A lazy Sunday afternoon spent lying in bed with nothing on my mind but stray thoughts slowly fading away into the mists.
My eyes grew heavy, my mind went wandering.
Eyelids closed, the insides better for pondering.- Steven McDougal (A Postprandial Exegesis).
A random electrical impulse in the repository of semantic memory1 brought a few lines of a half forgotten poem to the forefront of the semiconscious part of my brain.
These were lines that I had heard a decade ago, during my internship. Recited to me in the hospital’s cafeteria by a physician, a much respected teacher.
Try as I might, I could not remember the remaining lines which remained shrouded in the fog of faded memories.
Forced into wakefulness, I did what any right-thinking person in this digital age would do.
I reached for my laptop and Googled ‘My doctor’s issued his decree.’
Lo and behold, the first result that came up….
My doctor’s issued his decree
That too much wine is killing me,
And furthermore his ban he hurls
Against my touching naked girls.How then? Must I no longer share
Good wine or beauties dark & fair?
Doctor, goodbye, my sail’s unfurl’d,
I’m off to try the other world.
It is a short poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From what I could learn from the Rossetti Archive this poem was not published. They have a digital image of the manuscript composed in 1866 with notes in the margins which suggest that the poem was titled ‘A Doctor’s Advice’ by somebody else…
Translated from an inscription in ill-spelt French verse scratched in the pane of a window at the New Inn, Winchelsea.2
Mon médecin me dit souvent
Que trop de vin me tue,
Et me défend absolument
De toucher aux femmes nues.Faut il renoncer au bon vin,
À la brune et à la blonde?
Adieu, monsieur le médecin,
Je pars pour l’autre monde.
————–
Footnotes:
1. Where exactly in the brain are memories stored? Is it the amygdala or the hippocampi or the mammillary bodies or the medial temporal lobes. There seems to be no end to the search. Let’s look for the light at the end when we find out which tunnel we are in.
2. I have posted the French version here especially for the two blog-friends who know French, Moof and Dr. Hébert, who are of French-Canadian and Cajun-French extraction respectively and any other Francophile who stumbles into this blog.
The word is out. Memories are stored in muscle, probably among other places as well.
How neat…
Especially that you were able to find it on Google.
The internet is amazing.
Oh…
And your memory is too of course.
;+ )
later…
Nice poem. I don’t think I have encountered it before.
It is interesting that the French version emphasizes the parallel between light haired and dark haired women (”Faut il renoncer au bon vin,/ À la brune et à la blonde?”) and white and red wine in a way the English does not. White wine = blondes, red wine = brunettes. I would have missed that if I had only read the English.
Again, thanks.
Travelling Doc: I don’t know if you were joking. If you weren’t, then should we blame such memories stored in muscle for ‘phantom limb’ phenomena?
Thanks TJ. I don’t know how I got on before Google and Wikipedia
Dr. Hébert: Thanks for visiting and for the additional info.
Sometimes coincidences freak me out. I am in the process of reading (for the nth time) Phantoms in the Brain by V.S.R, and I come to scanman’s page to find, what? more references to amygdala, hippocampi and the mammillary bodies. Should I take a divine message from this? Or is it just tricking my limbic system into believing in divine intervention?
Excellent, Vijay! And thank you for including the French. I have a special place in my heart for anything that rhymes in French!
Although I’m not into “wine and women” … *LOL* … I understand the poor fellow’s sentiment. I’m of the same mind when I consider all of the lovely foods I’m supposed to avoid …
This post appears at zine5, a web magazine. Thanks to Vijay for letting us use it.