life sentences

I just need to push that gif a bit further down the page, don't I? Sigh. I think I'll do this nice book meme:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

I've been LibraryThinging all morning, just to stop myself from turning into a Watery Tart(TM Zoe) so I'm actually surrounded by Penguin Classics and other such books. Cataloguing your books mean they get a dust, and so eventually I'll have dusted all the books in the house, in time to see the first shelves regrow their protective dusty coating.

So I guess if I pluck one from the top of the pile it probably will be quite deep and meaningful. I'm going to close my eyes and pluck:

and the winner of the chook raffle is:

The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan. Congratulations, little missie, let's see what you have to say for yourself:

p. 123.

5th sentence and then the next four:

Thus she demonstrated well the great love which she had for her husband, as Boccaccio himself noted, approving the marriage bond which others want to attack."
(16. MORE CONCERNING QUEEN ARTEMESIA)
"Of all the ladies who have loved their husbands devotedly and who have demonstrated their love in fact, I would like to add, regarding that noble lady Artemesia, queen of Caria, that, just as was said above, insofar as she had followed King Mausolus into so many battles and was stricken and overcome with as much grief as anyone could bear when he died, she showed no less devotion in the end than she had demonstrated during his lifetime. For she performed all the solemn rites which could be administered to a king, in observance of the customs of that time, and during a dignified funeral in the presence of the princes and barons, she had his body cremated. She herself gathered his ashes together, washing them with her tears before she placed them in a gold vessel. Now it struck her that there was no reason why the ashes of the man whom she had so loved should have any other sepulcher than the heart and body where the root of this great love resided, and so for this reason, little by little, over a period of time, she drank these ashes mixed with wine until she had consumed them all.



Wow! I was going to count that heading as a sentence, but that next sentence blew me away so much I just had to keep it there. I must re-read this whole book. It's been years since I read it for Medieval Studies.

(hurr hurr... she said root)