Horace - 5

[Allen continues with his review of his classroom anthology]

AG: And the Sapphic Catullan form was picked up by, as we have in here [in this xerox anthology],  Sir Walter) Raleigh and (Sir Philip) Sidney. So, if you continue turning (the pages of the anthology), you'll get up to Raleigh. (If you can find that, it's about three-quarters of the way - okay, let's find the Raleigh first, then we can pay undivided attention) - about two-thirds down - It was called the perfect Sapphic! … here was are - the perfect Sapphic in English) -  about two-thirds of the way down, at the bottom...

Student: Did you read this, Monday?
AG: What?
Student: Did you read this, Monday?
AG: Yes, I read it . I just want to get us.. you know, get us all on the same set of papers. Got it?  Now you want to.. When you're all settled, we can do that…ok.. shoot.. now which one is that and what's it called?
Student: Ode Five. Book One.
AG: Aha!

Student:  (reads the entire poem (of Horace - (Book I - Ode V)) in James Michie's translation)  "What slim youngster, his hair dripping with fragrant oil/ makes hot love to you now, Pyrrha, ensconced in a/ snug cave curtained with roses?/Who lays claim to that casually/ Chic blond hair in a braid? Soon he'll be scolding the/Gods, whose promise, like yours, failed him, and gaping at/Black winds making his ocean's/ Fair face unrecognizable./ He's still credulous, though, hugging the prize he thinks/Pure gold, shining and fond, his for eternity./Ah, poor fool, but the breeze plays/ Tricks. Doomed, all who would venture to/ Sail that glittering sea. Fixed to the temple wall,/My plaque tells of an old sailor who foundered and,/Half-drowned, hung up his clothes to/Neptune, lord of the element."  

AG: That's not a Sapphic.

Student: Yes it is.

AG: Let's see.. I don't believe it . I think it's…

Student: (It's a bit irregular, but..)

AG: It's an ode… (an example of the) ode-form, which…  (John) Milton translated that particular poem. Do we have..? We don't have that, do we, here in the anthology? -  A fragment of it is actually printed in one of these...on one of these sheets, just a little fragment of it, the last half. I'll bring it in another time. It's the same form that Milton used and (Andrew) Marvell used for his.. Marvell's ode on Cromwell, - ("An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland")  ("As if his highest plot/To plant the bergamot")

[John Milton's translation of Horace Book I - Ode V)

"What slender Youth bedewed with liquid odours/Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,/Pyrrha for whom bind’st thou/In wreaths thy golden Hair,/Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he/On Faith and changed Gods complain: and Seas/Rough with black winds and storms/Unwonted shall admire:/Who now enjoys thee credulous, all Gold,/Who always vacant, always amiable/Hopes thee; of flattering gales/ Unmindfull. Hapless they/To whom thou untri’d seems’t fair. Me in my vowd/Picture the sacred wall declares t’ have hung/My dank and dropping weeds/To the stern God of Sea."

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa/perfusus liquidis urget odoribus/grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?/Cui flavam religas comam,/  simplex munditiis? Heu quotiens fidem/mutatosque deos flebit et aspera/nigris aequora ventis/emirabitur insolens/  qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,/qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem/sperat, nescius aurae/ fallacis. Miseri, quibus/ intemptata nites. Me tabula sacer/ votiva paries indicat uvida/ suspendisse potenti/vestimenta maris deo.

[Audio for the above can be heard here beginning at approximately forty-five-and-a-quarter minutes in, and ending at approximately forty-seven-and-three-quarter minutes  in]

Horace - 4

Student: (Did John Burnett [a Naropa student] do [read out loud] any Horace?)
AG: Pardon me?
Student:  John Burnett?
AG: No, he didn't do any Horace. (So), let's see, okay, yeah…

