Pancake Tuesday, 2024

Cannot believe it’s here already. Where has January gone? And February almost half-over! (That it isn’t quite, in about 23 hours–in my time zone–can only be attributed to the fact that this is a leap year.)

Ubi sunt? (The Latinistas among us (the one or two that I know of) will understand this.)

It’s a phrase which derives from the Vulgate Bible (a fourth-century Latin translation) from the Book of Baruch. Never heard of it? Or think it’s part of the Apocrypha? You’re probably a Jew or a Protestant. Or something even worse. (I’m somewhere on the “at-outs” spectrum myself, so it’s OK for me to say this. Nevertheless, I enjoyed a pretty wide-ranging education, some of it even outside my comfort zone, so Baruch isn’t totally foreign to me.)

In the Vulgate Bible, Baruch 3:16-19 goes like this:

16 ubi sunt principes gentium et qui dominantur super bestias quae sunt super terram 17 qui in avibus caeli inludunt 18 qui argentum thesaurizant et aurum in quo confidebant homines et non est finis adquisitionis eorum qui argentum fabricant et solliciti sunt nec est inventio operum illorum 19 exterminati sunt et ad inferos descenderunt et alii loco eorum exsurrexerunt

Or, in relatively idiomatic English:

16 “Where are the princes of the nations, and those who rule over the beasts on earth; 17 those who mock the birds of the air, 18 and who hoard up silver and gold, in which men trust, and there is no end to their getting; those who scheme to get silver, and are anxious, whose labours are beyond measure? 19 They have vanished and gone below, and others have arisen in their place.”

Pretty clear, right? Something of the same theme as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, You Can’t Take It with You. (Also, a great movie, BTW. Can’t wait for the woke and diverse adaptation; wonder who’ll be cast as Jimmy the Crow….)

When it comes to English Literature, the phrase “ubi sunt,” is closely associated with the poetic tradition begun in the poem, Ballade des dames du temps jadis (Ballad of Ladies of Time Gone By), by Francois Villon. Its refrain, “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan,” “But where are last year’s snows?” was famously reset by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in what he called The Ballad of Dead Ladies, as follows (an excerpt):

Where’s Heloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From Love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you, is the Queen
Who willed that Buridan should steer
Sewed in a sack’s mouth down the Seine?—
But where are the snows of yester-year?

…

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Except with this for an overword—
But where are the snows of yester-year?

Where are the snows of yesteryear?

“Look for [them] only in books, for [they are] no more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind.” (From the opening of the movie. Never let it be said that I missed an opportunity to take an opportunity when it leaps before me.)

But I digress.

Back to Shrove Tuesday:

To my friends in NOLA who are celebrating Mardi Gras, all the best. To my friends who are preparing for abstinence during Lent, I salute you, bless you. To my Polish friends, please enjoy Tłusty Czwartek. And, wherever you are, and whoever you are, and whatever your beliefs, the best of all Spring seasons.

For me, Shrove Tuesday will always evoke memories of the Pancake Race:

I’ll be enjoying English-style pancakes tonight. They’re very different from the US version. I adore them both. What’s your favorite?

or,

PS: Please, whatever you do, don’t turn this into some sort of snarky match claiming that US pancakes are merely Scotch pancakes which have been “stolen” by the Americans. That has (wrongly) been a part of the verdict from a Telegraph article which covered both sorts of the starchy marvels, although this opinion, which has been offered by many of the commenters, pales into insignificance before the number of pedants who are miffed/peeved/irritated by the Telegraph’s asking which pancake is “best.” Since there are only two choices on offer, “American,” or “English,” many readers can’t wait to point out that the word choice should have been the comparative “better,” rather than the superlative “best.” Sad. Just another squirrel that soi-distant “conservatives” fall for on the way to actually standing for what’s important.

Or, on another yet-irrelevant (or perhaps not) point:

Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by–Rudyard Kipling