Finished set

a very energetic and diverse set. i think my favourite was The Dust Cellar. http://www.abctales.com/abcplex/viewstory.cgi?s=25662

Yeah nice one Henstoat.. haven't read everything in your "hats off, uno" set; but I agree with chant; what I've read so far has been great stuff. Yeah man respect an all that where it's due.. I've never managed to finish an abc set.. that's pretty amazing dedication.. fairplay.. I feel quite humbled actually.. cause I'm a lazy writer man.. and you've injected some positive enthusiasm into me to have a go and finish off what I started out to do.. good writing anyway dude. safe

Thanks be to both of you! I'm not that good at finishing sets either, Funky - this is the first one! However, I plan to finish another in the next couple of weeks, since the 'Hats Off' collection is about twice as big as a single ABC set

wasn't too sure about two of the latin phrases in odi et amo. were 'si facias amnia' and 'o di mulier mea' supposed to mean something, or were they provided purely for phonetic effect?

They do mean something, but if you don't know Latin, then I though the poetic effect was worth it. I believe the first is, "If the face of the poet...", the second is, "O gods, my woman." They're both lines from the poems of Catullus.

And for the sake of completeness: Odi et Amo "Hate and Love" Sed nescio "But on the contrary, ignorance" Uale, puella "Have strength, girl!" Isn't half-remembered school latin wonderful!

How about sic transit gloria mundi?

hm, i would translate sed nescio as 'but i don't know,' and vale puella as 'goodbye, girl'. i wondered whether o di was 'o gods', but also thought it possible that you meant to write 'i hate my wife' (odi mulierem meam), and had just got the latin wrong. which poem have you pulled 'si facias amnia' from? i thought you might have meant to write si facias omnia - 'if you were to do everything'.

Is that a serious question? "Thus passes the glory of the world"

Chant: I thought the phrase used was "uale, puella", not "vale puella".

you might be looking for 'si vultus poetae' in your text.

not quite sure what point you're making Sirat. what point are you making?!

whoops, you've turned first person verbs into nouns too, Sirat - odi et amo - i hate and i love.

Sorry Chant. I bow to your superior knowledge (and/or memory). I was just amusing myself trying to see if I could remember any Latin. very little is the answer, i think.

no bowing required. impressive powers of recollection demonstrated. my degree was in Latin (and Ancient Greek) so am hoping i know something about the topic. am still finding si facias amnia decidedly dodgy.

and i'm also surprised that C uses mulier to mean woman - doesn't occur in the Lesbia poems, surely, where Lesbia is referred to as puella. he might have used femina (though not for Lesbia) - Virgil refers to Dido as 'dux femina facti' after all. mulier seems odd though. please give reference numbers for the poems you've pulled those two phrases from H.

for the love of God.. "and the meaning of poetry passes thusly into the anal"

This is going to require some digging. For the poem, I actually lifted the lines from some notes I had made long before, thinking that certain Latin lines were general enough to be used in poems and also had a good texture. Those notes were made in turn from GCSE notes where I had attempted to translate several groups of Catullus' lines into English, presumably as a homework exercise. To find what poems they come from, I'll have to dig up the worksheets we had and try and match the original notes to the poems on them, since they were all numbered rather than titled. Since my handwriting has played a part in this, I may well have meant 'si facias omnia' and have been translating it wrong ever since. I knew 'Odi et Amo' was 'I hate and I love' though, and the 'uale, puella' was indeed meant to be 'goodbye, girl' and 'sed nescio', 'I don't know.' In the poem, the latin was meant to be the voice of the servants. Catullus never says 'o di,' but I thought it a nice pun ("O gods" or a reference to the character of Odi again?) - but I'd never worked in the 'mulier mea' bit - that was a seperate line in my notes. I'm sure it is lifted from one of his poems, as opposed to my own notes, and I thought he referred to Lesbia as 'girl' when he was addressing her, but 'my woman' when he was talking of her.