Student (begins reading)  [Horace Book 2 - Ode XIV]  "Ah, how they glide by, Postumus, Postumus,/ The years, the swift years!/ Wrinkles and imminent/ Old age and death, whom no one conquers -/ Piety cannot delay their onward/ March; no, my friend, not were you to sacrifice/Three hundred bulls each day to inflexible/ Pluto whose grim moat holds the triple/ Geryon jailed with his fellow giants/ Death's lake that all we sons of mortality/Who have the good earth's fruits for the picking are/Foredoomed to cross, no matter whether/Rulers of kingdoms or needy peasants/.In vain we stay unscratched by the bloody wars,/in vain escape tumultous Hadria's/Storm-waves, in vain each autumn dread the/ Southern sirocco, our health's destroyer./We must at last set eyes on the scenery/Of Hell; the ill-famed daughters of Danaus,/Cocytus' dark, slow, winding river,/Sisyphus damned to his endlesss labour./ Farewell to lands, home dear and affectionate,/Wife then. Of all those trees that you tended well/Not one, a true friend , save the hated/Cypress shall follow its short-lived master./An heir shall drain those cellars of  Caecuban/You treble-locked (indeed he deserves it more)/And drench the stone-flagged floor with prouder/Wine than is drunk at the pontiff's banquet>"

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume labuntur anni, nec pietas moram     rugis et instanti senectae         adferet indomitaeque morti; non, si trecenis, quotquot eunt dies, amice, places inlacrimabilem     Plutona tauris, qui ter amplum         Geryonen Tityonque tristi compescit unda, scilicet omnibus, quicumque terrae munere vescimur,     enaviganda, sive reges         sive inopes erimus coloni. rustra cruento Marte carebimus fractisque rauci fluctibus Hadriae,     frustra per autumnos nocentem         corporibus metuemus Austrum: visendus ater flumine languido Cocytos errans et Danai genus     infame damnatusque longi         Sisyphus Aeolides laboris linquenda tellus et domus et placens uxor, neque harum, quas colis, arborum     te praeter invisas cupressos         ulla brevem dominum sequetur. absumet heres Caecuba dignior servata centum clavibus et mero     tinguet pavimentum superbo         pontificum potiore cenis.

AG: Does that have any.. anywhere? Is that done in Sapphics in English? 
Student: Yeah
AG; Can you read the adonic lines? - the little (tags) , just the adonic lines..
Student: (Well, I ...)  "Piety cannot delay their onward.."..(but)...
AG: Ah, it's not translated into.. ?
Student: Well, no, like, it's real irregular.
AG: That's really interesting
Student: (Some, but).. I don't know
AG: Are there are any good ones, short, brief sharp ones that are..really.. that have some rhythm?  The point is to get some rhythm, not just to listen to.. words..
Student: Yes, ok
AG: (But) rhythmic words!
Student: Here's one.  (but)  It's not all that short  tho'), with...
AG:  Er.. I don't want to get too hung up..
Student: (Well..)
AG: Is it interesting?  Because we've only got another fifteen minutes..

The reason Horace is important here is that the later European Renaissance poets (Petrarch, particularly, precursor of Dante - Petrarch was a precursor of Dante, right?) picked up not so much from Sappho or Catullus but from Horace. And it was Horace who influenced them - (John) Milton and (Andrew) Marvell - Milton translated an Horatian Ode - Marvell wrote a Horatian Ode,

[Audio for the above can be heard here beginning at approxomately forty-two-and-three-quarter minutes in, and ending at approximately forty-five-and-a-quarter minutes in]

Horace - 3

Picking up again on Allen's 1980 "Sapphics" class, going through his classoom anthology 

AG: So that was..  [Horace and Thomas Wyatt (bemoaning wasted opportunity)]  Okay..also, there's a great poem by Francois Villon  about an old.. It's called "Ballade de la belle  Heaumière  aux filles de joie" ( "The Complaint of the Fair Helm-Maker Grown Old"). It's a real meticulous description, like her lacking her teeth, and the rheum matter of her eye, and the sagging belly collapsed -  a really horrific description!  This also refers a little bit to the Catullus that we just passed by, that we have all these translations of  - So, "Furius and Aurelius..",  "Tell her of..."   just the page (in your anthologies) before that, if you look - "Furius and Aurelius, True Comrades" (Catullus # 11)   You got that there?

