The Lovers

Poetry is about passion. It can be terrifying and destructive, and it should convey sensitivity and sincerity to its audience.[1]

Greece:

Sappho was a female Greek lyrist who, in reflection of the times, wrote lyrical poetry that was accompanied by a lyre (which was discussed in class prior to the break). She was the inventor of the Sapphic metre which is: A line that consists of five equal beats, of which the central one alone is of three syllables, while the others consist of two each. [2]

Her style is sensual and melodic. She composed songs of love and reflection and centered much of her focus on woman in art, and was later considered for its homoerotic content. Her writing suggests that the expression of same-sex love was not frowned upon then as it was in more recent times. She has been known to be the “lesbian writer” of love poetry or the “undying Aphrodite”.[3]

Rome:

We’re taken to a time much different from the period of Sappho.
Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius represent the emergence of lyric poetry in Rome from approximately 60 to 10 BC.

It is at this point where we see men writing about love. Historically the ideas of lyric poetry involve much sexuality (Sappho) with romanticized ideas incorporating love, politics, sex and self-expression.
These poets are often referred of as writing in a time of “luxury”. Cattulus in particular was noted for writing during a period where the former conservative Roman empire became revolutionized by need for extravagance and bourgeois displays of wealth.

Catullus wrote:

"At leisure, Licinius, yesterday
We'd much fun at my writing-tablets
As we'd agreed to be frivolous.
Each of us writing light verses
Playing now with this metre, now that,
Capping each other's jokes with toasts,"[4]

This depicts a period where there was time for luxury: feasts, lavish dinners, and extravagance.

You'll dine well, my Fabullus, at mineOne day soon if the Gods are kind to you,If you will bring with you a dinnerGood and large plus a pretty girl And wine and salt and all the laughs. If, I repeat, you bring these with you, Our charmer, you'll dine well; for your Catullus' purse is full of cobwebs. But in return you'll get love neat Or something still more choice and fragrant; For I'll porvide the perfume given My girl by Venuses and Cupids And when you smell it you'll ask the Gods, Fabullus, to make you one large nose.
Translated by Guy Lee [5]


This is an example of a very sexual poem which insinuates the sharing of women, love-play, and eroticism.

As discussed in lecture, Ovid wrote a series of poems called “elegies in elegiac meter which were sophisticated poems about life and times and sex.

The first work is called “The Theme of Love” is his writings of Amore.

I interpret book one, “The Theme of Love” as a discussion between himself and his conscious (“Cupid”) as inevitably his passion for love outweighs the realities of violent times.

A discussion on Ovid’s Amores…

A selection from “The Theme of Love.”

Book I, Elegy I

Just now, I was preparing to start with heavy fighting
and violent war, with a measure to fit the matter.
Good enough for lesser verse – laughed Cupid
so they say, and stole a foot away.
‘Cruel boy, who gave you power over this song?
Poets are the Muses’, we’re not in your crowd.
What if Venus snatched golden Minerva’s weapons,
while golden Minerva fanned the flaming fires?
Who’d approve of Ceres ruling the wooded hills,
with the Virgin’s quiver to cultivate the fields?
Who’d grant long-haired Phoebus a sharp spear,
while Mars played the Aonian lyre?
You’ve a mighty kingdom, boy, and too much power,
ambitious one, why aspire to fresh works?
Or is everything yours?

Elegy II is entitled “Love’s Victim” and compares the idea of love to war, as they are both about passion and violence and unrequited desires.

How to say what it’s like, how hard my mattress
seems, and the sheets won’t stay on the bed,
and the sleepless nights, so long to endure,
tossing with every weary bone of my body in pain?
But, I think, if desire were attacking me I’d feel it.
Surely he’s crept in and skilfully hurt me with secret art.
That’s it: a slender arrow sticks fast in my heart,
and cruel Love lives there, in my conquered breast.
Shall I give in: to go down fighting might bank the fires?
I give in! The burden that’s carried with grace is lighter.
I’ve seen the torch that’s swung about grow brighter
and the still one, on the contrary, quenched.
The oxen that shirk when first seized for the yoke
get more lashes than those that are used to the plough.
The hot steed’s mouth is bruised from the harsh curb,
the one that’s been in harness, feels reins less.
Love oppresses reluctant lovers more harshly and insolently
than those who acknowledge they’ll bear his slavery.
Look I confess! Cupid, I’m your latest prize:
stretching out conquered arms towards your justice.
War’s not the thing – I come seeking peace:
no glory for you in conquering unarmed men.

