes 4.7 ("Diffugere nives")
is "the most beautiful poem in ancient literature."

David Lupher
Classics Dept.
Univ. of Puget Sound





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