Sirat, sorry to have to correct you. As any true classicist knows, sic transit gloria mundi means "earlier this week my girlfriend threw up all over my van"

I fed in the term: 'uale, puella' into Google just for fun and it came up with the poem by Catullus where the phrase occurs. You can find it here with a complete translation. The translator has rendered that particular phrase as: "Farewell my mistress". I can see now that I was barking up the wrong tree. I thought it came either from the root valeo: to be strong, have power, be well, or from the root ualeo : to be able to, to succeed in (doing something), both of which must be wrong I suppose. It still seems an odd construction to me. What root does it come from, Chant? .

who really cares? why do poets recycle other dead poets endlessly? why don't they write something original and their own? why don't they write in their own language which their audience understands?

I don't write poetry at all, Richard, don't blame me. It's just fun to see if you can understand what poets and others were saying in classical times. These guys were bright, they understood human nature pretty well and human nature hasn't changed. I love classical philosophy, that moment in time when the human race started to question things, to realise that you didn't have to accept the standard explanation and the standard view. The beginning of the critical tradition. Socrates is a big hero of mine. The first man to say: put your trust in reason and analyse things. Take nothing on trust. The most revolutionary thinker the human race has ever produced, in my opinion. We're still putting his programme into effect, we call it science and philosophy.

you were pretty well correct with your original translation, Sirat. vale does come from valeo, is imperative, and means 'be well'. it was customarily used when two people parted, at the end of letters, etc and has thus tended to be translated as 'goodbye'. perhaps a better translation would be 'take care', which gets in some of the original meaning, and is also used by us these days as a parting formula. oh well, H, your dodgy notes explain it all then. i've had a look and you're clearly right about mulier - it was used by C to refer to Lesbia. curious. i'm surprised he chose that word with all its loaded ambiguity of meaning. but then, perhaps that's why he chose it. that just leaves 'si facias amnia'. if you wish to retain it, then 'omnia si facias' would be a more typical latin word order. if you wish for the phrase, 'if the face of the poet', then 'si vultus poetae' would do the job.

'Si facias amnia'- literally: if you were to do protective membrane sacks for foetuses. Trust me, I'm a doctor.

you're right, Dgl! Greek etymology, from amnion. don't know if it existed in the Latin Language of Catullus's day. so...let's have 'make' rather than 'do' for facias. and H's poem contains the startling interjection:- 'if you were to make membranous sacks.' lucky Catullus didn't know when he sent his poems out on their two thousand year (plus) journey that they'd end up in the hands of our abc poet.

Just had a thought Chant or dgl or whoever is up to it: how about writing a poem in Latin and providing a tongue-in-cheek translation (which if you were clever could even be literally correct) that includes things like protective membrane bags for foetuses and other mind-bending classical howlers. Could be fun.

Good Lord. Well, there is a reference to membranes earlier in the poem, so I suppose it could be an extension of that. I'm very much tempted to leave it in there just because of these many possible meanings. Now, Richard, quit yer whining. Poets make references to other poets sometimes as a tribute, sometimes to deepen the meaning of their own poem. Read 'The Wasteland' to see what can be achieved by this kind of thing. As far as my poem goes, you don't *need* to understand the Latin - but the reader might be willing to look it up, or seek out the references. This *may*, in actual fact, make the poem more interesting, rather than less interesting. As you have well noted, we have managed to have quite a long discussion about this particular poem. In future, don't ask, "Who cares?" when the people who evidently do are represented in writing before your very eyes.

jaffa cake anyone?

Don't mind if I do.

i started to write something about the wasteland and the exclusion of the majority audience for literature as a result of the pretentious extent to which eliot went to create a new realm for poets like himself to be considered "the better poet". turns out that i couldn't be arsed. if it's worth saying, say it in the language of your audience. if it's not just for the sake of decoration, to add meaning, have a translation and it's worth noting that your audience is everyone on abc and elsewhere who read your writing, not only those who see a discussion about it as an opportunity to talk about etymology, rugger and perhaps ultimately, being detained after class in an uncomfortable place, and i don't mean the back of a volkswagen.

