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标题: DISCUSSION of Eclogues Translation Group (ETG) [打印本页]

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-25 18:43
标题: DISCUSSION of Eclogues Translation Group (ETG)
Hi everybody,

Let's discuss the questions we met in translating Virgil's Eclogues.

Meliboeus.

You, Tityrus, 'neath a broad beech-canopy
Reclining, on the slender oat rehearse
Your silvan ditties: I from my sweet fields,
And home's familiar bounds, even now depart.
Exiled from home am I; while, Tityrus, you
Sit careless in the shade, and, at your call,
"Fair Amaryllis" bid the woods resound.

After asking a few people for advice, I know the mark " ' " is an apostrophe, it's there to indicate that the word has been shortened from "beneath." As I know, dancerinmaya's known this for a long time, right?

and a list of vocabulary of first paragraph:

Tityrus: reference?
beech-canopy: canopy made of beech
oat: a different name of FLUTE or REED

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-25 18:52

原帖由 牧场看守人 于 2006-2-25 18:43 发表
After asking a few people for advice, I know the mark " ' " is an apostrophe, it's there to indicate that the word has been shortened from "beneath." As I know, dancerinmaya's known this for a long time, right?

One use of the apostrophe, it is often seen, for example, int'l is international. Here, it is to replace a syllable for metering.

In fact you might wish to consider pasting certain excerpts from your string of discussion, they are quite educational and informative, but perhaps interesting to only a few.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-25 18:56
You've misunderstood my idea.

Not just "pasting certain excerpts from string of discussion".
I wanna have sth else to discuss
Such as, what's the reference of Tityrus and Meliboeus?

I've just come up with a few examples of apostrophes, from Shelley's poems. They're so common but I forgot!

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-25 19:47

原帖由 牧场看守人 于 2006-2-25 18:56 发表
You've misunderstood my idea.
Not just "pasting certain excerpts from string of discussion".
I wanna have sth else to discuss
Such as, what's the reference of Tityrus and Melibo ...

I have sympathy...this is probably one of the most arduous learning process, every bit is probably learning. I was obsessing over the name of "Alexis".

Tityrus is the father of Helene in Greek Mythology. Here, I tend to believe it is merely used as a name. See also below:

eclogues

The Eclogues is one of three major works by the Latin poet Virgil.

Written in around 37 BC, it consists of ten poems with a rural setting. (For this reason, they are sometimes known as "The Bucolics".) Most of the individual poems are in the form of conversations between characters with names such as "Tityrus" (supposedly representing Virgil himself), "Meliboeus", "Menalcas" and "Mopsus".

The most famous of them is Eclogue 4 (PP Ecl.4), which appears to contain a Messianic prophecy, and was seized on by early Christians as such - one reason why Dante later chose Virgil as his guide through the underworld. Some modern scholars have pointed to Virgil's knowledge of Roman Jewish families as a possible route for his near quotations of Isaiah in the poem.

Eclogue 10 (PP Ecl.10) is in praise of Virgil's near-contemporary, the poet Gallus. They are based in large part on the Idylls of Theocritus in terms of style and content, but there are political undercurrents in Virgil not present in Theocritus, who maintains his rustic theme throughout.

The above info is from this link: http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=1spmvpuih66dw?tname=eclogues&curtab=2222_1&hl=tityrus&sbid=lc05b

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-25 20:00
Hi dancerinyama,

Grateful to your answer, it solves one of the most difficult problems while reading Dante's Divine Comedy!

OK, I'll keep on working.

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-25 20:12
Note: it probably helps for all of us to "pile" whatever reference we find here, it might be helpful to oneself and/other others in the process.

Based on your comments on Gide's "fall" during/after his encounter with Oscar Wilde, I think you'll really enjoy that Virgil was fond of youthful man!! HoHoHO.

This was found in my desperate obsession for Alexis, wondering whether there was any allusion hidden in the name:

Virgil (70-19 B.C.E.)

Virgil wrote approvingly of male love in many works, and his second eclogue became the most famous poem on that subject in Latin literature.

The pastoral setting of so many of Virgil's shorter poems was not merely a literary convention; he was in fact born on a farm near Mantua and throughout his life struck his contemporaries as shy, awkward, and countrified. Of sturdy build, Virgil, nevertheless, suffered from poor health and was often ill from headaches and hemorrhaging lungs; his modesty and lack of aggressiveness earned him a nickname--"the Virgin."

