greek&roman

  no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin and in eyes no sight and drumming           fills ears and cold sweat holds me and shaking grips me all, greener than grass I am and dead—or almost           I seem to me                                                  tr. Anne Carson     “No speaking is left in me,” Carson translates, and then the new stanza begins with that full stop, “no:” as the poem shifts to a sexual surrender which cannot be withstood. “tongue breaks and thin/fire is racing under skin/and in eyes no sight and drumming/fills ears//and cold sweat holds me and shaking/grips me all.” This is a poem of passion, of what passion feels like.  Sexual passion?  Yes.  Unlike the Homeric heroes who marshal their ranks and throw spears and make spe...

  A Fragment from Sappho Fragment 31 He seems to me equal to gods that man whoever he is who opposite you sits and listens close           to your sweet speaking and lovely laughing—oh it puts the heart in my chest on wings for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking           is left in me no: tongue breaks and thin fire is racing under skin and in eyes no sight and drumming           fills ears and cold sweat holds me and shaking grips me all, greener than grass I am and dead —or almost           I seem to me. But all is to be dared, because even a person of poverty translation by Anne Carson 

  Sappho Translated by William Carlos Williams That man is peer of the gods, who face to face sits listening to your sweet speech and lovely laughter. It is this that rouses a tumult in my breast. At mere sight of you my voice falters, my tongue is broken. Straightway, a delicate fire runs in my limbs; my eyes are blinded and my ears thunder. Sweat pours out: a trembling hunts me down. I grow paler than grass and lack little of dying. I am another person

  THE BEAT GOES ON [“fragment 58”] You, children, be zealous for the beautiful gifts of the violetlapped Muses and for the clear songloving lyre. But my skin once soft is now taken by old age, my hair turns white from black. And my heart is weighed down and my knees do not lift, that once were light to dance as fawns. I groan for this. But what can I do? A human being without old age is not a possibility. There is the story of Tithonos, loved by Dawn with her arms of roses and she carried him off to the ends of the earth when he was beautiful and young. Even so was he gripped by white old age. He still has his deathless wife. Translated by Anne Carson

  27 Raise high the roofbeams, carpenters! Hymenaon , Sing the wedding song! Up with them! Hymenaon , Sing the wedding song! A bridegroom taller than Arēs! Hymenaon , Sing the wedding song! Taller than a tall man! Hymenaon , Sing the wedding song! Superior as the singer of Lesbos – Hymenaon , Sing the wedding song! —to poets of other lands. Hymenaon !

Number 5 (translation by Jane Mason   Let us live, my Lesbia and let us love, and as for the mutterings of over-severe old men, we’ll reckon them all worth merely a penny. Suns can set and return: for us, when the brief light once sets, there is one everlasting night, enforcing sleep. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred, then, when we’ve made many thousands, we’ll mix them up, so that we lose count, or no bad person can envy us, when he learns how many kisses there are. 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 cent...