VANITAS VANITATUM.

UBI SUNT

Gilson Étienne. De la Bible à François Villon. In: École pratique des hautes études,
Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire 1923-1924. 1922. pp. 3-24

3. c'est bien en effet la Bible qui inspire le passage même de Villon qui l'a suggérée.

Ballade des Dames du temps jadis

5. După Înțelepciunea lui Solomon, care exprimă acest sentiment: vanité des biens
périssables, donc mépris du monde, et traduction de la fragilité des joies terrestres par une
accumulation d'images poétiques empruntées à tout ce qui passe sans laisser de traces

«Où sont maintenant les princes de la terre?»

C'est là l'origine première de ce que certains historiens de la littérature ont nommé: la
formule ubi sunt.

6. ce qui précisément passera au moyen âge, c'est l'apostrophe aux grands de la terre pour
montrer la vanité de leur grandeur et l'inutilité des biens de ce monde.

Sapientiae liber, V, 8-15:

{5:8} Quid nobis profuit superbia? aut divitiarum iactantia quid contulit nobis?
{5:8} How has arrogance benefited us? Or what has exalting in riches brought us?

{5:9} Transierunt omnia illa tamquam umbra, et tamquam nuncius percurrens,

{5:9} All those things have passed away like a shadow, and like a messenger traveling
quickly by;

{5:10} et tamquam navis, quæ pertransit fluctuantem aquam: cuius, cum præterierit, non
est vestigium invenire, neque semitam carinæ illius in fluctibus:
{5:10} and like a ship passing over the waves of water, when it has gone by, its trace
cannot be found, nor can the pathway of its keel in the waves;

{5:11} aut tamquam avis, quæ transvolat in aere, cuius nullum invenitur argumentum
itineris, sed tantum sonitus alarum verberans levem ventum: et scindens per vim itineris
aerem: commotis alis transvolavit, et post hoc nullum signum invenitur itineris illius:
{5:11} or, like a bird flying through the air, there is no evidence of her journey to be
found, but there is hardly a sound as the beating of her wings lifts up the air and, by the
force of her journey, divides the air she has flown across, which was disturbed by her
wings, and afterwards there is no sign of her journey to be found;

{5:12} aut tamquam sagitta emissa in locum destinatum, divisus aer continuo in se
reclusus est, ut ignoretur transitus illius:
{5:12} or, like an arrow shot at a selected mark, the air continues to be divided and to be
brought together again, so that its passing is unknown.
{5:13} sic et nos nati continuo desivimus esse: et virtutis quidem nullum signum
valuimus ostendere: in malignitate autem nostra consumpti sumus.
{5:13} And in like manner we, having been born, continuously cease to exist, and indeed,
we depart with no sign of virtue to show, but we are consumed in our malice.”

{5:14} Talia dixerunt in inferno hi, qui peccaverunt:

{5:14} Such things those who sinned said in hell.
{5:15} quoniam spes impii tamquam lanugo est, quæ a vento tollitur: et tamquam spuma
gracilis, quæ a procella dispergitur: et tamquam fumus, qui a vento diffusus est: et
tamquam memoria hospitis unius diei prætereuntis.
{5:15} For the hope of the impious is like feathers, which are blown away by the wind,
and like a thin foam, which is dispersed by a storm, and like smoke, which is scattered by
the wind, and like the memory of a guest who passes by one day.

Isaias, XXXIII, 18. You will think back to this time of terror, asking, "Where are the
Assyrian officers who counted our towers? Where are the bookkeepers who recorded the
plunder taken from our fallen city?"
”Inima ta îşi va aduce aminte de groaza trecută şi va zice: ‘Unde* este logofătul? Unde
este vistiernicul? Unde este cel ce veghea asupra turnurilor?’”.

Baruch, III, 16-19

Saint Paul, 1 Corinteni, 1: 20: Ubi sapiens? ubi scriba? ubi conquisitor hujus saeculi?
Nonne stultam fecit Deus sapientiam hujus mundi? » 20. Unde este înţeleptul? Unde e
cărturarul? Unde e cercetătorul acestui veac? Au n-a dovedit Dumnezeu nebună
înţelepciunea lumii acesteia? Versiunea Cornilescu: Unde este înțeleptul? Unde este
cărturarul? Unde este vorbărețul veacului acestuia? N-a prostit Dumnezeu înțelepciunea
lumii acesteia?”

6. A partir de ce moment on peut dire que le thème de

l'apostrophe aux grands du temps passé est entré dans le
courant littéraire de la chrétienté

7. Sa présence a été signalée, sans que ses origines aient été

reconnues, chez l'écrivain syriaque saint Ephrem (306-373)
et chez saint Cyrille d'Alexandrie (370-444). C'est la formule de saint Paul qui se trouve
littéralement utilisée: «Où est le sage, où est le savant, où est le conquérant de ce
monde?» (1)

Les Étymologies et les Synonymes sont des sources littéraires très riches pour toutes les
conceptions dont sont nourris les sermonnaires et les poètes médiévaux;

cette façon de démontrer le néant des aspirations mondaines et la fragilité de la vie

humaine

Chez Isidore de Séville au contraire, le thème Ubi sunt apparaît nettement, et c'est
probablement le point d'origine de sa diffusion: Synonym., II, 91.

8. Isidor, Synonyma, II, 91: «Brevis est hujus mundi félicitas, modica est hujus saeculi
gloria,
caduca est, et fragilis temporalis potentia. Dic ubi sunt reges? Ubi principes? ubi
imperatores? ubi locupletes rerum? ubi potentes saeculi? ubi divites mundi? quasi umbra
transierunt, velut somnium evanuerunt.»

9. une page de saint Bonaventure

Dic mihi ubi sunt amatores mundi

11. Comme il est aisé de le voir, la formule Ubi est est devenue aux xiie et xiiie siècles
une sorte de banalité théologique,

avec en moins l'énumération des noms propres, et en plus une insistance particulière sur
le thème de la beauté féminine

12. éléments nouveaux: rénumération des noms d'hommes ou de femmes illustres;

l'insistance plus marquée sur la fragilité de la beauté féminine.

19. Dic ubi est du poète français :

Dictes-moy où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora, la belle Romaine...

Sans doute, Héloïse, Jeanne la bonne Lorraine, Charlemagne

et Abélard viennent ici prendre les places de
Salomon, Samson et Absalon

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babylon Revisited

"And where's Mr. Campbell?" Charlie asked.
"Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell's a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales."
"I'm sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?" Charlie inquired.
"Back in America, gone to work."
"And where is the Snow Bird?"
"He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris."

In Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22, the protagonist Yossarian laments the death of

his friend Snowden, saying, "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

Parodierea locului
1978 La Vie mode d'emploi (prix Médicis)
Le roman retrace la vie d'un immeuble situé au numéro 11 de la rue (imaginaire) Simon-
Crubellier, dans le 17e arrondissement de Paris, entre 1875 et 1975. Il évoque ses
habitants, les objets qui y reposent et les histoires qui directement ou indirectement l'ont
animé.
Comme dans le tableau idéal de Valène, le professeur de peinture de l'immeuble, le
lecteur découvre «une longue cohorte de personnages, avec leur histoire, leur passé, leurs
légendes», comédie humaine où les destins entrecroisés se répondent, à l'image de la
curieuse création de l'ébéniste Grifalconi, « fantastique arborescence », « réseau
impalpable de galeries pulvérulentes ».
Gravures populaires, tableaux de maître, affiches publicitaires offrent l'occasion d'autant
de digressions et de récits: faits divers, rigoureuse description scientifique, recette de
cuisine, listes en tout genre.
De cette tentative d'inventaire et d'épuisement d'une portion de réel,

La Vie mode d'emploi est l'histoire détaillée d'un immeuble et de ses habitants à travers
le temps. A la fin du roman, Perec fournit au lecteur, auprès d'un plan de l'immeuble et
d'un index des noms et des œuvres, des repères chronologiques de 1833 à 1974. Le
peintre Valène est l'enregistreur privilégié de cette histoire. Le voici un jour dans
l'escalier, et tout un monde révolu surgit en lui comme si l'escalier lui communiquait par
osmose ses souvenirs accumulés.

“Il y avait bien sûr des gens dont il ne savait presque rien, qu'il n'était même pas sûr
d'avoir vraiment identifiés, des gens qu'il croisait de temps à autre dans les escaliers et
dont il ne savait pas très bien s'ils habitaient l'immeuble ou s'ils y avaient seulement des
amis ; il y avait des gens dont il n'arrivait plus du tout à se souvenir, d'autres dont il lui
restait une image unique et dérisoire : le face-à-main de Madame Appenzzell, les
figurines en liège découpé que Monsieur Troquet faisait entrer dans les bouteilles et qu'il
allait vendre le dimanche sur les Champs-Elysées, la cafetière émaillée bleue toujours
tenue chaude sur un coin de la cuisinière de Madame Fresnel.
Il essayait de ressusciter ces détails imperceptibles qui tout au long de ces cinquante-cinq
ans avaient tissé la vie de cette maison et que les années avaient effacés un à un: les
linoléums impeccablement cirés sur lesquels il fallait ne se déplacer qu'avec des patins de
feutre, les nappes de toile cirée à rayures rouges et vertes sur lesquelles la mère et la fille
écossaient des petits pois ; les dessous-de-plat en accordéon, les suspensions de
porcelaine blanche qu'on remontait d'un doigt à la fin du dîner; les soirées autour du poste
de T.S.F. avec l'homme en veste de molleton, la femme en tablier à fleurs et le chat
somnolent, pelotonné près de la cheminée; les enfants en galoches qui descendaient au
lait avec des bidons bosselés; les gros poêles à bois dont on recueillait les cendres dans de
vieux journaux étalés...
Où étaient-elles les boîtes de cacao Van Houten, les boîtes de Banania avec leur
tirailleur hilare, les boîtes de madeleines de Commercy en bois déroulé? Où étaient-ils
les garde-manger sous les fenêtres, les paquets de Saponite la bonne lessive avec sa
fameuse Madame Sans-Gêne, les paquets de ouate thermogène avec son diable cracheur
de feu dessiné par Cappiello, les sachets de lithinés du bon docteur Gustin?
Les années s'étaient écoulées, les déménageurs avaient descendu les pianos et les bahuts,
les tapis roulés, les cartons de vaisselle, les lampadaires, les aquariums, les cages à
oiseaux, les horloges centenaires, les cuisinières noires de suie, les tables avec leurs
rallonges, les six chaises, les glacières, les grands tableaux de famille.
Les escaliers pour lui, c'était, à chaque étage, un souvenir, une émotion, quelque chose de
suranné et d'impalpable, quelque chose qui …

Où étaient-ils les garde-manger sous les fenêtres, les paquets de Saponite, la bonne ... (La
Vie mode d'emploi, Hachette 1978, p.91)

Viața, instrucțiuni de utilizare este un roman din 1978 [1] de Georges Perec . Cartea a

câștigat autorului, în același an, Prix Médicis .

Cartea, probabil cea mai cunoscută a lui Perec, este dedicată memoriei lui Queneau și a fost
indicată de Calvino ca exemplu de hiper - roman [2] .

Romanul povestește viața diferiților locuitori din Rue Simon-Crubellier 11 (o stradă imaginară
situată în arondismentul 17 ): un bloc de 10 etaje, 10 camere pe etaj, formând
un „biquadrato” de 100 de elemente pe care Perec însuși le descrie în în acest fel.: «Îmi
imaginez o clădire pariziană a cărei fațadă a fost îndepărtată ... astfel încât, de la parter
până la mansarde, toate camerele din fața clădirii să fie vizibile imediat și simultan» [3] .

