Plus la change -- and Dominique Strauss-Kahn

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/17/2011 11:26 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 10:48 AM -0400 5/17/11, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>At 5/17/2011 10:19 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>[Joel wrote]  Maxim first seen in English by Google Books in
>>>>1917, "The Life of the Grasshopper," by
>>>>Jean-Henri Fabre, in a footnote translating from
>>>>the French: "Pour vivre heureux, vivons caché!"
>>>>
>>>>(I do not have any quotation reference books to check.)
>>>Me neither, but I suspect the last word would be
>>>"cachés".  Or the next to last one "vive".  But
>>>not both.
>>
>>Well, I do not know any more French than "La
>>multiplication, sil vous plais", but I did
>>transcribe accurately from page 302 of a 1917
>>edition of Fabre NY: Dodd, Mead), translated by
>>Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, Fellow of the
>>Zoological Society of London. (GBooks, full view).
>>
>>Joel
>We can take the plural version back a couple of centuries,

But merely 80 years before Fabre (to Paris, 1837).

>first here:
>
>http://books.google.com/books?id=w_4aAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA180&dq=%22vivons+cach%C3%A9s%22&hl=en&ei=qJDSTfjcOcbKsgaN3qW4CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwADha#v=onepage&q=%22vivons%20cach%C3%A9s%22&f=false
>
>(Sorry, I don't know how to do the tinyURL bit.)

URL is tinyurl.com.  Others use other sites.

I said I didn't know French ... but I assume that
if Fred does not have this yet, he will also want
the first appearance in English, perhaps the 1917 translation of Fabre.

Joel


>But you'll note that the proverb appears in the
>above text as an epigraph attributed to Florian
>(1755-1794), wikipedi-ized at
>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Claris_de_Florian,
>who is indeed credited there with devising the
>proverb in one of his celebrated fables.

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