From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Retrospection of My 1992 Reading
Date: 1 Jan 93 22:06:45 GMT
Organization: University of Waterloo


                               Friday, the 1st of January, 1993

In keeping with my shortstanding tradition here of reckoning up
reading for the previous year, here's my list for 1992.
As before, I count only whole volumes that I have completed in the
year, and, as before, the total list (of 157 books this year) is
made up of three sub-lists, each sub-list listing its books
in chronological order of completion. The first sub-list is
my classics ``structured reading program'' (means that I read
in it a fixed number of pages every night), the second consists of
reading in (well, roughly) American lit and history (it is also
structured), and the third sub-list contains books I've finished freestyle.

After the list, I'll try to summarize a little what I especially
liked from this year.

                     ***
1. Polybius, _The Histories_, v. III 
2. Polybius, _The Histories_, v. IV
3. Polybius, _The Histories_, v. V
4. Polybius, _The Histories_, v. VI
5. Babrius and Phaedrus
6. Menander, v. I
7. Appian, _Roman History_, v. I
8. Appian, _Roman History_, v. II
9. Appian, _Roman History_, v. III
10. Appian, _Roman History_, v. IV
11. _The Ancient Near East: Volume I An Anthology of Texts and Pictures_,
     edited by James B. Pritchard
12. _The Ancient Near East: Volume II A New Anthology of Texts and Pictures_,
          edited by James B. Pritchard
13. Aristotle, v. XI (_Historia Animalium_ VII--X)
14. Hippocrates, v. V
15. Hippocrates, v. VI
16. _Greek Lyric_, v. III
17. Epictetus, v. I
18. Epictetus, v. II
19. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
20. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. I
21. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. II
22. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. III
23. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. IV
24. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. V
25. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. VI
26. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. VII
27. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. VIII
28. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. IX
29. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. X
30. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. XI
31. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. XII
32. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. XIII
33. Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, v. XIV
34. Lysias
35. Plutarch, _Lives_, v. I
              ***
36. _Letters from Mexico_, by Hernan Cortes, tr. and ed. by Anthony Pagden
37. _The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500--1600_,
     by Samuel Eliot Morison
38. _The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492--1616_,
     by Samuel Eliot Morison
39. _Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus_,
     by Samuel Eliot Morison
40. _Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: The Americas Before Columbus_,
     by Brian M. Fagan
41. _Popol Vuh: The Great Mythological Book of the Ancient Maya_,
     Newly Translated and with an Introduction by Ralph Nelson
42. _The Ancient American Civilisations_, by Friedrich Katz
43. _The Cities of Ancient Mexico: Reconstructing a Lost World_,
      by Jeremy A. Sabloff
44. _Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiche Maya_, English version by
      Delia Goetz and Sylvanus G. Morley from the Translation of Adrian Recinos
45. _The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico 1517-1521_, by Bernal Diaz
      del Castillo, tr. by A.P. Maudslay
46. _Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of
      of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings_, translated by Dennis Tedlock
47. _A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of The Ancient Maya_, by Linda Schele
      and David Freidel
48. _The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian
     Legacy_, by Kirkpatrick Sale
49. _The Incas: The Royal Commentaries of the Inca_,
     by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539--1616), trans. by Maria Jolas
50. _The Epic of Latin America_, by John Armstrong Crow
51. _A Short History of the American Revolution_, by James L. Stokesbury
              ***
52. _The Wood Beyond the World_, by William Morris
53. _The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty_, by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. _Self-Contradictions of the Bible_, by William Henry Burr
55. _Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One_,
     by Friedrich Nietzsche, tr. by R.J. Hollingdale
56. _Mr. Midshipman Hornblower_, by C.S. Forester
57. _Lieutenant Hornblower_, by C.S. Forester
58. _Hornblower and the Hotspur_, by C.S. Forester
59. _A Palaeozoic Geology of London, Ontario_, by Christopher Dewdney
60. _The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto_, by Mortimer J. Adler
61. _Hornblower and the Atropos_, by C.S. Forester
62. _Beat to Quarters_, by C.S. Forester
63. _On Socialism_, by J.S. Mill
64. _Ship of the Line_, by C.S. Forester
65. _Flying Colours_, by C.S. Forester
66. _Commodore Hornblower_, by C.S. Forester
67. _One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology_, by John Polkinghorne 
68. _The Unmade Bed: Sensual Writing on Married Love_, edited by Laura Chester
69. _Lord Hornblower_, by C.S. Forester
70. _Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies_, by C.S. Forester
71. _Hornblower During the Crisis and Two Stories, Hornblower's Temptation
    and The Last Encounter_, by C.S. Forester
72. _In Praise of the Stepmother_, by Mario Vargas Lllosa
73. _At Swim-Two-Birds_, by Flann O'Brien
74. _Greek Lyrics_, translated by Richmond Lattimore
75. _Beauty's Punishment_, by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
76. _Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country_, by
    Mordecai Richler (1931--)
77. _The Mythology of North America_, by John Bierhorst
