The poets’ scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
~ Edmund Spenser
The Poets’ Scrolls
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12 thoughts on “The Poets’ Scrolls”
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Edmund Spenser – never heard of him, or his ‘genius’.
Stonehenge however …
His FAERIE QUEENE has lasted a while and Spenser’s name with it.
Stonehenge is older but nobody knows who built it or why.
Yes, I vaguely remember learning that if you wanted to know what Mercutio was going on about with this “Queen Mab” person, then you should read Spenser’s “Faerie Queene.”
I didn’t want to know that much about Mab, though, so I didn’t look for it 🙂 I might circle back, though, just because Mab hired Harry Dresden for a case. I don’t want to miss any Easter eggs just because I’m not well-read …
The first time I heard of him was in THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER. By the fifth time he was cited up in a great fantasy I figured I should try digging him up.
Then I saw the price.
(!!!!)
Fortunately it’s now in free ebook form.
Unfortunately I’m definitely a prose guy.
Pretty much my experience, even to the Pratt and de Camp reference.
Tell that to the ancient Greeks. All we have of theirs is what escaped the rampaging hordes that swept away over 90% of their legacy to the point we barely have the name of some works and authors. In most cases we don’t even know what we’re missing.
We need a time machine.
The ‘rampaging hordes’, alas, are called Humidity and Oxygen. Papyrus scrolls degenerated in a few decades unless stored in exceptionally favourable conditions. A lot of Greek literature perished long before the rampaging period of history, simply because most of the old books were no longer being read, and it wasn’t worth anyone’s while to make new copies.
Parchment was much more durable but also much scarcer, and most books never had the luck to be copied in that medium.
Torches were even faster.
Whose torches? Citation needed.
There was this dude named Genghis.
Before him, a guy named Alaric.
In between there was the merchant-warrior dude.
Before all of them there were the “sea peoples” that brought down Ozymandias and his peers.
Sacking and pillaging has a loonnng history.
Strange, there are many ‘monuments of stone’ laying about while the scrolls have rotted away (those not burned/lost/buried …)
Maybe, if the poets’ words are carved into the stone or baked into clay tablets. Otherwise I suspect that they will eventually be lost to the vagaries of time and decay leaving fewer remains than Ozymandias (even though he is currently only recalled in the poets words).