Once love has overtaken duty, this poetry continues to describe various levels of consciousness and describes encounters where, in great detail, love and sex are discussed as giving-way to great need for passion.

Elegy VII:

If there’s a friend here, tie my hands –
they merit chains – while my fury wanes!
Just now my fury thoughtlessly struck my girl:
my darling’s weeping, wounded by my mad hands.
Then I could have done violence to my dear parents
or savagely taken a scourge to the sacred gods!
Well? Didn’t Lord Ajax of the seven-layered shield
lay out the sheep he caught all over the fields,
and didn’t lawless Orestes’s, avenging his father
on his mother, dare to call up a spear for the secret Sisters?
So can’t I tear at her done-up hair?

Here it is seen again that through the stages of seeking and yearning for love, falling in love, courting love, enjoying love, testing love, finally lends way to violence, characteristic of Book I and depicts the violence that can be found in love, as it is found on the battle-field.

Elegy IX is adequately entitled: Love is War. It lends to the admission and recognition of the violence found in nature and in love.

Every lover’s in arms, and Cupid holds the fort:
Atticus, believe me, every lover’s in arms.
The age that’s good for war, is also right for love.
An old soldier’s a disgrace, and an old lover.
That spirit a commander looks for in a brave army,
a lovely girl looks for in a love partner.
Both keep watch: both sleep on the ground,
one serves at his lady’s entrance, the other his general’s.
A long road’s a soldier’s task: but send the girl off,
and a restless lover will follow her to the end.

I interpret this next part as a kind of revolutionary thought, meaning, the once inexperienced lover has now gone through the elements and stages of having loved, and has tasted both the good and the bad, and now reflects on love as mature, wiser, and experience lover.

Elegy X:

I feared eagles and bulls, for you,
and whatever else great Jupiter might make love as.
Now all fear’s gone, my mind is healed of error,
now your beauty can’t captivate my eyes.
Why am I changed, you ask? Because you want gifts.
That’s the cause that stops you from pleasing me.
Once you were innocent, I loved you body and soul:
now your beauty’s flawed by this defect of mind.
Love is a child and naked: without the shabbiness of age
and without clothing, so he’s all openness.

And…

When making love pleases both partners alike,
why should she sell and the other buy?
When a man and a woman perform a joint act
why should the pleasure hurt me and profit you?
It’s wrong for witnesses to perjure themselves for gain,
it’s wrong to open the purse of the chosen judges.
It’s a disgrace to defend the accused with a bought tongue:
a disgraceful court makes itself wealthy:
it’s wrong to swell family wealth with the bed’s proceeds,
or prostitute your good looks for money.
un-purchased, things deserve our thanks, on merit:
no thanks for the evil of a bought bed.
The buyer loosens all bonds

In the last elegy of his first book, he reflects on what he has experienced in love, hurt, and death. This also sets a dark, moody, and restless tone to his work.

So, while granite, while the unyielding ploughshare
perish with the years, poetry will not die.
Leaders and countries yield to the triumphs of song,
and the lavish waters of gold-bearing Tagus yield!
Let the masses gaze at trash: let golden-haired Apollo
offer me a brimming cup of Castalian waters,
and I’ll wear a wreathe of myrtle, that hates the cold,
and be read by many an anxious lover!
Envy feeds on the living: it’s quiet after death,
while everyone who’s dead gets their due honours.
So even when I’m given to the final flames,
I’ll live, and the better part of me will survive.

It’s a more humorous approach to writing for his time. It is sophisticated and incorporates the reality of love with descriptions that give-way to a sense of naivety and despair.

I think looking at Ovid is a great example of passionate and sophisitcated poetry.

Texts:
[1] 2110 Tutorial: Love. Jan 3, 2005
[2] Encyclopedia.org/s/sa/sapphic
[3] 2110 Lecture: Love. Jan 3, 2005
[4] Lee, Guy. The Poems of Catullus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Reference: www.tonykline.co.uk/browsebages/latin/amoureshome
[5] Lee, Guy. The Poems of Catullus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.