An ancient song: "Oceans"
stpaulbrowncoat
Posts: 12
I have a background in Latin and one of my favorite Roman poets is Publius Ovidius Naso (43BC-17AD), more commonly known as Ovid. He is most famous for the "Metamorpheses" and the "Ars Armatoria" ("The Art of Love", a courtship manual *ahem*). In the Heroides (Hero Stories) he tells the tale of Hero and Leander. Leander (the guy) would swim the strait between Asia and Europe, the Hellespont, to visit Hero (the girl). The two were having a secret affair and he would sneak into her room late at night and...um...meet...you get the idea. On night, she is unable to light the candle for him to guide himself by and he drowns. It all ends Romeo and Juliet style: upon learning of his death, she throws herself off the castle walls to he own death. Romantic and stupid all at the same time.
There is a desperation in that poem that has always made me think of Pearl Jam's "Oceans". The lyrics "..and we're all allowed to dream of the next time we touch.." fits Leander's voice and sentiment in the poem.
Put the poem's title into your favorite search engine and find an English translation. I haven't been able to link a site so far but will post back with more.
Wondering about everyone's take on this...
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There is a desperation in that poem that has always made me think of Pearl Jam's "Oceans". The lyrics "..and we're all allowed to dream of the next time we touch.." fits Leander's voice and sentiment in the poem.
Put the poem's title into your favorite search engine and find an English translation. I haven't been able to link a site so far but will post back with more.
Wondering about everyone's take on this...
-
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Forgive me for being such a geek......:)
XIX: Hero to Leander
Come! That I might have, in fact, the greetings
that you sent to me in words.
All waiting is long to us, that delays our joy.
Forgive my confession: I’m not patient in my love.
We blaze with equal fire, but I’m unequal to you in strength:
I suspect that a man is stronger by nature.
Like their bodies, the wills of tender girls are weaker:
add a little more time for delay, and I’ll fail.
You men, now hunting, now farming pleasant country,
spend many hours in various pastimes.
Either the market occupies you or, oiled, you’re bent at the skills
of wrestling, or you guide your horse’s neck with a bridle:
now you trap a bird, now draw a fish to your hook,
now dilute the wine that circles in the twilight hours.
These are denied me: even if I were less fiercely on fire,
nothing remains for me but to do what I do, to love.
What I do remains, and you, o my sole delight, I love,
more too than you may be able to give back to me.
I whisper about you with my white-haired nurse,
and ponder the reason for your delayed passage:
or I watch the sea stirred by hostile winds
reproving the waves almost with the words you use:
or when the waves slacken their weight of savagery a little,
I complain, it’s true, that you can come, but don’t want to:
while I complain tears trickle from my loving eyes,
and the old nurse, who knows, dries them with trembling hand.
Often I look to see if your footprints might mark the shore,
as if the sand might retain the marks traced there:
and to ask about you and write to you, I search out, if anyone
might be coming from Abydos, or going to Abydos.
Why recall how many times I kiss the garments
that you left when you plunged into the Hellespont’s waters?
So when day’s done, and night’s more friendly hour
shows its bright stars, driving away the daylight,
straight away I set out the unsleeping lights in the tower’s top,
signs and tokens of your familiar path,
and we beguile the long wait with feminine art,
twisting the threads drawn from the turning spindle.
Meanwhile I search for what to talk of in those long hours:
nothing but Leander’s name is on my lips.
‘Nurse, do you think my joy has left his house now,
or perhaps they are all awake, and he’s afraid of them?
Now do you think perhaps he slips the clothes from his shoulders,
and rubs olive oil now over all his limbs?’
She gives a nod: she doesn’t care about my kisses,
but moves her head, sleep stealing upon the old woman.
After the slightest pause, I say: ‘Now he’s swimming, for sure,
and his slow arms are cleaving the water.’
And, while the few threads I’ve finished fall to the floor,
I ask if you can have reached mid-strait perhaps.
And now I look out, and now I pray in a fearful voice,
that favourable winds grant you an easy passage:
I hear uncertain cries and I think that every noise
might be the sound of your arrival.
So as the larger part of the night passes for me in illusion,
sleep stealthily overcomes my weary eyes.
Perhaps, cruel one, you’ll still sleep with me, unwillingly,
and though not wishing, yourself, to come, you’ll come.
Now you seem to be nearer, now I see you swimming,
now my shoulders bear your briny arms,
now, as I do, I give the clothes from my breast to your wet limbs,
now, joined to you, I warm you with my heart,
and much besides is concealed, by the modest tongue,
that’s ashamed to speak of things it delights in doing.