78. _The Mythology of South America_, by John Bierhorst
79. _The Mythology of Mexico and Central America_, by John Bierhorst
80. _The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings_,
    by Jan Harold Brunvand
81. _Yellow Silk: Erotic Arts and Letters_, edited by Lily Pond
    and Richard Russo
82. _The Choking Doberman and Other ``New'' Urban Legends_, by Jan
    Harold Brunvand
83. _Greek Homosexuality_, by K.J. Dover 
84. _The Robber Bridegroom_, by Eudora Welty
85. _Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of
    Questions Raised by The Paideia Proposal_, by Mortimer J. Adler
86. _Duino Elegies_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by J.B. Leishman
    and Stephen Spender 
87. _Sonnets to Orpheus_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by M.D. Herter
    Norton
88. _Letters to a Young Poet_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen
    Mitchell
89. _The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge_, by Rainer Maria Rilke,
    translated by M.D. Herter Norton
90. _Selected Poems_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by J.B. Leishman
91. _reason and reality: the relationship between science and theology_,
    by John Polkinghorne
92. _The Third Policeman_, by Flann O'Brien
93. _Time's Arrow, or the Nature of the Offence_, by Martin Amis
94. _A Shropshire Lad_, by A.E. Housman
95. _A Journal of the Plague Year_, by Daniel Defoe
96. _Touching Fire: Erotic Writings by Women_, edited by Louise Thornton,
    Jan Sturtevant, & Amber Coverdale Sumrall
97. _Largo Desolato_, by Vaclav Havel, English version by Tom Stoppard
98. _The Memorandum_, by Vaclav Havel, tr. by Vera Blackwell
99. _Temptation_, by Vaclav Havel, tr. by Marie Winn
100. _The Rustle of Language_, by Roland Barthes, tr. by Richard Howard
101. _The Book of J_, translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg,
     interpreted by Harold Bloom
102. _Beauty's Release_, by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
103. _Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences_,
     by John Allen Paulos
104. _Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality_, by Steve Allen
105. _The Complete Poems of Francois Villon_, translated by John Heron
     Lepper, including the Texts of John Payne and Others
106. _Tell Me a Story: Creating Bedtime Tales Your Children Will Dream On_,
     by Chase Collins
107. _One Hundred Poems from the Japanese_, by Kenneth Rexroth
108. _The Arkansas Testament_, by Derek Walcott
109. _A Natural History of the Senses_, by Diane Ackerman
110. _The Day of the Locust_, by Nathanael West
111. _Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke_, a Translation from the
     German and Commentary by Robert Bly
112. _Death and the Maiden_, by Ariel Dorfman
113. _The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, by Evelyn Waugh
114. _The Age of Reason_, by Thomas Paine
115. _The Book of Might_, by Rick Ollman
116. _Poems from the Book of Hours_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by
     Babette Deutsch
117. _Who Wrote the Bible?_, by Richard Elliott Friedman
118. _Selected Poems_, by Robert Bly
119. _Lord of the Flies_, by William Golding
120. _Wordstruck_, by Robert MacNeil
121. _Their Eyes Were Watching God_, by Zora Neale Hurston
122. _Brave New World_, by Aldous Huxley
123. _Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future_, by
     Friedrich Nietzsche, tr. by Walter Kaufmann
124. _The Road to Serfdom_, by Friedrich A. Hayek
125. _The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion_, by Ford Madox Ford
126. _Staring at the Sun_, by Julian Barnes
127. _A Pale View of Hills_, by Kazuo Ishiguro
128. _An Artist of the Floating World_, by Kazuo Ishiguro
129. _A Room of One's Own_, by Virginia Woolf
130. _The Handmaid's Tale_, by Margaret Atwood
131. _Duino Elegies_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by David Young 
132. _New Poems [1907]_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by Edward Snow 
133. _New Poems [1908]: The Other Part_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by Edward
     Snow
134. _humanist manifestoes I and II_, edited by Paul Kurtz
135. _Thasos and Ohio: Poems & Translations 1950--1980_, by Guy Davenport
136. _Thinking about Magritte_, by Kate Sterns
137. _The Travels of Sir John Mandeville_, tr. by C.W.R.D. Moseley
138. _Thompson's ``The Hound of Heaven'': An Interpretation_,
     by Francis P. LeBuffe, S.J.
139. _Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz Poems: A Bilingual Anthology_, Sor
    Juana Inez de la Cruz, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
140. _Sor Juana's Dream_, by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, tr. by
     Luis Harss
141. _The Mysterium_, by Eric McCormack
142. _Stories of God_, by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by M.D. Herter Norton
143. _Two Treatises of Government_, by John Locke
144. _The Sumerians_, by C. Leonard Woolley
145. _A Universal History of Infamy_, by Jorge Luis Borges,
     tr. by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
146. _The Art of War_, by Sun Tzu, tr. by Samuel B. Griffith
147. _Yeats's Poems_, by William Butler Yeats
148. _The Analects of Confucius_, tr. by Arthur Waley
149. _Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot, The Great Digest, The Analects_,
     tr. by Ezra Pound
150. _The Collected Poems of A.E. Housman_, A.E. Housman
151. _An Autobiographical Study_, by Sigmund Freud, tr. by James Strachey
152. _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_, by Sigmund Freud, tr. by James Strachey
153. _Civilization and Its Discontents_, by Sigmund Freud, tr. 
     by James Strachey
154. _The Ego and the Id_, by Sigmund Freud, tr. by Joan Riviere, revised
     by James Strachey
155. _Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis_, by Sigmund Freud, tr. by James
     Strachey
156. _The Future of an Illusion_, by Sigmund Freud, tr. by James Strachey
157. _Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego_, by Sigmund Freud, tr.
     by James Strachey

