It's been ages since my last post, for which mea culpa, I've been enormously busy with some Latin texts I've been studying, plus there's the small matter of Horizon Review which is due to launch around the end of this month.
I shall cobble together something about poetry for next week, as I do have a few things on the back burner which I'd like to discuss on Raw Light, with perhaps the odd snippet from recent poems.
Meanwhile, this is my mood this morning: gladiatorial!
Showing posts with label Latin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latin. Show all posts
Friday, February 06, 2009
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Latin & Leicester
Driving off to Leicester later this evening to read from my new book of poetry, Camper Van Blues, at the Friends Meeting House, Queen's Road, Leicester. About 7.30pm, if you're able to come along.
Jane Commane and I are travelling in together, so wish her luck. I mean, us luck.
It's a pity I'm driving, as it means I won't be able to toast - with alcohol, at least! - my good news of the day, which is that I've just had the final result through from my Open University Latin course: a Distinction, or First Class Pass.
I'm still kicking myself though for ruining a record of straight 100% scores by stupidly leaving three lines out of a translation on my last tutor-marked assignment. Although it wouldn't have made any difference to the overall bracket I was placed in, the class of pass being calculated by adding up the assignment scores along with the examination result, I do hate getting things wrong, especially through carelessness.
I'm beginning to sound a bit ... obsessive compulsive. Hmm.
Jane Commane and I are travelling in together, so wish her luck. I mean, us luck.
It's a pity I'm driving, as it means I won't be able to toast - with alcohol, at least! - my good news of the day, which is that I've just had the final result through from my Open University Latin course: a Distinction, or First Class Pass.
I'm still kicking myself though for ruining a record of straight 100% scores by stupidly leaving three lines out of a translation on my last tutor-marked assignment. Although it wouldn't have made any difference to the overall bracket I was placed in, the class of pass being calculated by adding up the assignment scores along with the examination result, I do hate getting things wrong, especially through carelessness.
I'm beginning to sound a bit ... obsessive compulsive. Hmm.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
'Leamophants' in Latin
As promised, here's that commissioned "Leamophants" poem elegantly translated into Latin by John King, my friend and Latin teacher these past two years. Just for fun!
Many thanks for this, John. It's marvellous. Though I'd better spare you the Leamington Railway Station poem ...
IN MEMORIAM MAGISTRORUM ELEPHANTIUM LEAMINGTONENSIUM SAMUELIS ET GEORGII LOCKHART
Barbarico splendore suo longisque tegentes
palpebris oculos saeptae senioribus adsunt
rugosis placie lentas agitantibus aures.
Lascivae lepidam praebent speciem agmine lauto,
civibus ostentant sese mediamque per urbem
iucundae incedunt festo candore nitentem:
quas homines spectant mirati praetereuntes,
haud timidas veluti tandem sine matre puellas
antiqo vel amore aegras Heroidas aevo.
Rure huc advenere, urbano ut sole fruantur,
et vitream opposuit cum forte taberna fenestram,
ipsae se simili mirantur imagine captae.
Serica cuique sua est umbella proboscide curva,
leniter huc illuc quae pulverulenta movetur.
Centum anni fugiunt: illas nunc cernere possis
ante oculos hortis lento agmine procedentes
vespere per mediam frigus sub fluminis undis
corpora mersuras: naso caudaque catenam
inter se nectunt: durum pulsant pede campum
et vasto et tenero - sic stat serrata columna
firma solo. Modo non ingenti mole dianthos
contundunt tagetesque instructos ordine flores.
John King
(Classics Department: Rugby School)
Many thanks for this, John. It's marvellous. Though I'd better spare you the Leamington Railway Station poem ...
IN MEMORIAM MAGISTRORUM ELEPHANTIUM LEAMINGTONENSIUM SAMUELIS ET GEORGII LOCKHART
Barbarico splendore suo longisque tegentes
palpebris oculos saeptae senioribus adsunt
rugosis placie lentas agitantibus aures.
