My selection of one of my translations of Catullus as my latest 'Pick of the Month' dip into the archives reminded me of this little frippery I was knocking around a little while ago.
It's inspired by an image in one of Horace's best-known Odes, 1.v, in which he tries to console himself that he's better off without his tempestous former lover Pyrhha. Dedicating one's clothes to a god in gratitude for surviving a shipwreck was apparently a well-established custom in the Roman world, and I rather fancy it may have been something of a literary trope in circumstances such as this as well, an apt metaphor for escape from a gruelling love affair. I'm pretty sure I've come across it in another of the Classical poets somewhere. Catullus, maybe? Or Propertius?
With Horace, it's just a concluding quip, picking up on a metaphor of the "rough seas" he imagines his successor having to learn to endure in a relationship with the girl. I thought the image could carry a poem on its own. Here's a preliminary effort.
After Shipwreck
Like a man escaped from drowning,
I should make a shrine
of my still wet clothes
in thanks for my salvation.
How fierce was the storm!
How hard I had to kick
against the undertow that pulled me
to the bottom of the sea!
Yet today the sun is bright, the wind calm,
the waves lap gently at the shore.
As I walk along the damp strand
gazing wistfully out to sea,
I remember only
sailing in fair weather.
2 comments:
Yep, know that feeling!
Shit - you know Latin?! OK, feeling a little intimidated here...
That's about all it's good for, Gary, intimidation.
It's often pretty useful that most people assume you are necessarily a genius if you know any Latin at all.
The Classicist's guilty secret is that, in fact, Latin's a ridiculously easy language to learn: very simple and eminently logical grammatical framework and tiny core vocabulary. You can be reading original authors like Caesar and Livy within a few weeks.
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