There are a number of these volumes from the third, freestyle, list
where somebody's recommendation here had something to do with inducing
me to read them. Some of these recommendations spun out of arguments, to
be sure, but I appreciate them just the same (in fact, it's one of the
reasons I like picking arguments with intelligent people). Anyway, the
following book readings can be dedicated to the influence of people here:
95 Miriam Nadel
92 Vance Maverick and George Scott
55,123 Roger Lustig
109 Mike Godwin
129 Susan Gere
135 Jeff Davis
81,139,140 Francis Muir
83 John Donald Collier
121 Terrance Heath
125,150 Mark Taranto
143 Mikhail Zeleny
146 John Wojdylo
86-90,111,116,131-133,142,151--157 Fiona Webster

Most of my classics reading was done in the English translations
of the Loeb editions at 50 pages a night (=25 small English pages).
There were some lovely miscellaneous reads this year, most notably the
volume of Babrius and Phaedrus (verse collections of Aesop's fables).
Marcus Aurelius is always a joy to revisit. If you haven't read him
yet, go and do it. But Epictetus was a new and welcome companion.
I think that Stoicism goes too far in proscribing emotional display,
but I do think it is dead on in insisting that reason must be in charge
(at least of when and where the emotions are to be given free rein).
I also think the separation of the happenstances of human life into those we
can exercise moral choice over and those we cannot, counselling us to
pay no heed to what is beyond our moral control, but pay all attention to
what is in our control, to be a lesson contemporary society could
benefit by. Many passages would be worth committing to memory. A
couple examples:
   Why, what is the matter of being reviled? Take your stand by a
   stone and revile it; and what effect will you produce? If, then,
   a man listens like a stone, what profit is there to the reviler?
   But if the reviler has the weakness of the reviled as a point of
   vantage, then he does accomplish something. [volume I, p. 165]

