Not So Lost in Translation
Brian A. Sullivan claims that the Yard of yore isn’t so very different from Harvard today. And he’s right. The musing pontifications and perspicacious reflections of Francis Ellingwood Abbot make him the pundit du jour, relevant in his time and in our own. Word.
Abbot on relationships: “If we had only kisses for each other, they would pall after a while; that is why so many couples tire of each other after the honeymoon.”
2004: I’m sick of just hooking up, and stop ignoring me in Annenberg.
Abbot on his course of study and its future: “Then I feel as if I were a fool to incur such a debt and undergo so much anxiety of mind just to become a rhymester and second-rate poet. I get disheartened and feel tempted to give up the scheme of education; to enter some active business, and throw all my literary tastes to the dogs.”
2004: What do you do with a B.A. in English?
Abbot on love: “But you cannot learn what a tumultuous, wild, passionate thing my love is, for you are not a man and cannot understand the intense vehemence of a man’s attachment.”
2004: Baby, I got needs.
Abbot on someone he wants to fight: “I would like to have his nose opposite my fist.”
2004: Check-minus?! I’ll participate twice as hard in section...yeah...that’ll show him.
Abbot on gender: “That there must be equality in love; I am not a tyrant, neither are you a slave.”
2004: I swear I’m not dating you just because you make me look good at the Delphic punch event.
Abbot on physical activity: “I begin to take an interest in the physical again, as I find my old skill and strength returning. When I see you next, you will probably find me a mass of knotted muscles. Nothing will stand against my gigantic power.”
2004: I don’t need to workout, I mean, I walked all the way over to the IOP yesterday.
Abbot on life in Cambridge: “Cambridge. The burden of life must be taken again—the rush of cares that cannot be shunned, the heat and the turmoil...”
2004: Damn, this weather blows, and everyone is a work-crazed freak.
-M.J. Amato