File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1998/phillitcrit.9802, message 35


Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 19:21:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Enameled In Fire


At 06:50 PM 2/2/98 EST, you wrote:
>I have been unsuccessful in locating the work of Plutarch that is the source
>of the following reference in Emerson's "Essay on Love."
>
>            Love makes the face of nature radiant with purple
>		light, the morning and the night are varied enchantments,
>		and in love the single tone of a voice makes our heart
>		beat...and all these forms are placed in the amber of
>		memory...for the figures, the motions, the words of the
>		beloved are not like other images written in water, but,
>		as Plutarch said, "enameled in fire."
>
>Can anyone help?
>
>Thanks.
>
>John
>
>

Plutarch is absolutely huge. Good luck on finding what would likely be a
two-word phrase in Greek. Since "enamelled" (and variant spellings) is a
very common poetic and art-prose adjective in the 17C (see OED's usage
cites), I rather suspect that the thing to put at the top of your
suspect-list as Emerson's source would be North's 17C englishing of
Plutarch, which is something of a literary monument of its own in English.
(For a bit more on Plutarch in 17C England, see _Plutarch in Renaissance
England, with Special Reference to Shakespeare_, by Martha Hale Shackford,
1929). The later 18C and early 19C rediscovered a lot of 17C lit that had
been seen as too un-augustan by the early and mid 18C. I believe North's
Plutarch was reprinted earlier this century, so you're not dealing with a
"rare book." If you can't find the phrase easily in North's Plutarch, try
looking at a concordance to Plutarch under *pyr* (fire), and if North's
translation of Plutarch is faithful in that passage, that may point you in
the direction of the right passage in the Greek. Or, examine some 20C
monographs on Plutarch, looking for "love" in the indices or
chapter-headings of those monographs. That may turn up the ref you need.

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing-AT-nyu.edu or downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu



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