Povestea continuă, între camerele clădirii, urmând modelul „L” al mișcării calului în jocul
de șah și astfel atinge toate camerele, cu excepția uneia: capitolele cărții sunt de fapt
nouăzeci și nouă, nu o sută [4] [5] .

În conformitate cu obiectivele OuLiPo , Perec creează în carte - printre altele - un sistem

complex (la care se referă ca o „mașină de inspirat povești”) care generează, începând din
fiecare capitol, o listă de elemente - obiecte sau referințe - pe care capitolul ar trebui apoi să
le conțină sau la care ar trebui să facă aluzie. În carte apar 42 de liste de câte 10 obiecte,
adunate în 10 grupe de 4 elemente și două grupuri care conțin liste de „perechi”. Cateva
exemple:

 numărul de persoane implicate

 lungimea capitolului ca număr de pagini
 o activitate
 o poziție a corpului
 emoții
 un animal
 material de citit
 națiuni
 două liste de scriitori, dintre care este necesară o citare.
Deși romanul are o locație temporală precisă - „cu câteva minute înainte de opt seara” [6] din
23 iunie 1975 (câteva momente după moartea protagonistului) - poveștile care îl animă se
întind pe o perioadă mare de timp : între 1875 și 1975.

Protagonistul poveștii principale este miliardarul Bartlebooth (numele rezumă pe cele ale
altor două personaje literare: Barnabooth miliardarul lui Valery Larbaud și Bartleby scribul
lui Herman Melville ) care alege «în fața inextricabilă incoerență a lumii [.. .], să desfășoare
un program, restricționat, da, dar complet, intact, ireductibil. [...] să-și organizeze întreaga
viață în jurul unui singur proiect a cărui necesitate arbitrară nu ar fi avut alt scop decât el
însuși "; [7] Astfel a început, la vârsta de douăzeci de ani, să-și desfășoare proiectul: timp de
zece ani, deși neinteresat, a învățat arta acuarelelor de la pictorul Valène, apoi, timp de
douăzeci de ani, a călătorit în toată lumea pictând pe foi din hârtie Whatman , și cam la
fiecare două săptămâni, o „marina” și apoi trimiterea tabloului unui meșter priceput, Winckler,
care, după ce a lipit acuarela pe o tablă, construiește un puzzle de doar 750 de piese; în
cele din urmă, în următorii douăzeci de ani și după întoarcerea în Franța, Bartlebooth
reasamblează puzzle-urile, din nou câte unul la fiecare două săptămâni și în ordinea în care
au fost create: picturile, desprinse din suport și reasamblate de parcă ar fi fost picturile
originale, sunt trimise înapoi în locurile în care fuseseră vopsite și apoi scufundate «într-o
soluție solventă din care ar ieși doar o foaie de hârtie Whatman, virgină și intactă. Astfel, nu
ar mai rămâne nicio urmă a acelei operațiuni care, timp de cincizeci de ani, își mobilizase
complet autorul ". [8] Cu toate acestea, Bartlebooth nu își va putea îndeplini sarcina în
întregime; în momentul morții, mai rămâne o singură piesă pentru a finaliza cel de-al 439-lea
puzzle: dar în timp ce piesa lipsă are forma unui „X”, cea rămasă în mâinile lui Bartlebooth
are forma unui „W”.

Ediții

1. ^ Subtitrarea cărții citește romanii , la plural, adică Romane : deci nu un singur

roman, ci o serie de povești împletite.
2. ^ Italo Calvino , Lecții americane , Garzanti , 1988, p. 117:.
„Un alt exemplu din ceea ce eu numesc„ hiper-roman ”este La vie mode d'emploi de
Georges Perec. [...] Cred că această carte [...] este ultimul eveniment real din istoria
romanului. Și asta din mai multe motive: designul nemărginit și complet, noutatea
redării literare, compendiul unei tradiții narative și summa enciclopedică a
cunoașterii care dă formă unei imagini a lumii, sensul de azi, care este, de
asemenea, alcătuit din acumularea trecutului și vertijul golului, coexistența continuă
a ironiei și a angoasei, pe scurt, modul în care urmărirea unui proiect structural și
imponderabilul poeziei devin una »

1. ^ Cartea, totuși, conține și un preambul, un epilog și mai multe anexe: planul clădirii,
lista titlurilor poveștilor spuse, un index de nume, un postscript și o cronologie a
evenimentelor începând din 1883 .

45. ubi sunt. Tatăl băiatului a murit, marea l-a înghiţit şi nu i-a mai dat drumul niciodată.
Unde sunt, oare, ochii tăi în care mă vedeam aşa de frumoasă, unde-ţi sunt mâinile cu
care-ţi mângâiai copiii, unde e glasul care le alunga spaima de visele cele rele?
Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Între cer şi pământ, traducere din limba franceză de Magda
Răduţă, Iaşi: Polirom, 2014, 236p.
 "stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus."

There is a genre of literature known as Ubi sunt. It comes from the Latin phrase Ubi sunt
qui anto nos fuerunt, which means, "Where are those who went before us?" In short, this
kind of literature looks back to the good ole' days, wondering what has happened to the
heroes or good times of yore. Here are some examples.

Many schools used to sing a song which encapsulated the Ubi sunt mentality, De

Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life) more often known as Gaudeamus igitur. Here
is a brief excerpt:

Latin lyrics English translation

Ubi sunt qui ante nos Where are they
In mundo fuere? Who were in the world before us?
Vadite ad superos You may cross over to heaven
Transite in inferos You may travel into hell
Hos si vis videre. If you wish to see them.

Much of Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings involves the main characters looking back to
the "elder days" which can be read about in The Silmarillion. Perhaps no one portion
shows this better than Aragorn's "Lament of the Rohirrim" from The Two Towers:

Tolkein was much influenced by Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature. Probably
because he taught it. Aragorn's "Lament" is surprisingly like an excerpt from the OE
poem The Wanderer. Here is an excerpt with another poem of Tolkein's, Lay of the
Passing Ages (which was probably taken directly from The Wanderer):

Progrès, réaction, décadence dans l'Occident medieval,

Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Laurence Harf-Lancner
Librairie Droz, 2003 - 274 pagini

Vergiliu, Georgice, III, 284–285 – „Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus”

Sic transit Gloria mundi

Pepin, Ronald E., “Adso's Closing Line in The Name of the Rose”, American Notes &
Queries, 1986, 24-9/10 (1986): 151-152.
The Ubi Sunt formula on the transience of human life and joy, is widely diffused in
medieval literature in Latin and in various vernaculars, in both sacred and profane
writing. It is perhaps best known to most readers in the form of Villon's famous refrain
"Et ou sont les neiges d'antan?"; in Rossetti's rendering in The Ballade of Dead Ladies :
"But where are the snows of

Page 121
yesteryear?" ; and now perhaps in Philip Larkin’s take on both, a jeu d’esprit, named like
Villon’s, that also manages to be touching: Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis.
The formula is much older than Villon, like the theme it expresses —the contemplation
of mortality and the vanity of human wishes. J.W. Bright (MLN, 1893) sought to show
that the formula was used by the classical poets, but many of his citations do not seem
really relevant. More convincingly Etienne Gilson demonstrated the use of the formula in
Old and New Testaments, and in Christian ecclesiastical writing. At any rate, its wide
diffusion in the Middle Ages seems to derive mostly from the much-read encyclopedist
Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) and from Boethius. By the 12C or 13C it was already a
"banalité theologique," and about the same period writers began to emphasise two
elements found less often in the older versions: they now regularly substituted specific
names of famous men and women for the general classes more common in earlier
occurrences (David, Alexander, Hector, for emperors, kings, princes. Plato, Cicero,
Aristotle for "litteratus", "doctor," etc. (See also De Casibus entry above). The second
new element was an emphasis on the transience of woman's beauty.
The formula occurs mostly in connection with a number of interrelated themes and
conventions common in the literature of the Middle Ages: the Wheel of Fortune, the
Dance of Death, Contemptus Mundi, the Debate of the Body and Soul, De Casibus, and
so forth.
Very full citations and references will be found in the critical works cited below. The
following representative samples are meant as a small anthology to illustrate the kind of
variation to be found within the set formula:

1. Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent?

Quid Brutus, aut rigidus Cato?
(Boethius, De Consolatione, II, poema 7).
Where now are the bones of faithful Fabricius? What has become of Brutus or
of inflexible Cato?

2. Hwaer sint nu þaes Welandes ban, oþþe hwa wat nu hwaer hi waeron?
Oþþe hwaer is nu se foremaera and se araeda Romewara heretoga, se
waes haten Brutus, oþþe naman Cassius?
Oþþe se wisa and faestraeda Cato, se waes eac Romana heretoga ....
(King Alfred's Boethius, MS Bod 180, XIX; slightly different version in Meter 10).

Page 122
Where now are the bones of Weland [the famous smith], or who knows where they might
be? Or where now is Brutus the famous and resolute leader of the Romans? Or Cassius?
Or the wise and steadfast Cato, who was also a Roman leader?

3. Dic ubi sunt reges? ubi principes? ubi imperatores? ubi locupletes rerum? ubi potentes
saeculi? quasi umbra transierunt, velut somnium evanuerunt.
(Isidore's Synonyma, II, 91).
Tell us where are the kings? Where the princes? Where the emperors? Where
the rich of the world? Where the powerful of this earth? Like a shadow they have passed
like a dream they have vanished.

4. Hwaer cwom mearg? hwaer cwom mago? hwaer cwom maþþumgyfa

Hwaer cwom symbla gesetu? Hwaer sindon seledreamas? (Wanderer, 92-93).
Where is the horse, and where his rider? Where is the giver of
treasure? Where are the feasting places and the joys of the banqueting hall?

5. Ubi Plato, ubi Porphyrius?

Ubi Tullius aut Virgilius?
Alexander ubi rex maximus?
Ubi David rex doctissimus?
Ubi Solomon prudentissimus?
Ubi Helena Parisque roseus?
Ceciderunt in profundum ut lapides.
Anon. 12C
Where are Plato and Porphyry, Cicero and Virgil? Where is Alexander the greatest of
kings? David the most learned, and Solomon the wisest of monarchs?
Where are the beautiful Helen and Paris? They have fallen into the abyss like stones.

6. Where is Paris and Eleyne Helen

Ðaet were so bright and fair on bleo? of face
Amadas and Dideyne,
Tristram, Iseude and all theo? thosePage 123
(Luve Ron 13 C).

7. Where beth they bifore us weren,

Houndes ladden and hawkes beren
And hadden field and wood,
The riche levedies in hoere bour ladies / their bower
That wereden gold in hoere tressour, wore g. in their headdresses
With hoere brightte rode? their b. faces
(Anonymous 13 C)
Where are those who were before us,
who led hounds and carried hawks
and possessed fields and woods?
The rich ladies in their bower
that wore gold in their hair,
with their bright faces?

