bellum paxque wrote:
I did have a question or two about syntax, which, I realize, is probably not what you're most interested in.
"e desiderio tamen acri quod male sensi
illis me ducit credere qui favorem
dant igni."
What is ducit doing here? Is it impersonal? Or perhaps there's an implied subject? The relationship of e desiderio... to the rest of the sentence seems exceedingly vague. But maybe there's an idiom with ducit e that I'm not familiar with.
These two lines run something like: "Nevertheless, that which I have
male felt from sharp desire leads me to believe those who give preference to fire."
"odi puto me scire satis citus ut"
Is citus one of the filler words you mentioned?
Yes, it is. I don't think it's as bad as some, however, because I get the impression that Frost would indeed "swiftly" assent to either fire or ice. But definitely filler.
"magnam etiam glaciam esse ruinae"
This follows the English pretty closely, but I'm not sure that "ruinae" really expresses "for destruction." At least I was confused reading this until I compared with the English and realized what you were doing.
Call it a dative of purpose, perhaps, like half of what you see in the "double dative" construction. E.g., in
mihi auxilio erat, the
auxilio part.
"et satis esse et plus quam satis esse mihi."
There's a great Latin idiom for this, "satis superque" which sadly won't work in this sort of verse because of the quantity. But what about satis et super? I think you could slide that in nicely. It's just that the last line seems plus quam satis to me, in its length. "And would suffice" gets stretched out pretty long.
I agree completely. Catullus has
satis et super, although not in elegiacs, and I would be quite keen on paying tribute to his influence. I'll see what I can do to work it in.
And a few minor notes on quantity.
Are you scanning glacie in line 3 as short-short-long? Maybe I'm missing something, but it sure seems like it's short-short-short and you need a long at that point in the elegiac.
glacies is fifth declension and so scans short-short-long in the ablative.
For some reason, I thought that the "o" in favorem (line 4) was long. Maybe not? Well, I just checked my dictionary, which confirms this suspicion. So that line doesn't quite scan right.
That is thoroughly embarrassing!
As a stopgap solution, I am emending to:
Code: Select all
Ignis et Glacies
igne ferunt alii mundum nostrum periturum,
multi alii glacie, nescio verum equidem.
e desiderio tamen acri quod male sensi
illis me ducit credere qui calidum
ignem praeponunt. sin bis foret hic periturus
mundus, odi puto me scire satis citus ut
magnam etiam glaciem esse ruinae dicere possim
et satis esse et plus quam satis esse mihi.
This leaves three of my four hexamter lines with rather rough endings, but at least it scans -- I think. Unfortunately that's about the best I can say about it right now!
As I said, I'm no expert (!!!), but I'm pretty impressed by your first venture into verse comp.
Thanks, I'm glad someone read it! I'm very appreciative of all of your helpful commentary -- hopefully I'll be able to continue to improve this a bit.
Why don't you tell us a little about yourself? If you want to try for a Latin introduction, just visit the Agora.
I shall indeed do so, hopefully tomorrow, when I have a bit more time.
Thanks again for your help!
Didymus