Puzzle

[flemmings]

In the mid 70s there was a popular novel-- middle-brow fiction, my mind says, about the level of The Magus-- that had an epigraph in French, more or less to the effect of 'There are men who spend their time measuring the Pyramids and (something else) which is sufficient demonstration of the melancholy of existence.' All that I remember of the French (given my track record in these matters, 90% for sure remembering wrong) is 'une grande preuve de la melancolie.' De vivre? De la vie? De l'existance? Dunno.

Mind links the book to Fowles, but possibly only because I may have read The French Lieutenant's Woman around the same time. Book was popular enough that my friends could quote that at each other. It doesn't *sound* like a FLW epigraph and it definitely came at the start of the book along with a couple of other quotes.

Has anyone ever run across this? It's only been bothering me for about 30 years.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

I obviously have too much time to do other things that I would rather do this so I googled the

whole damned sentence and it gave me this! (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%27%27There+are+men+who+spend+their+time+measuring+the+Pyramids+and+%28something+else%29+which+is+sufficient+demonstration+of+the+melancholy+of+existence.%27&meta=)

Walden (http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden1d.html) whoever he is apparently although I could be way off the mark because it is an economics text??

or somesuch! oops dunno if I got the correct page on there!?

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html#toc

Re: or somesuch! oops dunno if I got the correct page on there!?

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

uhmm yeah ignore me it just dawned on me that you saw it in french so uhmm yeah totally off the mark. Eep! *runs away*

Re: or somesuch! oops dunno if I got the correct page on there!?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

See below. The pyramids were never there to start with, so I sent you off on a wild goose chase. Sorry!

Re: or somesuch! oops dunno if I got the correct page on there!?

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

It's ok ... I took a peek at the book I found and it was intriguing in it;s own right but not so that I would find the time to read it in its entirety!

No worries ... thank you and it's already the day here today (even if I may be anything up to 12 or 14 hours ahead ... but ....)

Hope The Day is Happy and full of Wonderful

Much love and many many HUGS of the extra-squishy kind!

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I found possibly the original French in Anatole France's La Vie Litteraire:

C'est pourquoi il y a d'honnetes gens qui etudient les poids et mesures des Assyriens ou la procedure civile en Egypte sous les Lagides, ce qui est une grande preuve de la melancolie de vivre.

(Sorry, I've never learned how to get the right accents on this computer, now that I'm years away from having to write essays in French.)

I was going to say that I would be surprised if one couldn't Google around to whichever book used it as an epigraph based on that, but I've tried it, so I guess I'm surprised.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That's it. Thank you. I must have imported the pyramids in there wholesale, is why my memory should never be trusted.

Yes, odd that it wouldn't turn up in a google search.