His earliest patron, Asinius Pollio, encouraged him to write of rural life in his first important poems, the Eclogues, completed when Virgil was about thirty. Pollio, a former general, had retired from public affairs to devote himself to authorship and the encouragement of literature. He had known Catullus and was a friend of Horace. He also owned a slave named Alexander, with whom Virgil, who never married, fell in love.

We know this last detail from a biography of Virgil appended to the Commentary of Donatus, a fourth-century critic. (It is possible that this Life is by Suetonius rather than Donatus; scholarship has been unable to decide the issue.) Virgil is characterized as "inclined to passions for boys," an unusual instance of a man's being assigned a specific preference by a Latin biographer.

We are also told that Virgil "especially favored" two boys named Cebes and Alexander, that the boys were educated by him, and that Cebes even became a poet. We also learn that Alexander was a slave given to Virgil by Pollio and that he was, in fact, the "Alexis" of Virgil's second eclogue.

Both of the boys had, presumably, been slaves, but apart from this, Virgil's relation to them seems to have approximated to the Greek ideal, according to which the older man became the protector and mentor of the younger.

One other ancient document also seems to attest to Virgil's homosexuality. The collection of epigrams and short poems called the Catalepton has two poems that are probably by Virgil, the fifth and seventh. In the former, the poet says farewell to a friend in Rome and to all the city's "beautiful boys"; in the latter, he confesses to Varius that he is in love with a boy.

The Second or Corydon Eclogue

Five of Virgil's ten pastoral Eclogues make at least some incidental reference to homosexuality. By far the most famous of these is the second or Corydon eclogue. Though Romans were theoretically supposed to limit their male amours to slave boys, this is one of the few poems in which the boy's slave status is explicitly mentioned.

He is introduced as Alexis, "the darling of the master" (delicias domini). The poem invites reflection on the paradoxes involved in "courting" a slave. By custom and by Roman law, a master might simply command any slave's sexual compliance.

Yet the literary conventions of homoerotic verse, which the Romans took over from the Greeks, required that the poet should express frustration, be at the mercy of the boy's refusal, and even suffer his disdain.

Arab rulers, in love with male slaves in tenth-century Spain, relished the piquancy of the situation in poems that declared frankly, "You are my slave, I am yours." Roman poets, less given to paradox, stuck to the Greek convention, so that we are, in fact, often in doubt about the boy's status.

Ancient writers (such as the Donatian biographer, Martial, Apuleius, and Servius) all assume that Corydon is simply a persona assumed by the modest Virgil, and equate the two. Corydon is described in the poem as a simple shepherd (whether free or slave is not made clear), presumably also the servant of "the master." Though he is wealthy enough to own a thousand sheep, he has no proprietary rights over Alexis.

Corydon wants them "to live together" a life devoted to hunting and herding, and risks sunstroke to pursue the youth, who is indifferent to his suffering despair. We may find in all this a kind of humorous self-deprecation. Corydon reminds himself, "You are only a rustic," as if he fears Alexis may prefer some sophisticated city dweller. At the end, he judges himself a lunatic for neglecting the homely tasks of the farm for this mad passion.

The Corydon eclogue became the most famous poem on male love in Latin literature. It is Corydon's love for Alexis, not Catullus' passion for Juventius or Tibullus' for Marathus, that is cited by later Latin poets and critics when they discuss the poetry of male love.

It is noteworthy, however, that, whatever Virgil's own sexual preference, Corydon represents himself as bisexual: He complains that Alexis is so cruel that he (Corydon) would have been better off with the temperamental Amaryllis (a woman) or swarthy Menalcas (another male).

Bisexuality in the Eclogues

Later eclogues maintain this democratic balance. In the third eclogue, Menalcas scolds the goatherd Damoetas, who evens the score by alleging that Menalcas was once possessed by another male in a shrine while tittering nymphs looked on. When their rivalry takes the form of a singing contest, Damoetas sings of his love for Galatea and Amaryllis, while Menalcas salutes the boy Amyntas as his "flame."

In eclogue five, Menalcas asks Mopsus to sing a song about Phyllis or, alternatively, about the boy Alcon. In eclogue seven, another singing match finds Corydon still lamenting the "handsome Alexis" but also enraptured of the sea-nymph Galatea.

Gallus, in the tenth eclogue, shows the same lack of prejudice as to gender; he bemoans the loss of his mistress Lycoris but envies the Arcadians--if he had their musical skill, he might win any "Phyllis or Amyntas." These figures are, or course, not real characters but shadowy names: What is striking is that their sex is equally immaterial.

