For O.B.
'See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here.'
Alexander Pope
Summer at last! And night gliding
silent and white
over the shivering, impervious leaves!
Time's - or perhaps eternity's -
headlong assaults
on the blue memorial of the heart!
And the sudden lapping of wild grasses
in the estuary of the hours!
And the scent of memories,
of things loved, of names, of laughter so close
leaving the river of the pillow
and leaping from the surface of the blood
into the furtive trembling soul
with the innocent agility of a squirrel!
Now, a song appears from the milky marble,
a song in haste to make us see,
perfect in their entanglements,
the anaglyphs of an Egyptian god!
Summer again! Summer!
Arator's Book,
sage, rosemary and thyme,
fluid flowers above us
ruffling the subtle veil of the air,
disturbing the strict order of
August shadows!
translated from the French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy by Norton Hodges
Notes:
Anaglyph:
1. An ornament carved in low relief.
2. A moving or still picture consisting of two slightly different
perspectives of the
same subject in
contrasting colours that are superimposed on each other, producing
a three-dimensional
effect when viewed through two correspondingly coloured
filters.
Alexander Pope:
Pope was born in London of Roman Catholic parents and moved to Binfield in
1700.
During his later childhood he was afflicted by a tubercular condition
known as Pott's
disease that ruined his
health and produced a pronounced spinal curvature. He never
grew taller than 4
ft 6 in. (1.4 m). Before he was 17 Pope was admitted to London
society and
encouraged as a prodigy. The shortest lived of his friendships was with
Joseph and his
coterie, who eventually insidiously attacked Pope's Tory leanings. His
attachment to the
Tory party was strengthened by his warm friendship with Swift
and his involvement
with the Srciblerus Club.
Works
: Pope's poetry
basically falls into three periods. The first includes the early
descriptive
poetry; the Pastorals
(1709); Windsor Forest (1713); the Essay on Criticism (1711), a
poem written in
heroic couplets outlining critical tastes and standards; The Rape of
the Lock (1714), a
mock-heroic poem ridiculing the fashionable world of his day;
contributions to the
Guardian; and “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady”
and “Eloise to
Abelard,” the only pieces he ever wrote dealing with love. In about
1717 Pope formed
attachments to Martha Blount, a relationship that lasted his entire
life, and to Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, with whom he later quarreled bitterly.
Pope's second period
includes his magnificent, if somewhat inaccurate, translations
of Homer, written in
heroic couplets; the completed edition of the Iliad (1720); and
the Odyssey
(1725–26), written with William Broome and Elijah Fenton. These
translations, along
with Pope's unsatisfactory edition of Shakespeare (1725),
amassed him a large
fortune. In 1719 he bought a lease on a house in Twickenham
where he and his
mother lived for the rest of their lives.
In the last period of his
career Pope turned to writing satires and moral poems.
These include The Dunciad (1728–43), a scathing satire on dunces and
literary hacks
in which Pope viciously
attacked his enemies, including Lewis Theobald, the critic
who had ridiculed
Pope's edition of Shakespeare, and the playwright Colley Cibber;
Imitations of Horace
(1733–38), satirizing social follies and political corruption; An
Essay on Man (1734),
a poetic summary of current philosophical speculation, his
most ambitious work;
Moral Essays (1731–35); and the “Epistle to Arbuthnot”
(1735), a defense in
poetry of his life and his work.
Arator: a sixth century Christian poet from Liguria in north-western
Italy. His best
known work, De Actibus
Apostolorum, is a verse history of the Apostles. |