8. A striking variation is to be found in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (407-469)

in which Cresseid laments at some length the loss of her own former life and
beauty.
__________________________________
E. Gilson ; J.E. Cross, Ubi Sunt Passages; Dubruck.

sfantul pavel 1 corintieni 1: 19, 20

”Ubi sunt” în literatura modernă

Un vechi topos literar încadrat de obicei în discursuri satirice de tipul celor cunoscute sub
numele contemptus mundi este ”ubi sunt”. De obicei, acest motiv este comentat alături de
altele tot cu denominațiuni latinești: fortuna labilis, memento mori, carpe diem etc.
Terminologia este medievală, dar motivul e biblic. Este atestat, de exemplu, în Cartea lui
Baruch (3: 16-19). Îl găsim și și în alte locuri din Biblie. În Eclesiastul sau Sirah. Din
Baruch, Sirah și Eclesiastul, motivul migrează la scriitorii creștini: îl întîlnim la Efrem
Sirul, la Chiril al Alexandriei, la Ioan Gura-de-Aur etc. Mulți teologi medievali brodează
pe marginea lui. Îl recunoaștem de îndată în poeme latine și englezești din secolul al XIII-
lea. Inclusiv în cântecul De breuitate vitae (Gaudeamus igitur). Ubi sunt prilejuiește de
cele mai multe ori o meditație cu privire la fragilitatea vieții și la zădărnicia oricărei
agitații omenești. Autorii propun comparații între gloria trecută a mărimilor și starea lor
prezentă. Faima nu durează decât o clipă. Puterea, la fel. Înțelepciunea nu folosește la
nimic. Frumusețea femeii (ori a bărbatului) este la fel de amenințată și fugară. Numai
moartea triumfă. Găsim în această meditație și un accent cinic. Alteori, în literatura
sapiențială, axată pe motivul disputei dintre suflet și trup sau dintre înțelept și lume (ca la
Dimitrie Cantemir), rațiunea (sau sufletul, sau înțeleptul) întreabă unde se află gloriile și
frumusețile de odiniară, iar opozantul laudă plăcerile vieții curente. Lumea îl îndeamnă
pe cititor să urmeze preceptul Carpe diem. Motivul a fost preluat, firește, și de autorii
moderni (scriitori, filosofi).

Valeriu Gherghel,
Istoria unui motiv literar: „ubi sunt” în scrierile sapienţiale româneşti

Semnificația motivului ”ubi sunt”

Un vechi topos literar încadrat de obicei în discursuri satirice de tipul celor cunoscute
sub numele contemptus mundi este ”ubi sunt”. De obicei, acest motiv este comentat
alături de altele tot cu denominațiuni latinești: fortuna labilis, memento mori, carpe diem
etc. Terminologia este medievală, dar motivul e biblic. Este atestat, de exemplu, în
Cartea lui Baruch (3: 16-19): ”Unde sunt căpeteniile neamurilor și cei ce stăpânesc
fiarele pământului? Cei ce cu păsările cerului se joacă și strâng argint și aur, în care
nădăjduiesc oamenii și a căror avere era fără sfârșit? Cei ce lucrau argintul și se străduiau
ca lucrările lor să fie neîntrecute? S-au stins și în locuința morților coborând, alții s-au
sculat în locul lor”.
Îl găsim și în alte locuri din Biblie. În Eclesiastul sau Sirah.
Pentru a-i stabili ”originea” (ceea ce este o iluzie), unii cercetători trimit la
Metamorfozele lui Ovidiu (12: 615-619).
Răsfoind cugetările împăratului Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180), Către mine însumi,
putem citi următorul pasaj: ”Dacă reflectezi asupra lui Satyrion, închipuie-ți un
socratic...; și privindu-te, imaginează-ți unul dintre împărați... Apoi pune-ți
întrebarea: Unde sînt ei acum? - Nicăieri și pretutindeni. Astfel făcînd, nu vei mai
vedea în lucrurile omenești decît fum și nimicnicie...”  (X: 31).
”Ubi sunt” apare în Antichitatea târzie în De consolatione philosophiae a lui Boethius
sub forma: ”Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent?” – Unde odihnesc oasele (rămășițele)
loialului Fabricius?
Din Baruch, Sirah și Eclesiastul, motivul migrează la scriitorii creștini: îl întîlnim la
Efrem Sirul, la Chiril al Alexandriei, la Ioan Gura-de-Aur etc. Mulți teologi medievali
brodează pe marginea lui. Îl recunoaștem de îndată în poeme latine și englezești din
secolul al XIII-lea. Inclusiv în cântecul De breuitate vitae (Gaudeamus igitur). Apare în
poemul lui François Villon (c. 1431 - 1464), Ballade des dames du temps jadis.
Versetul Mais où sont les neiges d’antan, ”Dar unde sînt zăpezile de altădată!” (care este,
la Villon, o exclamație dezamăgită și nu o întrebare) va fi rescris de autori moderni și
contemporani (inclusiv, la noi, de Odobescu).
La sfârșitul Renașterii, Shakespeare îl pune pe Hamlet să zică pe când ține craniul lui
Yorick în mână (Hamlet, 5: 1): “Vai, sărmanul Yorick! L-am cunoscut, Horaţio; era o
tolbă nesecată de glume; avea o fantezie deosebit de bogată. M-a purtat în cârcă de mii
de ori; şi acum cît de scîrbos îmi apare în închipuire! Mi se întoarce stomacul pe dos. Aici
atîrnau buzele pe care le-am sărutat de nu ştiu cîte ori. Ei, unde îţi sînt acum
zeflemelile? Cîntecele? Ghiduşiile care făceau să se cutremure mesele de hohote? Nu
mai ai nici una la îndemînă, ca să-ţi rîzi de propriul tău rînjet? Ţi-a căzut falca de tot? Să
mai pofteşti şi acum în iatacul doamnei şi să-i spui că dacă se sulemeneşte de un deget
grosime, aceasta e înfăţişarea pe care o s-o capete pînă la urmă; şi, vezi, s-o faci să rîdă.”
(Hamlet, 5: 1).

Motivul ”ubi sunt” ține de tematica mai generală cunoscută în literatura filosofică
drept contemptus mundi (disprețul față de lume). Un poem satiric intitulat De contemptu
mundi a scris Bernard de Morlaix. Din acest poem a citat un vers în Numele trandafirului
Umberto Eco.

Ubi sunt prilejuiește de cele mai multe ori o meditație cu privire la fragilitatea vieții și
la zădărnicia oricărei agitații omenești. Autorii propun comparații între gloria trecută a
mărimilor și starea lor prezentă. Faima nu durează decât o clipă. Puterea, la fel.
Frumusețea femeii (ori a bărbatului) este la fel de amenințată și fugară. Numai moartea
triumfă. Găsim în această meditație și un accent cinic. Alteori, în literatura sapiențială,
axată pe motivul disputei dintre suflet și trup sau dintre înțelept și lume (ca la Dimitrie
Cantemir), rațiunea (sau sufletul, sau înțeleptul) întreabă unde se află gloriile și
frumusețile de odiniară, iar opozantul laudă plăcerile vieții curente. Lumea îl îndeamnă
pe cititor să urmeze preceptul Carpe diem.
Philippe Ménard oferă o descriere precisă a temei ubi sunt: atotputere amorții,
deșertăciune a vieții în lumea de aici, supraviețuire mediocră în memoria oamenilor,
teribilă degradare a omenirii, acestea sunt elementele caracteristice ale acestei teme
melancolice”.

În literatura română veche

Cel dintâi care expune motivul ubi sunt în literatura veche este principele Neagoe
Basarab, în Învățături. În realitate, după cum a arătat mai demult Demostene Russo,
fragmentul face parte dintr-o omilie redactată de Ioan Hrisostomul și cunoscută sub titlul
”Despre răbdare…” (c. 347 – 407):

”Unde iaste acum [frumusețea] obrazului? Iată, s-au negrit. Unde iaste rumeneala feței și
buzele cele roșii? Iată, s-au veștejit. Unde iaste clipeala ochilor și vederile lor? Iată, să
topiră. Unde iaste părul cel frumos și pieptănat? Iată, au căzut. Unde sîntu grumazii cei
netezi? Iată, s-au frântu. Unde iaste limba cea repede și dăslușită? Iată, au tăcut. Unde
sîntu mâinele cele albe și frumoase? Iată, s-au deznodat. Unde sînt hainele cele scumpe?
Iată, s-au pierdut. Unde iaste înflorirea statului? Iată, au perit. Unde sîntu unsorile și
zulufiile cele cu miros frumos? Iată s-au împuțit. Unde iaste veseliia și dăzmirdăciunile
tinerețelor? Iată, au trecut. Unde sîntu părerile și nălucirile omenești? Iată, să făcură
țărână, că țărână au fost” (p.213).

Toposul va fi reluat și complet re-scris în poemul Viiața lumii, compus probabil înainte
de 1673 de către Miron Costin, care versifică pe tema ubi sunt astfel:

"Vremea petrece toate; nici o împărăție

Să stea în veci nu o lasă, nici o avuție
A trăi mult nu poate. Unde-s cei din lume
Mari-mpărați și vestiți? Acu de-abiia un nume
Le-au rămas de poveste. Ei sîntu cu primejdii
Trecuți. Cine ai lumii să lasă nădejdii?
Unde-s ai lumii impărați, unde iaste Xerxes
Alixandru Machidon, unde-i Ataxers,
Avgust, Pompeiu și Chesar? Ei au luat lume,
Pre toți i-au stinsu cu vreme, ca pre niște spume".

În Divanul sau Gâlceava înțeleptului cu lumea (1698), Dimitrie Cantemir propune,

într-o topică oarecum latinească, următoarea versiune a motivului urmărit aici:

”O, lume, dară eu știu precum și alții mulți ca mine, încă și mai puternici decât mine, au
fost; dară până la svârșit ce s-au făcut? Ce s-au făcut împărații perșilor cei mari, minunați
și vestiți? Unde iaste Chiros și Crisors? Unde iaste Xerxis și Artaxerxis, aceștia carii în
loc de Dumnădzău să socotiia și mai puternici decât toți oamenii lumii să ținea…? Unde
iaste Alexandru marele Machidonianul…? … unde iaste Constantin marele, ziditorul
Țarigradului? Unde iaste Iustiniian? Unde iaste Dioclitiian și Iuliian, tiranii cei puternici
și mari? Unde iaste Theodosie cel Mare și Theodosie cel Mic? Unde iaste Vasilie
Machidon și cu fiiul lui Leon Sofos și alți împărați puternici, mari și vestiți a grecilor?
Unde sînt împărații Romii?... Unde sînt moșii, strămoșii noștri, unde sînt frații, priiatinii
noștri, cu carii eri-alaltăeri avea, împreunare și într-un loc petrecere, carii acmu din
mijlocul nostrum periră și acmu să pare că n-au mai nice odinăoară fost? … Să știi că
numai cu o felegă de pânza înveliti ca cum ar fi cu camasa cea de matase invascuti, si
intr-un sacriu asezati, ca in haina cea de purpura mohorata, imbracati, si in gropnita
aruncati, ca in saraiurile si palaturile cele mari si desfatate asezati, s-au dusu-sa! iara alta
nemica, nici in san, nici in spate, n-au ridicat cu sine!” (pp.53-55).

Dar lamentația înțeleptului (și totodată diatriba sa la adresa lumii) se întinde pe mai
multe pagini.

În literatura modernă

Motivul ubi sunt apare, în chip oarecum neașteptat, în capitolul XI al eruditului eseu
publicat de A. I. Odobescu în 1874, sub titlul, grafiat în litere grecești, Pseudo-
kynegetikos. Tonul de lamentație resemnată vine în contrast cu intenția autorului de a-l
amuza pe cititor. Nu-l amuză întotdeauna. Transcriu:

”Atunci inima lui, cu suspine, întreba în zadar pe codrii și pe stânci: ‘Unde și în ce țară va
mai fi acea mândră floare, acea drăgăstoasă româncă, cu fața albă ca crinul, cu glas
încântător de zână?... Numai râul acuma, numai apele, când se clătesc, răspund cu vuiet la
gemetele mele… Ah! Unde mai sunt, stăpâna mea dorită, ah, unde mai sunt chiar și
viscolile de odinioară!”.