The Georgics

Up to this point, Virgil might have seemed to rank with Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and other poets of the "erotic revolt" who sang of dalliance and derided traditional Roman values. But Virgil now turned from the artificialities of Theocritaean pastoral to write another set of poems, the Georgics, which dealt more realistically with the practical techniques, trials, and delights of farm life.

The poems pleased Augustus, who wanted to repopulate the Italian countryside by settling his veterans on the land. Augustus now enlisted Virgil to write a Roman epic to rival Greece's Iliad.

The Aeneid

The Aeneid was intended to celebrate Rome's roots in myth and legend, the glories of its conquests, and the divine nature of the imperial mission, which was to impose its own version of law and order on the Mediterranean world.

The emphasis in the Aeneid is on pious duty, not personal relationships. Consequently, Aeneas leaves Dido, the Queen of Carthage, after their brief love affair, to fulfill his destiny by leading the Trojans to Italy, where they become the progenitors of the Roman race.

Virgil's epic appears to downplay love as a value. But in fact, it offered him an opportunity to elevate the Roman view of male love from amorous play with a pretty slave to the heroic ideal of the Greeks.

Virgil does this by incorporating into the Aeneid the story of Nisus and Euryalus. Euryalus is a handsome soldier in the bloom of youth, Nisus a mature warrior who is bound to him by what Virgil calls an "amor pius." Their love--Virgil uses the word several times--is clearly meant to mirror the bond that unites Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad.

Indeed, Virgil has so managed that they more nearly fulfill the classical pattern of the Greek "lover" (erastes) and "beloved" (eromenos) than do Homer's heroes.

Their story seems very closely tailored to match the ideal set forth by Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium, the ideal of two comrades in arms whose love leads to heroic self-sacrifice. To this end, Virgil repeatedly emphasizes Euryalus' beauty and Nisus' protective leadership.

In the fifth book of the Aeneid, the men take part in a footrace. Nisus stumbles and brings down with him another runner to make Euryalus the winner. The young man's good looks lead Aeneas' soldiers to condone this trick and award him the prize.

In book nine, the pair are on guard duty at night together. Nisus plans to make a dangerous foray to take a vital message to Aeneas. Euryalus begs to join him, and the pair slaughter many sleeping enemy soldiers. However, the younger man is separated from his lover in the dark and surrounded by vengeful Rutulians.

Nisus tries heroically to save him but is cut down and expires on the dead boy's body in a kind of Liebestod. (This is not quite the only example of Greek love in the Aeneid; in book ten, the valiant Cydon is briefly introduced as the lover of the handsome Clytius and characterized as a pederast.) After their deaths, Virgil salutes Nisus and Euryalus as "Fortunate both" and prophecies that their fame will last as long as Rome's.

Obviously, he hoped they would become to the Latins what Achilles and Patroclus were to the Greeks. But this was not to be: Virgil's effort to engraft the Greek ideal of heroic pederasty onto Latin culture is of great interest, but he did not succeed in influencing later writers.

Virgil's Reputation and Influence

The middle ages held Virgil in high regard, esteeming him as a prophet and seer as well as a poet. Dante, who apparently knew the Donatian biography, made him his guide through Hell and Purgatory, and the unusual courtesy he shows to sodomites in both domains may stem partly from his knowledge of his mentor's tastes.

Nevertheless, an unamiable medieval legend (traceable to the thirteenth century) held that all sodomites had died at the moment of Christ's birth, and some ecclesiastics who were confused about the date of Virgil's death maintained that he too had died in the holocaust.

In the Renaissance, Christopher Marlowe appears to have been inspired by the Corydon eclogue to issue his own seductive invitation to the pastoral life--"Come live with me and be my love." No doubt Marlowe's own homosexuality drew him to the poem.

Richard Barnfield published in 1594 a work called The Affectionate Shepherd, which bore the inflammatory subtitle "The Complaint of Daphnis for the Love of Ganymede." When he found himself attacked by unsympathetic English readers for the homoeroticism of his verses, his rather disingenuous defense was to maintain that his poem was only "an imitation of Virgil, in the second eclogue of Alexis."

In English translations, references to homosexual love in Greek and Latin classics were typically handled in one of three ways: Passages were omitted (as with Ovid's account of Orpheus' turning to the love of boys in George Sandys's 1626 translation of the Metamorphoses), pronouns were changed to disguise genders (as in renderings of Sappho and Plato), or more rarely, the translator added some editorial moralizing.