Lascivae lepidam praebent speciem agmine lauto,
civibus ostentant sese mediamque per urbem
iucundae incedunt festo candore nitentem:
quas homines spectant mirati praetereuntes,
haud timidas veluti tandem sine matre puellas
antiqo vel amore aegras Heroidas aevo.
Rure huc advenere, urbano ut sole fruantur,
et vitream opposuit cum forte taberna fenestram,
ipsae se simili mirantur imagine captae.
Serica cuique sua est umbella proboscide curva,
leniter huc illuc quae pulverulenta movetur.
Centum anni fugiunt: illas nunc cernere possis
ante oculos hortis lento agmine procedentes
vespere per mediam frigus sub fluminis undis
corpora mersuras: naso caudaque catenam
inter se nectunt: durum pulsant pede campum
et vasto et tenero - sic stat serrata columna
firma solo. Modo non ingenti mole dianthos
contundunt tagetesque instructos ordine flores.
John King
(Classics Department: Rugby School)
Monday, January 14, 2008
A Thin Dream of Life: lines from the Aeneid
I promised this little translation from Virgil's Aeneid to my friend Bo some weeks ago; so here it is now, much to my chagrin, a pretty ropey piece of prose disguised as poetry by virtue of having its sentences lopped in half and separated with white space. A thin dream of verse ...
But as a first 'serious' attempt at classical translation, it's not too desperate and was, in fact, rather useful as a starter exercise. I'm relieved to say that my ongoing translation of the long Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, is far more in line with the sort of original poetry I'm writing, i.e. it's less easy to tell at a single glance that it's a translation!
Where the elipsis occurs, a few lines are missing; I leapt over them in the translation to get to the central image.
Re-reading this, it's clearly not 'finished'. Especially the first two segments (I hesitate to call them stanzas). But that's a good thing. 'Finished' poems are beyond help. Unfinished ones ... well, if they're unfinished, it's easier to believe you could get them right one day, which is always more comforting than accepting that you've failed.
A Thin Dream of Life
(a translation from The Aeneid, Bk 6, l. 268 on)
Shoulder to shoulder, they took by night
to the shadowy wastes of death,
walking bare caverns like two people
lost on a forest path, their way home
shifting under a sullen moonlight,
clouds hiding the stars, everything blackened
by night’s monochrome.
Reaching the jaws of death, they saw
how those most grieved and oppressed
had thrown down their beds,
how the old and unwell
had built themselves a den there
with the poor and the starving.
Grim-faced and scared, they stared out
from death’s workhouse ...
at some vast shadowy elm,
older than time, extending dark arms
at the heart of this hell;
a resting-place, where a thin dream of life
still clings on and cleaves –
so they tell – with its sticky fingers
to the undersides of leaves.
But as a first 'serious' attempt at classical translation, it's not too desperate and was, in fact, rather useful as a starter exercise. I'm relieved to say that my ongoing translation of the long Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, is far more in line with the sort of original poetry I'm writing, i.e. it's less easy to tell at a single glance that it's a translation!
Where the elipsis occurs, a few lines are missing; I leapt over them in the translation to get to the central image.
Re-reading this, it's clearly not 'finished'. Especially the first two segments (I hesitate to call them stanzas). But that's a good thing. 'Finished' poems are beyond help. Unfinished ones ... well, if they're unfinished, it's easier to believe you could get them right one day, which is always more comforting than accepting that you've failed.
A Thin Dream of Life
(a translation from The Aeneid, Bk 6, l. 268 on)
Shoulder to shoulder, they took by night
to the shadowy wastes of death,
walking bare caverns like two people
lost on a forest path, their way home
shifting under a sullen moonlight,
clouds hiding the stars, everything blackened
by night’s monochrome.
Reaching the jaws of death, they saw
how those most grieved and oppressed
had thrown down their beds,
how the old and unwell
had built themselves a den there
with the poor and the starving.
