Another Catullus favorite.

[oneirophrenia]

Lately, I've realized that I've begun to forget a lot of the Latin I used to know mostly by heart...so in an effort to get back into the noblest of dead tongues, I've dug out my old copy of Wheelock's and my book of old Roman poetry. Naturally, I went straight to Catullus, since he's definitely my favorite. Sure, Ovid and Vergil are excellent as well, but one can take only so much mythical retelling before one finds one's interest drifting back toward the shorter works designed to score points with the ladies. And ain't nobody smoove like Catullus. For example:

Carmina 5:

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis.
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis, cum semel occidit brevis 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 invidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Which brings to mind: Love poetry is completely worthless unless it mentions the prospect of death as encouragement to, in essence, "gather ye rosebuds while ye may."

Comments

[ex-wolff493.livejournal.com]

Translation?
Do you have AIM or something? I'm tired of gunking up your journal :P

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

Not translated by me, because I'm too damn lazy, but here's a good one:

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
and let us judge all the rumors of the old men
to be worth just one penny!
The suns are able to fall and rise:
When that brief light has fallen for us,
we must sleep a never ending night.
Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred,
then another thousand, then a second hundred,
then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.
Then, when we have made many thousands,
we will mix them all up so that we don't know,
and so that no one can be jealous of us when he finds out
how many kisses we have shared.

[ex-wolff493.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)
Maybe not ALL love poetry sucks...

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

Catullus is the man. Well, this coming from someone who translated a good deal of Catullus at one point in her younger life...

[ex-wolff493.livejournal.com]

Have you read any Sappho? I have kind of a soft spot for her, though I have to agree that Catullus is pretty awesome :)
Are you still into dead languages?

[alternakittyn.livejournal.com]

I've not read Sappho if only because I never really got into Greek. However, I took four years of Latin in high school and plan to go back into Classics in the near future. Yes, I will be some poor sucker's Classics professor. Someday...

[ex-wolff493.livejournal.com]

Classics professors rock :) (Except the one I currently have...) I have a couple friends who are/want to go to grad school for Classics and be professors. Dead languages own.

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

The only love poetry that's worth reading is either A) in Latin; or B) written by drunken, depressive masochists like Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe; or C) both, but that's pretty hard to track down.

[ex-wolff493.livejournal.com]

I am obsessed with Baudelaire and Poe, as well as Dylan Thomas, whom I believe also fits into that category :P

[oneirophrenia.livejournal.com]

That's *my* favorite online translation, as well....My god, have you ever read Sir Richard Burton's translations dating back to, umm, 1851, I believe? They are HORRID. The man could translate the Arabian Nights just fine, but he massacres the Latin in an attempt to render it in rhymed English pentameter. BLECH.

[raincrystal.livejournal.com]

I really wish I'd been able to take Latin in high school. >______< But they didn't offer it, so I got into French instead, and took local college courses when the ones at school ran out, and started college as a foreign languages (not classics) major, and then I had so many foreign language credits that I ran out of electives and couldn't take anything else. Bleah.

So I never got to learn Latin. -_- My dad taught me a little from his old high school textbook, but it was like, memorize the first and second declensions, and that's it.