Odobescu trimite, desigur, la versul din cunoscuta baladă a lui François Villon (n.
1431 – 1463), pomenită deasupra. Versul sună astfel: ”Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!”.

Tudor Arghezi îl evocă pe Villon într-o poezie care are ca titlu tocmai numele
sciitorului medieval:

François Villon

Poți tu să-mi spui, șoptit, ca-ntr-o poveste,

Atâta frumusețe unde este,
Atâta gingășie și iubire,
De câtă lasă veacul amintire:
Frământ și cântec și mânie,
Și-atâta nevinovăție?
Unde-i Thaïsa de odinioară,
Ioana ciobănița, ostașe și fecioară,
Și Heloiza, scumpă în zadar
Cinstitului părinte Abelar?
Unde-i murmurul fostelor pâraie
Și-al apelor clătite-n heleștaie,
Marie, Maică Prea-Curată?

Dar unde-i și zăpada de-altădată?

Ion Barbu compune pe când se afla în Berlin, în anul 1934, o dedicație care sună în
felul următor:

Orașul

Orașul lui Friedrich rămâne

Același, iubite Sudan!
Verdeața și pietrele spâne,
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

Ah, unde e Grete și Fritzi

Și Agnes cea lungă-n picioare,
Tapeții, apașii, bandiții
Și multele false fecioare?

Inima-n doliu suspine

După acel Vavilon!
Și află că totul un spin e
De astăzi lui Barbu-Villon.

Unii critici literari au identificat motivul ”ubi sunt” până și la Mircea Dinescu în
”Balada triştilor băcani” tipărită în volumul Exil pe o boabă de piper, din 1983.

Concluzii

În literatura veche motivul ubi sunt este preluat (ca atare) ori re-scris, pastișat din /
după scriitorii creștini, îndeosebi după Efrem Sirul și sfântul Ioan Hrisostom. Motivul
pare inevitabil în literatura veche, întrucât aceasta se compune mai ales din omilii și
precuvântări la cărți religioase, traduse din grecește sau slavonă. Tema morții, a
zădărniciei constituie pentru preot ocazia unui discurs edificator.
În literatura mai nouă, motivul vine îndeosebi din poemul lui Villon.

Bibliografie

A. Surse

1. ***, Învățăturile lui Neagoe Basarab către fiul său Theodosie, Text ales și
stability de Florica Moisil și Dan Zamfirescu, București: Editura Minerva, 1970.
2. Dimitrie Cantemir, Divanul, ediție îngrijită și studiu introductiv de Virgil Cândea,
București: Editura pentru Literatură, 1969.
 3. Miron Costin, Viiața lumii, ediție îngrijită de Sande Vîrjoghe, Galați, Editura
Porto-Franco, 1991.
4. Nedelcea, Tudor, Cărți românești vechi: Predoslovii, Craiova, Editura Scrisul
Românesc, 1994.
5. Odobescu, A. I., Pseudo-kynegetikos, ediție G. Pienescu, București: Editura
Albatros, 1990.

B. Literatură critică

1. Beardsley, Jr., Theodore S., ”Celestina Act I, Scene I: Ubi Sunt?", Hispanic
Review, 52: 3 (1984): 335-341.
2. Di Sciacca, Claudia, ”The Ubi Sunt Motif and the Soul-and-Body Legend in Old
English Homilies: Sources and Relationships”, The Journal of English and
Germanic Philology, 105: 3 (2006): 365-387.
3. Foarţă, Şerban, Clepsidra cu zăpadă, Introducere, antologie, traduceri, adaptări,
pastişe, ilustraţii de Angela Rotaru-Serbenco, Iași: Editura Polirom, 2003.
4. Gervais, Ronald J. , ”The Snow of Twenty-Nine: 'Babylon Revisited' as 'Ubi
Sunt' Lament”, College Literature, 7: 1 (1980): 47-52.
5. Mamulea, Mona, ”Miron Costin – autorul ceui dintâi poem filosofic din cultura
română”, in Viorel Cernica & Mona Mamulea (eds.), Studii de istorie a filosofiei
românești, București: Editura Academei Române, 2007, pp.447-451.
6. Ménard, Philippe, ”Le sentiment de décadence dans la littérature
medievale”, in Emmanuèle Baumgartner & Laurence Harf-Lancner (eds.),
Progrès, réaction, décadence dans l'Occident médiéval, Paris: Librairie Droz,
2003, pp.137-156.
7. Nash, Walter, ”A Tale of a Trope: Ubi Sunt and its Analogues in English Verse”,
The Glass, 23 (2011): 25-34. Citează versul lui Boethius: ”Ubi nunc fidelis ossa
Fabricii manent?”; II. m. 7, 15
8. Pepin, Ronald E., ”Adso's Closing Line in The Name of the Rose”, American
Notes & Queries, 1986, 24-9/10 (1986): 151-152.
9. Rooney, Anne, ”The Book of the Duchess: Hunting and the 'Ubi Sunt' Tradition”,
The Review of English Studies, 38: 151 (1987): 299-314.
10. Roth, Norman, ”The Ubi Sunt Theme in Medieval Hebrew Poetry”, Hebrew
Studies, 19 (1978): 56-62.
11. Schwartz, Debora B., "Those Were the Days": The "Ubi Sunt Topos" in "La Vie
de Saint Alexis, Yvain", and "Le BelInconnu", Rocky Mountain Review of
Language and Literature, 49: 1 (1995): 27-51.

Foarţă, Şerban, Clepsidra cu zăpadă, Introducere, antologie, traduceri, adaptări, pastişe,

ilustraţii de Angela Rotaru-Serbenco, Iași: Editura Polirom, 2003, 176 p.
Nash, Walter, ”A Tale of a Trope: Ubi Sunt and its Analogues in English Verse”, The
Glass, 23 (2011): 25-34.

Rooney, Anne, ”The Book of the Duchess: Hunting and the 'Ubi Sunt' Tradition”, The
Review of English Studies, 38: 151 (1987): 299-314.

Gervais, Ronald J. , ”The Snow of Twenty-Nine: "Babylon Revisited" as "Ubi Sunt"

Lament”, College Literature, 7: 1 (1980): 47-52.

47. One of the enduring themes of literature is the transitory nature of man's life, of love
and beauty, of happiness. In works of this sort, an important part is sometimes played by
the ubi sunt device, which takes its name from the first two words of the Latin sentence,
Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt! ("Where are they who were before us?"), that began
numerous medieval poems.l In asking the question, the writer evokes for a moment the
splendor of life, symbolized by famous persons of the past, and then, by his inevitably
grim answer, condemns it to death.

several commentators have pointed out how similar motifs of impermanence, of exile and
separation, and of loss and regret are interwoven in "Babylon

48. Revisited," F. Scott Fitzgerald's story of a reformed drunkard, Charlie Wales,

returning to Paris to claim his daughter, Honoria.

"Babylon Revisited," then, widely anthologized and called Fitzgerald's "one virtually
flawless contribution to the canon of the American short story,"10 belongs to that generic
convention known as the ubi sunt lament. More specifically, it is organized around
alusions to one of the most famous of such works, Francois Villon's "Ballade of Dead
Ladies.''

In the story, Charlie Wales has "spoiled" the city for himself through dissipation during
the boom, but now after the crash he returns and sees it with "clearer and more judicious
eyes" (p. 214). In the Ritz bar, he makes a series of melancholy inquiries that are
Fitzgerald's version of the ubi sunt formula. The story opens like a medieval poem.
"And where's Mr. Campbell? Charlie asked. "Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell's a
pretty sick man, Mr. Wales." "I'm sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?" Charlie
inquired. "Back in America, gone to work." "And where is the Snowbird?" (p. 210)

49. This slang reference to a cocaine dealer or user, the "Snowbird," is picked up later
when we learn that Charlie locked his wife Helen in a snowstorm,
Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent? ("Where are they who were before us?"), asks Charlie. His
question of "Where is the Snow Bird?" alludes to Villon's sad and lovely refrain "But
where are the snows of yesteryear?"

50. suggest that Fitzgerald is comparing Charlie and perhaps himself with Villon, who
led so disreputable a life,

51. The ubi sunt device in both works suggests, of course, the themes usually associated
with it: the impermanence of youth, beauty, and life itself. Fitzgerald's concern for such
themes can be recognized as part of a tradition that goes back at least to Anglo-Saxon
poetry. Since the device emphasizes the transitory nature of all things, the mood it
represents is persistent and wide-spread. Even a contemporary figure like Robert Lowell
"imitates" Villon's "Dames du Temps Jadis" and also asks, "Where, mother of God, is last
year's snow?"

"And where's Mr. Campbell?" Charlie asked.

"Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell's a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales."
"I'm sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?" Charlie inquired.
"Back in America, gone to work."
"And where is the Snow Bird?"
"He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris."

In Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22, the protagonist Yossarian laments the death of

his friend Snowden, saying, "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

Post Mortem
Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.615-619 (tr. Frank Justus Miller): 
Now he is but dust; and of Achilles, once so great, there remains a pitiful handful, hardly
enough to fill an urn. But his glory lives, enough to fill the whole round world. This is the
true measure of the man; and in this the son of Peleus is still his real self, and does not
know the empty Tartara. 

iam cinis est, et de tam magno restat Achille

nescio quid parvum, quod non bene conpleat urnam,
at vivit totum quae gloria conpleat orbem.
haec illi mensura viro respondet, et hac est
par sibi Pelides nec inania Tartara sentit.

The Ballade des dames du temps jadis ("Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past") is a poem
by François Villon which celebrates famous women in history and mythology, and a
prominent example of the Ubi sunt  genre. It forms part of his larger work, the Grand
Testament.
The section is simply labelled Ballade by Villon; the title des dames du temps
jadis was added by Clément Marot in his 1533 edition of Villon's poems.
Translations and adaptations 
Particularly famous is its interrogative refrain, Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? This was
translated into English by Rossetti as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?", for which he
coined the new word yesteryear to translate Villon's antan. The French word was used in
its original sense of "last year", although both antan and the English yesteryear have now
taken on a wider meaning of "years gone by".
The refrain is taken up in the bitter and ironic Berthold Brecht/Kurt Weill "Nannas Lied",
[1] expressing the short-term memory without regrets of a hard-bitten prostitute, in the
refrain
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?
Where are the tears of yesterday evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?
In popular culture 
The poem was alluded to in Joseph Heller's novel, Catch-22, when Yossarian asks
"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" in both French and English.
In chapter five of D.H. Lawrence's book Lady Chatterly's Lover Clifford Chatterly asks,
"Where are the snows of yesteryear?...It's what endures through one's life that matters."
Here he is referring to the short-lived sexual affairs that his wife, Lady Chatterly, has had
with other men. He is suggesting that these affairs, like the snows of yesteryear, are
ephemeral and once gone leave nothing tangible behind.
Text of the Ballad 
The original text is mostly taken from Oxford Book of French Verse. The translation is
deliberately close to the original.
Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays, Tell me where, in which country
Est Flora, la belle Romaine; Is Flora, the beautiful Roman;
Archipiada, ne Thaïs, Archipiada (Alcibiades[2] ?), and Thaïs
Qui fut sa cousine germaine; Who was her first cousin;
Echo, parlant quand bruyt on Maine Echo, speaking when one makes noise
Dessus rivière ou sus estan, Over river or on pond,
Qui beaulté ot trop plus
Who had a beauty too much more than human?
qu'humaine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan! Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

Où est la très sage Helloïs, Where is the very wise Heloise,

Pour qui fut chastré et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart à Saint-Denis?
Pour son amour ot cest essoyne.
Semblablement, où est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust gecté en ung sac en Saine?
For whom was castrated, and then (made) a monk,
Pierre Esbaillart (Abelard) in Saint-Denis ?
For his love he suffered this sentence.
Similarly, where is the Queen (Marguerite de
Bourgogne)
Who ordered that Buridan
Be thrown in a sack into the Seine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan! Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

La royne Blanche comme lis,
Qui chantoit à voix de seraine;
Berte au grant pié, Bietris, Allis;
Haremburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu'Englois brulerent à Rouan;
Où sont elles, Vierge souvraine?
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!
The queen Blanche (white) as a lily (Blanche de Castille)
Who sang with a Siren's voice;
Bertha of the Big Foot, Beatrix, Aelis;
Erembourge who ruled over the Maine,
And Joan (Joan of Arc), the good (woman
from) Lorraine
Whom the English burned in Rouen;
Where are they, oh sovereign Virgin?
Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine Prince, do not ask me in the whole week

Où elles sont, ne de cest an, Where they are - neither in this whole year,
Qu'à ce reffrain ne vous remaine: Lest I bring you back to this refrain:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan! Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!

