Cushion quotation

[Matthew Montchalin]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Roy Candler wrote:
|Just passing - used to read this Newsgroup but haven't been here in
|years. My Latin was rusty then, it has practically seized up now.
|Anyway, here's the problem. My Better Half has bought some cushions,

Say, how much did she pay for them? From the rest of your message,
it looks like they are well worthy collecting. :)

|on which there is what seems to be a Latin poem (or part of one) -
|and has asked me to translate. Finding it hard going, so am posting
|it here in case anyone recognises it. It seems to be taken from a
|tapestry, and has the letters N, R, V and E in the corners, in
|illuminated script.
|
| LOQUERIS
|Si vis me flere, Dolendum est
|Telephe vel Peleu male si ipsi
|DORMITABO AUT MANDATA
|on satis est pulchra
|Ridentibus adrident, ita
| RIDEBO

Well, just translating by sight, I'd offer something along the lines
of:

IF YOU SAID:

"If you are going to cry on me, then let it be a real tear-jerker,
or if Telephus or Peleus themselves sneer wickedly on that,
then (in that case = aut) I SHALL DRIFT ASLEEP ON THOSE ORDERS,
- O, is it enough that it is beautiful to those jokers? - so,

I'LL LAUGH

|"Telephe" and "Peleu" are personal names, I assume, and "on" is
|not a word I recognise from schooldays (but that was a long time ago).
|I can get most of the words, but can't make sense of the whole.

My gut feeling suggests that 'on' is merely the interjection O!
with the enclitic interrogative -ne joined to it. As you well
know, the final 'e' is often dropped on -ne. Short of that, it
is an awful Greek barbarism entered into the Latin language for
some unknowable reason.

[Roy Candler]

Just passing - used to read this Newsgroup but haven't been here in
years. My Latin was rusty then, it has practically seized up now.
Anyway, here's the problem. My Better Half has bought some cushions,

on which there is what seems to be a Latin poem (or part of one) - and
has asked me to translate. Finding it hard going, so am posting it
here in case anyone recognises it. It seems to be taken from a
tapestry, and has the letters N, R, V and E in the corners, in
illuminated script.

LOQUERIS
Si vis me flere, Dolendum est
Telephe vel Peleu male si ipsi
DORMITABO AUT MANDATA
on satis est pulchra
Ridentibus adrident, ita
RIDEBO

"Telephe" and "Peleu" are personal names, I assume, and "on" is not a

word I recognise from schooldays (but that was a long time ago). I
can get most of the words, but can't make sense of the whole.

Any suggestions welcome,

Roy

[Fred W. Helenius]

royca...@clara.co.uk (Roy Candler) wrote:

>Just passing - used to read this Newsgroup but haven't been here in
>years. My Latin was rusty then, it has practically seized up now.
>Anyway, here's the problem. My Better Half has bought some cushions,
>on which there is what seems to be a Latin poem (or part of one) - and
>has asked me to translate. Finding it hard going, so am posting it
>here in case anyone recognises it. It seems to be taken from a
>tapestry, and has the letters N, R, V and E in the corners, in
>illuminated script.
>
> LOQUERIS
>Si vis me flere, Dolendum est
>Telephe vel Peleu male si ipsi
>DORMITABO AUT MANDATA
>on satis est pulchra
>Ridentibus adrident, ita
> RIDEBO

It seems to be a scrambled portion of Horace's Ars Poetica;
here are lines 99-105 from the Perseus Project's text at
http://ibis.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Hor.+Ars+99 :

non satis est pulchra esse poemata: dulcia sunto
et quocumque volent animum auditoris agunto.
ut ridentibus adrident, ita flentibus adflent
humani voltus. si vis me flere, dolendum est
primum ipsi tibi: tum tua me infortunia laedent,
Telephe vel Peleu; male si mandata loqueris,
aut dormitabo aut ridebo.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Hor.+Ars+99
gives an English prose translation:

It is not enough that poems be beautiful; let them be
tender and affecting, and bear away the soul of the
auditor whithersoever they please. As the human countenance
smiles on those that smile, so does it sympathize with those
that weep. If you would have me weep you must first express
the passion of grief yourself; then, Telephus or Peleus, your
misfortunes hurt me: if you pronounce the parts assigned you
ill, I shall either fall asleep or laugh.

--
Fred W. Helenius <fr...@ix.netcom.com>

[Roy Candler]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 20:30:05 GMT, royca...@clara.co.uk (Roy Candler)
wrote:
>
> LOQUERIS
My thanks to the two gentlemen who replied to my query. To Matthew
Montchalin for his gallant translation, and to Fred Helenius for not
only identifying the source in Horace but to providing a translation
of the original from which the inscription on our cushions (£6 each on
a stall at Derby market, BTW) is apparently derived.

In so doing, unfortunately, another mystery has taken its place. Who
could have made such an "ientaculum canis" (as they say in these
parts) of the passage, and why? The design, with its arbitrary use of
capitals in one line, lower-case in another, is odd - especially with
the initials in the four corners.