This last was the case with the lines on Cydon as they appeared in Dryden's famous rhymed version of the Aeneid (1698). Where Virgil had simply called Clytius Cydon's "latest joy" and remarked that Cydon's amorous life was almost ended on the battlefield, Dryden saw fit to interpolate a very un-Virgilian comment: "The wretched Cydon had received his doom, / Who courted Clytius in his beardless bloom, / And sought with lust obscene polluted joys."

Byron, in search of literature that would validate his own youthful homosexual feelings, found inspiration in the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, and published his own translation while he was still in his teens.

His contemporary Jeremy Bentham, arguing for the reform of England's lethal sodomy law, cited the episode as proof that the Romans tolerated male love.

The anonymous author of Don Leon (a poem that purported to be Byron's own account of his homosexual experiences) included a list of famous homosexuals that began with Virgil: "When young Alexis claimed a Virgil's sigh, / He told the world his choice, and may not I?"

In 1924, André Gide published four dialogues in defense of homosexuality under the title Corydon.

The above comes from this link: http://www.glbtq.com/literature/virgil.html, an Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, & Queer Culture, which comes up by googling "Alexis".

haha.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-25 20:28
Very..interesting,hug?
OK,OK,it's Virgi..
..My poor Gide..Byron..

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-25 20:38
did you mean "huh?" or "hug"? They are quite different. Sorry, that's 灌水。

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-25 22:11
标题: Ecologue II: Alexis
Thestylis Any rustic maiden. In the Idylls of Theocritos, Thestylis is a young female slave.

“And then in baste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves.”
Milton: L'Allegro.

Daphnis A Sicilian shepherd who invented pastoral poetry.
Daphnis. The lover of Chloe in the exquisite Greek pastoral romance of Longos, in the fourth century. Daphnis was the model of Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, and the tale is the basis of St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia.

From The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseandFable/data/1219.html

[ 本帖最后由舞者于 2006-2-25 23:14 编辑 ]

作者: sych 时间: 2006-2-25 22:43

原帖由舞者于 2006-2-25 20:38 发表
did you mean "huh?" or "hug"? They are quite different. Sorry, that's 灌水。

it is only english that is used to communicate in this place. i want to die.

灌水 is the most important thing in the world and by the way it is chinese .

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-25 23:23

原帖由 sych 于 2006-2-25 22:43 发表

it is only english that is used to communicate in this place. i want to die.

灌水 is the most important thing in the world and by the way it is chinese .

Please do not die, for one, your English is not bad, and more importantly, if you are a goner now, you will not have the chance to scorn or tease someone in English skillfully someday

. So, live for it.

If I "put in water", "add water", or "water it up", or "irrigate" (灌水), I might get confused and forget what I intended to do in the first place.

So, Chinese must rule sometimes.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-26 11:04

原帖由舞者于 2006-2-25 20:38 发表
did you mean "huh?" or "hug"? They are quite different. Sorry, that's 灌水。

Forgive you for the first time.

原帖由 sych 于 2006-2-25 22:43 发表

it is only english that is used to communicate in this place. i want to die.

灌水 is the most important thing in the world and by the way it is chinese .

It't rude habit, I won't 灌水 from now on, and forever.

p.s: very good resources of Alexis, many thanks.

作者: chinesepoet 时间: 2006-2-26 11:22
I think most of us should work hard for English more frequently,so that we could discuss some advanced topic.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-26 11:25

原帖由 chinesepoet 于 2006-2-26 11:22 发表
I think most of us should work hard for English more frequently,so that we could discuss some advanced topic.

advanced topic?

Like..?

作者: chinesepoet 时间: 2006-2-26 11:55
ontologic topic,hehe.

作者: chinesepoet 时间: 2006-2-26 12:10
In the beginning ,I don't think we can discuss some topic.we have to have a process.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-27 12:06
A few questions in translating,

1)
Is "Fair Amaryllis" a name or a noun?

作者: 舞者 时间: 2006-2-27 12:36

原帖由 牧场看守人 于 2006-2-27 12:06 发表
A few questions in translating,

1)
Is "Fair Amaryllis" a name or a noun?

Amaryllis is the name of Corydon's female lover, fair means fair, as an adj...it could mean light complexion as well as good looking/pretty.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-2-27 12:39

原帖由舞者于 2006-2-27 12:36 发表

Amaryllis is the name of Corydon's female lover, fair means fair, as an adj...it could mean light complexion as well as good looking/pretty.

Thanks, I thought "Amaryllis" is name of a shepherdess just like its meaning in Latin.

作者: mu 时间: 2006-5-8 17:43
Two days left..really busy, never slack off.

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