Baltasar Gracián - Collected Wisdom: The Art of Worldly Wisdom; Reflections: Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims; and Maxims and Reflections

Collected Wisdom

The Art of Worldly Wisdom; Reflections Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims; Maxims and Reflections

Baltasar Gracin, Franois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Balthasar Gracin

Translated from the Spanish by Joesph Jacobs

Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of History, Madrid

Auf des Glckes groer Waage

Steht die Zunge selten ein;

Du mut steigen oder sinken,

Du mut herrschen und gewinnen,

Oder dienen und verlieren,

Leiden oder triumphieren,

Ambo oder Hammer sein.

Goethe, Ein Kophtisches Lied .

(On the great scales of fortune,

The balance rarely keeps still;

You must rise or sink,

You must rule and win

Or serve and lose,

Suffer or triumph,

Be the anvil or the hammer.)

Translation of Goethe by John Bruno Hare

When you are an anvil, hold you still,

When you are a hammer, strike your fill.

G. Herbert, Jacula Prudentum

To Mrs. G. H. Lewis

Dear Mrs. Lewis,

This little book were not worthy of being associated with your name, did it not offer an ideal of life at once refined and practical, cultured yet wisely energetic. Gracin points to noble aims, and proposes, on the whole, no ignoble means of attaining to them. The Spanish Jesuit sees clear, but he looks upward.

There is, however, one side of life to which he is entirely blind, as was perhaps natural in an ecclesiastic writing before the Age of Salons. He nowhere makes mention in his pages of the gracious influence of Woman as Inspirer and Consoler in the Battle of Life. Permit me to repair this omission by placing your name in the forefront of this English version of his maxims. To those honoured with your friendship this will by itself suffice to recall all the ennobling associations connected with your sex.

Believe me, dear Mrs. Lewis,

Yours most sincerely,

Joseph Jacobs

Kilburn, 26th October 1892.

PREFACE

MY ATTENTION WAS first drawn to the Orculo Manual by Mr. (now Sir Mountstuart) Grant Duffs admirable article on Balthasar Gracin in the Fortnightly Review of March 1877. I soon after obtained a copy of Schopenhauers excellent version, and during a journey in Spain I procured with some difficulty a villainously printed edition of Gracins works (Barcelona, 1734, Por Joseph Giralt), which contains the Orculo Manual towards the end of the first volume (pp. 431-494).

I have translated from this last, referring in the many doubtful places of its text to the first Madrid edition of 1653, the earliest in the British Museum. I have throughout had Schopenhauers version by my side, and have found it, as Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff says, a most finished piece of work, though I have pointed out in the Notes a few cases where he has failed, in my opinion, to give Gracins meaning completely or correctly. I have little doubt that I am a fellow-sinner in this regard: I know no prose style that offers such difficulty to a translator as Gracins laconic and artificial epigrams. It is not without reason that he has been called the Intraducible. The two earlier English versions miss his points time after time, and I found it useless to refer to them. On the other hand, I have ventured to adopt some of Sir Mountstuart Grant Duffs often very happy renderings in the extracts contained in his Fortnightly article.

I have endeavoured to reproduce Gracins Laconism and Cultismo in my version, and have even tried to retain his many paronomasias and jingles of similar sound. I may have here and there introduced others of my own to redress the balance for cases where I found it impossible to produce the same effect in English. In such cases I generally give the original in the Notes. Wherever possible I have replaced Spanish proverbs and proverbial phrases by English ones, and have throughout tried to preserve the characteristic rhythm and brevity of the Proverb. In short, if I may venture to say so, I have approached my task rather in the spirit of Fitzgerald than of Bohn.

The gem on the title, representing a votive offering to Hermes, the god of Worldly Wisdom, is from a fine paste in the British Museum of the best period of Greek glyptic art. I have to thank Mr. Cecil Smith of that Institution for kind advice in the selection.

Let me conclude these prefatory words with a piece of advice as oracular as my original: When reading this little book for the first time, read only fifty maxims and then stop for the day.

Joseph Jacobs

TESTIMONIA

Il est si concis si rompu et si estrangement coup quil semble quil ait pris lobscurit tasche: aussi le Lecteur a besoin den deuiner le sens & souvent quand il la compris il trouve quil sest estudi faire une nigme dune chose fort commune.

F. Van Aerssens, Voyage dEspagne , 1667, p. 294.

Il a beaucoup dlvation, de subtilit, de force et mme de bon sens: mais on ne sait le plus souvent ce quil veut dire, et il ne le sait pas peut-tre lui-mme. Quelques-uns de ses Ouvrages ne semblent tre fait, que pour ntre point entendus.

Bouhours Entretiens dAriste et dEugne , 1671, p. 203.

Luisa de Padilla , a Lady of great Learning, and Countess of Aranda , was in like manner angry with the famous Gratian upon his publishing his Treatise of the Discreto , wherein she fancied that he had laid open those Maxims to common Readers, which ought only to be reserved for the knowledge of the Great. These Objections are thought by many of so much weight that they often defend the above-mentiond Authors by affirming they have affected such an Obscurity in their Style and Manner of Writing, that tho every one may read their Works there will be but very few who can comprehend their Meaning.

The Spectator , No. 379 (1712).

En cherchant toujours lnergie et le sublime il devient outr et se perd dans les mots. Gracin est aux bons moralistes ce que Don Quichotte est aux vrais hros. Its ont lun et lautre un faux air de grandeur qui en impose aux sots et qui fait rire les sages.

Abb Desfontaines,1745.

Qu de elogios no se deben al autor del Criticon ! En medio de las antitesis, paronomasias y toda la metralla culta es una de las obras ms recomendables de nuestra literatura por la felicidad de la invention, la inagotable riqueza de imagination y de sales, por la viveza de sus pinturas y por la gracia, soltura y naturalidad del estilo.

Don Manuel Sievela, Biblioteca selecta de literatura espaola (1819).

Si hubiese Gracin procedido con ms sobriedad en el uso de estos juegos y conceptos qual es el escritor de su tiempo de tantos dotes y caudal nativo para ser el ms fecondo y elegante, sabiendo, como lo manifesto, en dnde estaban las delicadezas y los donaires, esto es, lo amargo, lo dulce, lo picante, lo salado de la lengua castellana?

Don Antonio Capmany, Teatro de la elocuencia espaola , tomo v.

The Orculo Manual has been more used than any other of the authors works. It is intended to be a collection of maxims of general utility, but it exhibits good and bad precepts, sound judgments, and refined sophisms, all confounded together. In this work Gracin has not forgotten to inculcate his practical principles of Jesuitism to be all things to all men (hacerse a todos), nor to recommend his favourite maxim, to be common in nothing (en nada vulgar), which, in order to be valid, would require a totally different interpretation from that which he has given it.