There are better ways of connecting things up ..." The annotations to "The Well of
Lycopolis" break new ground, and will provide much relief to a perplexed reader.
Some monks, like John of
Lycopolis, remained in a cell for thirty years, being cared for by a disciple who brought the necessities of life to a window in his cell.
Sometime, probably in the mid-380s, Evagrius and one of the Tall Brothers, Ammonius, set out from their desert monastery in Lower Egypt and trekked upriver to consult with John of
Lycopolis, the famed "Seer of the Thebaid." It would have been a demanding pilgrimage.
11 Though the Byzantine Lexicon called the Suda identifies it with
Lycopolis. Hunter's suggestion (404 n.
In this case, one presumes that the tribunes were chosen for their ability to record, both swiftly and accurately, each word uttered by John of
Lycopolis in reply to the emperor's request, as much as for their services as messengers.
Furthermore, as Makin demonstrates convincingly, The Well of
Lycopolis (written in 1935, but not published until 1950) draws to a climax a recurrent theme in Bunting's poetry since 1924: the interdependence of sexual and poetic impotence, occasioning feelings of guilt, cowardice, and a bleak despair about transience.
455.32ff Boissonade, names Lyco (perhaps
Lycopolis, as in the Suda?) as his birthplace, inspiring e.g.
In the Well of
Lycopolis I have tried to turn Dante's contempt for it around, where I have Styx "silvered by a wind from Heaven" - ultimate hope rising from the helpless victim of accidie.
Sayings by Macarius the Alexandrian are found scattered among those listed under the name of Macarius the Egyptian, and a story about John of
Lycopolis is ascribed to John the Little.(89) But Lucien Regnault has argued that such an interpretation is not necessary here.