Student:  (In the) Robert Fitzgerald translation?

AG: Yeah, and there are a couple of other translations of that before, but the angle, or idea, is that - three-quarters of the way down -  (Allen begins reading) - "Take a little bulletin to my girl friend,/ Brief but not dulcet:/ Let her live and thrive with her fornicators/Of whom she hugs three hundred in an evening/ With no true love for any, leaving them broken-/Winded the same way./She need not look, as once she did, for my love./By her own fault it died, like a tumbling flower/ At the field's edge, after the passing harrow/ Clipped it and left it." 

and if we go back a little more to the Catullus, we'll find some other versions of that ..

James Cranstoun has a terrible Victorian post-Victorian translation  - page twenty-two.. twelve pages beyond, twelve pages back..see page twenty two -  "The Poet Travels …" - You see that? Anybody not? Anybody can't find it? It's just a few pages

Student: The Poet Travels?

AG: Yea, above that, right above "The Poet Travels..." - two stanzas - (Allen reads from Cranstoun's translation) - "Still let her revel with her godless train,/ still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall,/ Still  truly love not one but ever drain/The life-blood of them all"-    Not very good. That guy tried to..

Student: (One of the better ones..)

AG:  (No, there are ten better ones than that!

Student: Is that the same one?

AG: It's the same one, but he tries to translate it into ten-ten-ten-six, quatrains, ABAB, ten syllables, ten syllables, ten syllables, six syllables. You know, just an approximation o that isn't anywhere near approximate . So that's the trouble with that kind of rhyme. There is.. And then (if) we go back further, you'll find.. how many pages back?, oh, about..
Isn't that bad! - See how bad it can get!

If you go back to the Loeb, there's this little tiny-type Latin on one side, English on the other. [Allen displays] - "This is the way the page looks" - Go back to those. Another ten (pages) back, (eight back, I don't know). It begins "Furius Aurelius.." - on the the right hand side of the page - "Furius Aurelius" - Got it? - Right hand side of the page - "Furius Aurelius"

Student: Oh, there's the original Latin.

AG: Yeah, there's the original Latin. 

Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli,
sive in extremos penetrabit Indos,
litus ut longe resonante Eoa
tunditur unda,

sive in Hyrcanos Arabasve molles,
seu Sacas sagittiferosve Parthos,
sive quae septemgeminus colorat
aequora Nilus,

sive trans altas gradietur Alpes
Caesaris visens monimenta magni,
Gallicum Rhenum, horribile aequor, ulti-
mosque Britannos,

omnia haec, quaecumque feret voluntas
caelitum, temptare simul parati,
pauca nuntiate meae puellae
non bona dicta.

cum suis vivat valeatque moechis,
quos simul complexa tenet trecentos,
nullum amans vere, sed identidem omnium
ilia rumpens;

nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem,
qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati
ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
tactus aratro est.

And this is the Loeb library literal translation. "Bid her go and be happy with her paramours, three hundred of whom she holds at once in her embrace, not loving one of them really, but again and again, draining the strength of all."

And a translation by Horace Gregory - I don't think you've got it here..let me see.. (going) further back…

Student:  No, below, right below (it).

AG: Really? By Horace Gregory? - No, this, of that same poem .. Well, it's a couple back, two back, you'll find the (Roy Arthur) Swanson version - One page.. page eleven (it says page eleven on the top), it's just a couple down… Find it? - "Furius, Aurelius, friends of Catullus.." and, on the right, "That fellow seems to be the same as God"' [a translation of Sappho]/ Yes? You've got that?

"Furius Aurelius, friends of Catullus" (says one). So it says -"..tell her to live with her rakes and be well,/ hugging three hundred or more at a time,/ loving not one but, in favor to all,/ pumping their loins." 

And then there is a translation, another translation around, let's see if I can find it.

Student: There's the Michie one in there.