   But God has brought man into the world to be a spectator
   of Himself and of His works, and not merely a spectator,
   but also an interpreter [exegete]. [volume I, p. 45]

   Again, if a man comes forward and says, ``I would have you
   know that nothing is knowable, but that everything is uncertain'';
   or if someone else says, ``Believe me, and it will be to your
   advantage, when I say: One ought not to believe a man at all'';
   or again, someone else, ``Learn from me, man, that it is
   impossible to learn anything; it is I who tell you this and I will
   prove it to you, if you wish,'' what difference is there between
   these persons and---whom shall I say?---those who call themselves
   Academics? ``O men,'' say the Academics, ``give your assent to the
   statement that no man assents to any statement; believe us when we say
   that no man can believe anybody.'' [volume I, pages 371-373]

   Next train yourself to use wine with discretion, not with a view
   to heavy drinking (for there are some clumsy fools who practise
   with this in mind), but first for the purpose of achieving abstention
   from wine, and keeping your hands off a wench, or a sweet-cake. And
   then some day, if the occasion for a test really comes, you will
   enter the lists at a proper time for the sake of discovering whether
   your sense impressions still overcome you as they did before. But
   first of all flee away from the things that are too strong for you.
   It is not a fair match that, between a pretty wench and a young beginner
   in philosophy. [volume II, p. 85]

But, the core of my classics reading was the history of republican Rome,
with Polybius carried on from last year, Appian's _Roman Wars_, and Livy's
_From the Founding of the City_. Polybius I think displays the
profounder historical mind, but all three authors are simply a goldmine
of story.

I've commented before about some of my American reading this year. In '91
I began with Prescott and then Columbus' diary which ended up devoting
most of this year's reading to Columbus and conquistadores and precolumbian
civs and Latin America. All more or less in honour of the quincentennial.
Prescott is still my favorite account of the conquests, but I must say
that I enjoyed the whole thread. It is another goldmine of story.
And it sketched in this gaping chasm in my education. I have
been meaning all year to draw up some sort of review especially of
the books by Samuel Eliot Morison on voyages of discovery, but
I'm afraid I just haven't gotten around to it, so I'll content myself
with a word or two here. Morison I think is one of the great
narrative American historians, this century's worthy companion of
Parkman and Prescott. His style is always personal, and, above all,
he makes it a story. Unfortunately for him, his style is also
authoritative, dismissive of all he considers fools, and it
gets him in no end of trouble with whippersnappers who go gunning
for him. For one thing, he simply makes his own (usually reasonable,
I think) judgment calls about all the Columbus ``questions''
(precolumbian discoveries, birth and training and travel, why he sailed,
what he expected to find, where he landed, etc., etc.), and Morison has
little sufferance for those who like to wallow in these things, those who
prefer to emphasize our ignorance and the mystery of it all.
Morison's _Admiral of the Ocean Sea_ is probably *the*
modern Columbus, giving the canonical interpretation (that is, if
you're going to choose one from out of hundreds). Morison lauds
Columbus' achievement as a mariner, and traces his colonial disasters
to the very singleness of purpose that made Columbus into the Discoverer in
the first place. I got mine from the Book-of-the-Month Club, and
and it is indeed a pretty thing, but, unfortunately,
it is an abridgement of the original two-volume 1942 work (I haven't
seen the full thing, but I gather the difference is that all the
footnoting has been cut). A perfect foil to it is Kirkpatrick Sale's
_Conquest of Paradise_. Sale is rabidly environmentalist, and doesn't
like Morison from the word go. He sees the Conquest as an untold
environmental disaster, the product of a sickness in the very soul
of European civilization. I mean, not only does he excoriate
Judeo-Christianity for introducing a patriarchal deity who gives man
dominion over the earth, but he traces this all the way up to
Enlightenment liberalism and individualism and says that they have to go.
Columbus, for Sale, becomes the epitome of the rootlessness,
exploitiveness, and all-round sickness of Western civ. And always
Sale plays off of Morison, contradicting him at every step that
he can. OK, I'm not sympathetic to Sale's politics, but he writes
very, very well. Let me summarize both Morison and Sale with two striking
quotes. First, Sale, in a footnote regarding a dig
of what might be La Navidad in Haiti:

