Status Updates From Diario del año de la peste

“It was indeed a time of very unhappy breaches among us in matters of religion: innumerable sects, and divisions and separate opinions prevailed among the people...”

“Some endeavors were used to suppress the print of such books as terrified the people, and to frighten dispersers of them...but nothing was done in it as I am informed; the government being unwilling to exasperate the people, who were, as I may say, all out of their wits already.”

5/2/22

4/2/22

P. xxviii.

3/2/22

2/2/22

... okay the hat thing really is funny.

1/2/22

“The people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophesies, astrological conjurations , dreams and old wives’ tales, than they ever were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it; that is to say, by printing predictions, and prognostications I know not. But certain it is: books frightened them terribly.”

“But I must go back again to the beginning of this surprising time, while the fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely by several odd accidents, which put together, it was really a wonder the whole body of people did not rise up as one man & abandon their dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by heaven for a Hakeldama, doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth...”

This is intense.
“But besides those who were so frighted as to die upon the spot, there were great numbers frighted to other extremes, some frighted out of their senses, some out of their memory, and some out of their understanding.”

“The distemper intermitted often at first; so they were as it were, alarmed and I alarmed again, and this several times, til it began to be familiar to them...”

“Men’s hearts were hardened, and death was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the Loss of their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the next hour.”

Stopped for a while.

Good to see Defoe's uncle (? or whomever was telling him all this) had as much trouble keeping to quarantine as we all do

lololololol "god saved me so i could call you out on your shit"

okay

"...[people in the tavern] turned their anger into ridiculing the man and his sorrow for his wife and children, taunted him want of courage to leap into the great pit and go to heaven ..."

Defoe is like "some people were just ABSOLUTE dicks, you have NO idea"

Daniel, my good man, i think i can make a guess

improving.

ohhhh i still do not like Defoe.

i hated Moll Flanders when i read it, so my hopes are not super high for Journal. (otoh Moll is not about the black plague.)

reading it on proj. gutenberg, but i might trouble myself to pay $1 for the Dover ereader edition, because much as i love Project Gutenberg i absolutely loathe reading online ...

It’s kind of funny how the reaction to the plague and coronavirus was to stay inside and make bread

It’s really interesting how we’ve essentially done the exact same guidelines

leio, leio e esse livro não termina

I'm enjoying this book far too much.

Chapter one:
So things haven’t changed in 400 years.

Impressionante, sembra di leggere una versione secentesca dei primi mesi di questa pandemia

So far, dry and boring