Anyone?
I have tried and I find it relatively easy although I'm not a 100% sure it's all correct. I once read the old poets wrote approx. one or two lines a day, and Ovid topped that in his best days with approx. seven or eight. Of course, they didn't have dictionaries (didn't they? hmm) and the internet to help them out but still, I just wrote three lines in half an hour.
Who has attempted to write Latin or Greek poetry?
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Evito
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Moerus
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IT's really not easy if you look at all the details. TRy to put important words before the caesura and use hyperbata etc. and try with these means to clarify the sense of the verse, if you do so, I think it's rather difficult!
Puting words in a metrical scheme is not as difficult as it looks, but if you are going to do it with all the details, I think it's a difficult job!
Good luck,
Moerus.
Puting words in a metrical scheme is not as difficult as it looks, but if you are going to do it with all the details, I think it's a difficult job!
Good luck,
Moerus.
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chad
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Hi evito, could you put your lines up in a reply?
which language, genre and meter did you use? there are lots of issues to do with each genre, meter and even author.
e.g. if you imitated catullus' hendecasyllables, did you follow the style of his earlier or later carmina, allowing only a molossus at the start of the line (early style) or alternatively allowing a bacchius or cretic (later style, evident in his later poems and also poem 1, indicating that this was probably written last or or nearly last by him)? and more importantly, did you make sure that the natural word accent fell in your lines in the ordered way they fall in his? (you'll notice in his poems, if you know how to find accents, they fall very regularly)...
if you did homeric dactylic hex, did you try to give the phrases either side of the caesura a sort of mini-completeness on their own? homer often does that, because the formulae he used were able to be slotted into lots of different types of lines, so they often have a "completeness" by themselves (not as a clause, with a verb &c, but e.g. a noun and an epithet, or a verb and an adverb/conjunction/participle &c).
if you did sophoclean/euripidean iambic tri, how did you put it together? rouse suggests that writers built a lot of their lines by first finding a cretic and bacchius to use in the centre of their lines, and then filled out the rest of the line from there... i find this way too hard to do myself at my beginner level...
also getting the idiom right is beyond me now... each poetic genre and metre has its own idiom and standard phrases/logic...
writing greek verse is also my goal ,and so if you've used a particular method to compose verse, i'd greatly appreciate you explaining here how you did it. thanks heaps! chad.
which language, genre and meter did you use? there are lots of issues to do with each genre, meter and even author.
e.g. if you imitated catullus' hendecasyllables, did you follow the style of his earlier or later carmina, allowing only a molossus at the start of the line (early style) or alternatively allowing a bacchius or cretic (later style, evident in his later poems and also poem 1, indicating that this was probably written last or or nearly last by him)? and more importantly, did you make sure that the natural word accent fell in your lines in the ordered way they fall in his? (you'll notice in his poems, if you know how to find accents, they fall very regularly)...
if you did homeric dactylic hex, did you try to give the phrases either side of the caesura a sort of mini-completeness on their own? homer often does that, because the formulae he used were able to be slotted into lots of different types of lines, so they often have a "completeness" by themselves (not as a clause, with a verb &c, but e.g. a noun and an epithet, or a verb and an adverb/conjunction/participle &c).
if you did sophoclean/euripidean iambic tri, how did you put it together? rouse suggests that writers built a lot of their lines by first finding a cretic and bacchius to use in the centre of their lines, and then filled out the rest of the line from there... i find this way too hard to do myself at my beginner level...
also getting the idiom right is beyond me now... each poetic genre and metre has its own idiom and standard phrases/logic...
writing greek verse is also my goal ,and so if you've used a particular method to compose verse, i'd greatly appreciate you explaining here how you did it. thanks heaps! chad.
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annis
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Well, I've written a few haiku in classical Greek. Some even try for snippets of genuine Greek meters.
Some even try for snippets of genuine Greek meters.William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/ — http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;
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Evito
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I'm writing Latin love-poetry, in hexameters and pentameters, inspired by Ovids Tristia. After reviewing my lines I noticed with a few issues, so I'm a little shy to post them here, as they aren't fully correct. (Well who would expect me to be perfect, I stopped studying Latin about a year ago)...
I concentrated more on the metre and grammar than on the style and figures.
Di facerent me, quo lacrimem, quo Musaque, scire,
ingenium cara* manet amore meum!
Quid manus dederim quid carminibus animique,
nunc palam hic facio scribi** papyris ego:
Oscula haec sunt chartea, haec tibi gressa litura
pumice frons fragili ipsa polita mihi.
*Personification
**Known issue, I believe "bi" should be long, not short...
Translation:
If only the Gods made that I knew why I cry, and the Muse
why my talent drips with my dear love!
What kind of hand, what kind of spirit I have given my poems
I make to be publicly written here on these papers:
These paper kisses, this running stain is for you,
with fragile pumice the cover itself polished by me.
I concentrated more on the metre and grammar than on the style and figures.
Di facerent me, quo lacrimem, quo Musaque, scire,
ingenium cara* manet amore meum!
Quid manus dederim quid carminibus animique,
nunc palam hic facio scribi** papyris ego:
Oscula haec sunt chartea, haec tibi gressa litura
pumice frons fragili ipsa polita mihi.
*Personification
**Known issue, I believe "bi" should be long, not short...
Translation:
If only the Gods made that I knew why I cry, and the Muse
why my talent drips with my dear love!
What kind of hand, what kind of spirit I have given my poems
I make to be publicly written here on these papers:
These paper kisses, this running stain is for you,
with fragile pumice the cover itself polished by me.