1) The mathematical comparisons Cattalus uses are somewhat related to the artistic vein all the artists have. It’s very common to artists use mathematics as a reference because nature itself is made out of all mathematical concepts like the Fibonacci numbers, the PI, etc.
Catallus clearly has a vision of love in a very ordered and rational way. The usage of the words “total”, “length”, and “sum” shows a perception of beauty that is carefully measured and put in place. Is he trying to find the perfect body on those women that might be not so perfect? Or is he vision of love depicted? Like in mathematics putting two plus two is four, the author in his writing is trying to add love with physical beauty as one.
2) Poem 32 seems to me to be a very passionate and sexual orientated poem. The poem is showing how the author desires to see, feel and make love to his loved one in the name of love. However seems to me that the loved one is a “difficult” one or even a person who doesn’t really accept the authors love fully “Honestly, if you want it, give the order”.
Poem 33 is a satirical poem but still very societal orientated. The father being the thief and the son the prostitute how more dysfunctional this family can be? I loved the fact the author used the characters social characteristics – one being thief and the other prostitute – to bring them down and question whether or not they have credibility.
Poem 47 shows how a love of a man can blind him from seeing the reality and find excuses to explain his loved one. The poem reflects his hate and disgust of all those men that have sex with the woman he loves but never throw on her the guilt of having sex with other men.
3) Romantic love is a very debatable concept. Love is an emotion and no definition can made to make it universal. However according to the Dictionary of Contemporary English from Longman, romantic is “someone who shows strong feelings of love and likes doing things that are connected with love such as buying flowers, presents, etc.”
So if I use these two concepts and put them together it means that romantic love is purely material, money related and completely unattached to the true feelings because the word romantic is only “connected with love.” For me as a foreigner and English being the third language, the rational usage of the language is extremely important because I must rely on what academics taught me to understand what happens around me in English however I strongly disagree with this dictionary and language type of explanation. Romantic love is an utopia type of love that often occurs in the beginning of a relationship and only at a some level is carried to the development of that same relationship. Romantic love for me is a love that occurs when you think about that special person and you envision a relationship made out of only good things and nothing else. But the question arises: how romantic can you be if love is the feeling that comes after passion and falling in love with. Do we really love when we are being romantic? Love doesn’t need an adjective/noun to characterize it. Love itself has enough power and strength to carry its own meaning. Probably in the world of today we need to catalog everything and that’s why we called it romantic love, sick love, dangerous love, obsessive love, fatal love… Love can be romantic but can someone romantic love?
Catullus and Sappho
Catullus:
86
Many find Quintia stunning. I find her attractive:
Tall, “regal,” fair in complexion—these points are granted.
But stunning? No, I deny it: the woman is scarcely venerious,
There’s no spice at all in the length of her body!
Now Lesbia is stunning, for Lesbia’s beauty is total:
And by that sum all other women are diminished.
39
Egnatius, because he has bright white teeth,always smiles: If someone comes to the defendant'sbench, when the speaker arouses weeping,he grins; If there is weeping at the funeral pyre ofa dutiful son, when the bereaved mother laments her only son,he grins. Whatever it is, wherever he is,whatever he is doing, he grins: he has this disease,neither elegant, as I think, nor refined.Therefore I must warn you, my good Egnatius.If you were a city man or a Sabine or a Tiburnanor a thrifty Umbrian or a fat Etruscanor a swarthy or toothy Lanuvian ora Transpadane, to touch on my own people as well,or anyone you like who cleans his teeth with clean water,I still should not want you to smile on all occasions:for nothing is more silly than a silly smile.Now you are a Celtiberian: in the land of Celtiberia,whatever each man has urinated, with this he is accustomedin the morning to rub his teeth and gums until they are red,so that the more polished those teeth of yours are,the more urine they proclaim you to have drunk.
70
My woman says there is no one whom she’d rather marry
Than me, not even Jupiter, if he came courting.
That’s what she says—but what a woman says to a passionate lover
Ought to be scribbled on wind, on running water.
94
Mentula is an adulterer. Why certainly he is. How could he be anythingelse with a name such as his. It is as natural as for a pot to gather vegetables.
Excerpts from Sappho
‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’
Some say horsemen, some say warriors,
Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s
What you love.
It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,
Since Helen, she who outshone
All others in beauty, left
A fine husband,
And headed for Troy
Without a thought for
Her daughter, her dear parents…
Led astray….
And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step
Or that flicker of light on her face,
I’d rather see than Lydian chariots
Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.
‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’
Stand up and look at me, face to face
My friend,
Unloose the beauty of your eyes.....
‘Love shook my heart’
Love shook my heart,
Like the wind on the mountain
Troubling the oak-trees.
‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’
He’s equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voice’s sweetness,
And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,
My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.
Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And I’m an inch from dying.
86
Many find Quintia stunning. I find her attractive:
Tall, “regal,” fair in complexion—these points are granted.
But stunning? No, I deny it: the woman is scarcely venerious,
There’s no spice at all in the length of her body!
Now Lesbia is stunning, for Lesbia’s beauty is total:
And by that sum all other women are diminished.
39
Egnatius, because he has bright white teeth,always smiles: If someone comes to the defendant'sbench, when the speaker arouses weeping,he grins; If there is weeping at the funeral pyre ofa dutiful son, when the bereaved mother laments her only son,he grins. Whatever it is, wherever he is,whatever he is doing, he grins: he has this disease,neither elegant, as I think, nor refined.Therefore I must warn you, my good Egnatius.If you were a city man or a Sabine or a Tiburnanor a thrifty Umbrian or a fat Etruscanor a swarthy or toothy Lanuvian ora Transpadane, to touch on my own people as well,or anyone you like who cleans his teeth with clean water,I still should not want you to smile on all occasions:for nothing is more silly than a silly smile.Now you are a Celtiberian: in the land of Celtiberia,whatever each man has urinated, with this he is accustomedin the morning to rub his teeth and gums until they are red,so that the more polished those teeth of yours are,the more urine they proclaim you to have drunk.
70
My woman says there is no one whom she’d rather marry
Than me, not even Jupiter, if he came courting.
That’s what she says—but what a woman says to a passionate lover
Ought to be scribbled on wind, on running water.
94
Mentula is an adulterer. Why certainly he is. How could he be anythingelse with a name such as his. It is as natural as for a pot to gather vegetables.
Excerpts from Sappho
‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’
Some say horsemen, some say warriors,
Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s
What you love.
It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,
Since Helen, she who outshone
All others in beauty, left
A fine husband,
And headed for Troy
Without a thought for
Her daughter, her dear parents…
Led astray….
And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step
Or that flicker of light on her face,
I’d rather see than Lydian chariots
Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.
‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’
Stand up and look at me, face to face
My friend,
Unloose the beauty of your eyes.....
‘Love shook my heart’
Love shook my heart,
Like the wind on the mountain
Troubling the oak-trees.
‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’
He’s equal with the Gods, that man
Who sits across from you,
Face to face, close enough, to sip
Your voice’s sweetness,
And what excites my mind,
Your laughter, glittering. So,
When I see you, for a moment,
My voice goes,
My tongue freezes. Fire,
Delicate fire, in the flesh.
Blind, stunned, the sound
Of thunder, in my ears.
Shivering with sweat, cold
Tremors over the skin,
I turn the colour of dead grass,
And I’m an inch from dying.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
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