The Shipwreck Sea
TRANSLATION EXCERPTS
Catullus, “Her Sparrow’s Passing”
Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
cui primum digitum dare appetenti
et acris solet incitare morsus,
cum desiderio meo nitenti
carum nescio quid lubet iocari
et solaciolum sui doloris,
credo ut tum gravis acquiescat ardor:
tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
et tristis animi levare curas!
*
Sparrow, my darling lady’s pet,
to her breast nestled when she frets,
to which she gives her fingertip,
her sorrow easing nip by nip
when some dear whim thus pleases her
its ardent onslaughts to incur.
To my bright love thus does it please
by this her play love’s pain to ease.
Oh, would that I at play with you
might have my own pain tended to!
Petronius, “Lovemaking Proprieties”
Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas et taedet Veneris statim peractae. non ergo ut pecudes libidinosae caeci protinus irruamus illuc (nam languescit amor peritque flamma); – sed sic sic sine fine feriati
et tecum iaceamus osculantes.
hic nullus labor est ruborque nullus: hoc iuvat, iuvat et diu iuvabit;
hoc non deficit incipitque semper.
*
Odious is coition’s joy, and brief;
the hurried consummation tiresome.
Thus be we not as rutting beasts undone, reckless our inclination and relief,
thus falters love and dwindling dies the flame, but be just so, abed our holiday,
thus bound, thus kissing the hours away. Here labor none, here banishment of shame, here bliss entire, beguilement in the chore, nor deficit, but bounty evermore.
Baudelaire (from “Lesbos”), “Where No Man Has Lain”
Lesbos, terre des nuits chaudes et langoureuses, Qui font qu’à leurs miroirs, stérile volupté!
Les filles aux yeux creux, de leur corps amoureuses, Caressent les fruits mûrs de leur nubilité; Lesbos, terre des nuits chaudes et langoureuses,
*
Lesbos, where balmy nighttimes langu’rously reign, That—in mirror’s view, infelicitous gain!—
Goad vacant-eyed girls to self-pleasured disdain, Their ripened fruits gladdened where no man has lain. Lesbos, where balmy nighttimes langu’rously reign.
Baudelaire (from “Le Balcon”) “Kisses from Depths Reborn”
Ces serments, ces parfums, ces baisers infinis, Renaîtront-ils d’un gouffre interdit à nos sondes, Comme montent au ciel les soleils rajeunis Après s’être lavés au fond des mers profondes? — Ô serments! ô parfums! ô baisers infinis!
*
These oaths, these perfumes, these kisses untold, Will they from a void to our senses closed
Arise, cleansed suns from depths of ocean old A’mount the skies, suns ever recomposed? O oaths, O perfumes, O kisses untold!
POEMS BY JEFFREY DUBAN
to pasture placed
Love’s glory day is past
and I to pasture placed
who in love’s course held fast nor equaled nor outpaced.
I mounted high the vale descended the divide,
and snorting did assail love’s rampart opened wide.
Yes, I who stayed love’s course,
to whom no steed drew near, am petted now perforce,
a hayseed in my ear.
*
with glory graced
Love’s glory day be sung resplendent to the lyre, strings taut and neatly strung aglow with bygone fire.
So range the bard’s report
of epic ecstasies
wherein I did disport
once, nestled at your knees.
*
with dawn’s first gaze
Not in gold admired
nor silk to sight displayed, my greeting stands attired in nature’s kiss conveyed.
My hair hangs fallen free,
my lips wear dawn’s first gaze, find upward from my knee pasturage where to graze.
Explore me north and south, feast fully on my breast, fasten me to your mouth north, south, east, and west.
*
from woman’s harborage
(On a theme from Nikos Kazantzakis, Odusseia, 6.773–786)
The stars begin to tinkle, strung like bells,
The prow-sown sea lies supine neath her swells, The slumb’ring soul in search of dreams unmoors, Its hold to weight with wares from distant shores.
Across the crust of crumbling thirsting earth Death’s ensign reigns affixed atop its berth, But soul its banner wraps about the world, From woman’s harb’rage voyaging unfurled.