AG: Yeah, that's what we just.. where's the Michie?, yeah… Do we have the Michie translation of that tho'? - Yeah - ((a) couple (of pages) before, you'll find Michie - "Good luck to her.." - It's about three from the top, three or four from the top . It's right after the Latin, right after the Greek, right after the Greek stuff,  three from the top - "Furius Aurelius, loyal comrades".. - "translated", at the bottom, "by James Michie". Got that? Three from the very top. Got it? - 

So the line there is  "Good luck to her, let her enjoy her lovers,/ the whole three hundred that she hugs together,/ loving none truly, by grim repetition/Wringing them all sperm-dry" - I think I read that one before

and in Horace Gregory's transation of that is "Live well and sleep with adulterous lovers./ Three hundred men between your thighs embracing all love turned false again, again and breaking their strength, now sterile..."  

Well, I think, "wringing them all sperm-dry" is pretty good. What the… I don't know what the (word) "rumpens"  means - break?  ilia rumpens - the Latin means breaking, I think.

Okay, lets see going on what else have we got here? -  Why don't we do another one, a nice Sapphic. Is there a nice Sapphic there that might...? - By Horace? - (yes) -  A little bit more of Horace now, something different.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately forty-two-and-a-half minutes in]

Horace - 2

AG: Pardon me?
Student:  ("Thracian")  (What's the origin of "Thracian"?)
AG:  Thrace - part of Greece. (Where is that, where Thrace is, mind you) - Thrace? What part of Greece is Thrace? - Orpheus lived in Thrace wasn't it? The worst part.. (Pelopponesian Islands?)  Who knows Thrace?
Student (1): Thrace is in Macedonia.
Student (2) :  Sparta?
AG: No, Sparta's down south.
Student: Sparta's down South…
AG: Oh god, we should all know this! - Thracia! - Oh - [Allen consults, again, his classical dictionary] - "In earlier times the name of the vast space of country bounded on the north by the Danube, in the south by the Propontis and the Aegean, on the East by the Pontus Euxinus, and on the West by the River Strymon and the easternmost of the Ilyrian tribes.."   (I don't know where that is)
Student  Ilyrian's.. Yugoslavia
AG; Yeah..  Well, I don't know. [continues consulting] -  So, (I guess we're taking about) Byzantium - the Thracian Bosphoros - so . towards the East.. Yes?

Student: Okay, two, I  notice.. how come two, out of three (translators of Horace I --25) mention a specific character by name, Lydia, and one leaves it out?
AG: One didn't feel it was necessary. I mean, they're adapting the poems. None of them are translating them one-to-one word-for-word, they've got to fit it and squeeze them in the way they want to squeeze them in
Student; It seems like an important oversight to leave out…
AG: Maybe not..
Student (2): - They're already new poems , from...
AG: Yeah, you find if you do see a lot of translations..If you look through these translations you'll see that they're all different . You know, some people leave out the names, some people don't keep the rhythmic form…. Okay, yes, the (Fitzgerald translation) - "The young men…."

                                                  [Pompeiian fresco - First Century A.D.]

Student 3: [begins reading Horace - Book I - Ode  XXV (translated by Robert Fitzgerald] 
- "The young men come less often - isn't it so -/ To rap at midnight on your fastened window;/ Much less often. How do you sleep these days?/  There was a time your door gave with proficiency/On easy hinges; now it seems apter at being shut./I do not think you hear many lovers moaning./  "Lydia, how can you sleep?"/ "Lydia, the night is so long!" /"Oh, Lydia, I'm dying for you!"/ No. The time is coming when you will moan /And cry to scornful men from an alley corner/In the dark of the moon [AG: Wow!] - when the wind's in a passion/ With lust that would drive a mare wild/Raging in your ulcerous old viscera/You'll be alone and burning then/ To think how happy boys take their delight/In the new tender buds the blush of myrtle, /Consigning dry leaves to the winter sea."  

