What is the connection between Wallace Stevens and the Wallenberg family, I wonder. Esse non videri. That is as far as I’ve got.

Here is a link to a history of the Wallenbergs. Basically, they are the most powerful family in Sweden. Esse non Videri is their family motto. “Existing, but invisible.”

They were instrumental in helping Jews escape the Nazis in WW2. Fair enough, but contemporary events in Gaza cast such sympathy in an uncanny light.

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Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

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Take from the dresser of deal,

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

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Stevens was probably aware that this phrase happens also to be the motto of North Carolina. So far so good. But this is a quantum post; a post aligning dislocated facts simply for the sake of a phrase. So I’m interested in why the Nobel Peace Prize has just been awarded to a rabid Zionist and one intent on interfering in democratically-elected Maduro’s Venezuela. Alfred Nobel was another billionaire Scandinavian, one who invented cordite and dynamite. Like Mrs Winchester, widow of the rifle mogul, he suffered from a guilty conscience.

Sometimes it is Esse quam Videri – but the meaning seems broadly the same – well, up to a point. Esse quam videri is found in Cicero’s essay On Friendship (Laelius de Amicitia, chapter 98). Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt (“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so”).

Just a few years after Cicero, Sallust used the phrase in his Bellum Catilinae (54.6), writing that Cato the Younger esse quam videri bonus malebat (“He preferred to be good rather than to seem so”).

Previous to both Romans, Aeschylus used a similar phrase in Seven Against Thebes at line 592, at which the scout (angelos) says of the seer/priest Amphiaraus: οὐ γὰρ δοκεῖν ἄριστος, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι θέλει (ou gàr dokeîn áristos, all’ eînai thélei: “he doesn’t want to seem, but to be the bravest”). Plato quoted this line in Republic (361b). Cicero’s essay On Friendship (Laelius de Amicitia, chapter 98). Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt (“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so”).

However, the phrase seems to have acquired some spooky overtones – “to do without being seen” appears to be one of them. It also seems to get reversed in much popular opinion – “to seem, rather than to be,” or, according to the Free People’s Movement in Sweden – “acting without being seen.” So like the moebius strip, it turns itself inside out while remaining a single surface. Reminds me of the motto of Mossad – “By way of deception, we have done war.”

There is a great video on Odysee.com by ImplodeX called Esse non Videri, but I can’t seem to upload it here.

Anyway, I got a poem out of this, which perhaps demonstrates the slipperiness of language. However, I keep altering it – and perhaps it’s the sort of poem that can never be resolved. The phrase epitomises the enigma of language; that meaning is all too often an assumption.

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ESSE NON VIDERI

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We might translate this phrase as

“Let be be finale of seem.”

At times it is Esse quam videri – however,

The meaning seems broadly the same:

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Few are those who wish to be

Endowed with virtue

Rather than to seem so. Rather than to

Seem so, he preferred to be so.

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He doesn’t want to seem so but to be

The one to do what he should do.

Few are those who wish, rather than to seem so,

To be endowed with virtue.

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He preferred to be so rather than

To seem so. So he doesn’t want to seem

But to be the doing one, or

To do without being seen,

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To seem, rather than to be

Or act without being seen,

And thus, by way of deception,

To do what must be done.