no one goes over the top like Bruno

For those who have never sampled Bruno’s utterly unique philosophical prose, his arguments are often prefaced with over-the-top anthems of the following sort. (Cause, Principle, and Unity and Essays on Magic. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998. Trans. R. De Lucca, p. 17)

“I have no intention of speaking like a holy prophet, as an abstruse oracle, like an apocalyptic visionary or the she-ass of Balaam beholding the angel. Nor will I discourse as if I were exhilarated by Bacchus or swollen with wind by the sluttish Parnassian muses, nor like a Sibyl impreganted by Phoebus, nor like a prognostic Cassandra, nor as if Apollonian rapture had seized me form my toenails to the hair on my head, nor like the seer illuminated in the oracle or Delphic tripod, nor like wise Oedipus, probed in the riddles of the Sphinx, nor as a Solomon before the enigmas of the queen of Sheba, nor like Calchas, interpreter for the Olympian council, nor as a Merlin possessed, nor as one emerged from the cave of Trophonius. Instead I will speak in common, vulgar language, like a man who has had other things on his mind than to go about distilling the juice of his brain and cerebellum to the point of withering his pia mater and dura mater.”

Imagine submitting something like this to your tenure committee or dissertation advisor!

Actually, we do have a medium that goes this over-the-top even now, and it’s called blogging. I suppose that over time, blogging will become more organized and regulated as well, and some of today’s blogs will look like impossibly colorful relics of the past.