The Aegean and die Nordsee
A couple of Greek poets recently brought to my attention:
Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) (more poems)
Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996)
A whole civilization away from A. E. Housman, which is odd because Housman was a classicist as well as a poet and perhaps knew the ancient world that Cavafy deals with so well as well as he did.
But it was as I was reading Waiting for the Barbarians with a modern-day Greek looking on that I realized I have almost always read poems from the point of view of the barbarians. This chimed off my old thoughts about Old English exile poetry contrasted with the words that Dante puts into the mouth of his ancestor Cacciaguida:
The Wanderer, 49-57:
Þonne beoð þy hefigranThen are the heavier
heortan benne,the wounds of the heart,
sare æfter swæsne.grievous (sare) with longing for (æfter) the lord.
Sorg bið geniwadSorrow is renewed
þonne maga gemyndwhen the mind (mod) surveys
mod geondhweorfeð;the memory of kinsmen;
greteð gliwstafum,He greets them joyfully,
georne geondsceawaðeagerly scans
secga geseldan;the companions of men;
swimmað oft on wegthey always swim away.
fleotendra ferðThe spirits of seafarers
no þær fela bringeðnever bring back there much
cuðra cwidegiedda.in the way of known speech.
Cearo bið geniwadCare is renewed
þam þe sendan scealfor the one who must send
swiþe geneahhevery often
ofer waþema gebindover the binding of the waves
werigne sefan.a weary heart.
Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 55-60:
Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
più caramente; e questo è quello strale
che l’arco dello essilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e ’l salir per l'altrui scale.
Thou shalt leave everything loved most dearly, and this is the shaft which the bow of exile shoots first. Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another man's bread and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.
And while the sound of the Old English has something that made me fall in love with it long ago and I love it still, it is hard to deny from these two extracts that the Italian says more, in a more compact way, and in a way which hits a modern audience much more directly with its salt bread and stairs than the wanderer's spirits of seafarers.
(Not that I'm necessarily wondering about how to pitch a Very Short Introduction about Old English verse, or anything like that...)
Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) (more poems)
Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996)
A whole civilization away from A. E. Housman, which is odd because Housman was a classicist as well as a poet and perhaps knew the ancient world that Cavafy deals with so well as well as he did.
But it was as I was reading Waiting for the Barbarians with a modern-day Greek looking on that I realized I have almost always read poems from the point of view of the barbarians. This chimed off my old thoughts about Old English exile poetry contrasted with the words that Dante puts into the mouth of his ancestor Cacciaguida:
The Wanderer, 49-57:
Þonne beoð þy hefigranThen are the heavier
heortan benne,the wounds of the heart,
sare æfter swæsne.grievous (sare) with longing for (æfter) the lord.
Sorg bið geniwadSorrow is renewed
þonne maga gemyndwhen the mind (mod) surveys
mod geondhweorfeð;the memory of kinsmen;
greteð gliwstafum,He greets them joyfully,
georne geondsceawaðeagerly scans
secga geseldan;the companions of men;
swimmað oft on wegthey always swim away.
fleotendra ferðThe spirits of seafarers
no þær fela bringeðnever bring back there much
cuðra cwidegiedda.in the way of known speech.
Cearo bið geniwadCare is renewed
þam þe sendan scealfor the one who must send
swiþe geneahhevery often
ofer waþema gebindover the binding of the waves
werigne sefan.a weary heart.
Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 55-60:
Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
più caramente; e questo è quello strale
che l’arco dello essilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e ’l salir per l'altrui scale.
Thou shalt leave everything loved most dearly, and this is the shaft which the bow of exile shoots first. Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another man's bread and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs.
And while the sound of the Old English has something that made me fall in love with it long ago and I love it still, it is hard to deny from these two extracts that the Italian says more, in a more compact way, and in a way which hits a modern audience much more directly with its salt bread and stairs than the wanderer's spirits of seafarers.
(Not that I'm necessarily wondering about how to pitch a Very Short Introduction about Old English verse, or anything like that...)