It glides from lavish longitudes o’er-crossed, Cargoed with kisses, kisses flame-embossed, Each kiss untiring, each kiss evermore Protesting the loss of the kiss before.
Chapter Excerpts
Preface (Gender Neutral Art and Artistic Process )
This book explores both the vicissitudes of love—its exhilarations, perversions, and often catastrophic results—and the “battle of the sexes” vis-à-vis artistic creation. It expands as such upon the concerns of The Lesbian Lyre: Reclaiming Sappho for the 21st Century. I begin with an essay titled: “Female Homer and the Fallacy of Gendered Sensibility” (PART I). Taking my lead from Samuel Butler’s The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), I disavow the notion of gendered creativity, that is, of any difference appreciable to eye or ear between works created by men or by women. My position is that the process and product of artistry is invariably gender-neutral. Artistic sensibility, with possible passing exceptions, is neither male nor female, but human, ideally reflecting humane values and serving humane ends. Civilization is itself “the idealized goal and outcome of art.” This inquiry, within a necessarily bounded scope, traverses literature, painting, sculpture, and music.
PART I (No Miriams, No Deborahs, No Special Pleading)
There are no Miriams or Deborahs in the Greek tradition and, if there were, their singing (as in the Old Testament) would be indistinguishable from that of their male compeers. Their roles are those of strong, heroic, and initiative-taking women—not of singers performing from a “woman’s perspective” or requiring the like analysis or label. They exhibit no female compositional style, any more than does Sappho. Indeed, even the so-called Sapphic meter does not necessarily originate with Sappho, though she makes arresting use of it, ultimately affording it her name. The meter survived into Roman times. More than half a millennium later, it was used to great and quite different effect, among others, by Catullus and Horace (with clear nods to Sappho) and by Ovid, as noted.
PART I (Lipstick, Perfection, and Perpetuity)
The veneration to which women accede is puzzling. In some societies, it calls for lipstick, nail polish, eyeliner, and heels. These are real-time enhancements, seeking the perfection here and now of woman’s form and idealized likeness; a temporal or interim means by which to artifact, i.e., “make art of,” woman, preserving her as something ever beautiful, ideal, and unchanging. Such enhancement is apparent in the connection between rococo color and women’s cosmetics, in “painting as makeup.” As for the beauty and elaboration of women’s attire, it is said that the success of a woman’s dress is measured by a man’s desire to remove it.
PART V (Trepidation and Perversity)
. . . it was with trepidation that I undertook to translate the single most frequently and freely translated Latin lyric from antiquity, even as Horace himself “has had more translators than any other poet, ancient or modern.” The attraction, in the words of one pundit, owes to “the perversity of human endeavor,” Horace’s poetry being “about as untranslatable as you can get.” By the number of its renderings, we further surmise that Odes 1.5, as Pyrrha herself, is especially alluring; the most exciting and exacting of Horace’s poems; its pretenders, no less than Pyrrha’s own, left in disarray.
PART V (Never Again and Whew!)
It is noteworthy that in this, the first “love poem” of Horace’s Odes, the poet does not pine for unreciprocated love but disavows love’s very risk. Here is no Dylan Thomas’s “Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs,” but a self-satisfied poet pleased to have escaped the ordeal. How very much like Horace—by contrast to Catullus’s thrilling-to and riding out the storm—to hunker down in the captain’s quarters, chart the safer course, and boast the storm’s and life’s avoidances. . . . Horace offers no impassioned outpouring: no tongue “breaking” or “unhinged” and no cold sweat or racing subcutaneous flame (Sappho); no “shameful fits of parching rage” (Ibycus); none the annoyance nor bittersweetness of love’s iterations: “Why this time?” “Whom this time?” (Sappho); no resignation in the face of love’s assaults: “Again does Love” Anacreon). He sooner says, never again and whew! And yet there is the utter charm, resourcefulness, and sophistication of it all, attracting centuries of trans-lators (and critics) to this Siren’s song in particular, even as preternatural Pyrrha beguiles and beckons—poem and portal alike quasi-intemptati nitentes.