The Snake’s Head presents a neglected classic of nineteenth century Swiss literature, Eugène Rambert’s La marmotte au collier (1889), together with its German translation by Rambert’s fellow Swiss, Alfred Graber, Das Murmeltier mit dem Halsband (1929). For the first time the Tablets of the Philosophical Marmot appear also in English.

This is a project born of the ongoing pandemic (2020). I encountered Rambert’s little work some twenty years ago aboard a train from Oxford to Chamonix Mont-Blanc. However, it is only the suspension of air travel between Malawi and Europe that has allowed the otium of a Long Vacation to attempt this edition and translation.

The Philosophical Marmot has proved agreeable company as I have reclined on my khonde amidst the twilight of the Eton of Africa, meditating, as he once did too, the increase of all that is base in the world and the dwindling of what is civilised and good. He is, by turns, irascible and cheerful, outrageous and a model of sound reason, intolerably pompous and touching in his temporary defeat, but endearing alway in his irrepressible Marmot-ness and ever a protrepticon to the Consolation of Philosophy. There is within the Tablets, so I like to think, a fine introduction to the characteristic thought of the Presocratics, but also much on the construction of burrows, the importance of friendship and the allurement of mountains and flowers (not only to eat).

Both Titivillus and distance from a French library will have left their mark. However, I think it best to publish this now in draft and to revise over the next few months. The Appendices will increase in number as commitment elsewhere affords leisure for Marmotology.

RLH

Kamuzu Academy, Malawi
Feast of the Assumption (Dry Moon, Fourth Day of the Last Quarter) 2020