Alas! It’s brief and pleasure is untrue:
for you always leave me, as sleep does.
Oh, let’s bind our eager passions more firmly,
so that our joys lack nothing of faith and truth.
Why do I spend so many cold, empty nights?
Why are you so often, lingering slowly, absent from me?
I grant the sea’s not fit for swimming:
but last night the wind became more gentle.
Why did you neglect it? Why didn’t you dare to come?
Why did such a moment die, and you not seize the time?
May you soon be given many similar chances,
though this one was surely better than those before.
But the shape of the peaceful deep changes quickly.
When you hurried, you often came in less time than that.
I think if you were to be caught here you wouldn’t complain
and, with me holding you, the storm would do you no harm.
Then I’d joyfully listen to the sounding winds
and I’d pray for the waters never to be calm.
What’s happened then, why are you more fearful of the waves,
and are afraid now of the straits you despised before?
Now I remember, when the sea was no less, or a little less,
savage and threatening, you came:
when I cried to you: ‘You are so reckless,
I’ll be mourning your courage in misery.’
Where’s this new fear from, and that courage fleeing to?
Where is that great swimmer scorning the tides?
Still, be rather as you would be, than as you used to be before,
and make your way here safely in a calm sea –
Provided that you’re the same: let us love, so, as you write,
and may its flame never become cold ashes.
I don’t greatly fear that the winds will delay my prayers,
but I fear lest your love strays like the wind,
or that I be not worthy, and the risk will outweigh my cause,
and the reward appear less to you than your labour.
At times I’m afraid lest my race harms me, and a Thracian girl
be considered unfit for marriage to Abydos.
Still, I could bear all things patiently, so long as I knew
you didn’t spend your time with a rival, captive, in idleness,
and no other’s arms came about your neck,
and no new love was ending our love.
Ah, let me rather die, than be wounded by that crime,
and my fate be charged with guilt before yours!
I don’t say this because you’ve shown signs of it happening,
or because I’m distressed by some new rumour.
I fear everything! Who has ever been secure in love?
And distance creates more fear, for the absent.
Happy are they, whose presence commands knowledge
of true guilt, and prevents fear of falsehood.
So many vain things move me, wrong that’s done deceives,
and the sting of both errors equally rouses me.
Oh I wish you would come! Or let the cause of your delay
be the winds, for sure, or your father, and not some woman!
If I were to know that grief, I’d die, believe me:
sin at once if you seek my death.
But you will not sin, and I fear it foolishly,
also you don’t come because you fight a hostile storm.
Ah me! What a tide pounds this shore,
and the day is hidden, buried by a dark cloud!
Perhaps Nephele, Helle’s devoted mother, may have come
to the straits, and weeps for her drowned child, with the water’s flow:
or Ino, the stepmother, now a sea-goddess, stirs the sea,
that’s called by the name of her hated step-daughter?
As it is, this place is not kind to tender girls:
here Helle perished, here I’m wounded by the waters.
But remember your love-flames, Neptune,
and love won’t be hindered by the winds:
if the tale of your crimes against Amymone, and Tyro,
most praised for her beauty, are not vain,
and bright Alcyone, and Calyce, and Hecate’s daughter,
and Medusa before her hair was knotted with snakes,
and golden-haired Laodice, and Celaeno, received in heaven,
and other names I remember that I’ve read of.
Surely, the poets sing of these and more, Neptune,
who have joined their sweet flanks to yours.
So why have you, who so often felt the power of love,
closed the familiar path to us, with storms?
Spare us, proud one, and embroil yourself in battle out at sea:
this short passage separates our two lands.
You are suited to hurling about great ships with your might,
or even being fierce towards a whole fleet:
It’s shameful for the god of the sea to terrify a young swimmer,
and the glory’s less than that of the god of a pond somewhere.
In fact he’s noble and of a distinguished family,
but he draws nothing from Ulysses’s race, that you mistrust.
Take pity, and guard us both. He swims: but the same wave
carries the body of Leander and my hopes.
The light splutters in fact – for I write where it’s placed –
it splutters, and thereby gives me a favourable sign.
See, onto the auspicious flame my nurse drops wine:
‘Tomorrow,’ she says, ‘ there’ll be more of us’, and drinks the rest.
Make us more, gliding through the defeated waves,
oh you, received deep within me, by my whole heart!
Return to this camp, deserter from mutual love:
why should my body be left in the centre of the bed?