     The bones of a European rat have been found through these
     excavations; though it is not quite certain when it arrived,
     it would be perfectly in keeping that the first European
     animal to land in the New World was a rodent ``pest,''
     introduced accidentally. [Sale, p. 117]

Then, listen to Morison on the destruction of the aboriginal
inhabitants of Hispaniola:

     Those who fled to the mountains were hunted with hounds,
     and of those who escaped, starvation and disease took toil,
     whilst thousands of the poor creatures in desperation took 
     cassava poison to end their miseries. So the policy and
     acts of Columbus for which he alone was responsible began
     the depopulation of the terrestrial paradise that was
     Hispaniola in 1492. Of the original natives, estimated
     by a modern ethnologist at 300,000 in number, one third
     were killed off between 1494 and 1496. By 1508 an enumeration
     showed only 60,000 alive. Four years later that number was reduced
     by two thirds; and in 1548 Oviedo doubted whether 500 Indians
     remained. Today the blood of the Tainos only exists mingled
     with that of the more docile and laborious African Negroes
     who were imported to do the work that they could not and
     would not perform.
         The fate of this gentle and almost defenceless people
     offers a terrible example to Americans who fancy they will
     be allowed to live in peace by people overseas who covet what
     they have. [Morison, p. 492,493]

I would suggest there's a world of difference here exhibited of the
world-views of these two historians. The one with a cynicism,
that, however much I don't happen to agree with his politics,
comes so naturally to me: How typical, a rat! And the other
with what would be unthinkable to any modern writer---identifying
Americans with the underdogs---the Indian victims of Europeans.

Let's see---with my freestyle reading, I'll pick out some individual
works. You see above that Fiona got the most dedications, which is
because I credit her with spurring me to read both Rilke and Freud. For
Rilke I seem to remember an ancient post back when Fiona was still Oceanstar
and took Rilke with her backpacking in the mountains. My foray into Rilke
this year has been only a taste---in particular, I've had only a glance
at the German---, but I've been amazed to find that much of it stays
with me. My first love is given to the Elegies, but I also particualarly
like the first part of the _New Poems_. _Malte Laurids Brigge_ is an
episodically and lyrically beautiful novel, but I must say that I
couldn't shake the moral criticisms of it that Kundera made in
_Immortality_.  Rilke is very inwardly directed, yes,
but I must say I almost can't imagine reading him backpacking
in the mountains. Ideally, I think he should be read in the city, very
late at night, everyone else asleep. Yeats and Housman and Villon
were also wonderful acquisitions for the year. But, I didn't
read nearly as much poetry as I would have liked. Nor as much Nietzsche
as I set out to read, though what I did read (_Zarathustra_ and
_Beyond Good and Evil_) didn't exactly change my previously held notions
about him.  The Hornblower novels were a lovely read and I'd recommend
Anne Rice's erotic trilogy, ``Chronicles of Sleeping Beauty''. Not
only erotic, but intriguing I think. I also thought _The Third Policeman_,
_The Robber Bridegroom_, _A Journal of the Plague Year_, _The Loved One_,
_Wordstruck_, _Brave New World_, _The Good Soldier_, _A Pale View of
Hills_, and _The Mysterium_ all fictional jewels. The two Ishiguro
I finished this year complement _Remains of the Day_, which I'd read before.
I almost can't decide, but I'll say now that I think _Pale View of Hills_
is the best of the three. For non-fiction, I'd strongly recommend all of
_Who Wrote the Bible?_, _The Road to Serfdom_, _A Room of One's
Own_, _The Age of Reason_, and _Two Treatises of Government_. _Who Wrote
the Bible?_ I'd single out for a particularly clear and convincing argument
from first principles in favor of the Documentary Hypothesis (you
know---J, E, P, D and all that). Also, I am particularly glad
of reading Sun Tzu and Confucius for the first time, and I look forward
to more exploration of Chinese literature in the future. Which brings me
to the string of Freud I finished the year with. I was going to
start Dorothy L. Sayers and Arthur Ransome on Christmas Day, but
I'm afraid I got stuck with the Freud instead (so anyway I'm starting
reading Sayers and Ransome today). I credit Fiona because of her
mystery post of items from the index of one of Freud's works.
(Was it the _Introductory Lectures_? I forget.) It seemed to promise
God's plenty was to be found in Freud, and so it caught my interest.
So far, I'm impressed both by how little Freud claims (in that he'll say
that psychoanalysis is merely a method of bringing the unconscious to the
attention of the conscious, so that conscious moral choice may be made)
and by how much he claims (he'll psychoanalyze the whole of Western civ,
arguing Judeo-Christianity is an illusional, perhaps even delusional, neurosis,
and prescribe atheism as the cure). I'm also amazed at how much of Freud
I've simply internalized from out of the culture, without having
been quite consciously aware of its provenance. Fascinating stuff.

