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I am also listening to Iolanthe but the stupid Xanga-Amazon thingy neglects its existence!
{expression of muted discontent}
Catullus III: Everybody’s got to do it sometime…
When I started using this Xanga as a medium for sharing my translations, I focused on relatively more minor poems, so as not be redundant with the (markedly more skillful) translations that are freely available online and in print. But today, I just felt like Catullus III, so forgive me for being trite and doing the Catullus everyone sees ad nauseum in the AP curriculum. Overexposure aside, the beauty of this poem is breathtaking, even on the fifty-gazillionth reading. I have tried, as always, to do it some semblance of justice.
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,
et quantumst hominum venustiorum:
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.
nam mellitus erat suamque norat
ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat.
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:
tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis
o factum male! o miselle passer!
tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.
Mourn, O Venuses and Loves*
And all the lovely ones there are:*
My lady’s sparrow is dead,
The sparrow, my lady’s pet,
Whom she loved more than her eyes.
For honey-sweet he was, and knew
His mistress as a girl does her mother,
Nor would he move from her lap,
But capering this way, that way,
Cheeping always to his mistress alone.
He who now fares the shadowed path
From which they say no one returns.
But blight on you, blighted shades*
Of Orcus, which devour all pretty things:
Such a pretty sparrow you’ve snatched from me.
O for shame! O wretched sparrow!
Your work is it now, that my lady’s
Dear eyes are swollen and red with weeping.*
* See Merrill’s excellent commentary on the plurals in this line (Available online here )
* This line is particularly tough in English. Goold and Lee differ markedly here, and I have chosen, as they did, to render it loosely.
* The repetition here is used in order to preserve the male/malae repetition in the Latin, though again, inflected forms rather defeat my command of English. Catullus’ use of repetition is very interesting to me.
* “Dear” is not explicitly in the text, but I use it here because of the double diminutive in this line. It’s a highly debatable choice. A quick survey of the two translations I happen to own proves not so helpful. Lee’s “Eyelids” is just too strange, where as Goold’s “darling eyes” seems to me to be overkill.
---
In Other News
While Google searching for articles on the medieval transmission of Catullus, I accidentally came upon this fascinating review. I need this book! To let my inner valley girl out for a second, scholia are so totally awesome. The history of classical authors in manuscript is so totally awesome. Virgilian (and for that matter, Ovidian or Ciceronian) exegesis is awesome. Excuse me while I descend into yet another fit of drooling love for academe…
Related MS available at the Beinecke (swoon):
MS 834 --- Servius, 4th cent.
[Commentaries to Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics:]
ms. on paper, in Latin, signed by the scribe Alvisius.
Milan: ca. 1450
24 days until I have access to a real research library! 24 days until Dictionary of the Old English Corpus! I am bloody sick of having to check seven manuscripts for the sense of one word. And one need not forget… 24 days until I do not get that stupid ‘Access Restricted’ message every time I need to read an article on Project MUSE. Thank GOD (or, er, the humanistic tradition) for institutional subscriptions.
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Also currently reading:
Bodleian MS Digby folios 37 recto -50 verso and 95 recto- 145 recto. I adore this page at Oxford where they have scanned digital facsimiles of their manuscipts at a fantastically detailed resolution.
Questions to Mull Over:
1. Why isn't everyone secretly in love with Benjamin Britten?
2. How did I manage to hate Earl Grey tea for twelve years of my life?
3. Why isn't eveything written in Carolingian Miniscule?
I haven't posted in a while, because I've been writing and generally trying to get back into the groove of the academic style in time for the fall term. This is a (very early) draft of the essay I'm most excited about:
“Peculiar Splendor”: The Aesthetic of Suffering in Brideshead Revisited.
“To Sebastian he said: ‘My dear, I should like to stick you full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pincushion,’…” Anthony Blanche
Brideshead Revisited is not so much a novel of protracted nostalgia as it is one of hagiography. The character of Sebastian Flyte often assumes the revered aura and significance of a saint in the course of Charles Ryder’s remembrances. Anthony Blanche aptly characterizes this idolization by comparing Sebastian to his namesake, Saint Sebastian. He can be stuck “full of barbed arrows”, because he is a martyr and a testament to the lost cause of the English aristocratic lifestyle. But Blanche’s analogy works on several levels, and a comparison between the life and representation of Saint and dipsomaniac undergraduate is profitable in examining Brideshead Revisited’s spiritual, moral, and sexual implications.
