Fioretti di San Francesco (The Little Flowers of Saint Francis) is a florilegium - a collection of excerpts - divided into 53 short chapters, on the life of the fabled saint, which was composed at the end of the 14th century.

The anonymous Italian text, almost certainly by a Tuscan author, is a version of the Latin Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, of which the earliest extant manuscript is one of 1390 A.D. The text has been ascribed to Fra. Ugolino da Santa Maria, whose name occurs three times in the Actus.

The text has been the most popular account of his life and relates many colorful anecdotes, miracles and pious examples from the lives of Francis and his followers.

It is said that one day while Francis was traveling with some companions they happened upon a place in the road where birds filled the trees on either side. Francis told his companions to “wait for me while I go to preach to my sisters the birds”. The birds surrounded him, drawn by the power of his voice, and not one of them flew away. Francis spoke to them:

My sister birds, you owe much to God, and you must always and in everyplace give praise to Him; for He has given you freedom to wing through the sky and He has clothed you…you neither sow nor reap, and God feeds you and gives you rivers and fountains for your thirst, and mountains and valleys for shelter, and tall trees for your nests. And although you neither know how to spin or weave, God dresses you and your children, for the Creator loves you greatly and He blesses you abundantly. Therefore… always seek to praise God.

Fioretti tells that in the city of Gubbio, where Francis lived for some time, was a wolf “terrifying and ferocious, who devoured men as well as animals”. Francis had compassion upon the townsfolk, and went up into the hills to find the wolf. Soon, fear of the animal had caused all his companions to flee, though the saint pressed on. When he found the wolf, he made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf to come to him and hurt no one. Miraculously the wolf closed his jaws and lay down at the feet of St. Francis.

“Brother Wolf, thou doest much harm in these parts and thou hast done great evil…” said Francis. “All these people accuse you and curse you…But brother wolf, I would make peace between you and the people.”

“As thou art willing to make this peace, I promise thee that thou shalt be fed every day by the inhabitants of this land so long as thou shalt live among them; thou shalt no longer suffer hunger, as it is hunger which has made thee do so much evil; but if I obtain all this for thee, thou must promise, on thy side, never again to attack any animal or any human being; dost thou make this promise?”

In agreement the wolf placed one of its forepaws in Francis’ outstretched hand, and the oath was made. Francis then commanded the wolf to return with him to Gubbio.

Meanwhile the townsfolk, having heard of the miracle, gathered in the city marketplace to await Francis and his companion, and were shocked to see the ferocious wolf behaving as though his pet. When Francis reached the marketplace he offered the assembled crowd an impromptu sermon with the tame wolf at his feet. He is quoted as saying: “How much we ought to dread the jaws of hell, if the jaws of so small an animal as a wolf can make a whole city tremble through fear?”

Gubbio was freed from the menace of the predator. Francis, ever the lover of animals, even made a pact on behalf of the town dogs, that they would not bother the wolf again.

These legends exemplify the Franciscan mode of charity and poverty as well as the saint’s love of the natural world. Part of his appreciation of the environment is expressed in his Canticle of the Sun, a poem written by the saint in Umbrian Italian shortly before his death in 1226, which expresses a love and appreciation of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Mother Earth, Brother Fire, and all of God’s creations personified in their fundamental forms. In Canticle of the Creatures, he wrote: “All praise to you, Oh Lord, for all these brother and sister creatures.” His Canticle is believed to be among the first works of literature, if not the first, written in the Italian language.

It is an affirmation of Francis’ personal theology as he often referred to animals as brothers and sisters to Mankind, and rejected material accumulation and sensual comforts in favour of “Lady Poverty”.

Image: Saint Francis instructs the Wolf, Carl Weidemeyer-Worpswede, 1911

Beauty, in a sentence, is as difficult to describe as beauty in a painting or a human face. If you are even thinking in these terms - that is, if you are even considering what might constitute strong vigorous, energetic, and clear sentences - you are already far in advance of wherever you were before you were conscious of the sentence as something deserving our deep respect and enraptured attention.

Consider the sentence that begins Samuel Johnson’s brief biography, The Life of Savage.

It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality only been more conspicuous than others, not more frequent, or more severe.

The quality that this sentence shares with all good sentences is clarity. Between its initial capital letter and its final period are 134 words, ten commas, and three semicolons, and yet the average reader, or at least the reader who has the patience to read and consider every word, will have no trouble understanding what Doctor Johnson is saying.

