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Irony from 16th-century Italy

Published by marco on

 The post Filosofia monosillabica by Mark Liberman (Language Log) included the image reproduced to the left.

Taking some artistic license, this translates roughly to:

Who can, will not
Who wills[1], cannot
Who knows, does not
Who does, knows not
And so the world
goes badly


[1] I use “will” in both cases in the will-to-live sense, when perhaps “wants” would be a more appropriate modern translation. But “wants” would impose a messy “doesn’t want to” translation.