Saint Sebastian’s life, as given in William Caxton’s first English edition of the Archbishop of Genoa’s lives of the saints, was quite a tumultuous one. After completing a number of Christian acts and miracles in secret, he revealed himself as a Christian to the Emperor Diocletian. Diocletian promptly ordered that Sebastian be executed at the hands of the archers he had once commanded in the armies of Rome. The image of Sebastian bound to a tree or pillar and pierced with arrows, is the most common representation of his fate in Renaissance iconography*. Perhaps because of the visceral drama of the scene, Saint Sebastian was one of the most frequently used subjects for such paintings and frescos.
The iconography of Saint Sebastian is unique for several reasons. First, because the “suffering” saint sometimes does not appear to be suffering at all, and second, because his appearance is often quite emasculated and eroticized. Dürer’s “Young Man as Saint Sebastian” (c. 1505) and Boltraffio’s “St. Sebastian” are excellent examples of the former, while among the numerous examples of the latter, those of Giambattista Cima da Conegliano in the National Gallery in London, and Perugino’s many portrayals, serve to justify this conclusion as well. Sometimes pictured on a triptych juxtaposed with another, fully clothed and bearded saint, these hairless, scantily draped Sebastians, take on an air of hedonistic submissiveness*.
The artistic admiration of this pose common to Renaissance iconographers is also common to Waugh’s Charles Ryder. Sebastian Flyte’s suffering, like that of Saint Sebastian, is a thing to be fetishized. It is because Sebastian is doomed that he is lovely. He is “… entrancing with that epicene beauty, which in extreme youth sings aloud for love and withers at the first cold wind” (26). Alcoholism appears to be a sin of his father, visited upon Sebastian as martyr of the Marchmain legacy of Catholicism, wealth, and propriety. While Brideshead is the scion of the family, it is Sebastian who bears its burdens. He tells Charles that it is “very difficult to be a Catholic” (75), but what he really means is that it is very difficult to be the Catholic, the aristocrat, the Marchmain. Penultimate in the era that is to see the apocalypse of their way of life, Sebastian’s hagiographer duly notes how he becomes the archetypal sufferer for all of his kind.
In his fall from grace, Sebastian Flyte, despite his great personal responsibility for his own decline, manages to appear through the lens of Charles Ryder’s fond remembrance as a passive and beatific victim of fate. Even when vomiting, “there is a kind of insane and endearing orderliness about Sebastian’s choice, in his extremity…” (25). No wonder Anthony Blanche wants to stick him full of arrows. But, one must now ask, are there ends besides those of class and church to all of this adorable suffering? Sebastian is just “so charming” by virtue of his sensualist self-martyrdom (45). Charming, in fact, in precisely the same way that Saint Sebastian is in Perugino’s piece at the Louvre. This Sebastian stands, ensconced by a Corinthian promenade and bright gardens, his glowing, nude and hairless form barely sheathed by a thoughtfully placed colored scarf. The scarf appears to be slipping, and the scant two arrows a mere accessory to this veritable Arcady of the submissive erotic. We see no blood on the marmoreal flesh of the saint, nor it is visible on the young student who is “the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty” (23). They have no need for the mess of the corporeal, for inelegant pain. They’re ravishing without it.
There’s a long way, however, between being ravishing and having sex. Many recent academic critics of Brideshead Revisited have been inclined to take an explicitly sexual reading of the homosocial relationship between Charles and Sebastian. Others dispute this claim, stating that the novel provides no concrete support for such a conclusion. My proposition would be, that, despite the delicious fun of controversy and debate, it doesn’t really matter what Waugh’s protagonists do in bed. What does matter is that Anthony Blanche’s comment opens an avenue for us as readers to see Charles’ remembrance as a hagiography. Sainthood, in the Flyte paradigm, may have a clearly sexual subtext, but this subtext serves only to enhance, not supplant, the quasi-religiosity of Charles’ affection for Sebastian. Homoerotic fetishization of both Sebastian the saint and Sebastian the undergraduate serves as a form of worship. Whether it is consummated or not is irrelevant, because what matters in Brideshead Revisited is the perceived nobility of suffering. Through his sainthood and beauty in Charles’ eyes, Sebastian is made a universal parable for a place, a people, and a time in the consciousness of England.