^ Because Alcibiades was described by Plato as a model of beauty, he was often mistaken
for a woman in the Middle Ages.

Ubi sunt (literally "where are... [they]") is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante
nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?". Ubi nunc...? ("Where
now?") is a common variant.[1]
Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation
on mortality and life's transience.
Ubi sunt is a phrase that begins several Latin medieval poems and occurs, for example, in
the second stanza of the student song "De Brevitate Vitae", known from its incipit as
"Gaudeamus Igitur": "Ubi sunt qui ante nos / In mundo fuere?", "Where are those who,
before us, existed in the world?" The theme was the common property of medieval Latin
poets: Cicero may not have been available, but Boethius' line was known: Ubi nunc
fidelis ossa Fabricii manent? [2]

The medieval French poet François Villon famously echoes the sentiment in the Ballade

des dames du temps jadis ("Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past") with his question, Mais
où sont les neiges d'antan? ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?"), a refrain taken up in
the bitter and ironic Berthold Brecht / Kurt Weill "Nannas Lied",[3] expressing the short-
term memory without regrets of a hard-bitten prostitute, in the following refrain:
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?[4]
Another famous medieval French writer, Rutebeuf, wrote a poem called Poèmes de
l'infortune ("Poems of the misfortune" – or bad luck) which contains those verses:
Que sont mes amis devenus
Que j'avais de si près tenus
Et tant aimés ?
Roughly: "Where are my friends I used to embrace so close and loved so much". In the
second half of the 20th century, the singer Léo Ferré made this poem famous by adding
music. The song was called Pauvre Rutebeuf (Poor – or sad – Rutebeuf).
In "Coplas por la muerte de su padre", the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique wrote equally
famous stanzas about contemporaries that death had taken away:
¿Qué se fizo el rey don Juan?
Los infantes de Aragón
¿qué se fizieron?
¿Qué fue de tanto galán,
qué fue de tanta invención
como trujeron?
Las justas y los torneos,
paramentos, bordaduras
y cimeras,
¿fueron sino devaneos?
¿qué fueron sino verduras
de las eras?
What became of King Don Juan?
The Princes of Aragon,
What became of all of them?
What of so much handsome nobility?
And of all the many fads
They brought with them?
What of their jousts and tournaments,
Gilded ornaments, fancy embroideries
And feathered tops?
Was all of that meaningless waste?
Was it all anything else but a summer's green
on the fields?
(Translation: Simón Saad)
In medieval Persian poetry, Ubi sunt? is a pervasive theme in The Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam:
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say:
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
English
Anglo-Saxon
A general feeling of ubi sunt radiates from the text of Beowulf. The Anglo-Saxons, at the
point in their cultural evolution in which Beowulf was written, experienced an
inescapable feeling of doom, symptomatic of ubi sunt yearning. By conquering the
Romanized Britons, they were faced with massive stone works and
elaborate Celtic designs that seemed to come from a lost era of glory (called the "work of
giants" in The Ruin).
Prominent ubi sunt Anglo-Saxon poems are The Wanderer, Deor, The Ruin, and The
Seafarer (all part of a collection known as the Exeter Book, the largest surviving
collection of Old English literature). The Wanderer[5] most exemplifies Ubi sunt poetry
in its use of erotema (the rhetorical question):
In Anglo-Saxon, this passage – from lines 92–96 of the poem – reads as follows:
Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?
Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?
[...]Hu seo þrag gewat,
genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære.
One modern English translation of this passage is given below:
Where is the horse gone? Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall?
[...]How that time has passed away,
grown dark under cover of night, as if it had never been.[6]
Middle English
The 13th century poem "Ubi Sunt Qui Ante Nos Fuerunt" is a Middle
English example following the medieval tradition:[7]
Uuere beþ þey biforen vs weren,
Houndes ladden and hauekes beren
And hadden feld and wode?
Þe riche leuedies in hoere bour,
Þat wereden gold in hoere tressour
Wiþ hoere briȝtte rode; ...[8]
William Dunbar
The Lament for the Makaris ("Lament for the poets", c. 1505) of the Scottish makar or
poet William Dunbar consists of a general introductory section (quoted from below)
followed by a list of dead Scots poets with the Latin refrain Timor mortis conturbat
me ("the fear of death disturbs me") at the end of each of the 25 four-line stanzas:[9]
On to the ded gois all estatis,
Princis, prelotis, and potestatis,
Baith riche and pur of al degre;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

He takis the knychtis in to feild,

Anarmit under helme and scheild;
Victour he is at all mellie;
Timor mortis conturbat me.
(Lament for the Makaris, Lines 17-24)

Shakespeare
Ubi sunt poetry also figures in some of Shakespeare's plays. When Hamlet finds skulls in
the Graveyard (V. 1), these rhetorical questions appear:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination
it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning –
quite chap-fall'n. Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch
thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that.[10]
Where is Bohun?
In an often-quoted speech in a law case of 1625 over the Earldom of Oxford, the Lord
Chief Justice Ranulph Crewe listed great noble dynasties of the English Middle Ages,
extinct from the Wars of the Roses and other turmoils, and told the court:
"I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon
judgment; for I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or
nobleness, but his affection stands to the continuance of a house so illustrious, and would
take hold of a twig or twine-thread to support it. And yet time hath his revolutions; there
must be a period and an end to all temporal things—finis rerum—an end of names and
dignities, and whatsoever is terrene; and why not of de Vere? Where is Bohun,
where's Mowbray, where's Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where
is Plantagenet? They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality. And yet
let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleaseth God."[11]
When the passage was quoted in the House of Lords in the 1970s, Charles Stourton, 26th
Baron Mowbray (the barony having been revived in the meantime) loudly responded
"Here's Mowbray", to great applause.[12]
18th century
Interest in the ubi sunt motif enjoyed a renaissance during the late 18th century following
the publication of James Macpherson's "translation" of Ossian. The eighth of
Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760) features Ossian lamenting,
Where is Fingal the King? where is Oscur my son? where are all my race? Alas! in the
earth they lie. I feel their tombs with my hands. I hear the river below murmuring
hoarsely over the stones. What dost thou, O river, to me? Thou bringest back the memory
of the past.[13]
This and Macpherson's subsequent Ossianic texts, Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763),
fueled the romantics' interest in melancholy and primitivism.
20th century
In Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22, the protagonist Yossarian laments the death of
his friend Snowden, saying, "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"
Also, Martin Amis' The War Against Cliché mentions it in a contemplation of movie
violence and Medved's polemic against Hollywood. He asks, "It is Ubi sunt? all over
again. Where are they now, the great simplicities of yesterday?"
References
^ See the examples in James W. Bright, "The 'ubi sunt' Formula", Modern Language
Notes' 8.3 (March 1893: 94).
^ Fulk, Robert Dennis; Christopher M. Cain, Rachel S. Anderson (2003). A History of
Old English Literature. p. 57. "Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent? – Where now do
the bones of loyal Fabricus lie?"
^ Nanna's Lied, sung by Tiziana Sojat
^ "Where are last night's tears?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?"
More literally,
"Where are those who were once so glad to be alive?" "Where are the tears of yesterday
evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?"
^ "Anglo-Saxons.net : The Wanderer". Retrieved 2008-11-06. "Hwær cwom mearg?
Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær
sindon seledreamas?"
^ Research.uvu.edu
^ Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy ed., The Norton Anthology of
Poetry, Fourth Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, New York – London, 1996, p. 13, 
^ Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932),
pp. 85–87
^ Full text of Lament for the Makaris
^ Shakespeare, William (1996-12-31). The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd Edition (2nd ed.).
Heinle. p. 2057. 
^ [1]
 1066 And Rather More, by Huon Mallalieu, p. 3
^ Gaskill, Howard, ed. (1996). The Poems of Ossian and Related Works. Edinburgh
University Press. 
^ "The Silent Superstar". The New York Times.
Garde, Judith N. (1991). Old English Poetry in Medieval Christian Perspective. p. 191. 

Ubi sunt est une locution latine signifiant «où sont(-ils)». Elle est issue du latin « ubi sunt
qui ante nos fuerunt? » signifiant « où sont passés ceux qui nous précédèrent ? ».
Par extension, l'ubi sunt désigne un thème littéraire où l'auteur s'interroge sur la
survie des grands personnages du passé qui sont morts, thème présent en particulier
au Moyen Âge.
Présentation 
Le thème de l'ubi sunt est un thème bien représenté dans la littérature médiévale où
l'auteur s'interroge sur la mort des grandes figures du passé. En s'interrogeant ainsi,
l'auteur pose également la question de sa propre mort ainsi que celle du lecteur.
Philippe Ménard (professeur émérite de littérature française du Moyen Âge à la
Sorbonne1) donne une description précise des thèmes de l'ubi sunt: «Toute-puissance de
la mort, vanité de la vie en ce bas monde, survivance misérable dans la mémoire des
hommes, et donc terrible dégradation affectant l'ensemble de l'humanité, tels sont les
éléments caractéristiques de ce thème mélancolique2.»
Ce thème remonte à la Bible, en particulier dans le Livre de la sagesse où l'auteur offre
une méditation désespérée sur la condition humaine en comparant la vie à un nuage qui
s'éloigne. Ce thème se retrouve aussi chez Isaïe et Baruch, où chacun souligne que la
brièveté de la vie comme la vacuité de la richesse et du pouvoir suggèrent qu'il faut
délaisser le monde terrestre et se tourner vers Dieu2.
Les figures médiévales les plus connues de l'ubi sunt seront par la suite Eustache
Deschamps2  et François Villon3. Cependant ce n'est plus tant l'idée chrétienne de se
tourner vers Dieu qui prédomine, mais plutôt le désespoir et le sentiment du
tragique et de l'absurde de la vie2.
Exemples 
Le poète médiéval français François Villon exprime ce sentiment dans la Ballade des
dames du temps jadis avec la question Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?.
Un autre écrivain médiéval français, Rutebeuf, écrit les Poèmes de l'infortune qui
contient ces vers:
Que sont mes amis devenus
Que j'avais de si près tenus
Et tant aimés?
Dans Stances sur la mort de son père, le poète espagnol Jorge Manrique écrit sur des
contemporains morts :
¿Qué se fizo el rey don Juan?
Los infantes de Aragón
¿qué se fizieron?
¿Qué fue de tanto galán,
qué fue de tanta invención
como trujeron?
Las justas y los torneos,
paramentos, bordaduras
y cimeras,
¿fueron sino devaneos?
¿qué fueron sino verduras
de las eras?
Dans la poésie persane, Ubi sunt? est un thème omniprésent dans les Rubaiyat:
Et regarde… des milliers de fleurs avec le jour
S'éveillent… et des milliers s'effeuillent dans l'argile
Et ce premier mois d'Été qui apporte la Rose
Emportera Djemschild et Kaykobad (en)4
Notes et références 
Judith N. Garde, Old English Poetry in Medieval Christian Perspective, 1991 
↑ Présentation de Philippe Ménard sur le site de France Culture.
↑ a, b, c et d Ménard, Philippe, «Le sentiment de décadence dans la littérature
médiévale» in Progrès, réaction, décadence dans l'Occident médiéval, dirigé par
Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Laurence Harf-Lancner, Librairie Droz, 2003 (voir Google
Books [archive]).
↑ Nancy, Freeman Regalado, «La fonction poétique des noms propres dans le
"Testament" de François Villon» in Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études
françaises, 1980, N°32. pp. 51-68.
↑ Rubaiyat, VIII, traduction française de Charles Grolleau

Anonymus, 1100 – 1210

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?
The poem's first line roughly translates the Latin title (which is in the original
manuscript). The last six additional stanzas, not in the printedRepresentative Poetry, were
added in version 2.08. Spelling is normalized somewhat -- thorn/th, u/v, u/w --
and {.e} marks what is thought to be a sounded syllable. For a translation, see Medieval
English Verse, translated by Brian Stone (Penguin, 1964): 67-68.
The theme of this poem occurs in Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, II, metre 7, and
frequently in medieval poetry. The most famous example is Villon's Ballade des dames
du temps jadis
The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS., ed. F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, OS
117 (1901): 761-63. 

