Aforismi in lingua originale - Got him!

“Unsportsmanlike!” bellowed the big man. “Give it fair play, give it fair play!” And he came after his own hat quickly but cautiously, with burning eyes. The hat had seemed at first to droop and dawdle as in ostentatious langour on the sunny lawn; but the wind again freshening and rising, it went dancing down the garden with the devilry of a pas de quatre. The eccentric went bounding after it with kangaroo leaps and bursts of breathless speech, of which it was not always easy to pick up the thread: “Fair play, fair play... sport of kings... chase their crowns... quite humane... tramontana... cardinals chase red hats... old English hunting... started a hat in Bramber Combe... hat at bay... mangled hounds... Got him!”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Manalive.

Aforismi in lingua originale - There is beauty...

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Robert Browning.

il 23 aprile è stata la festa di San Giorgio, patrono d'Inghilterra, e Chesterton scrisse una simpatica poesia in suo onore...

San Giorgio,
Carlo Crivelli, Polittico
del 1472.

St George he was for England, 

And before he killed the dragon
He drank a pint of English ale
Out of an English flagon.
For though he fast right readily
In hair-shirt or in mail,
It isn't safe to give him cakes
Unless you give him ale.

St George he was for England,
And right gallantly set free
The lady left for dragon's meat
And tied up to a tree;
But since he stood for England
And knew what England means,
Unless you give him bacon
You mustn't give him beans.

St George he is for England,
And shall wear the shield he wore
When we go out in armour
With battle-cross before.
But though he is jolly company
And very pleased to dine,
It isn't safe to give him nuts
Unless you give him wine.

_____________

nostra traduzione in prosa ©:

San Giorgio stava dalla parte dell'Inghilterra,
E prima di uccidere il drago
Bevve una pinta di birra inglese
Da una brocca inglese.
Perché sebbene digiuni volentieri
In cilicio o in cotta di maglia,
Non è sicuro offrirgli dolci
A meno che non gli si offra della birra.

San Giorgio stava dalla parte dell'Inghilterra,
E con grande galanteria liberò
La damigella destinata a diventare cibo del drago
E legata a un albero;
Ma poiché si batteva per l'Inghilterra
E sapeva cosa significasse l'Inghilterra,
A meno che non gli si dia del bacon
Non bisogna dargli fagioli.

San Giorgio sta per l'Inghilterra,
E indosserà lo scudo che portava
Quando usciamo in armatura
Con la croce da battaglia davanti.
Ma sebbene sia di allegra compagnia
E molto lieto di cenare,
Non è sicuro dargli noci
A meno che non gli si dia del vino.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Pride.

Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - He is the Man, the most terrible of the beasts.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbor... we have to love our neighbor because he is there — a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Grande ritorno di Aforismi in lingua originale - The supreme adventure is being born (L'avventura suprema è nascere).

An adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose. Falling in love has been often regarded as the supreme adventure, the supreme romantic accident. In so much as there is in it something outside ourselves, something of a sort of merry fatalism, this is very true. Love does take us and transfigure and torture us. It does break our hearts with an unbearable beauty, like the unbearable beauty of music. But in so far as we have certainly something to do with the matter; in so far as we are in some sense prepared to fall in love and in some sense jump into it; in so far as we do to some extent choose and to some extent even judge—in all this falling in love is not truly romantic, is not truly adventurous at all. In this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Una copia della prima edizione
di Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - To have a right and to be right.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, A Short History of England, 1917.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Right or Wrong.

Right is right even if nobody does it. Wrong is still wrong even if everybody is wrong about it.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, llustrated London News, 11 maggio 1907.

Aforismi in lingua originale - L'aforisma di ieri, in English.

The forgiveness of sins is essential to the communion of saints; and the resurrection of the body to the life everlasting.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, William Blake.

William Blake, The Ancient of Days,
copia del British Museum

Aforismi in lingua originale - There is non such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.

We might, no doubt, find it a nuisance to count all the blades of grass or all the leaves of the trees; but this would not be because of our boldness or gaiety, but because of our lack of boldness and gaiety. The bore would go onward, bold and gay, and find the blades of grass as splendid as the swords of an army. The bore is stronger and more joyous than we are; he is a demigod—nay, he is a god. For it is the gods who do not tire of the iteration of things; to them the nightfall is always new, and the last rose as red as the first.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Humility preserves the stars from wrong.

It is humility, and not duty, which preserves the stars from wrong, from the unpardonable wrong of casual resignation; it is through humility that the most ancient heavens for us are fresh and strong.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Easy and hard...

It is so easy to be solemn, it is so hard to be frivolous.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, All Things Considered.

Aforismi in lingua originale #BuonCompleanno - Defiantly and even flamboyantly...

The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive….But there is a second fact about Birthdays, and the birth-song of all creation, a fact which really follows on this; but which, as it seems to me, the other school of thought almost refuses to recognize. The point of that fact is simply that it is a fact. In being glad about my Birthday, I am being glad about something which I did not myself bring about.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, G.K.’s Weekly, 21 marzo 1935.

