I'm thinking of learning some Catullus to recite in Latin.
Partly for the fun of learning poetry - I love the way it sounds - but mostly for the kleios. She's offered a prize of a dictionary, but it's more because I want to do it for my personal glory, and also for PT herself. I think she's great, and if you know how much I still love my old Latin teacher then you'll appreciate she must be pretty good for me to not loathe her on principle.
She's made this offer - an edible prize, plus Latin dictionary - which I know no one else will take up, and even learnt a passage of Gellius to recite to us as an example. Which was understandably brave and nerve wracking. The class is very, very cruel to her, and are downright rude in private. I liked them all personally, but their attitude offends me, particularly one sitting opposite me whom I befrended, not to mention thinking them gorgeous, until I noticed that they were as keen to mock and smirk as everyone else. This made me double angry: there's a level at which if I do this, it'll be terribly teacher's pet and no one in my Latin class will like me - and there's a level at which that's exactly why I'm doing it, because I'm angry and offended by them. Having friends is nice, but some people don't actually deserve your friendship, and this is the politest way I can inform them that I can't stand them.
The translations below are mostly smegged from the web, and tweaked a bit to better reflect what I see as their spirit. Were it not tomorrow, I'd translate them from scratch. Honest.
My favourite Catullus poem of all time is far too short for me to perform in fairness:
"odo et amo - quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior..."
"I hate, and I love - perhaps you ask why this is so. I do not know, but I feel it - and it is torture"
I think we've all had that. That's one of the chief reasons I love reading Roman texts - they are so, so modern. They grieve, get jealous and spiteful, are slimy, artistic - in other words, nothing has changed.
My next want-to-read is also a short one, and like the previous it really burns with bitterness
"NVLLI se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
in uento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."
"There is no one, says my girl, whom she would rather marry than me - not even if Jupiter himself asked. She says - but what a woman says to an ardent lover should be written in wind and water..."
I think we've all been there too. It's the simplicity and sincerity which really stings, and the way he can pass off a perfect truth in under a paragraph.
It's my previous Latin teacher responsible for the Catullus love - we did the famous hundreds-and-millions-of-kisses poem, which is the ancient equivalent of Billy Shipton's inspired chat up line in Blink - "life is short and you are hot":
"VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum seueriorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum."
"Let us live, and let us love! - and rate not a penny the chattering of crabby old farts!
Suns may set and rise again - for us, once our brief light has set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night. Give me a thousand kisses - then a hundred - then another thousand - then a second hundred - then, when we have made up many thousands, we will confuse our counting and not know the reckoning - nor will any malicious blight us with evil when he knows our kisses are so many"
I used to kid that I'd fall straight for any guy who would read me Catullus, and indeed PT mentioned that her previous year's class, a girl had made that very same comment - but none of the guys took the hint. I've smarted up my priorities since then - now, playing Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu is the minumum standard, along with appreciating that one is supposed to watch the film uninterrupted on a cinema date. But I still think it is often excrutiatingly romantic, particularly the way that poem subsides from the boisterous hope of the opening into the sombre acceptance of death, leading into that frenetic and desperate end. Lesbia was a real young lady, by the way - and ultimately, she was faithful to Catullus as she was to her husband - hence the more bitter poems above. There's a very, very sad one when he realises this too.
He's most famous for the love poems, but he also has a number of witty, cheeky and downright rude notes written to his friends, and about his enemies - try Poem 16 if you want to learn some interesting Roman turns of phrase. But his serious ones are brilliant too, and that brings us to the elegy for his dead brother. This made me cry when I first read it, but perhaps I was having a sensitive day. It's still moving though:
"MVLTAS per gentes et multa per aequora uectus
aduenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, aue atque uale."
"Wandering through many countries and over many seas - I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies, to present you with the last guerdon of death, and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes, since fortune has taken your own self away from me alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me! Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers have been handed down -- a sorrowful tribute -- for a funeral sacrifice; take them, wet with many tears of a brother, and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell!"
