The other day I was so bored that I actually read something. Not in English of course but a poem in french. It was excellent about two lovers reunited in a mansion yard but one was declining it; this was sad and touched me for a reason. I can so much more easily feel the rhythm and beauty of french poetry than the strict latin ooh you can replace that with a spondee. I read it and actually wanted to read on it flowed so well and was a beauty of a poem. For a certain reason it almost made me cry. Only joking. Actually I’m not. No I’m joking, or maybe not. Anyway I will try to find it again and envy it wishing that I could write this in french. Well I might be able to in some form but I’ve never tried. Rhyming is where it is at. And I am sincere for I wrote is not be.
Also talking of poetry in Physics I saw perhaps the best English poem that I have ever seen in my life. I in all honestly have never repeated a poem so many times. I was captured by the simplicity and innocence hereof, the way in which it also might relate to a person and the irony of the person by whom it was written, i.e. the author was probably the 23rd root of the above french poet’s intelligence. Nevertheless, I quote, scraped into the wooden desk:
There once was a girl named bright
Who could travel faster than light
She departed one day
In Einsteinian way
And came back the previous night
It’s half past midnight, I’m at the office, half a pack of cigarettes, unlimited coffee supplies, and three binders to go through before the morning.
Could life really get any better?
Perhaps we could try to put this 3-liner into elegiacs? Go on, dear friends, give it a go, either in Greek or Latin! Perhaps Webmaster to be the Krites?
That is your opinion and this is wherefore I think that one should not have to study or analyse poetry, for I might believe Catullus to be one of the most ignorant and juvenile things that I have ever seen but we are forced to read it and call it great anyway.
Phylax, I admire your zeal for the languages, but this classic can not be rendered any better in any other tongue.
Still, check out my three lined Swedish thing I just made, it’s nowhere near the standard of the above poem but it’s quite good and is actually based on reality. The past 6 years in 1 week in 3 lines.
Den här veckan
Har jag älskat flickan
men nu är den där prickan
oopsy daisy I don’t want to be insulted, I just deserved it before. It hurts man. Sometimes I wonder whether you yourself are sane Kopio.
and now u say u miss me
ONE of the most. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use the LETTER ‘U’ as the WORD ‘you’. And that’s only one reason. It rhymes bad too. I don’t like lots of christmasy poems because the rhyming so silly.
I, having not the skills to read Catullus, can’t compare him to this vandalizer.
Trust me, Catullus has poems far more tasteless than this, but that is part of the reason they are enjoyable If you think the poem/song is terrible, you would no doubt disapprove of the music video (which is a parody of a girls gone wild infomercial).
I also hate the u thing and all such abbreviations but english is phonetically fuxored anyway, so why care? One time indeed when whiteoctave was drunk he used ‘them’ as a demonstrative, ‘ppl’, ‘u’ and said prospectus to be 5th declension. But granted he was intoxicated.
Nevertheless when I be drunk you will see the most faultless latin ramblings for I don’t be embarrassed about sounding queer. Like a true Roman.
The other day I was so bored that I actually read something. Not in English of course but a poem in french. It was excellent about two lovers reunited in a mansion yard but one was declining it; this was sad and touched me for a reason.
that’s the 2nd time you’ve mentioned it, you’re talking about verlaine’s poem right
Excellent, Whiteoctave! (And Kopio, many thanks for the limerick!)
Catullus - ah yes! He should be honoured for accelerating the Classical Languages learning curve of generations of dirty-minded pupils (I was one - probably still am ), desperate to improve their Latin in order to decypher the rude bits! An opportuntiy to learn biology and Latin at the same time!
Come to think of it, didn’t the Loeb editions tend to put the rude bits of Greek poems etc. into Latin rather than English in their translations? I seem to remember Rufinus in the Greek Anthology being handled in this prudish way - acres of Latin, and not because he had a Latin name … and brushing up my Latin to decode it … and learning some interesting new Greek vocab!!! Do the Loebs still do this even in these broad-minded days?
Thanks also to you, O Episcope, for both your Swedish renderings. Would it be possible for you to give literal translations for each? Or are they too rude? Might you have to put them into Latin to save Classicalclarinet’s mother’s blushes?!
aha! many thanks chad! Great poem a beauty. No, I have read nothing more of him, for I never read, I just came across that random one when bored flicking through books.
This is just a quick latin translation, some words are modern terms ( like prick!) that can’t really be hit in latin. Not in any metre but translation quand meme:
inte kan jag förstå
varför ville hon gå
för att bli en hå
nequeo percipere quare
sese vellet hinc illis iactare
but in english that exactly does not make sense but the message is there
Den här veckan
Har jag älskat flickan
men nu är den där prickan
If you think the poem/song is terrible, you would no doubt disapprove of the 
), desperate to improve their Latin in order to decypher the rude bits! An opportuntiy to learn biology and Latin at the same time!