Despite its length, the sentence is economical. To remove even one word would make it less lucid and less complete, as Johnson takes an observation so common as to have become a cliché (money and fame don’t by themselves make us happy) and turns it, then turns it again, considering the possible explanations, the reasons why this perception may be true or merely appear to be true. The sentence combines a sort of magisterial authority with an almost offhand wit, in part because of the casual ease with which it tosses off sweeping philosophical generalizations (”great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages”, “the general lot of mankind is misery”) compressed into subordinate clauses, as if the truth of these statements is so obvious to both the writer and the reader that there is no need to pause over these pronouncements, let alone give them sentences of their own.

Possibly the principal reason why the sentence so delights us is that to read it is to take part in the process - the successive qualifications and considerations - of thought itself, of a lively mind at work. Finally, the cadence and rhythm of the sentence are as measured and pleasing as those of poetry or music.

Excerpted from Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer, HarperCollins, 2006

Image from Word Rogues

Poet, musician, novelist, ladies’ man, monk, actor… Leonard Norman Cohen, one of Canada’s most influential cultural icons was born on Sept. 21, 1934 in Montreal. Whether from a mountaintop at a Buddhist retreat in California, on the Greek island of Hydra or strolling along the streets of his beloved ville d’amour, the melancholy bard of popular music has delighted fans worldwide with his poetry, novels and music.

Leonard Cohen’s towering songbook fits no category save its own, but they finally found a house big enough to hold him. Cohen’s overdue induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came during Monday night’s ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

Between the inductions of Madonna, John Mellencamp, the Ventures, Gamble & Huff and Little Walter, Lou Reed took the podium to offer a generous tribute to his fellow rock poet.

Reed mentioned William S. Burroughs and Cohen as contemporaries, citing Naked Lunch and Beautiful Losers, and saying “one of them got more attention. I was always surprised by that.” Reed then quoted lavishly from the Cohen oeuvre from typewritten remarks, from First We Take Manhattan, Hey That’s No Way to Say Goodbye, Anthem and Cohen’s latest work Book of Longing. It was, appropriately, a most writerly induction for Montreal’s greatest living artist.

Cohen pronounced the induction “such and unlikely event” and “not a distinction I coveted,” while joking that music critic Jon Landau once said “I have seen the future of rock ‘n’ roll, and he is not Leonard Cohen.” Then came the perfect recital of Tower of Song before Damien Rice serenaded the hall with Hallelujah.

The evening was doubly celebratory for Montrealers as it was accompanied by the announcement of Cohen’s first live dates in Montreal in 15 years, with three shows at Place des Arts - June 23, 24 and 25 - as part of this year’s Montreal International Jazz Festival. There is also talk of an album.

Details at Montreal Gazette

CBC Digital Archives

Leonard Cohen website

The lighting is bordello red, but the librarians insist that their X-rated exhibition is serious.

Hell at the Library, Eros in Secret, which opened at the National Library in Paris last month, offers a peek at its secret archive of erotic art, putting on display more than 350 sexually explicit literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, film clips, even calling cards and cardboard pop-ups.

Visitors to the library can listen to a modern-day recording of an 18th-century “dialogue” during sex and watch a six-minute excerpt from a grainy black-and-white silent pornography film made in 1921.

The handwritten manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s novel Les Infortunes de la Vertu (The Misfortunes of Virtue) is under glass here, as are 17th-century French engravings of “erotic postures”; English “flagellation novels” exported to France in the late 19th century; Japanese prints; Man Ray photographs; and a police report from 1900 that compiles the addresses of Paris’s houses of prostitution and what they charged.

To avoid complaints that a publicly supported institution is corrupting the country’s youth, no one under 16 is admitted.

“In an era where sexual images are a product for popular consumption, the library has decided to lift the veil on this world of imagination and fantasy,” Bruno Racine, the library director, said in an interview. “The library is a very serious institution, and the project was done with gravity. But we also perhaps are different from what you think — and there is humor here too.”

The items, on display through March 22, are drawn from a permanent collection created in the 1830s when the library isolated works considered “contrary to good morals.” They were put in a locked section with its own card catalog and given the name L’Enfer — hell. Many pieces have been consigned there over the years by the police for safeguarding, perhaps, and posterity.

The exhibition (and its 464-page catalog) comes at a time when France is struggling with a variety of societal issues: the limits of privacy for its public figures, censorship and the definition of good taste. A one-day scholarly conference at the library about the exhibition included a debate on the meaning of modern-day censorship. Library curators acknowledge that public morality is shifting.

President Nicolas Sarkozy himself is blurring the lines of public permissibility. His decision to revel in, rather than hide, his love affair with Carla Bruni, a model-turned-pop-singer, is, he said at a news conference last week, a break with the past and a sign that “France is moving forward.”

However, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist defeated by Mr. Sarkozy in last May’s presidential election, is calling for more decorum and discretion in public life. “Nicolas Sarkozy has chosen to turn private events in his life into public events, like Louis XIV: You have the king’s breakfast, the king’s lunch, the king’s bedtime, the king’s mistresses,” she said in a radio interview on Monday.

Even Simone de Beauvoir’s backside is not off limits from exposure and analysis these days. The decision by the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur two weeks ago to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of that feminist literary figure with a nude photo of her (taken from the back in 1952) has been sharply criticized and just as sharply defended.

Florence Montreynaud, a historian and feminist author who runs an anti-sexism organization, protested the photo by offering the magazine’s director, Jean Daniel, a choice: apologize or bare his own bottom. She also said the magazine should publish the bare buttocks of Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s long-time partner.

The fact that the cellulite on Beauvoir’s thighs and buttocks was airbrushed away added to the indignity. The media columnist for the newspaper Libération, Daniel Schneidermann, wrote: “The photo has even been retouched — the buttocks of Beauvoir — with makeup, to make them lose some kilos, some rolls of fat and to take off 10 years.”

The Paris metro system constructed a teaser for the show on its No. 10 line. Commuters passing by the closed Croix Rouge station get the most fleeting of glimpses of erotic engravings lighted up in shocking pink and partly hidden behind fluttering black curtain strips.

The newspaper Le Monde has run ads for the show (with a shocking-pink X) on its front page. The literary review Le Magazine Littéraire devoted its December cover to the subject, with scholarly essays on sex and aging, the last taboo of pedophilia and whether excessive public display of sex has made it boring.

Still, with France’s tough laws against pornography and one of the most aggressive law-enforcement campaigns against child pornography in Europe, the library has taken care to avoid falling afoul of the law. . . .

New York Times, January 16, 2008

This week, Canada’s Globe and Mail began a new literary series, the 50 Greatest Books.

Over the coming year, an international panel chosen by The Globe and Mail will select the 50 Greatest Books ever written. Each week, a single work will be discussed by an expert or a writer passionate about the work in question.

As columnist Martin Levin explains, “I know, it’s an entirely presumptuous label, and no doubt we’ll leave off dozens that readers feel belong. So why not simply 50 Great Books?”

In part, because the G&M wants readers to engage in the discussion through its forum for outraged advocates or critics, clever ripostes and tut-tutting over obvious oversights — and in part because in making distinctions, the G&M implicitly rejects the postmodern view that won’t allow privileging Anna Karenina over the James Bond books.

A great book is adjudged a great book over time by virtue of offering things — astonishing ideas, unforgettable characters, imaginative sublimity, glorious prose — that cannot be got elsewhere, and that tell us something new about the human (or other) condition.

The 50 will not be ranked in order. Just choosing them is adventurous enough. The entries will be derived from discussions among members of the panel. Their carefully guarded identities will be revealed only at the end of the series, when readers will be invited to engage with them more directly. Each entry will be written by someone with knowledge, usually extensive knowledge, of the book in question.

We realize the abounding questions as to establishing criteria. One juror has raised several important points, perhaps the central of which is how to mediate between a book’s literary or intellectual qualities and its importance. Given that the King James Bible (not the Hebrew or Greek versions) is both poetically magnificent and of unsurpassed significance, I find it hard to imagine its absence. But what about the Koran, clearly almost unparalleled in its influence, though perhaps not in literary value. But it may be to readers of Arabic, which raises another issue: How does one judge a work (as pure work) in a foreign language?

Never mind works in Japanese or Arabic. Our juror cites Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. There is common agreement among German speakers that the writing is beautiful, but can a jury of English-speakers tell? A case that blends both translation and “importance” is Rousseau’s The Social Contract. The book has had incalculable influence, informing the work of Kant, Hume, Tolstoy and of almost every post-Rousseau French writer. Our juror suggests, though, that as a work marrying literature to ideas, most English-speakers might opt for The Confessions.

Is it a cheat to cite the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which contain at very minimum a half-dozen works of genius? Or do we simply opt for King Lear or Hamlet? Is it the collected works of T. S. Eliot, or Four Quartets? Or neither? If we think Emily Dickinson deserving, how is it possible to single out an individual work?

And how are we to estimate texts that were once of overwhelming scientific influence: Aristotle, Newton, Galileo, Vesalius? Since science proceeds by falsifiability, it is in the very nature of the scientific text to be superseded. Newton’s Principia Mathematica may be almost unread now, but our world is inconceivable without it.

So many issues, so many books.

First entry: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Read Huckleberry Finn online

Even in the weak winter light seeping into the room, his colors astonish me. Russet brown and tan, silver, black, white and gray. … His are the shades of subtle intimation, the perfection of understated tones.