Die Frage Ubi sunt, "Wo sind sie (geblieben)?", vollständiger Ubi sunt qui ante nos in
mundo fuere?, "Wo sind sie (geblieben), die vor uns auf der Welt waren?", ist ein
formelhaft wiederkehrender Topos in der Predigt und Dichtung des Mittelalters, der dazu
dient, dem Leser oder Hörer an Beispielen vergangener Macht oder Schönheit die
Vergänglichkeit alles Irdischen in Erinnerung zu rufen und ihn auf das Jenseits als die
Bestimmung des Menschen zu verweisen, der sich zuweilen aber auch
mit nostalgischerVerklärung der Vergangenheit und zeitkritischer Klage über die
Gegenwart verbindet.
Der Topos, der ähnlich auch in der islamischen Tradition verbreitet ist, stellt im
christlichen Mittelalter eine Variante des jüdisch-christlichen Vanitas-Motives dar und
findet sich bereits im biblischen Buch Baruch vorgebildet (Bar 3,16-19):

Lateinischer Bibeltext der Vulgata

ubi sunt principes gentium et qui dominantur super bestias quae sunt super terram
qui in avibus caeli inludunt
qui argentum thesaurizant et aurum in quo confidebant homines et non est finis 
adquisitionis eorum qui argentum fabricant et solliciti sunt nec est inventio operum
illorum
exterminati sunt et ad inferos descenderunt et alii loco eorum exsurrexerunt

La poétique de François Villon

 De David Mus
Editions Champ Vallon, 1992 - 506 pagini

Clark S. Northup, Ubi Sunt Heroes?, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 28, No. 4 (1913),
pp.106-107.
UBI SUNT HEROES?
Professors Bright and Tupper long ago (MLN., viii, 94, 253 f.) called attention to the use
of the ubi sunt formula in classical and medieval literature. Before their notes appeared,
M. F. Batjushkov (Romania, xx, 13, 545) had already pointed out the use of this thought
in Ephraim the Syrian, Cyril of Alexandria, and various medieval poets and homilists.
More recently (MLN., xxrv, 257) the writer added Lydgate's Like a Midgomer Rose to
the list. It is of course found in several versions of the Debate of the Body and the Soul. It
may be well to note that the idea of the all-compelling force of Death has not ceased to be
a favorite, especially in Irish literature. In the Comhagall idir an mbas agw an othar
(Dialogue between Death and the Sick Man, a modern poem of 566 lines), vv. 85-136,
we have an interesting instance of its use. The author of the poem is unknown; it has been
attributed to various persons: among others to Thomas Roche and to John Collins. It was
edited with a translation by Patrick O'Brien in his Cnuasacht Chomhagall (Dialogues in
Irish), Baile aitha, cliath (Dublin), 1901, pp.4-43. As O'Brien's small volume is rarely met
with outside of Ireland, I quote Mr. O'Brien's translation of the thirteen stanzas with
which we are here concerned:
Ah, Deathl whose words are truth without disguise,
Disclose where Sampson or great Caesar lies,
Olympia's son, the Macedonian heir,
Or Hannibal who may with them compare.
The faithful Jonathan where can we find;
Or Solomon, the wisest of mankind;
Jason, whose valour gained the golden fleece,
Or Hercules, the pride of ancient Greece?
Or fierce Achilles, who made armies yield,
Or Ajax, master of the seven-fold shield;
Nestor the mellifluent Pylian sage,
Or fierce Tydides 'Lwho did Mars engage?
Where's Hector brave, that daring prince of Troy,
His country's champion, bulwark, hope and joy;
Priam whose sceptre did all Asia sway,
Or Paris, who fair Helen bore away?
I Diomedes.
[107] Where's Cresus with his heaps of shining gold,
Cadmus the first Beotian King of old,
Cyrus, accustomed to fierce wars' alarms,
And mighty Xerxes with the world In arms?
Where now is Herod base or Nimrod vain,
Or Pharaoh, drownMd ib the Erythrsan main?
Where Nero, tyrant of the Roman state,
Or fell Antiochus~ the reprobate?
Where's Bajaret with all his boast and might?
Where's Tamerlane who conquered him in fight?
Where's Arthur, who doth in our annals shine,
Or Charlemagne with all his sceptered line?
Where's Venus, Pallas, or the wife of Jove,
The three fair candidates of Ida's grove?
Where the gay nymphs of the Hesperian Plain?
Where chaste Diana and her vrgin train?
The sweet-tongued Ovid for his wit expelled,
Or Virgil who in tuneful verse excelled,
Horace, who hliman errors could describe,
Or Homer, prince of all the epic tribe?
Our Irish chiefs to whom each power gave way,
Lughaidh Mac Con, who loved superior sway,
Lughaidh Lagha, who stretched Arthur on the plain,
And brave Curaoi M6r, treacherously slain;
Conall the grand, who fame in battle won,
Cuchullain, or his more intrepid son-;
Naisi, who with Deirdre sought a distant land,
Mac Lughaldh or Osgar of the Fenian band?
Where are these kings, or men of high renown,
these lords, these earls, and great ones of the gown,
That they do not return and let us know
The secret systems of the shades below?
Are they there honoured, feasted and caressed,
In ermine robes and shining tissue dressed,
3Sparkling in all the pageantry of pride
They here on earth enjoyed before they died?
To the above may be added a passage in Die Jobsiade, By Dr. Karl Arnold Kortum (part
i,
chap. 37), Miinster, 1784, 2d ed. Dormund, 1799, reprinted by Bobertag in Deutsche Na-
tional-Litteratur, vol. 140, Berlin, 1883.
Charles T. Brooks, in his translation of Die Jobsiode, Philadelphia, 1863, pp. 180 f., also
quotes a passage from " Father Mulvanev's Sarmon," in Mrs. Hall's Lights and Shadows
of Irish Life, which was published in 1838, and the parts of which originally appeared in
The New Monthly Magazine.

Frederick Tupper, Ubi sunt-A Belated Postscript, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 28, No.
6 (1913), pp.197-198.
To the Editors of Mod. Lang. Notes.
SIRS:-Professor Northup's reference in the April Notes to my Ubi sunt article of "twenty
years syne " (MLN., VIII, 253f.) is doubly suggestive of "les neiges d'antan," as that
meagre note was almost my first contribution to the melancholy of nations. Of course I
knew
then a thousand things which unhappily have long since been forgotten; but, strangely
enough, I do not seem to have known that the formula in question is not the exclusive
pos-
session of any period or people, but is as universal as the themes of mutability and mis-
chance. An afternoon's ranging through modern English literature, in company with my
colleague, Professor W. E. Aiken, reveals the ubiquity of ubi sunt.
Northup's apt citation of an Irish "Dialogue with Death" naturally recalls to any
lover of Clarence Mangan his spirited rendering of the Kinkora of the eleventh-century
Mac-Liag-in which the formula is adapted through a dozen stanzas to a score of
Hibernian heroes:
"0 where, Kinkora! is Brian the Great,
And where is the beauty that once was thine?
0 where are the princes and nobles that sate
At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine?
Where, 0 Kinkora? "
The modern Celtic school delights in the motif. "Wbere are now the warring kings?" asks
Yeats in a stirring stanza of The Song of the Happy Shepherd. "Where is she gone?" is
the dirge in A Broken Song of Moira O'Neill (Songs of the Glens of Antrim). It is
needless to multiply instances.
The medieval version of the formula, of which many occurrences have been recorded,
apparently lingered on into the modern period. In a song at the close of Ingeland's
Interlude of the Disobedient Child (Dodsley, II, 320) of about 1550 the familiar rhetorical
curiosity is
displayed concerning the fate of many biblical and classical worthies, Solomon, Samson,
[198] Absalom, Jonathan, Caesar, Dives, Tully, Aristotle. Strip Lydgate's Like a
Midsomer Rose
of its scanty mysticism, its rather musical repetend-indeed of its slight literary pretension-
and there is little to distinguish it from the verses on Vanity of Vanities appended by
Michael Wigglesworth to the sixth edition of his Day of Doonm in 1715. The Puritan
applies the same formula as the monk and-what is certainly significant-to very similar
types of vanished greatness, Scipio, Pompey, Hannibal and Alexander. Interestingly
enough, Alexander is dominant in Robert Blair's fine adaptation of the motif in The
Grave (lines 116-130), and in Carlyle's effective use of the device in his chapter on
"Natural Supernaturalism" in Sartor Resartus.
Thoroughly classical is Sterne's introduction
of the formula into Tristram Shandy (Book III, chap V.). Indeed, he is writing with his
eye on "Servius Sulpicius's consolatory letter to Tully :"-" ' Where is Troy and Mycenae
and Thebes and Delos and Persepolis and Agrigentum,' continued my father, taking up
his
book of post-roads, which he had laid down. 'What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh
and Babylon, of Cizicum and Mitylenae?'"
A short search furnishes many illustrations of the formula, neither classical nor medieval.
It intensifies the horror of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth (V, i, 47-48): "The Thane
of Fife had a wife: where is she now?" It adds immeasurably to the tender reverie of
Arnold's Thyrsis: "Where is the girl. Where are the mowers . . . They all are gone and
thou art gone as well." It deepens the rich reflectiveness of the Autumn ode of Keats:
"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?" With the formula Byron attains the
climax of feeling in his stirring lyric, The Isles of Greece; by its means he tumbles into
intentional bathos in the eleventh canto of Don Juan:
"Where is Napoleon the Grand? God knows.
Where little Castlereagh? The devil can tell."
Then on with these mocking queries for several stanzas (XI, lxxvii-lxxx). And Thackeray
muses in his lecture on George the Third over the bygone glories of Carlton House:
"Where be the sentries who used to salute as
the Royal chariots drove in and out?"
Strange to say, the lighter verse of a more recent time literally revels in the grim motif.
Dr. Holmes's class-poem of 1852, Questions and Answers, is throughout a serio-comic
song
of ubi sunt: "Where are the Marys and Anns and Elizas, / Loving and lovely of yore? " In
like mood, Thomas Hood recalls his London schoolmates (Ode on a Distant Prospect of
Clapham Academy). The formula ranges freely from the society verse of Austin Dobson,
"Where is the Pompadour, too? / This was the
Pompadour's fan." (On a Fan) and of An-
drew Lang (On Life) through the Australian
Ballads of Douglas Sladen (A Voice from the
Bush) and the New England lyrics of Bliss
Carman (Philip Savage and The Least Com-
rade) to the negro melody of Paul Lawrence
Dunbar, " Whah's de da'kies, dem dat used to
be a dlancin', etc." (The Deserted Plantation).
But a truce to all this, ere the wearied editor
throws down his warder! Yet there is one
more noteworthy example, not classical, nor
medieval, nor Celtic, which I had almost forgotten-that heart-breaking lament of the
nursery:- "0 where, 0 where has my little dog gone?
0 where, 0 where is he?"