What I might fear: is not! Venus herself blesses you with courage,
and, born from the waves, she smoothes the sea-lanes.
Often I want to travel the midst of the waves myself,
but these straits are usually safer for men.
Why, if Phrixus and his sister Helle were carried over them,
did only the girl give her name to the desolate waters?
Perhaps you fear there’ll not be time for you to return,
or you won’t be able to endure the effort of a double journey.
But let us meet, from opposite directions, in mid-strait,
and exchange kisses, as we touch, on the crest of a wave,
and each return, once more, to the cities we came from:
that would be little, but better than nothing at all.
I wish this shame, that forces us to love in secret,
would end, or our love, fearful of reputation!
Now, the thing’s badly joined: passion and propriety conflict.
Which to follow’s in doubt: one is proper: the other gives joy.
When Jason, of Pagasa, once entered Colchis
he swiftly carried Medea away from Phasis, in his ship:
When Paris, of Ida, once came as an adulterer to Sparta,
he soon returned with Helen, his prize.
You, who so often seek whom you love, as often leave her,
and whenever it’s difficult for ships to sail, you swim.
In this way, o youth, conqueror of the swollen waters,
you scorn what the straits may do, though you fear them.
Ships built with skill can be sunk by the waters:
do you think your arms are more capable than oars?
What you desire: to swim, Leander: is what the sailor fears:
it’s usually the result for him of his ship being wrecked.
Ah me! I want to persuade you not to do as I urge,
and pray you’re stronger than my admonishments:
provided you’d come and throw those weary arms,
battered often by the waves, around my shoulders.
But whenever I turn towards the dark-blue waves
my fearful heart’s possessed by some unknown chill.
And I’m troubled no less by last night’s dream,
though I’ve propitiated the gods with holy rites.
Just before dawn, when the lamp was sinking,
a time when true dreams are often experienced,
the slackened thread fell from my hands in sleep,
and I laid my head on the supporting pillow.
In it, without doubt, in true vision, I saw a dolphin
swimming along through the stormy waves:
then, when the flood had dashed it against the thirsty sands,
life, and the tide, together, abandoned the wretched creature,
Whatever it means, I’m frightened: don’t mock my dream
and don’t trust yourself to the sea unless it’s tranquil.
If you don’t spare yourself, spare your beloved girl,
who can never be safe unless you’re safe too.
Yet there’s hope of peace near in the weakening waves:
then you must divide the calm waters with your breast.
Meanwhile, since the straits are not passable by swimming,
let the letter I send ease the hateful hours of waiting.
shoot, and this was Leander's letter to Hero, which came before[/] Hero's reply, posted above. sorry 'bout that!
XVIII: Leander to Hero
Hero, accept, from Leander’s hand, while he himself comes,
what he’d have wished to bear through the customary waves.
From one of Abydos, greetings, girl of Sestos, which he’d prefer
to bring to you, if only the waves would abate.
If the fates are good to me, if the gods accompany me with love,
you’ll read these words with indifferent eyes.
But the fates aren’t kind: why now would they delay my pledge,
not allowing me to hurry to you through familiar waters?
You yourself can see the sky blacker than pitch, and the strait
troubled by winds, and ships hardly venturing the deeps.
One boatman, and he’s daring, by whom my letter
is delivered to you, makes his way from harbour.
I’d have embarked with him, except that when he cast off
the lines from the stern, he was in view from all Abydos.
I wouldn’t have been masked from my parents, as before,
and the love we wish to conceal wouldn’t have been hidden.
As soon as I wrote this, I said: ‘Go, happy letter!
now she’ll reach out her lovely hand for you.
Perhaps she’ll even touch you, with her snow-white teeth,
bringing you to her lips, when she wishes to break your seal.’
I spoke these words to myself in a low murmur,
while the rest of the sheet was indicated by my right hand.
But how I’d prefer that this hand, that writes, might swim
and carry me faithfully through familiar waters!
However apt it is as a servant of my feelings,
it’s better in fact at making strokes in the placid sea:
For seven nights, a space of time longer to me than a year,
I’ve been disturbed, as the troubled ocean raged with cruel waves.
If my mind has seen gentle sleep through those nights,
may this delay caused by the raging straits be a long one.
I’m sitting on a rock, sadly gazing at your other shore
and I’m carried in mind to where my body cannot go.
Indeed my keen watchful eye either sees
or thinks it sees the summit to your tower.