Finally, a note about the number of books. I remain impressed by 220 or
400 books read in a year. In 1991, my list totaled 92 books. The greater
number this year can be explained mostly by the fact that among
the books on my freestyle list, a lot of them were pretty thin. Dropping
usenet altogether, or doing absolutely zero physics and ignoring my family,
or ignoring household chores (hey, there's an idea!), I might be able to
read more. And I can see where sticking to short fiction would up my
my total somewhat. But mostly I'm convinced I don't read anywheres
near as fast as many of you do.

Let me leave you with this beautiful hymn I learned from Morison (and
which has become the song I've sung most frequently to my daughter, Helen,
born this last February):


        Sal-ve re-gi-na
        C   E  G  A  GG
        Ma-ter Mi-se-ri-cor-di-ae,
        A  C'  B  A  G  A   G  GG
        Vi-ta, Dul-ce-do, et spes no-stra sa-l-vae.
        C' GG  A   F  DD  E  F    G  E    E  D CC
        Ad Te cla-ma-mus ex-su-les Fi-li-i E-vae,
        G  A  B   C' GG  A  B  C'  B  A  G A GG.
        Ad Te su-spi-ra-mus Ge-men-tes et flen-tes
        C' G  A  F   D  E   E  G   A   C' A    GG
        In hac la-cri-ma-rum val-le.
        A  G   F  E   D  E   D   CC
        E-ia er-go--  Ad-vo-ca-ta no-stra,
        G A  B  C'C'  G  A  C' B  A  GG
        il-los tu-os, mi-se-ri-cor-des o-cu-los,
        C' GG  A  FF  D  E  F  G   F   A G  GG 
        ad nos con-ve-r-te.
        F  E   D   E  D CC
        Et Je---sum-  Be-ne-dic-tum fruc-tum ven-tris tu-i,
        G  A B  C'C'  B  G  A   G   G    A   C'  B    A  G
        No-bis post hoc ex-si-li-um os-te-n-de.
        C  GG  A    C'  B  A  G  EE F  E  D CC
        O----   cle-mens,
        E F G   E   CC
        O--------  Pi--a,
        G A B C'B  A G GG
        O----------  Du-l-cis
        C' GG A F D  E  F GG
        Vir-go Ma-ri--a-.
        C   F  E  D C CC

    where C=do, D=re, etc., C'=C 8va, and all notes are eighth notes, except
          where doubled they are quarter notes

Morison says it is one of the oldest extent Benedictine chants, and would
have been sung by Columbus' sailors at evening prayers somewhere in the
second dogwatch (then between 5 and 7 PM), just after sunset.

Have a Happy New Year, and may God bless.

              Mike Morris
       (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books