Friedman, Lionel J., ”The Ubi Sunt, the Regrets, and Effictio”, Modern Language Notes,
Vol. 72, No. 7 (1957), pp. 499-505.

UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS FUERUNT (Where are they who lived before us?)
The Ubi Sunt formula on the transience of human life and joy, is widely diffused in
medieval literature in Latin and in various vernaculars, in both sacred and profane
writing. It is perhaps best known to most readers in the form of Villon's famous refrain
"Et ou sont les neiges d'antan?" ; in Rossetti's rendering in The Ballade of Dead Ladies :
"But where are the snows of Page 121
yesteryear?" ; and now perhaps in Philip Larkin’s take on both, a jeu d’esprit, named like
Villon’s, that also manages to be touching: Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis.
The formula is much older than Villon, like the theme it expresses —the contemplation
of mortality and the vanity of human wishes. J.W. Bright (MLN, 1893) sought to show
that the formula was used by the classical poets, but many of his citations do not seem
really relevant. More convincingly Etienne Gilson demonstrated the use of the formula in
Old and New Testaments, and in Christian ecclesiastical writing. At any rate, its wide
diffusion in the Middle Ages seems to derive mostly from the much-read encyclopedist
Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) and from Boethius. By the 12C or 13C it was already a
"banalité theologique," and about the same period writers began to emphasise two
elements found less often in the older versions: they now regularly substituted specific
names of famous men and women for the general classes more common in earlier
occurrences (David, Alexander, Hector, for emperors, kings, princes. Plato, Cicero,
Aristotle for "litteratus", "doctor," etc. (See also De Casibus entry above). The second
new element was an emphasis on the transience of woman's beauty.
The formula occurs mostly in connection with a number of interrelated themes and
conventions common in the literature of the Middle Ages: the Wheel of Fortune, the
Dance of Death, Contemptus Mundi, the Debate of the Body and Soul, De Casibus, and
so forth.
Very full citations and references will be found in the critical works cited below. The
following representative samples are meant as a small anthology to illustrate the kind of
variation to be found within the set formula:
1. Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent?
Quid Brutus, aut rigidus Cato?
(Boethius, De Consolatione, II, poema 7).
Where now are the bones of faithful Fabricius? What has become of Brutus or
of inflexible Cato?
2. Hwaer sint nu þaes Welandes ban, oþþe hwa wat nu hwaer hi waeron?
Oþþe hwaer is nu se foremaera and se araeda Romewara heretoga, se
waes haten Brutus, oþþe naman Cassius?
Oþþe se wisa and faestraeda Cato, se waes eac Romana heretoga ....
(King Alfred's Boethius, MS Bod 180, XIX; slightly different version in Meter 10).Page
122
Where now are the bones of Weland [the famous smith], or who knows where they might
be? Or where now is Brutus the famous and resolute leader of the Romans? Or Cassius?
Or the wise and steadfast Cato, who was also a Roman leader?
3. Dic ubi sunt reges? ubi principes? ubi imperatores? ubi locupletes rerum? ubi potentes
saeculi? quasi umbra transierunt, velut somnium evanuerunt.
(Isidore's Synonyma, II, 91).
Tell us where are the kings? Where the princes? Where the emperors? Where
the rich of the world? Where the powerful of this earth? Like a shadow they have passed
like a dream they have vanished.
4. Hwaer cwom mearg? hwaer cwom mago? hwaer cwom maþþumgyfa
Hwaer cwom symbla gesetu? Hwaer sindon seledreamas? (Wanderer, 92-93).
Where is the horse, and where his rider? Where is the giver of
treasure? Where are the feasting places and the joys of the banqueting hall?
5. Ubi Plato, ubi Porphyrius?
Ubi Tullius aut Virgilius?
Alexander ubi rex maximus?
Ubi David rex doctissimus?
Ubi Solomon prudentissimus?
Ubi Helena Parisque roseus?
Ceciderunt in profundum ut lapides.
Anon. 12C
Where are Plato and Porphyry, Cicero and Virgil? Where is Alexander the greatest of
kings? David the most learned, and Solomon the wisest of monarchs?
Where are the beautiful Helen and Paris? They have fallen into the abyss like stones.
6. Where is Paris and Eleyne Helen
Ðaet were so bright and fair on bleo? of face
Amadas and Dideyne,
Tristram, Iseude and all theo? thosePage 123
(Luve Ron 13 C).
7. Where beth they bifore us weren,
Houndes ladden and hawkes beren
And hadden field and wood,
The riche levedies in hoere bour ladies / their bower
That wereden gold in hoere tressour, wore g. in their headdresses
With hoere brightte rode? their b. faces
(Anonymous 13 C)
Where are those who were before us,
who led hounds and carried hawks
and possessed fields and woods?
The rich ladies in their bower
that wore gold in their hair,
with their bright faces?
8. A striking variation is to be found in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (407-469)
in which Cresseid laments at some length the loss of her own former life and
beauty.
__________________________________
E. Gilson ; J.E. Cross, Ubi Sunt Passages; Dubruck.

Sources of the Boece, Tim William Machan, Alastair J. Minnis, University of Georgia

Press, 2005 - 311 pagini

Finding the Right Words: Isidore's Synonyma in Anglo-Saxon England, Claudia Di

Sciacca
University of Toronto Press, 2008 - 323 pagini
Re-scrierea în vernaculară a motivului ubi sunt, cîteva zeci de pagini

105. The ubi sunt topos

149. The Synonima in Anglo-Latin Literature

THE "ubi sunt" FORMULA.
The occurrence of the elegiac formula or motive ubi sunt in the academic song " Gau
deamus," as also in the refrain of the " Lau riger Horatius," will be 'thought of at once,
but it may be assumed that few American scholars have become aware of
Professor Creiznach's historical study of the "Gaudea mus " (' Verhandlungen der 28
ten Versamm lung deutscher Philologen und Schulmanner,' Leipzig, 1873, P2"3
f-)Creiznach takes the 106.
ubi sunt formula to be a common possession of the mediaeval Latin poets, pertaining
primarily D) quotes from an unknown poet (perhaps Menander) : to the Christian lyric as
a formula for the expression of the transitoriness of things temporal. He then adds more
specifically: " Sie [d. h. die Frage ubi sun(\ wird ungemein haufig gebraucht, wo
das Entschwinden friiherer Grosse durch Beispiele, namentlich durch Aufzahlung
beruhmter Manner veran schaulicht werden soil. Wo befinden sich nun, wird
gefragt, die Helden, Dichter und Weisen der Vorzeit " ? He then cites the To THE
EDITORS OF MOD. LANG. NOTES. following mediaeval lines :
Ubi Plato, ubi Porphyrius? Ubi Tullius ant Virgilius? Alexanderubi rex maximus?
Ubi Hector Troiae fortissimus ?
Die ubi Salomon olim tarn nobilis, Vel Samson ubi est duxinvincibilis?
Clearly the motive is older than either Villon or Ryman. It was familiar to the Anglo-
Saxon example of a striking parallel in the pot of the poet :
Hwfer cwom mearg? hwtxr cwom mago?
hwizr cwom mappumgyfa ?
hw"r cwom symbla gesetu? hw"r sindon
seledreamas? "The Wanderer," 11. 92-93.
" Metres of Boethius," x, 33,
Hw"r sind na p"s wlsan Welandes ban ?
Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent ? But the canon does not close with Boethius.
which I am indebted to the kind assistance of Dr. A. Gudeman, will answer the present
purpose: Pro di immortales! ubi est ille mos
virtusque maiorum? (Cicero: " Oratio Phi-
lippica," viii, 23); Ubinam ille mos, ubi ilia aequitas iuris, ubi ilia antiqua libertas etc.
(Cicero: " Oratio pro Cn. Plancio," 33).
Delos ubi nunc, Phoebe, tua est, ubi Delphica Pytho ? Tibullus, ii, 3, 17.
Ubi nunc facundus Ulixes Ovid, 'Met.' xiii, 92.
For further references see Loers, 'Ovid Heroid.' iv, 150; Drakenborch, 'Sil. Ital.,' vii,
Plutarch (" Consolatio ad Apollonium," no
Uov yap rd 6"juvd, Ttov 8k Av8ir)"i Meya? Svva'GTTjS KpmdoS rf EspfyS fiapvv aidav
r/XSov uat Aa3"r? Sojuov?.
JAMES W. BRIGHT.

https://www.commentary.org/articles/joseph-epstein/author-reflects-on-literary-fame/
Fame
Do I have it? Do I need it?, Commentary, October
2020
by Joseph Epstein
I recently had an email from a reader who sent along a paragraph
from Garrison Keillor’s “News from Manhattan” column in which
he, Keillor, bemoans the end of the famous writer. Keillor recounts
looking at a portfolio of Jill Krementz photographs of authors from
the 1960s and 1970s: Every author there, he writes, “from Tom
Wolfe to Mailer to Roth to Margaret Mead to Perelman and Singer
and Vonnegut and Morrison and Steinem—I recognized them
instantly at a glance. I don’t think I know many authors by sight
anymore. What’s worse, I doubt that others do. I think the era of
Famous Writers is over.” The email from my reader ends by asking,
“Are you not, if not hounded, at least recognized often when you’re
out and about?”

I found it especially interesting that my correspondent would quote

Garrison Keillor on fame to me. I recall one night, standing before a
urinal during an intermission at the Chicago Symphony and
discovering Garrison Keillor at the adjoining urinal. He was taller
than I had imagined—they apparently grow big along Lake
Wobegon—and he had a ticked-off look on his face. I recognized
him because he’d been on PBS that day, but I said nothing to him.
Back in the foyer with my wife, a man came up to me and asked,
“Aren’t you Joseph Epstein, the writer?” After I allowed that I was,
he said some kind words about my writing. I thanked him and
looked over at Garrison Keillor, who still had that ticked-off look on
his face. Was it there, I now wonder, because no one recognized
him?

The answer to my correspondent’s question is that, no, I am not

often recognized and have never come close to being hounded. I am
mildly pleased on the rare occasions when I am. The other day in my
local Whole Foods, a woman in the checkout line in front of me
said, “I know who you are,” though nothing more. When I am
recognized, I often respond by saying, “Damn, I guess this disguise
didn’t work.”

On a cold day in Minneapolis some years ago, I asked to share a cab

with two men who announced to the driver that they were going to
the same Marriott hotel I was. At the hotel, I was ahead of one of the
two men at the reception desk. When I asked the reception clerk if
he had a reservation for Joseph Epstein, one of my fellow passengers
asked, “Are you the Joseph Epstein?” I replied, “Actually I
am a Joseph Epstein.”