One day, a baby sparrow plummeted 25 feet from a nest tucked in the eaves of a Southeast Portland home and landed in a clump of dying irises.

This would have been an entirely unremarkable event had the home’s owner, a man named Chris Chester, not discovered the baby bird in his flower beds, naked-winged and helpless - a limp, clammy thing not much bigger than Chris’ thumb.

At first he was hesitant to pick it up, his “compassion having been hobbled by childhood memories of failed bird rescues. … I remembered shoeboxes with plucked-up grass as padding, inappropriate offerings of bread and worms. The tiny, inevitable corpse come morning.”

But eventually, he took it in his hands and carried it into his home.

Maybe, in the end, we are drawn to vulnerable things because we recognize in them our own frailty - that deep down we are all somehow broken, flightless, naked in a heap. When he found this particular vulnerable thing, Chris was 41, and in his own words, as depressed as he had ever been, living “below sea level,” struggling to get things done.

Chris had always dreamed of writing a book. He would say that he just knew it was what he was meant to do, and he would try in fits and starts - he’d written poetry for years, even frequented open-mike nights around town many years ago - but he could never get far. “He just couldn’t focus,” his ex-wife, Rebecca Lester, says. He doubted. He fretted. He silenced himself with terrible writer’s block.

And then, down tumbled the sparrow.

When it became clear the bird would survive, Chris named him B. Just B. Just Be. One of Chris’ favorite things to do was to cradle B in his cupped hand, feel his warmth.

In the days following Chris’ death everyone agreed that this was one of the happiest times in Chris’ life. It was as if he had finally found the words for everything he ever wanted to say.

I offer B my right shoulder after I walk inside. He puffs and stretches, glances at the papers in my hand before hopping down. We’ve gone through this routine innumerable times, yet I ponder each repetition as the steps unfold, knowing that I’ll one day be desperate to recall all B-related things. Every day I vow and every day fail to take nothing for granted regarding those tricks time plays on complacency.

B pulled Chris outside of himself, and in doing so, he gave him something to write about: this crazy life he was living - living - with a bird flying around in the background, seed husks crunching underfoot.

But that was just the starting point.

Really, what B gave Chris was the chance to write about finding meaning and wonder in the smallest things. About the joy of finding something, anything, that can keep you focused on the moment and away from your more destructive forces: the doubts and worries and fears that keep us from being present in our own lives, that keep us from risking our feelings, even if that means experiencing the ache of loss.

One night, you accompany Rebecca as she goes to fetch Chris’ birds, and move them to her house.

Rebecca is pale and shaky, and she keeps repeating, alternately “I can’t believe he’s gone,” and “It’s so hard to be here.”

It’s clear by the state of his house that Chris had suffered both physically and existentially in his last year. That, as his nephew put it, it had become more and more like a birdhouse Chris was simply visiting. The pain of his last few years is almost palpable.

And yet, while Rebecca is upstairs preparing the birds, and you are wandering through the rooms downstairs, studying his collection of books and marveling at the mind they reflect, you spot a small rectangle of paper lying on one of the bookshelves.

Just a few minutes before, you had ventured upstairs to be introduced to the birds, and as the rest of the flock careened and spun around the room, one brave sparrow landed briefly on your open palm. And you imagined you could feel the weight of every tiny bone, every feather.

You are reminded of that moment as you pick up the piece of paper and realize that it is Chris’ name tag from the Oregon Book Awards, the dark fibers of his jacket still stuck to the back - and you know you are holding something incredibly fragile in your hands.

Sparrow Man

Le Parfum, the story of a murderer, is the work of the German writer, Patrick Suskind. This novel has been translated from the original German into 45 languages. A movie, starring Ben Whishaw and Dustin Hoffman, was adapted from this bestseller in 2006.

The novel takes place in France during the 18^th century. It tells about the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a man who possesses an extraordinary sense of smell.

Jean-Baptiste was born into the stench of the fishmarket at the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris. His mother, who had borne four bastards before him, gave birth standing behind her fish stall, and threw the baby onto a pile of rubbish as she had done with the others. But this baby was different. The newborn started crying, and attracted the attention of passers-by. This ended with his mother being arrested and condemned to be decapitated for attempted infanticide.

Little Jean-Baptiste was handed over to several nurses in succession, but none of them wanted to have anything to do with him. He was greedy, and worse, he had no odour. They all knew how sweetly babies smelled, but Jean-Baptiste was strangely different. He ended up with Madame Gaillard, a woman without emotion and without a sense of smell, for she had lost the latter in a childhood accident. She collected children and looked after them for a suitable fee. It was in her house that he learned to recognize the smells of his surroundings – flowers, grass, wood, water… But the other children sensed that he was somehow different, and rejected him from the start, even attempting to suffocate him.