* Sebastian, it should be noted, is not said to have died from these arrow wounds. It is claimed that he was nursed back to health with the aid of the virgin Irene, and later ordered killed again by Diocletian, whereupon he was promptly beaten and his body thrown into the municipal sewer.
* See especially Bellini’s “Triptych of St. Sebastian” (c. 1460-64) and Filippino Lippi’s “Sts Sebastian, John the Baptist, and Francis”.
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My New Frames...
... as of yet, sans lenses. The little logo printed on the store non-prescription lenses is below my eye, and they are reflective, unlike the real lenses will be. Still, I'm very excited.
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I'm contemplating writing an essay on public/private spheres in Auden. Any thoughts? Also in the writing arena, I managed a Spenserian sonnet yesterday, which deeply pleases me. This summer was intended to be Get a Grip on Form and Metre Season.
Reading beautifully haunting Ishiguro... there's a reason he won the Booker! This is his newest novel, and it raises some interesting bioethical questions while being deeply moving and not overtly futuristic or overwrought. It's a deceptively simple story that builds in force. I highly recommend it both to the local collegiate literati, who may be inclined to dismiss it due to it's relative popularity, and to my darling Nerdly Illiterati (you know who you are), who would be inclined to avoid it due to its much publicised highbrow following. Never Let Me Go (ignore the fact that the title at first appears swoony or sentimental-- it isn't in context) is the rare novel that succeeds at being both accesible and unabashedly well-written.
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On Translation
''Yes, there's the whole insane comedy of your voice pretending to be Horace's or Virgil's. It's like dressing up and thinking you're Napoleon. Of course, you know you're not. But even if you don't get it right, maybe you learn something of their tones of voice, their wild vocal power, and that little that you learn makes you feel like you're on a wonderful ride."
-translator David Ferry, as quoted recently in the Boston Globe
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The Metrical Epilogue to MS 41, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
I had a good deal of trouble with this epilogue, due to the fact that I do not have access to a decent OE lexicon. I was forced to infer meanings from references in other similar manuscripts, definitions of related terms in Mitchell & Robinson’s textbook, and the only partially digitized dictionary of Bosworth and Toller. Therefore, some inaccuracies are likely to be present in my translations of the poem, though it does seem to follow a typical approach, couching Christ in terms of pagan ancestor-worship and lordship. Notes follow as to sources for particular inferences.
Bidde ic eac æghwylcne mann,
brego, rices weard, þe þas boc ræde
and þa bredu befo, fira aldor,
þæt gefyrðrige þone writre wynsum cræfte
þe ðas boc awrat bam handum twam,
þæt he mote manega gyt mundum synum
geendigan, his aldre to willan,
and him þæs geunne se ðe ah ealles geweald,
rodera waldend, þæt he on riht mote
oð his daga ende drihten herigan.
Amen. Geweorþe þæt.
Without regard for sound:
And I bid every man
Lord, kingdom ward, they this book [would] read
And that they [who] were bred before the age of man
Extending their writer’s delightful craft
they this book wrote between [your] two hands
that he might yet many hands rid from sin.
his elders’ will, and this to him granted
that he would have them all in dominion,
Ruler of the heavens, that rightly on, he might,
Up to the end of his days, [be] lord of the sanctuary*
Amen. That is exalted.
*Alternately, fane (OED).
Made colloquially readable:
And I bid every man,
Lord or kingdom ward, to read this book
And they who were born before the age of man
Perpetuating their writer’s winsome craft,
They wrote this book between your two hands,
That he would yet rid many hands of sin,
His elders’ will, and granted this power to him,
So that he would hold all in dominion,
Ruler of the heavens, so as is right, he would
Up to the end of his days, be lord of the temple.