“No kidding,” he said. “You’re my alter ego. This is going to sound

like a bobbysoxer, but may I go up in the elevator to your room with
you?” He did, and he turned out to be Dr. Paul McHugh, head of
psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and since that fortuitous day a dear
friend.
I have been publishing essays and reviews and stories and books for
what will soon be 62 years. I have had two books, one on snobbery
and the other on friendship, on bestseller lists. Over the years I have
been sent round the country by various publishers to flog these and
other books on radio and TV stations and in bookstores. I have been
interviewed for my opinions on various media perhaps a dozen
times, and perhaps turned down the same number of invitations for
other interviews. I’ve been more than 60 years in the literary
business, and they are still mispronouncing my name (it’s Ep-
STINE).

Do I feel aggrieved about my relative obscurity? Not much. Not

really? Garrison Keillor is probably correct: Literary fame is
probably no longer available. But, then, fame itself, its very nature,
seems to have changed.

_____________

I USED occasionally to go to dinner with a man who was the lone

anti-machine alderman during the Chicago mayoralty of Jane Byrne
(1979–83), and he was consequently often interviewed on television
for his anti-machine views. At our dinners together, I couldn’t help
notice that he scanned the room, looking for people who recognized
him, and could feel his palpable disappointment when nobody had. I
sensed Saul Bellow, especially after winning the Nobel Prize in
1976, was also slightly disappointed when not recognized in public
places. I once introduced him to a lawyer I knew who, not knowing
who Saul was, asked him if he was any relation to Charlie Bellows,
a once well-known local defense attorney. We did not speak about
this painful contretemps afterwards.

On the other, very different hand, I was some years ago taken to a
Chicago Cubs–Los Angeles Dodgers game by George F. Will. We
watched it from a skybox. After the game, making our way through
the crowd, no fewer than 20 people called out, “Hey, it’s George
Will.” “Yo, George Will!” “George Will, loved the piece on Bush.”
When I asked George if this happened often, he said that it did. “I
suppose this is owing to your television appearances,” I said.  This
was before cable talk shows, and he was a regular on the now long-
defunct Sunday-morning show This Week. “I like to think it isn’t,”
he said, “but you are probably right.”

Regular appearances on television may today be the only source of

fame in America. One can achieve fame through being a great
athlete, perhaps a movie star, possibly a major gangster, but the
surest route is through television. And yet even cable talk television,
with its multiplicity of pundits, no longer produces fame of the kind
George Will then possessed. In 1968, Andy Warhol said that “in the
future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” With the scores
and scores of bloggers, podcasters, cable pundits, and others, that
time may by now be down to three minutes. Fame itself has come to
seem a lot less interesting.

One test of fame has it that your caricature can appear in a

publication without a caption beneath it identifying who you are.
Another is the first-name test, whereby one can be known by one’s
first name alone. Thus: Cary (Grant), Frank (Sinatra), Johnny
(Carson), Michael (Jordan or Jackson), Marilyn (Monroe), no last
name required. All, note, are figures from an earlier day. Ellen
(DeGeneres), Leo (DiCaprio), Jen (Aniston), Stephen (Colbert)
don’t quite register in the same way.

In some realms, fame diminishes more rapidly than others. Sports is

notable here. That splendid linebacker, that indispensable closer, that
brilliant point guard—five or 10 years after their retirement from
professional sports, they are forgotten by all but the die-hardest of
fans. At the Standard Club in Chicago I was once introduced to
Marshall Goldberg, the 1939 All-American running back from the
University of Pittsburgh who went on to play for the long defunct
Chicago Cardinals. When I made plain that I of course knew who he
was, it seemed all he could do not to hug me.

Movie-star fame also seems less than it once was. Here, from a
recent biography of Cary Grant, is a list of America’s favorite male
movie stars in 1957: Rock Hudson, William Holden, Cary Grant,
Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, James Stewart, Burt
Lancaster, Glenn Ford, Yul Brynner, Clark Gable, and John Wayne,
which leaves out Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Tyrone Power,
and Fred Astaire. A similar list could be made for female stars. No
one, I daresay, could put together anything like such lists for 21st-
century movie stars. Movies do not play the central role in the life of
the country they once did, and so the portion of fame available to
those who make movies is correspondingly reduced.
Not that fame doesn’t have its uses. I have always liked the story of
Ira Gershwin and his wife and another couple attempting, rather late
in the day, to get a table for dinner at Sardi’s. Ira goes off to call the
restaurant and returns to say that they are filled up and aren’t taking
any more reservations. The husband of the other couple says he
would like to try. He returns to report that, yes, they have a table for
four at 8:00 p.m. in the center of the room. “How did you arrange
that?” Gershwin asks his friend.” “Simple,” the friend replies, “I told
him I was Ira Gershwin.”

Chicago, my hometown, is not famous for famous people. We have

no Spike Lee or Woody Allen, which explains why the Chicagoan
Gene Siskel, the movie critic who had a successful television show
with Roger Ebert called At the Movies, was invited by the Chicago
Bulls to buy four first-row seats for the team’s home games. “It cost
only $58,000,” he told me, with more than a touch of irony, the night
he took me and two others to a game against the New Jersey Nets,
“and they throw in free parking.” After the game, the four of us were
headed for dinner, and Siskel, from his car phone, called a restaurant
for a reservation, a call that began, in reverse Ira Gershwin mode:
“This is Gene Siskel.…” The restaurant, I was somehow pleased to
learn, wasn’t taking any more reservations.

Some American writers have made a direct play for fame, even for
visible fame. In his day, Mark Twain became known as the man in
the white suit. In ours, Tom Wolfe picked up on Twain’s white suits
and was rarely seen not wearing one. (Some clever fellow remarked
that perhaps the person who mourned Wolfe’s death most was his
dry cleaner.) A former editor at the New Republic, in reverse Tom
Wolfe mode, wore all black, including cowboy boots, but he came
off as all hat and no cattle. Without her good looks, the writing of
Susan Sontag is unlikely to have attracted the interest it did.

Costuming and good looks alone were not the only forms of writers
achieving visible fame. Appearances on Jack Parr or Johnny Carson
or Dick Cavett’s late-night talk shows, at a time when these shows
had a much wider audience than their successors have, brought
nearly instant fame, at least if during those appearances a writer said
wildly scandalous things. So Truman Capote remarked that the
popular novelist Jacqueline Susann looked like nothing so much as
“a truck driver in drag.” Gore Vidal said that the three most
depressing words in the English language were Joyce Carol Oates.
Norman Mailer, who could be depended on to supply outré behavior
on national television, called Vidal a liar and a hypocrite on the Dick
Cavett program. Such was one way to fame open to the
contemporary writer, which reminds one that Marcus Aurelius said,
“After fame is oblivion.”

How many great writers were famous in their lifetime? Lord Byron
was one: “I awoke one morning and found myself famous,” he
wrote. More accurately, Byron was infamous, this chiefly for his
sexual escapades, including rumors of incest with his sister. Tolstoy
had great fame in his later years, and his lingering death, in a
railway station far from his home at Yasnaya Polyana and his wife
of nearly 50 years, was covered by the press as one of the first great
media events of the 20th century. T.S. Eliot during his lifetime had a
fame beyond the merely literary, as witness his amusing
correspondence with Groucho Marx. Ernest Hemingway was another
writer who could claim fame, but his was less than enviable; and
in the New Yorker, the reporter Lillian Ross, by merely recording his
vain talk, allowed him to hang himself as a foolish blowhard.

Look into any dictionary of quotations or any list of them to be

found online and one discovers that everywhere the pursuit of fame
is thought a game not worth the candle. From Emerson’s “Fame is
proof that people are gullible” to Santayana’s “The highest form of
vanity is the love of fame,” those who have passed for thinkers over
the centuries are agreed that fame is an empty prize. Yet, for want of
it, so subtle a mind as Henry James’s suffered, late in his career, a
nervous breakdown. James’s New York Edition (the revised
republication) of his novels was a financial flop. His renewed (also
abortive) attempt to score a triumph in the theater also contributed.
At one point, James even allowed that “I would have written, if I
could, like Anthony Hope and Marion Crawford,” one the author
of The Prisoner of Zenda and the other a writer of fantasy, both far
below his own standard. Even Henry James, that most immitigable
of highbrows, that purest of literary artists, dreamed of great fame
and riches through his writing.

But then most writers, when it comes to their own writing, tend to be
fantasists. When they publish a book, their hopes for it—
commercial, critical, popular—soar into the empyrean. This will be
the book, a sure bestseller, that will take me out of the financial wars
forever. Reviewers, surely, cannot help but understand, and duly
appreciate, what I have achieved here. If only… if only…if only.

Freud says that the artist gives up fame, fortune, and the love of
beautiful women for his art, through which he hopes to win fame,
fortune, and the love of beautiful women. I like to think that I have
eluded Freud’s clever cliché. I believe I have stowed away sufficient
fortune to see me out, I have for more than 40 years been living with
a beautiful woman, and the idea of being famous no longer lights my
fire.

I also like to think I have passed beyond the fantasy stage in regard
to my own writing. When I publish a book, I hope it will sell enough
copies to repay my publisher and please my modest number of
regular readers (7–8,000 or so). I am pleased by enthusiastic reviews
but no longer crushed (ticked maybe, but not crushed) by damning
ones. I have ceased accepting occasional offers to do interviews or
appear on talk-radio shows. As for offers to give lectures, I set a
high fee ($10,000) and write to the people, not all that many, who
have made the offer that they are not to worry if they cannot meet it,
for I have heard these talks myself and assure them they are worth
nowhere near $10,000.

My writing has not won any of the grand prizes. No MacArthur

Awards, no National Book Awards, no Pulitzer Prizes. (Pulitzers, I
once wrote, go to two kinds of writers: those who don’t deserve
them and those who don’t need them.) I was given a National
Humanities Medal, which caused a liberal friend to say that it was a
shame that I won it during the George W. Bush presidency. I replied
that I should have preferred to have been awarded the medal by
Abraham Lincoln, but then one couldn’t have everything.

“The longer a man’s fame is likely to last,” wrote Schopenhauer,

“the longer it will be in coming.” Bearing this out, many writers
famous in their day—Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, John
Updike—already seem decidedly less interesting in ours, while
many of the writers I admire were not notably famous in their
lifetimes. Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb,
Max Beerbohm, George Orwell—they all worked diligently without
the need for the kind of clamorous recognition that accompanies
fame. Beerbohm even enjoyed his obscurity, proudly showing S.N.
Behrman a royalty statement preponderately filled with zeros.
In recent years I have taken to referring to my own royalties as my
peasantries, though I do take some small pleasure in noting, on the
Amazon Author Central page, that my books do continue to sell at
the modest rate of 20- or 30-odd copies every week.

_____________

FOR ME the true pleasure in writing is found in the work itself: in

the delight in amusing phrases, well-turned sentences, rhythmical
paragraphs, conclusions I had little or no idea I would arrive at until
my composition was complete. I have long subscribed to E.M.
Forster’s remark, when asked his opinion on a subject, that he didn’t
really know what he thought until he had written about it. Writing,
in this view, is an act of discovery, and so it has been for me.
Fame, which I never truly sought, has eluded me, but in
compensation I have had more than my share of praise, some of it
from writers older than I whom I have much admired: Jacques
Barzun, William Barrett, Sidney Hook, Philip Larkin, Tom Wolfe,
Herman Wouk, Gordon Wood, Norman Podhoretz, John Gross, Dan
Jacobson, among others. I also take pleasure in the minor but fairly
continuous flow of emails (perhaps six or seven a month) that I get
from readers who claim to find satisfaction in my writing. One such
email, touching on my subject here, recently claimed that I was not a
famous writer—he adduced Stephen King as a famous writer—but a
distinguished one. Now there, if only it were true, is a distinction
with which I can happily live out my days.