AG: What is this myrtle? What's the significance of myrtle? Does anybody know? I'l look it up (It's useful to have a little classical dictionary when you're dealing with these people) - M-Y-R..  no.. how do you spell myrtle?
Student: M-Y-R-T-L-E….
AG: I don' t have it in here. What was a myrtle anyway?
Student: It's connected with the poetic laurel. It doesn't seem to be (however, with) this one.
AG: But laurel is laurel and myrtle is myrtle, or something. "They must have the myrtle brow for the young maidens!" -  "the myrtle brow of the young maidens".. 
Student: ((So) maidens clothe themselves (then) in leaves of myrtle?) 
AG: (No, palm leaves... - "myrtle brow for the young maidens"... 
Student: Oh sorry
AG: … so myrtle must be for the virgin  - virginal myrtle?

                                                              ["of myrtle: dry old leaves" - dried myrtle]

Okay, then, another translation of  it, by Joseph P Clancy, which is done also in Sapphics and the.. just to give you the adonics within that, it's  "door hugs its threshold", "and the moon is dark", "can you stay sleeping" "and you will complain to the winter wind"  - "and you will complain" "to the winter wind" (two, separate)

Student: This was written in Sapphics? - the original?

AG: Yeah well, The original is translated Sapphics, the original is Latin Sapphics - from Sappho to Catullus - Archaeus and Sappho to Catullus -  to Horace. Horace was maybe twenty years later than Catullus

AG (reads the entire poem) :  "Less and less often the roaring boys/toss their pebbles against your closed shutters/they don't rob you of sleep any more and the/door hugs its threshold/ that once turned gladly all night on its/ hinges..." -  (talking about her cunt actually, "the door that once turned gladly all night on its hinges"! ) - "You hear fewer and fewer wailing:/ "While I spend the long night dying for you, Lydia,/ can you stay sleeping?"/ Your turn is coming: a crone alone in the street/You will cry that your lovers all hate you,/as the Northwind howls like a bacchante/and the moon is dark,/ and the fire of love and longing is in you,/the itch that drives a mare mad for a stallion,/you will rage with the lust that gnaws your belly/and you will complain/ that the goodtime boys now find their fun/with the green ivy and the dark green myrtle,/and the withered leaves are tossed away/ to the winter wind."    

Now what do you have for yours for that one? - That's 1-25 - Let's see what they''ve got  (as long as we're on this particular one. The one I just did was Joseph P Clancy - The Odes and Epodes of Horace, that was 1-25. You want to read that?

Student (reads entire poem, in different translation, by James Michie)  -  Yeah - 
"The young bloods come round less often now,/Pelting your shutters and making a row/And robbing your beauty sleep. Now the door/Clings lovingly close to the jamb - though before. It use to move on its hinge pretty fast./ Those were the days -  and they're almost past -/ When lovers stood out all night long crying,/"Lydia, wake up, save me, I'm dying!"/ Soon your time's coming to be turned down/ And to feel the scorn of the men about town -/ A cheap hag haunting alley places/On moonless nights when the wind from Thrace is/ Rising and raging, and so is the fire/in your raddled loins, the brute desire/That drives the mothers of horses mad./You'll be lonely then and complain how sad/ That the gay young boys enjoy the sheen/Of ivy best or the darker green/Of myrtle: dry old leaves they send/As a gift to the east wind/winter's friend."

  
AG: Does that remind you of any poem that we touched on during the year?  Because remember (Sir) Thomas Wyatt? - "Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain that makest but game on earnest pain.." [Allen reads from Wyatt's poem,"My Lute Awake"] - "Think not alone under the sun/Unquit to cause thy lovers plain: Although my lute and I have done./Perchance thee lie withered and old/The winter nights, that are so cold,/Plaining in vain unto the moon./ Thy wishes then dare not be told:/Care then who list as I have done./And then may chance thee to repent/The time that thou hast lost and spent,/To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon;/Then shalt thou know beauty but lent/And wish and want as I have done."

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-one minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in]  

Horace (Latin Sapphics)

AG: Then Horace. Now Horace was the next of the Romans that picked up on the Catullun line and from Sappho. And we didn't actually get to that, did we, at all? - did we ever bring up Horace, yet?  [to "Mike"] -  Do you have any Horace that you're prepared to chuck out? or is it too sudden? - We have some in here [pointing to the classroom anthology],  so maybe do one (from) in here? - Can we find the first page of Horace translations? It's abour half-way through.. half-way..a third of the way down maybe.. at the end of the Catullus.

