I got my copy of Vanitas with a very short essay by me on Lorca, translation, and prosody. Of course my first reaction on seeing was this was realizing that I spelled Zukofsky Zukovsky. I thought I had transcended that particular mistake. I really hate people who write Zukovsky, along with idiots who write The Wasteland or Finnegan's Wake or Alan Ginsburg. Those are mistakes I would never, ever make. Except with Lewis Z, for some reason. (I mean Louis, of course). I would never write Harry Matthews when everyone knows it is Harry Mathews. I would never write Thelonius instead of Thelonious either.

I would never refer to Leonardo Da Vinci as "Da Vinci." You have to say "Leonardo." It's just one of those things you have to know. You don't ever call San Juan de la Cruz, "De la Cruz" or Garcilaso de la Vega "De la Vega" or Fray Luis de León "De León." It just isn't done.

Bérubé reviewed some book about why the humanities matter, or some such crap, by an Ohio State professor who thinks that Leonardo was influenced by Newton's ideas on gravity. That's a little worse than calling Leonardo "Da Vinci," because, as others have pointed out, Leonardo was long dead before Newton was born. The guy lives in a bizarro universe where Edward Said is not sufficiently sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. But, of course, he is the champion of objective reality against postmodernism. Go figure.

Anyway, the Vanitas issue is worth checking out, apart from my deeply flawed contribution. At least I didn't talk about Lorca's influence on "Da Vinci."