Three times I’ve left my clothes on the dry sands:
three times, naked, painfully, I’ve tried to swim the roads:
the swollen sea opposed my youthful undertaking,
and, swimming against the waves, my head was submerged.
But you, wildest of the swift winds, why do you,
with fixed purpose, wage war against me?
If you don’t see it, Boreas, you rage against me not the waves.
What might you do if love was not known to you?
Icy though you may be, cruel one, still, can you deny
that you once glowed with Greek fire?
What joy in plundering would you have known
if the airy approaches had wished to shut you out?
Spare me, I beg you, and release a more gentle breeze!
And let Aeolus not command anything offensive to you!
I beg in vain: he roars in answer to my prayers
and holds in check no part of the waters he’s stirred.
Now I wish Daedalus might give me bold wings!
Though the shores of the Icarian Sea are not far from here.
I’d suffer whatever might be, if only my body, that often hangs
above the uncertain water, might be lifted into the air.
Meanwhile, while winds and waves deny all,
I agitate my mind with the first moments of my secret affair.
Night was falling – indeed I remember the pleasure of it –
when, a lover, I slipped from my father’s door.
Without delay, shedding my clothes, and with them my fear,
I calmly slid my arms into the flowing water.
The moon offered only a trembling light, to my going,
like an obliging companion on the road.
I looked up to her, and said: ‘Favour me, bright goddess,
and let the cliffs of Latmia suggest themselves to your mind.
Endymion would not allow you to be hard-hearted:
I beg you, turn your face to my secret enterprise!
Goddess, you came down from the sky to seek a mortal:
may I speak truth! – She whom I follow is herself a goddess.
Without calling to mind her virtues, worthy of the gods,
her beauty doesn’t appear except among true goddesses.
There’s no greater loveliness than hers, after yours and Venus’s:
if you don’t believe my words, look for yourself!
By as much as all the stars yield to your fires
when you shine out, silver, with clear rays,
so much more beautiful than all the beauties is she:
if you doubt it, Cynthia, your eye is blind.’
I spoke these words or ones not unlike them,
the waters I shouldered parting before me, of themselves.
The waves shone with the image of the reflected moon
and it was bright as day in the silent night.
There was no voice anywhere: nothing came to my ears,
except the murmur of the waters, parted by my body.
Halycons alone appeared, lamenting to me,
sweetly, remembering dear Ceyx.
Then, both my arms growing weary, at the shoulder,
I raised myself strongly, high above the waves.
Seeing a distant light, I said: ‘My fire is in that fire:
that is the shore that holds my light.’
And sudden strength returned to my weary arms,
and the waves seemed calmer to me.
Love aids me, warming my eager heart,
so I will not be chilled by the deep cold.
I am more vigorous and the shore comes nearer,
as the distance grows less, my joy increases.
When I can see you clearly, your watching
gives me strength, and adds to my courage.
Now, to please my lady, I labour to swim,
and lift up my arms to catch your sight.
Your nurse can hardly stop you plunging into the deep.
This I saw too, it was not something I was told of.
Though she held you from going, she could not stop you,
nor prevent your feet being wet by the wave’s edge.
You embrace me, and join in happy kisses –
kisses, great gods, worth seeking over the sea!
Then you surrender to me the shawl from your shoulders,
and dry my hair drenched by the showers of brine.
The rest night knows, and we, and the tower that sees,
and the light that showed me a path through the sea.
The joys of that night can no more be counted
than the seaweeds in the waters of Hellespont:
how brief the time granted us for that secret passion,
how great the care that it was not wasted.
Soon Aurora, Tithonus’s bride, would chase away the night:
Lucifer paving the way, was in the sky:
we shower hasty kisses, quickly, without thought,
and complain how little the night lingers.
And so, delaying until the nurse’s cross warning,
leaving the tower, I seek the cold shore.
We part weeping, and I re-enter virgin Helle’s waters,
looking back at my lady, when I can, all the way.
If truth be known, coming to you from here I was a swimmer,
when I returned, I seemed to myself like a drowning man.
This too, if you would believe it: to you the way seemed smooth:
from you returning, a hill of inert water.
I return, unwillingly, to my country: who would believe it?
Now truly I linger in my city unwillingly.
Ah me! Why are our hearts that joined severed by the waves,
two of one mind but not of one country?
Your Sestos should take me, or my Abydos you:
your land pleases me, as much as mine pleases you.
Why am I troubled, when the sea is troubled?
How can a slight cause, the wind, oppose me?
Now the curved dolphins know of our affairs,
nor do I think I’m unknown to all the fish.
