I see your chagrin, and how modesty forb...

I see your chagrin, and how modesty forbids you

From including yourself in the list;

And, not to speak of yourself,

What do they do for the country, your clever heroes?

How does their writing serve the State

By accusing the court of horrible injustice

And complain everywhere that their distinguished names

Have failed to attract either favor or funding?

Their brains are really vital to France!

It seems to these pinheads that since they’ve been published

In handsome coffee-table editions

Now they’re important national figures

Who forge the destiny of crowned heads with their pens;

Who ought, for providing the slimmest of volumes

To have pensions come flowing into their accounts;

Who have the eyes of the universe fixed on them;

Whose glorious names ring out everywhere.

In science they’re doubtless great prodigies

For memorizing what had been written before,

For carrying around, for thirty years, eyeballs and eardrums;

For devoting nine or ten thousand all-nighters

Wallowing in Greek and Latin;

And for cramming their brains with a murky jumble

Of all the old gobbledygook that molders in books;

People habitually drunk on their knowledge,

Rich above measure in senseless babble,

Devoid of common sense, endlessly awkward,

But so full of effrontery and ridicule

That they bring ill repute to knowledge and the mind.

Citation: Moliere, Translated by Jonathan Marks, The Learned Women, Public domain.
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