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We had too much time to find for ourselves
I translated this tonight for one of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
strange_selkie's projects-in-progress and she said I should post it, so that's my excuse. Have some Catullus 5:
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love
and to the gossip of censorious old men
give all the credit of a copper coin.
Suns can set and return again:
with us, once our brief light is gone,
one unending night is ours to sleep.
So give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then a thousand again, then a second hundred,
then straight on another thousand, then a hundred,
then after making up so many thousands
we will scatter them all, so that we may not know
and neither can any ill-wisher look us awry,
when he knows the number of our kisses.
strange_selkie's projects-in-progress and she said I should post it, so that's my excuse. Have some Catullus 5:Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love
and to the gossip of censorious old men
give all the credit of a copper coin.
Suns can set and return again:
with us, once our brief light is gone,
one unending night is ours to sleep.
So give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
then a thousand again, then a second hundred,
then straight on another thousand, then a hundred,
then after making up so many thousands
we will scatter them all, so that we may not know
and neither can any ill-wisher look us awry,
when he knows the number of our kisses.
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LJ apparently hangs out with my muse. I told you. They went out and got wrecked on vodka tonics.
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Oh, for the love of Hermes.
They went out and got wrecked on vodka tonics.
Tell her to stay off the internet! It's not for drinking, it's for porn!
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...And there actually are dicks, for once. OH MY PEARLS.
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I do like Pet Shop Boys. I like "West End Girls," and I really like their version of "You Were Always on My Mind."
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I shall have translate Catullus 7 next.
and I really like their version of "You Were Always on My Mind."
Thanks!
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Catullus 7:
You ask me how many of those kisses
of yours, Lesbia, are enough and more?
As many as number the sands of Libya
that lie in Cyrene rich in silphium
between the oracle of sultry Jupiter
and Battus the ancestor's sacred tomb
or as many stars as in the silenced night
watch the stolen loves of mortals—
to kiss you so many of those kisses
is, for crazy Catullus, enough and more,
which the curious will never tally up
nor use with wicked tongue to cast a spell.
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sultry Jupiter
--gives me a whole different sense of Jupiter!
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He was some of the first real Latin I read. He's wonderful.
--gives me a whole different sense of Jupiter!
Iovis . . . aestuosi: both because the oracle of Zeus-Ammon is located in the desert and because the god is legendarily lustful, turning himself into equally numberless animals to seduce women and nymphs (and not a few beautiful boys, cf. Ganymede and the eagle). I thought about translating the word as smoldering, but that didn't give the right sense of a sticky summer night.
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(love the photo on that wikipedia page of the temple)
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(And you have that coin, just in case.)
Nine
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Thank you! I find it difficult to translate poems I'm very close to, so I'm glad.
(And you have that coin, just in case.)
(Yes, I do.)
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Thank you!
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Thank you! That is an important component!
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Absolutely; that's another one I love, so it terrifies me.
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I notice you mentioned this as a work in progress; are you eventually going to translate the whole set, or just selections? Either way, I'm excited to see more, as your translations are gorgeous.
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Well, the work in progress is
Either way, I'm excited to see more, as your translations are gorgeous.
Thank you! I'll try to keep it up . . .
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Then again, so does the one where I think the friend loses his wife?
Anyway, I can't wait.
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It's in the queue.
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Thank you!