One day, Madame Galliard had had enough of Jean-Baptiste, and handed him over to Monsieur Grimal, a tanner who needed man to help him. Young Jean-Baptiste worked hard at his disagreeable and dangerous tasks.As a result, Monsieur Grimal gave him permission to go out for an hour every day. During his free time, Jean-Baptiste roamed around Paris and explored every nook and cranny in search of the most extraordinary smells.

One evening, during the feast celebrating the coronation of Louis XV, Jean-Baptiste sensed a perfume that he had not experienced hitherto. This magnificent perfume led him across the entire city to a young girl in the Rue des Marais. Overwhelmed with desire to possess this perfume, Jean-Baptiste strangled her and tore her clothes off, to better savour her scent. He escaped the scene of the crime, but not without planning to become the best perfumer in Paris.

Later, his plan started to come to fruition. He arranged to deliver some goatskins to a master perfumer, Giuseppe Baldini. Visiting Baldini’s shop was overwhelming. It was chock full to the rafters with perfumes, unguents, pomades, herbs and oils, and had a laboratory with a wealth of essences.

Baldini scoffed at his offer to come and work as an apprentice, but he was quick to convince the master that he could formulate the most delicious perfumes. He started by replicating Amor and Psyche, a perfume by Pelissier for which all Paris was clamouring. Then he improved on it. At Baldini’s, he was hungry to learn all of Baldini’s techniques, and Baldini was well rewarded by his efforts. Of course, the magnificent scents that he invented were sold to the adoring Parisiennes under Baldini’s name.

Despite his success, Jean-Baptiste was frustrated by his inability to capture the scent of objects like glass and stone. More importantly, he would have liked to replicate the smell of the young girl in Rue des Marais. Baldini confided to him that there were other, more sophisticated techniques that were used, and that these could be learned in the city of Grasse.

It wasn’t long before Jean-Baptiste left Baldini’s house and set out to learn these techniques.

As soon as he had left Paris, Jean-Baptiste felt a certain well-being. At first, it was the experience of fresh air, away from the stench of Paris, but after awhile, he noticed that what he really disliked was people themselves. As a result, he wandered into the mountains of Auvergne and became a recluse for a period, living in an imaginary kingdom of scents.

Eventually, he set out for Grasse, and there he found work as a perfumer-apprentice. His goal was to create a perfume that was not only human, but superhuman – so powerful that anyone who inhaled it would fall under its spell.

One day, he sensed, far away, the odour of a young girl. This girl was the beautiful Laure Richis, daughter of the consul. Jean-Baptiste knew that he absolutely needed to possess this scent, but she was still too young. He knew that it would take two more years for her pheromones to have the time to ripen and be perfect for his perfume.

During this time, twenty-four murders were committed in Grasse. Each time, a beautiful young virgin was murdered, and her hair was cut off. Terror was the order of the day, and fathers were at a loss as to how to protect their daughters from the murderer who took only the best.

One night, it was time for the twenty-fifth. Jean-Baptiste stealthily climbed into the bedchamber of Laure Richis. He killed her quickly with a blow to the head, wrapped her in oiled cloths to extract her scent, cut her hair off, and removed her chemise to preserve the odours therein.

When the news of Laure’s death spread throughout Grasse the next day, the citizens decided to make every effort to capture and bring to justice her murderer. After several days, they ended up at Jean-Baptiste’s house, where they dug up the hair and chemise, as well as those of other victims.

Jean-Baptiste was summarily arrested and condemned to death.

His execution was fixed for five o’clock that afternoon, and the good people of Grasse arrived early in the morning, so as not to miss a minute of the spectacle.

As he ascended the scaffold, Jean-Baptiste sprinkled a little of Laure’s scent on him. The crowd went wild and abandoned all reason. They could see no reason why this pure and innocent man should be executed. Love was in the air, and Jean-Baptiste was the god who had brought it.

It couldn’t last, of course, so Jean-Baptiste headed for Paris before the effect on the crowd had worn off. He ended up in the old neighbourhood where he had been born.

Tired of his own solitude, and after the exhilarating experience in Grasse where he was adored by the crowd, he just wanted to be loved. But none of this was possible without his perfume. He was nothing without it, in the eyes of the world.

He sprinkled the remainder of Laure’s essence on himself, and was immediately surrounded by an adoring crowd. This time though, they advanced on him and, after they were finished, there was nothing left. He had disappeared