Amen. That is blessed.
*********
Notes
--- Meaning of “gefyrðrige” inferred from Bosworth and Toller:
fyrþran , fyrþrian; p. ede, ode; pp. ed, od [furðor further] To further, support, advance, promote; provehere, prom?v?re :- Ðæt ic eáðe mæg ánra gehwylcne fremman and fyrþran freónda mína that I may easily advance and further every one of my friends, Andr. Kmbl. 1867; An. 936. Ðæt hí mágen hénan ða yflan, and fyrþrian ða gódan that they may humiliate the evil, and further the good, Bt. 39, 2; Fox 212, 22. Friðaþ and fyrþraþ protects and supports, Bt. 34, 10; Fox 148, 29. Ealle Godes gerihto fyrþrie man georne let every one zealously further all God's dues, L. E. G. 5; Th. i. 168, 25, note 28, MS. B. DER. gefyrþran.
-- Meaning of “geendigan” inferred from Bosworth and Toller:
endian , ændian; p. ode; pp. od To END, make an end; f?n?re, d?s?n?re:-Hí hit endian sceoldon they should end it, Ps. Th. 9, 6. v. ge-endian.
-- Meaning of OE words for hands verified using The Monasteriales Indicia from British Library MS Cotton Tiberius A.III (online at http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/Indicia.htm)
-- Meaning of “geunne” inferred from Metrical Charm 1: MS Cotton Caligula A vii (http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/a43.1.html)
-- “Herigan”, cf. Paris Psalter: Psalm 116 in Bibliothèque Nationale, 8824 (http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ascp/a05_116.htm)
More to come... shall edit later. I have to find the MS #'s for some of the online material.
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Catullus XLII, with necessary liberties
You all know and love them, o denizens of the silicate world, those Latin lines which require a little tweaking in order to sound decent in English. And I have tweaked. Hence, as footnotes would be too numerous here to be profitable, please excuse their absence. Excuse also the rendering of the lines themselves. I am trying to learn how to be a good translator, but in the process there is the inevitable struggle with material beyond my current capabilities.
Adeste, hendecasyllabi, quot estis
omnes undique, quotquot estis omnes.
Iocum me putat esse moecha turpis,
et negat mihi nostra reddituram
pugillaria, si pati potestis.
Persequamur eam et reflagitemus.
Quae sit, quaeritis? Illa, quam videtis
turpe incedere, mimice ac moleste
ridentem catuli ore Gallicani.
Circumsistite eam, et reflagitate,
"moecha putida, redde codicillos,
redde putida moecha, codicillos!"
Non assis facis? O lutum, lupanar,
aut si perditius potes quid esse.
Sed non est tamen hoc satis putandum.
Quod si non aliud potest ruborem
ferreo canis exprimamus ore.
Conclamate iterum altiore uoce.
"Moecha putide, redde codicillos,
redde, putida moecha, codicillos!"
Sed nil proficimus, nihil mouetur.
Mutanda est ratio modusque vobis,
siquid proficere amplius potestis:
"pudica et proba, redde codicillos."
Come near, hendecasyllables, many you are,
All and from everywhere, many many you are all.
A sleazy tart thinks me a joke
And refuses to return our tablets,
If you’ll bear to suffer that.
Let’s after her and demand them.
Which is she, you ask? That one, whom you see
Strutting sleazy with her unctuous shammer’s grin,
The face of a Gallic dog.
Surround her and demand them,
‘Dirty tart, give back the notebooks,
Give back, dirty tart, the notebooks’
She doesn’t give a damn? O the scum,
The whore, or whatever’s nastier than that.
But let’s not think that this is yet enough,
Because, even if nothing else is doable,
We should extract a blush
From that brazen dogface.
Now screech again in shriller voice:
‘Dirty tart, give back the notebooks,
Give back, dirty tart, the notebooks’
But we’ve made no headway, she is not moved.
You’ll have to change your scheme and tone
If you are to get anywhere:
‘Virtuous and virginal, give back the notebooks.’
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