Grim-faced and scared, they stared out
from death’s workhouse ...
at some vast shadowy elm,
older than time, extending dark arms
at the heart of this hell;
a resting-place, where a thin dream of life
still clings on and cleaves –
so they tell – with its sticky fingers
to the undersides of leaves.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Salt Autumn Party
I'm off down to London later today, for tonight's Salt Autumn Party at Foyles. This involves readings by a whole host of Salt poets who have new or newish books out, plus vino and nibbles for the rest of us.
I'm also hoping there may be a trip to the nearest pub afterwards, then I'll be back on the late train and home for about half past midnight.
Work for the train includes a sheaf of unpublished poems that need revisions and some Latin homework - a modern verse translation of a shortish passage from the Aeneid. I've finished the actual translation as a rough draft but I need to improve on the poetry itself, to avoid embarrassment in my evening class.
One of the big problems with my modern version of the Aeneid passage - she says, easily distracted from the main purpose of her blog entry - is that part-way through, it suddenly started to rhyme. And the effect was rather good in places. So I decided to rewrite the less mellifluous first half and 'fit in' some rhymes to smooth out the transition from blank to rhyming.
Disastrous!
To make matters worse, some of the rhymes were not only full but distinctly Victorian in places. For instance, 'fell' - in the sense of grim/terrible - to rhyme with 'hell'.
So the whole thing needs more work. To put it mildly. Okay, it may only be a short piece for my Latin evening class, but I still want it to be good, damn it!
I'm also hoping there may be a trip to the nearest pub afterwards, then I'll be back on the late train and home for about half past midnight.
Work for the train includes a sheaf of unpublished poems that need revisions and some Latin homework - a modern verse translation of a shortish passage from the Aeneid. I've finished the actual translation as a rough draft but I need to improve on the poetry itself, to avoid embarrassment in my evening class.
One of the big problems with my modern version of the Aeneid passage - she says, easily distracted from the main purpose of her blog entry - is that part-way through, it suddenly started to rhyme. And the effect was rather good in places. So I decided to rewrite the less mellifluous first half and 'fit in' some rhymes to smooth out the transition from blank to rhyming.
Disastrous!
To make matters worse, some of the rhymes were not only full but distinctly Victorian in places. For instance, 'fell' - in the sense of grim/terrible - to rhyme with 'hell'.
So the whole thing needs more work. To put it mildly. Okay, it may only be a short piece for my Latin evening class, but I still want it to be good, damn it!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Hard and Unusual Words
This will be a brief blog entry, as I'm just off to my last Latin evening class of the summer term, and I do need to at least glance at the passage from Tacitus we were supposed to have prepared beforehand.
Some of you may have noticed a new blog listed at the bottom of the Blogger Profile page for Raw Light. It's entitled Hard and Unusual Words and is not yet ready to be shown to the public. I wanted to grab the blogspot address but haven't had much time recently for officially launching it, which is why it's just loitering there, untouched and unblogged on.
It's going to be based on an idea I had a few years ago, connected to Thomas Blount's Glossographia, a 17th century 'Dictionary of Hard and Unusual Words'. I'm not entirely sure how it will work yet, so more I can't tell you. But it will be a strange blog, that's for certain, and probably interesting to only one or two people. My apologies to the rest of you ...
Some of you may have noticed a new blog listed at the bottom of the Blogger Profile page for Raw Light. It's entitled Hard and Unusual Words and is not yet ready to be shown to the public. I wanted to grab the blogspot address but haven't had much time recently for officially launching it, which is why it's just loitering there, untouched and unblogged on.
It's going to be based on an idea I had a few years ago, connected to Thomas Blount's Glossographia, a 17th century 'Dictionary of Hard and Unusual Words'. I'm not entirely sure how it will work yet, so more I can't tell you. But it will be a strange blog, that's for certain, and probably interesting to only one or two people. My apologies to the rest of you ...
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