For visitors, though, I am working on a story that this is a message
in code, allegedly pointing to the true whereabouts of King John's
jewels, the tomb of King Arthur, or God-knows-what (which could
probably be worked up into a bestseller with a bit of effort).

Roy

[Cormac Murphy-O'Connor]

Yup, it's from the Ars Poetica all right - my Latin tutor at uni keeps a
matching cushion and throw with the same design on the back of one of his
chairs, so he can put people on the spot by asking them to identify the
source. I don't know why it's type-set like that, though I've sat through
many tedious tutorials on Lucretius wondering. Coincidentally, I was at a
house last night where they had curtains of a very similar design, only in
red and with the quotation 'lupus et agnus consederint' and various other
pieces. From the book of Isaiah I think, or could it be the psalms - my
Biblical scholarship is about of the same order as my classics...

Alec

[Matthew Montchalin]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2001, Roy Candler wrote:
|In so doing, unfortunately, another mystery has taken its place.
|Who could have made such an "ientaculum canis" (as they say in
|these parts) of the passage, and why? The design, with its
|arbitrary use of capitals in one line, lower-case in another,
|is odd - especially with the initials in the four corners.

It's the stylistic effect of embedding one thing within the other.

[Matthew Montchalin]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Roy Candler wrote:
| LOQUERIS
|Si vis me flere, Dolendum est
|Telephe vel Peleu male si ipsi
|DORMITABO AUT MANDATA
|on satis est pulchra
|Ridentibus adrident, ita
| RIDEBO

You were wondering why certain words were given in uppercase, and others
left in lowercase. As you can see, if we ignore all the lowercase
letters, we'll get something like this:

LOQUERIS
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
DORMITABO AUT MANDATA
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
RIDEBO

where the lowercase 'B' letters mean 'blah blah blah.'

"[Whatever] you will say,
I'll sleep, or [if you utter] commands
I'll laugh."

So, as you can see, it is an *inside* joke, for those of us privy
(or pretending to be privy) to the nuances of the language.

[Roy Candler]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2001 14:52:47 -0800, Matthew Montchalin
<mmon...@OregonVOS.net> wrote:

>"[Whatever] you will say,
> I'll sleep, or [if you utter] commands
> I'll laugh."
>
>So, as you can see, it is an *inside* joke, for those of us privy
>(or pretending to be privy) to the nuances of the language.

Damn! Failed another intelligence test.

Roy

[Matthew Montchalin]

Although it may be an inside joke, it nevertheless may well have
a heritage implying connections with something else. We might
like to keep looking. :)

[jacqueli...@gmail.com]

Just bought a similar cushion
Whatever any one says...
I laugh

It's simple perfect for me and thanks to all the old scholars
Where ever you may be

[Ed Cryer]

Is it like one of these?
http://www.busylizziecrafts.co.uk/ourshop/cat_324495-Cushions.html

Ed

[skilt...@gmail.com]

I wonder whether one should approach the problem presented by these cushions in another way. It may not matter WHAT the quotation means (though it is very well known, and very common in the abbreviated form "se vis me flere", which used to be known to all students of literature, whether or not they knew much Latin. I start from the question of WHY this quotation is on a cushion, and a cushion, moreover, produced for and marketed by a respetable firm of drapers, Jones Brothers, one of the precursors of John Lewis in opc-parternship business, I believe, and not catering principally for a highly educated customer. There are old schoolboy jokes about Horace's Ars Poetica, which lead me to suppose that these words are on a cushion upon which you might place your arse poetic or poetic arse. Perhaps the design of the cushion is taken from an example from another age, when men would find it, if not funny, then enagaging, and reminiscent of schooldays, while ladies might be able to ignore the feeble double-entendre, which is maculine in-joke. This is just another way of looking at -- and using -- the cushion.

[Rich Alderson]

skilt...@gmail.com writes:

> On Thursday, 13 December 2001 21:44:57 UTC, Matthew Montchalin wrote:

>> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Roy Candler wrote:

You do realize that you're responding to a post from 17.5 years ago, right?

--
Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

[jojo...@googlemail.com]

Hi i read thru this lot n yor comment has just made my day, so thanku xxx lol xx
Only u was the last of them- how come no one put any more posts up? And did we get any final reasons to the 4 letters in corners/ what they meant? Nice1 xxx My name is Joanne by the way, so hi n ty n byeeee x

[Ed Cryer]

jojo...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Hi i read thru this lot n yor comment has just made my day, so thanku xxx lol xx
> Only u was the last of them- how come no one put any more posts up? And did we get any final reasons to the 4 letters in corners/ what they meant? Nice1 xxx My name is Joanne by the way, so hi n ty n byeeee x
>

You should have included a ref to the thread;
https://elbo.in/xyRu

Ed

[jojo...@googlemail.com]

Thanku x