Flamboyant Chesterton...

29 maggio 1874, noi torniamo sempre lì -- Auguri, Gilbert!!!

Chesterton diciassettenne e la famosa
torre dell'acquedotto di Campden Hill,
nominata nel famoso incipit dell'Autobiografia.

Chinandomi con cieca credulità, come è mia abitudine, di fronte alla mera autorità e alla tradizione degli anziani, ingoiando superstiziosamente una storia che non potevo verificare all'epoca mediante esperienza o giudizio privato, sono d'opinione fermissima di essere nato il 29 maggio 1874 a Campden Hill, a Kensington, e d'essere stato battezzato secondo le formule della Chiesa d'Inghilterra nella chiesetta di San Giorgio, di fronte alla grande torre dell'acquedotto che dominava quel crinale. Non attribuisco alcun significato alla relazione tra i due edifici e nego sdegnosamente che la chiesa sia stata scelta perché era necessaria l'intera forza idrica della parte occidentale di Londra per trasformarmi in un cristiano.

Ciononostante, la grande Torre dell'Acquedotto era destinata a svolgere il suo ruolo nella mia vita, come racconterò in una pagina successiva; ma questa storia è legata alle mie esperienze, mentre la mia nascita (come ho detto) è un episodio che accetto, come un povero contadino ignorante, solo perché mi è stato tramandato per tradizione orale. Prima di passare a parlare delle mie esperienze personali, sarà bene dedicare questo breve capitolo ad alcuni altri fatti della mia famiglia e del mio ambiente, che tengo in piedi in modo altrettanto precario sulla base di semplici dicerie. Naturalmente, quelle che molti chiamano prove per sentito dire, o che io chiamo testimonianze umane, potrebbero essere messe in discussione in teoria, come nella controversia baconiana o in buona parte della Critica Superiore biblica. La storia della mia nascita potrebbe essere falsa. Potrei essere l'erede a lungo perduto del Sacro Romano Impero, o un neonato abbandonato da alcuni furfanti di Limehouse sulla soglia di una porta di Kensington, per sviluppare in seguito un'orribile eredità criminale. Alcuni dei metodi scettici applicati all'origine del mondo potrebbero essere applicati alla mia origine e un ricercatore serio e scrupoloso potrebbe giungere alla conclusione che non sono mai nato. Ma preferisco credere che il senso comune sia qualcosa che i miei lettori e io abbiamo in comune e che siano disposti a sopportare un noioso riassunto dei fatti.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Autobiografia  

(traduzione di Marco Sermarini).

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian.

Nevertheless, the great Waterworks Tower was destined to play its part in my life, as I shall narrate on a subsequent page; but that story is connected with my own experiences, whereas my birth (as I have said) is an incident which I accept, like some poor ignorant peasant, only because it has been handed down to me by oral tradition. And before we come to any of my own experiences, it will be well to devote this brief chapter to a few of the other facts of my family and environment which I hold equally precariously on mere hearsay evidence. Of course what many call hearsay evidence, or what I call human evidence, might be questioned in theory, as in the Baconian controversy or a good deal of the Higher Criticism. The story of my birth might be untrue. I might be the long-lost heir of The Holy Roman Empire, or an infant left by ruffians from Limehouse on a door-step in Kensington, to develop in later life a hideous criminal heredity. Some of the sceptical methods applied to the world's origin might be applied to my origin, and a grave and earnest enquirer come to the conclusion that I was never born at all. But I prefer to believe that common sense is something that my readers and I have in common; and that they will have patience with a dull summary of the facts.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Autobiography.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Breaking bones, not optimism.

Circumstances break men's bones; it has never been shown that they break men's optimism.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Charles Dickens.

Aforismi in lingua originale - A great man...

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Charles Dickens.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Oggi è San Patrizio e allora...

The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Sin and impenitence.

The soul does not die by sin but by impenitence.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Resurrection of Rome.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Childhood is clearness.

I must try to state somehow what I mean by saying that my own childhood was of quite a different kind, or quality, from the rest of my very undeservedly pleasant and cheerful existence.

Of this positive quality the most general attribute was clearness. Here it is that I differ, for instance, from Stevenson, whom I so warmly admire; and who speaks of the child as moving with his head in a cloud. He talks of the child as normally in a dazed daydream, in which he cannot distinguish fancy from fact. Now children and adults are both fanciful at times; but that is not what, in my mind and memory, distinguishes adults from children. Mine is a memory of a sort of white light on everything, cutting things out very clearly, and rather emphasising their solidity. The point is that the white light had a sort of wonder in it, as if the world were as new as myself; but not that the world was anything but a real world.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Autobiography.

Qui sotto il brano in italiano nei due post in cui l'abbiamo già pubblicato:

https://uomovivo.blogspot.com/2024/05/150voltechesterton-un-aforisma-al_01058284088.html

https://uomovivo.blogspot.com/2021/04/un-aforisma-al-giorno_18.html

Aforismi in lingua originale - Gloriously surprised.

Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.