'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun'

Isaac Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is a civilized man with civilized values. As of Friday he and his family were safe or as safe as anyone can be in Israel. His blog post that day is titled “Unseen, Unfeared.” Isaac quotes a brief passage from Horace’s Ode 2.13 – “. . . sed inprovisa leti / vis rapuit rapietque gentis” – followed by seven translations of it into English. Isaac takes the title of his post from J.S. Blake-Reed’s 1944 version: 

“Unseen, unfeared, destruction’s might

Descends and shall descend again.”

 

If read out of context – that is, the context of both Horace’s ode and the news out of Israel – it’s easy to say of the translated passage, “Well, that’s always the case. Given the perversity of human nature, we and our little worlds might be destroyed at any moment. We’re all vulnerable.” But that’s an abstraction, albeit an inarguable one. For Isaac and his countrymen, and Jews anywhere, it’s an imminent reality. Anti-Semitism is experiencing yet another predictable revival in Israel, its neighbors and, shamefully, even in the United States. Isaac has published Blake-Reed’s More Odes of Horace, which includes 2.13. It begins:

 

“An impious hand, accursed tree,

For future generations’ harm

In evil hour first planted thee

To be the scandal of my farm.”

 

And the third stanza:

 

“All forms of evil ’neath the sun,

Thou sorry trunk, his hand has sped,

Who planted thee to fall upon

Thy unoffending owner’s head.”