I suppose that it's hard, if you regard a book as in some way a fount of
wisdom, not be impressed or jolted if you open it at a passage which
engages with your mood, wishes or fears. Certainly I find this. There is
rather a good study of the matter in M.R.James' short story 'The Ash Tree'
-
James was always good with the apt biblical quote - as was Sayers. A nice
ironic twist with the Stratagems - so very Jamesian.
It seems from the response that the sortes have dies out - or are people to
shy to discuss their present day use?
Helen Conrad-O'Briain
At 02:26 PM 8/4/99 +0100, Helen Conrad-O'Briain wrote:
It seems from the response that the sortes have dies out - or are people to
shy to discuss their present day use?
The following story may be apocryphal; as I recall, it was recounted by my
sixth-grade teacher as an admonition AGAINST using
Since the subject came up ... there is the poem Sortes Vergilianae in John
Ashbery's _The Double Dream of Spring_. I've never caught the connection
between this poem and its title, but then, in Ashbery that relationship can
be oblique.
