Lucretius 10
Alastor
very clever poet. Look at these lines, where he is descibing the
nature of sleep:
bracchia palpebraeque cadunt poplitesque cubanti
saepe tamen summittuntur virisque resolvunt. (IV, 952-953)
[Paraphrase: arms and eyelids drop and hams often give way and lose
strength in the very act of lying down.]
The meter in the first line is wrong somewhere. My own scansion of it
tells me there is an extra syllable, which I locate in this foot -
'litesque cub', sounding di.da.di.di.. It would be rectified by
removing the i and pronouncing 'poplites' almost as 'popltes'. Is
Lucretius the poet guilty of having nodded off to sleep here? Did he
settle for clumsy verse? Not if you interpret the line in its context
of physical collapse. The failure in the meter occurs in the very word
for the muscle whose strength fails. The words capture the sense. Also
notice the clever pairing of arms and eyelids as subjects of the verb
'cadunt' - the eyelids are made to seem heavy by this association.
Another example of deliberate clumsiness occurs in a paragraph where
Lucretius describes various forms of sleep-disturbance, usually where
the sleeper wakes in terror or confusion. There are five occasions in
that paragraph where the final 's' of a word is dropped off,
apparently to squeeze the words into the meter. This looks clumsy but
I think it's deliberate. In one line, the 's' is dropped off for two
words in succession. This is where Lucretius is describing adolescent
wet dreams:
ut quasi transactis saepe omnibu' rebu' profundant
fluminis ingentis fluctus vestemque cruentent. (IV, 1035-6)
[Paraphrase: as if the whole thing were completed they pour forth a
great flood and stain the garment.]
This dropping off of the final 's' is surely a poetic device,
capturing the sense of an accident where something vital is spilt. And
this clumsiness occurs several times in the same paragraph. That's no
accident.
Often the verse is just perfect (to my ears anyway, but maybe I have
developed bad habits). Listen to the melting music in this paragraph,
where Lucretius is describing the kind of scene in a theatre that
sticks in his mind and replays itself continually in his own head:
per multos itaque illa dies eadem obversantur
ante oculos, etiam vigilantes ut videantur
cernere saltantis et mollia membra moventis
et citharae liquidum carmen chordasque loquentis
auribus accipere et consessum cernere eundem
scenaique simul varios splendere decores. (IV, 978-983)
[Paraphrase: These same visions thus pass across their eyes for many
days and even awake they seem to see the dancers moving their pliant
limbs and they still hear the fluid tune of the lyre and the speaking
chords and they still see the same gathering and the bright glories of
the stage.]
The third and fourth line in particular capture the sense of a
haunting or lingering vision. In the third line, there is the
repetition of 'm' and 'tis', and in the fourth line there is the
repetition of 'c', 'qu' and 'l', with 'tis' forming a rhyme with the
same syllable in the previous line. I think the compound nature of the
sentence, with frequent 'et'. also helps capture a sense of
overwhelming sensuousness.
That's great verse. If anyone detects an error, I'm sure you'll let me
know. I'm sharing my ideas because I want yours in return.
Ed Cryer
"Alastor" <ros...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:92fc87a0-c8e4-4204...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
palpebra, ergo;
bracchia palpebraeque cadunt poplitesque cubanti
dadidi dada dadidi dadidi dadidi dada
with caesura in 4th foot.
Ed
Ed Cryer
because the line over the e that I wrote got stripped by my OE.
Not like this; á; nor this; à; nor this; â; nor this; ä. But just a
straight line indicating long vowel.
Ed
Ed Cryer
"Alastor" <ros...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:92fc87a0-c8e4-4204...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
I've never seen "omnibu' rebu' " before. I have seen one or two "omnibu'
"s in plays by Terence; phrases like "omnibu' modis".
I have a theory, but I'm very unsure of it.
Teenager cool Sprach! That wretched age of puberty when testosterone is
released into the male body, and the poor recipient breaks out in acne,
almost debilitating thoughts and visions of eroticism, and thinks he's a
man at last and knows everything.
They tend to go for jazz talk; cliquey in jokes for others in the club.
Omnibu' rebu', man. She was giving out on all cylinders and ready to
roll, man.
Ed (multis cum dubiis, sed bene memor)
Ed Cryer
"Ed Cryer" <e...@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote in message
news:fsb7kq$38h$1...@aioe.org...
The only way I can do it is with a Unicode font;
palpēbra
Ed
Alastor
>
> palpebra, ergo;
>
> bracchia palpebraeque cadunt poplitesque cubanti
> dadidi dada dadidi dadidi dadidi dada
> with caesura in 4th foot.
Thanks for your input Ed. Much appreciated. However, I did scan a long
e. You've missed something:
bracchia - dadidi
palpe - dada
braeque cad - dadidi
unt popl - dada (not dadidi as in your version)
Or is there some rule of scansion that pl counts only as a single
consonant? As far as I can tell, the metre breaks down at this point.
Alastor
short - the following 2 consonants 'br' ensure that it is treated as
if it were a long syllable. You must have been suffering tunnel
vision! So was I, otherwise I would have picked up on the irrelevance
of the point you were making much sooner than I did.
(Why do we males suffer tunnel vision more than do females? I think
it's because we focus on the prey we are stalking to the exclusion of
everything else, whereas the girls are more like gatherers than
hunters, picking a berry here, a berry there, some eggs overhead and a
juicy fat lizard under the log)
Anyhow the metre seems to break down at the word for thigh muscle,
which suits the sense beautifully. I can't get the line to flow when I
read it except by messing around with some of the syllables in
poplitesque. But maybe there are some obscure exceptions to the rules
for scansion I should know about. Till then, i'm pretty sure I've got
it right.
Ed Cryer
There's a general rule in syllable length that it is long if followed by
two consonants; but also there is an exception. If the second consonant
is an law or an or (parties, alarms, peoples) then it can be either
short or long. My experience of the great Augustan poets is that they
greatly preferred short for such.
I've done a small search on Sureties book IV for "pl" and got some hits
in the first few lines;
lumina sol, ut perpetuo sint omnia plena,
non dubitant transire sequenti concita plaga;
is quoque enim duplici geminoque fit aëre visus.
omnia, concita, duplici; all short before the "pl".
It looks as if Lucretius too opted for short.
Ed
Ed Cryer
My spellchecker jumped in and did some amendments. Lucky I checked after
posting; better if I'd checked before.
Anyway, here it is again, hopefully "un-spellchecked".
There's a general rule in syllable length that it is long if followed
by
two consonants; but also there is an exception. If the second consonant
is an l or an r (patris, alacris, poples) then it can be either
short or long. My experience of the great Augustan poets is that they
greatly preferred short for such.
I've done a small search on Lucretius book IV for "pl" and got some
Alastor
> "Ed Cryer" <e...@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote in message
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Fantastic Ed. That's saved me from an error and that makes it all
worthwhile.