Hold me underwater, not afraid of drowning

[sovay]

Rabbit, rabbit! I woke this morning with forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit running through my head like the stuck line of a song, which I'm not even sure what to do with. On the other hand, I also woke to a small black cat who crawled under the covers beside me and purred himself back to sleep, which feels like a better omen. The air and the light have changed just enough to feel like autumn, even on a drizzling day. Every year I observe it's the ghost-season, but that doesn't seem to stop it being true.

Comments

[kore]

I liked this meditation on that line (I suck at Latin so I don't know if "help" really is more appropriate, but it seems to go more with Seneca and other Stoic viewpoints)

https://medium.com/in-medias-res/forsan-et-haec-olim-meminisse-iuvabit-will-remembering-help-or-please-d631c8829886

[sovay]

I liked this meditation on that line (I suck at Latin so I don't know if "help" really is more appropriate, but it seems to go more with Seneca and other Stoic viewpoints)

Thank you! I hadn't seen Lombardo's translation, but I have seen discussions of memory in terms of usefulness rather than pleasure. I wish I could remember what I was taught about the line when we read the Aeneid in high school, but any notes or written translations of mine, if they survived, would be longhand on paper in a box in my parents' storeroom.