Now my worn path through the solitary waves is familiar,
no different to a road traversed by many wheels.
Before, I complained that this was the only way for me:
but now I also complain that I fail because of the wind.
Helle’s waters whiten with unruly waves,
and scarcely a boat remains safe at its moorings.
I think this sea was found like this, when first
it took its name from the drowned virgin.
This place is infamous enough from Helle’s loss,
and though it spares me, it has an evil name.
I envy Phrixus, carried safely over stormy seas,
on the golden ram, with its woolly fleece:
nevertheless I don’t need the services of a ram, or a boat,
provided these waters are given me, that my body parts.
Nothing’s done by artifice: only by the means to swim,
riding the waves, I’m both sailor and ship,
I don’t follow, Helice, the Great Bear, or Arctos, the Little Bear
that men of Tyre use: my love needs no visible stars.
Some other can gaze at Andromeda, or bright Corona Borealis,
or Callisto’s Bear shining at the frozen pole:
But it does not please me for the loves of Perseus,
Bacchus, or Jove, to be the judges of my dangerous path.
Another light’s more certain for me: my love,
that guides me, doesn’t wander in the darkness.
While I gaze on it, I might swim to Colchis, furthest Pontus,
and where the Thessalian ship, the Argo made its way,
and I might outdo young Palaemon, and Glaucus
whom a bite of grass made suddenly a god.
Exhausted, I can scarcely drag myself through the vast waters,
and often my arms are wearied by the endless motion.
When I tell them: ‘The reward for your labours will not be small,
soon it will be granted you to embrace your lady’s neck,’
they gain strength right away, and strain for the prize,
like swift horses of Elis, released from the starting gate.
So I serve my passions, with which I’m burnt,
and follow you the more, girl worthy of the heavens.
True you are worthy of the heavens, but linger still on earth,
or tell me which is indeed the way to the gods!
You are here, and have only a wretchedly small part of your lover,
and when the sea is stirred, my mind is stirred.
What good is it to me that no great width of sea divides us?
Does so narrow a stretch of water obstruct me less?
I wonder if I’d prefer to be a whole world distant,
when the hope I have of my lady is also far away.
Now, because we are nearer, I burn with a nearer flame,
and the hope, but not the thing itself, is always near me.
I almost touch what I love with my hand: it is so near:
but often, alas, that ‘almost’ moves me to tears!
How is it different, I say, to snatching at intangible fruit,
or chasing the hope of vanishing water with one’s mouth?
In that way, am I never to hold you, unless the waves wish it,
and is the storm never to see me happy,
and, when nothing’s less permanent than wind or wave,
are my hopes always to be with wind and water?
It is still summer. What when the Pleiades, and Bootës,
and Capella’s Kids wound me and the waters?
Either I haven’t learnt how rash I might be,
or, then too, incautious Love will send me into the sea:
If you think I vow it only because the time is not yet ripe,
I’ll give you an assurance of my promise without delay.
Let the tides be still as high as now for a few nights more,
and I’ll try to cross the uninviting waters.
Either I’ll reach happiness, through courage, in safety,
or death will make an end of anxious love.
I wish nevertheless to be thrown on that shore
and my drowned body reach your harbour.
For you’ll weep, and think my body worthy to be touched
and you’ll say: ‘I was the cause of this man’s death!’
No doubt you might be grieved by an omen of my death,
and this part of my letter might be hateful to you.
Enough: refrain from complaint. But let your prayer
agree with mine, I beg, that the sea indeed ends its wrath.
A brief lull is needed for me to cross to you:
when I touch your shore let the storm rage on!
There is the right harbour for my keel,
and no better waters exist for my vessel.
There let the North Wind shut me in, where delay is sweet:
There I’ll be reluctant to swim, there I’ll be cautious,
I’ll not cry out against the unheeding waves,
nor complain the sea is harsh for swimming.
Let both the winds and your tender arms hold me equally,
and I’ll be hindered by both causes.
When I’ve suffered the storm, I’ll use my arms as oars:
only always keep your light in sight.
Meanwhile let this stay with you, all night, instead of me,
this letter, that I pray, myself, to follow, with the least delay
Oceans
hold on to the thread
the currents will shift
glide me towards...
you know something's left
and we're all allowed
to dream of the next
of the next time we touch...
you don't have to stray
the oceans away
waves roll in my thoughts
hold tight the ring...
the sea will rise...
please stand by the shore...
i will be... i will be there once more...
Many Thanks and Much Peace!