Student: "Less and less often now…?"

AG: Yes. "Less and less often now the horny young men…" - [to "Mike"] Who did your translation?

Student (JB): Who did it?  I'll have to look that up.. it's Michie..

AG: (James) Michie, again,  yeah, same guy that did the Sappho. Has anybody got that? Lower left-hand side of the page - "Less and less often now".  It's three different translations of the same poem, so, actually - lucky!.
See, it'd (be) (number) one-twenty-five.  [to "Mike"]  If you have that one too, Mike (sic)?, do you have one-twenty-five prepared?  Book One  - twenty-fifth ode in Book One….Is that one of them that you have found)?

Student (JB): Yeah, it's here but I didn't have it to (recite)...

AG: I see. You didn't do that one. Okay. Well, that's one we do have so I'd like to check it out . John Frederick Nims was a modern poet, did a really..... if you look at the adonics - "firm in its framework", "You - you- you just lie there", "wind from the mountain", "not without heartache", "figure the hell with" . And then, the next guy, Rolfe Humphries says.. one has "firm in its framework ", one has "faith with the threshold"   "Thracian comes brawling"  "not without anguish", " "chilly old Eurus".. The other one by Robert Fitzgerald isn't done in literal Sapphics. 

This is, again, sort of a ribald poem (so apparently the  Sapphics do go along with, like, frank statements). Anybody want to read that? Anybody got a good voice?  From the top of  (page) one-twenty-five. John Frederick  Nims' translation?     Come on, some cocksman! 

Student:  Okay.. The first one?

AG: Yeah   

Student [reads the John Frederick Nims' translation of Horace 1-25 in its entirety]: "Ribald romeos less and less and less berattle/your shut window with impulsive pebbles./Sleep - who cares? - the clock around/The door 's stuck/firm in its its framework,/  which once, oh how promptly it popped open/ easy hinges. And so rarely heard now/ "Night after night, I'm dying for you, darling!,/ You - you just lie there"/Tit for tat.  For insolent old lechers/  you will weep soon on the lonely curbing/while, above, the dark of the moon excites  the/ wind from the mountain./ Then, deep down, searing desire (libido /that deranges too, old rutting horses)/in your riddled abdomen is raging/ not without heartache/ that the young boys take their solace rather/ in the greener ivy, the green myrtle;/  And such old winter-bitten sticks and stems they/figure the hell with." 

AG: Okay, somebody else want to read the second translation of that, by Rolfe Humphries?

Student (2): [reads Rolfe Humphries' translation of Horace 1-25 in its entirety]:
"Less and less often now, the horny young men rattle your bolted shutters, and the door/ That used to turn on easy hinges keeps/ Faith with the threshold./ Seldom. or never, now, you hear them crying/Across your sleep, "Lydia, let me in,/ The nights are long, and wasted,  and your lover/ Is dying for it."/ Finally, never,/ an old woman living/ Unnoticed in an alley, all alone,/ You grieve for those hot rowdies, while a cold/ Thracian comes brawling, Rattling the shutter/ a cold Thracian wind/ No good for you, in whom the heat drives/ Mares to the stud-horse, burns the ulcered loins/Not without anguish./ That high young men go happily elsewhere/For their green ivy and dark myrtle, leaving/The withered leaves to winter's boon companion, /chily old Eurus"

AG: Eurus?  Eurus? What is Eurus? Does anybody know?  - I have a classical dictionary here. Anybody know?
Student (3): (Might be the) North Wind?
AG: E-U..   E-U-R-U-S …. Yeah, [Allen consults the dictionary] the South-East wind, the Latin Anemoi - hmm..  

And then there's a third translation by Robert Fitzgerald. Well, we'll see what that's like. Anybody want to read it?

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-seven minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-one minutes in]