There's theories that mortality rates in the past meant people held their families less dear than we do now in more sensitive times - you'll appreciate that after that poem, my only response is to recite some of Catullus' more scatalogical vocabulary. Bit of a downer though.
I should have stuck with "odo and amo", because I just rediscovered the Sirmio poem. It's not exactly a short one, but a particular favourite. Partly because my previous Latin teacher did it more than once, and I found it tricky every time, so it sticks in the mind - but when I fly back over guernsey I always get it running through my head - particularly the discription "ocelle", literally "little eye" or "little jewel". It's Catullus' description of his own joy at homecoming to the island Sirmio, so you can see why I admire it.
"PAENE insularum, Sirmio, insularumque
ocelle, quascumque in liquentibus stagnis
marique uasto fert uterque Neptunus,
quam te libenter quamque laetus inuiso,
uix mi ipse credens Thuniam atque Bithunos
liquisse campos et uidere te in tuto.
o quid solutis est beatius curis,
cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
labore fessi uenimus larem ad nostrum,
desideratoque acquiescimus lecto?
hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.
salue, o uenusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude
gaudente, uosque, o Lydiae lacus undae,
ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum."
"Sirmio, bright little eye of peninsulas and islands, whatever ones either Neptune bears
in liquid lakes or in the vast sea. How willingly and happily I visit you, scarecely trusting myself that I have left Thynia and the Bithynian plains, and that I see you in safety!
Oh, what is more blessed that to put cares away, when the mind lays down its burden, and tired with the labor of travel, we come to our own home and rest on the bed we longed for.
This is the only thing that is worth such great toils.
Hello, charming Sirmio, rejoice in your happy master, and you, Lydian waves of the lake,
laugh whatever laughter there is in your home."
And on that note, good night and good morning.
Partly for the fun of learning poetry - I love the way it sounds - but mostly for the kleios. She's offered a prize of a dictionary, but it's more because I want to do it for my personal glory, and also for PT herself. I think she's great, and if you know how much I still love my old Latin teacher then you'll appreciate she must be pretty good for me to not loathe her on principle.
She's made this offer - an edible prize, plus Latin dictionary - which I know no one else will take up, and even learnt a passage of Gellius to recite to us as an example. Which was understandably brave and nerve wracking. The class is very, very cruel to her, and are downright rude in private. I liked them all personally, but their attitude offends me, particularly one sitting opposite me whom I befrended, not to mention thinking them gorgeous, until I noticed that they were as keen to mock and smirk as everyone else. This made me double angry: there's a level at which if I do this, it'll be terribly teacher's pet and no one in my Latin class will like me - and there's a level at which that's exactly why I'm doing it, because I'm angry and offended by them. Having friends is nice, but some people don't actually deserve your friendship, and this is the politest way I can inform them that I can't stand them.
The translations below are mostly smegged from the web, and tweaked a bit to better reflect what I see as their spirit. Were it not tomorrow, I'd translate them from scratch. Honest.
My favourite Catullus poem of all time is far too short for me to perform in fairness:
"odo et amo - quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior..."
"I hate, and I love - perhaps you ask why this is so. I do not know, but I feel it - and it is torture"
I think we've all had that. That's one of the chief reasons I love reading Roman texts - they are so, so modern. They grieve, get jealous and spiteful, are slimy, artistic - in other words, nothing has changed.
My next want-to-read is also a short one, and like the previous it really burns with bitterness
"NVLLI se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
in uento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."
"There is no one, says my girl, whom she would rather marry than me - not even if Jupiter himself asked. She says - but what a woman says to an ardent lover should be written in wind and water..."
I think we've all been there too. It's the simplicity and sincerity which really stings, and the way he can pass off a perfect truth in under a paragraph.
It's my previous Latin teacher responsible for the Catullus love - we did the famous hundreds-and-millions-of-kisses poem, which is the ancient equivalent of Billy Shipton's inspired chat up line in Blink - "life is short and you are hot":
"VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum seueriorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum."
"Let us live, and let us love! - and rate not a penny the chattering of crabby old farts!
