At the end of A Man in a Crowd, there are these latin words: hortulis animae cum oratiumculis aliquibus superaditis. What would be a good translation.

Thanks

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2004

Answers

IF this is a real reference it is hard to find. A book by Gruninger(medieval or Gothic philosopher?) Of the the little garden of the soul .... Added for color more than necessary explanation. Mood tag and lending authority to the narrator's ideas.

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2004

Poe's Latin note (not exactly as you transcribed it) gives the title of the book alluded to, which we may translate as: "The Little Garden of the Soul -- with Some Additional Short Prayers". There were in fact many excessively popular "Little Garden of the Soul" books published during the first decades of the sixteenth Century (1501, 1516, 1521..., with many later reprints, and new ones too) most of them in Latin, but also in German, in English... the earliest one seeming to have been issued in 1498 at Strasburg (France). These religious books collected various popular prayers together with religious meditations, printed in ornated/twisted gothic (not always easily legible) types, and were often illustrated by highly symbolic wood-engravings, themselves not always clear in their meaning, nor perfectly relevant to their accompanying texts. Poe, as Mr Murphy rightly suggests, is probably referring rather to the kind in itself than to one precise volume, though I believe that the Grünninger's one actually does exist, if I remember well. Yours sincerely, Raven's Shade (Belgium).

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2004