Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988)
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
“This light feather was called Maat, goddess of the scales. The hieroglyph for Maat also stood for a unit of length—the 33 centimeters of the standard brick—and for the fundamental note of the flute.
This information comes from a lecture by Giorgio de Santil-lana on the precision of the ancients in observing astronomical phenomena, a lecture I heard in Italy in 1963 which had a profound influence on me. These days I have often thought of Santillana, who acted as my guide in Massachusetts during ...my first visit to the United States in 1960. In memory of his friendship, I have started this talk on exactitude in literature with the name of Maat, goddess of the scales—all the more because Libra is my sign of the Zodiac.
First I shall try to define my subject. To my mind exactitude means three things above all: a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable visual images; in Italian we have an adjective that doesn't exist in English, “icastico,”MoreLess
This information comes from a lecture by Giorgio de Santil-lana on the precision of the ancients in observing astronomical phenomena, a lecture I heard in Italy in 1963 which had a profound influence on me. These days I have often thought of Santillana, who acted as my guide in Massachusetts during ...my first visit to the United States in 1960. In memory of his friendship, I have started this talk on exactitude in literature with the name of Maat, goddess of the scales—all the more because Libra is my sign of the Zodiac.
First I shall try to define my subject. To my mind exactitude means three things above all: a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable visual images; in Italian we have an adjective that doesn't exist in English, “icastico,”MoreLess
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