Suns may set and rise again - for us, once our brief light has set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night. Give me a thousand kisses - then a hundred - then another thousand - then a second hundred - then, when we have made up many thousands, we will confuse our counting and not know the reckoning - nor will any malicious blight us with evil when he knows our kisses are so many"
I used to kid that I'd fall straight for any guy who would read me Catullus, and indeed PT mentioned that her previous year's class, a girl had made that very same comment - but none of the guys took the hint. I've smarted up my priorities since then - now, playing Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu is the minumum standard, along with appreciating that one is supposed to watch the film uninterrupted on a cinema date. But I still think it is often excrutiatingly romantic, particularly the way that poem subsides from the boisterous hope of the opening into the sombre acceptance of death, leading into that frenetic and desperate end. Lesbia was a real young lady, by the way - and ultimately, she was faithful to Catullus as she was to her husband - hence the more bitter poems above. There's a very, very sad one when he realises this too.
He's most famous for the love poems, but he also has a number of witty, cheeky and downright rude notes written to his friends, and about his enemies - try Poem 16 if you want to learn some interesting Roman turns of phrase. But his serious ones are brilliant too, and that brings us to the elegy for his dead brother. This made me cry when I first read it, but perhaps I was having a sensitive day. It's still moving though:
"MVLTAS per gentes et multa per aequora uectus
aduenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, aue atque uale."
"Wandering through many countries and over many seas - I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies, to present you with the last guerdon of death, and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes, since fortune has taken your own self away from me alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me! Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers have been handed down -- a sorrowful tribute -- for a funeral sacrifice; take them, wet with many tears of a brother, and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell!"
There's theories that mortality rates in the past meant people held their families less dear than we do now in more sensitive times - you'll appreciate that after that poem, my only response is to recite some of Catullus' more scatalogical vocabulary. Bit of a downer though.
I should have stuck with "odo and amo", because I just rediscovered the Sirmio poem. It's not exactly a short one, but a particular favourite. Partly because my previous Latin teacher did it more than once, and I found it tricky every time, so it sticks in the mind - but when I fly back over guernsey I always get it running through my head - particularly the discription "ocelle", literally "little eye" or "little jewel". It's Catullus' description of his own joy at homecoming to the island Sirmio, so you can see why I admire it.
"PAENE insularum, Sirmio, insularumque
ocelle, quascumque in liquentibus stagnis
marique uasto fert uterque Neptunus,
quam te libenter quamque laetus inuiso,
uix mi ipse credens Thuniam atque Bithunos
liquisse campos et uidere te in tuto.
o quid solutis est beatius curis,
cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
labore fessi uenimus larem ad nostrum,
desideratoque acquiescimus lecto?
hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.
salue, o uenusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude
gaudente, uosque, o Lydiae lacus undae,
ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum."
"Sirmio, bright little eye of peninsulas and islands, whatever ones either Neptune bears
in liquid lakes or in the vast sea. How willingly and happily I visit you, scarecely trusting myself that I have left Thynia and the Bithynian plains, and that I see you in safety!
Oh, what is more blessed that to put cares away, when the mind lays down its burden, and tired with the labor of travel, we come to our own home and rest on the bed we longed for.
This is the only thing that is worth such great toils.
Hello, charming Sirmio, rejoice in your happy master, and you, Lydian waves of the lake,
laugh whatever laughter there is in your home."
And on that note, good night and good morning.
16:57 |
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1 comments
Comments (1)
It doesn't hurt to be on the side of the lecturers at Uni. Some students think they are still at school, and think it is cool to slack and smirk from the back; then suddenly its finals, they scrape a 2.2 and are out amongst the jobless millions which is not cool at all and nobody is smirking. Academia is for academics, not schoolboys.
Anyway, one can be friends on many levels. There are very few people I have ever consistently disliked. We had lecturers who were very shapr but hopeless human beings and others who were warm and friendly and hopeless once a chalk went into their hands. Most people are ok in the right context; few people seem worthless on every level.