Gone with the wind from the house of leaves

The line "gone with the wind" (see my last post, "I have forgot much, Cynara!") made me think of the Cumaean Sibyl, who writes her prophecies on leaves that blow away in the wind. Remembering that I had posted about her before, I searched this blog and found only one post containing the word sybil (as I had carelessly misspelled it in my search): "Plates among the dead leaves" (June 2024). That syncs with my last post, which is about a juxtaposition of the Book of Mormon (translated from plates) and Gone with the Wind (like dead leaves).

The 2024 post begins by referring to two dreams of mine: one set in "a long-abandoned building where everything was covered with dead leaves," and the other also taking place in "an indoor area full of dead leaves." The phrase "gone with the wind" comes from Ernest Dowson's poem "Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae." In my last post, I mentioned that part of the title of that poem had appeared on this blog before, in "Oh mark I am" (July 2024). Here is the context in which it appeared:

She [WG] quoted a line from [the Mark Z. Danielewski novel] House of Leaves: "Known some call is air am." . . . It’s an attempt to render phonetically as English what is actually another language, in this case Latin. Non sum qualis eram -- "I am not what I was." This is a line from Horace, famously used by Ernest Dowson as the title of his poem "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae." ("I am not what I was under the reign of good Cynara.")

So a line from the Dowson poem led me back to a 2024 post featuring two dreams about "houses of leaves" -- and part of the title of the same poem appears, in disguised form, in a novel called House of Leaves.

Today, wanting to reread Virgil's reference to the Sibyl writing on leaves, I took down one of the half-dozen English editions of the Aeneid I own. For no particular reason, rather than my well-worn Mandelbaum translation, I grabbed the Dryden, which I rarely consult and have never read through. This turned out to be a bad edition for looking up specific passages, as there are no line numbers and no headers indicating what book one is in. I found Book VI but had to flip around a bit to find the section I wanted. While so doing, I saw the name Marcellus, which arrested my attention, probably because Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay) has turned up in syncs from time to time. I paused to read the surrounding lines:

Ah! couldst thou break thro' fate's severe decree,

A new Marcellus shall arise in thee!

Full canisters of fragrant lilies bring,

Mix'd with the purple roses of the spring;

This juxtaposition of lilies and roses was a bit of a sync, since my last post had quoted these lines from the Dowson poem:

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;

I then found the passage I had been looking for, which Dryden renders thus:

But O! commit not thy prophetic mind

To flitting leaves, the sport of ev'ry wind,

Lest they disperse in air our empty fate;

Write not, but, what the pow'rs ordain, relate.

This made me think of the Book of Mormon references to a prophetic book which, rather than being written, "proceedeth forth out of the mouth of a Jew" -- and Bill and others have imagined this "Jew" as female, like the Sybil.

Thinking about the Sibyl and her windy cave also brought to mind these lines from Pope:

In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,

And more than echoes talk along the walls.