Our school didn't teach latin. Is it something that people just learn at school?

Richard - the Wasteland only excludes a lazy audience. Nothing wrong with a lazy audience - I'm lazy myself - but you'd be a damn fool to blame the poem for your not understanding it. I also find your sentence ("the pretentious extent to which eliot went to create a new realm for poets like himself to be considered the better poet") a very negatively spun way of saying the man was putting considerable effort into something new and original. Whether that makes it 'better' or not is a matter of taste - I don't think you're in a position to tell the poets of the world they're not allowed to do this, just as I don't think Eliot was in a position to tell them it's the only way to do things. I don't write for a lazy audience. Actually, I don't keep my audience in mind at all, since I consider it fortunate if *anyone* reads my work. I write for myself, which means, I suppose, that my target audience is people like me. I happen to enjoy mystery in poems, and I actually prefer ones that aren't crystal clear to me immediately. I like to be involved in the creative process. Therefore, my poems will reflect that. I don't mind discussing the meanings afterwards - not at all - but I see no reason to translate them in the piece. I might as well have a ruddy great explanation at the bottom of the piece explaining what every noun represents. Obviously, I don't want to create insummountable collections of gibberish, but I hardly think a few lines of Latin renders the poem as such. Like it or not, the average poet *does* write in a language that the audience does not fully understand - that being their own voice. You can probably never understand a poem completely, but you don't need to. So, you read the poem. You come to the Latin - it looks nice. It sounds nice when it's read out. That's important to poetry. Does it have meaning? Is it worth saying? Possibly. So if you think it does, maybe have a quick look in a Latin dictionary, maybe on online one, and get a rough definition. See if it fits in the rest of the poem. On the other hand, if you don't think it's worth your time, leave it as a picture, or decoration. But don't tell me that I should have to change it just because you have to put a little effort in to uncover the meaning.

I just find ancient languages and classical writers interesting. I wish I had paid more attention at school because I really only came to appreciate that kind of thing much later. At the beginning of my one and only novel (also called "SIRAT") I have a quotation which I found somewhere at about fourth hand, but it's attributed to a philosopher named Favorinus who lived in the second century AD. I have only ever seen it in English, as far as I know the original Latin has been lost. The quote is: On earth there is nothing great but man, And in man there is nothing great but mind. I wonder if any of you have seen it in the original, or could translate it back into suitably elegant Latin?

dear hen, i don't know about the rest of your audience, but i judge the relative merits of looking up a quotation based on whether the immediately legible sections of the poem are any good. and so, coming to the case of the waste land, given that it is the case that i've written countless sheets on it, by now probably know a great deal about the legends and myths which it's based on, and also being the case that i am not lazy when it comes to reading poetry, rather zealous in fact, it reasonably follows that i could see where the meaning/sound/rhythm of any section is superceded by arch pretence. i'd also say that 90% of anyone who has ever read it do not notice the significance of "jug jug" or the address of the sybil, or have read up on the parts which were of even lesser clarity. this 90% is the audience which is excluded by the reams of meaning, dribbling through the crumbling remnants of neo-classical curator literature. all i'm saying is why not try writing your own thoughts, in your own words, and perhaps we'll have a market for other scholarly marginalia once poetry is reclaimed for real people with real lives in the modern world. god knows that noone likes rocking the clique, but i'll put the points forward for everyone too timid to try.

I'm not so sure it is a matter of timidity Richard or cliqueyness but more one of not having had an education in the classics or even, in my case, literature, that prevents many people from entering a debate such as this. One cannot put forward a coherent argument without knowledge of the subject matter. With regard to your percentage of 90%, that may accurate regarding the audience here but I would suggest it would increase to 99% given a wider readership ie publication. But there again, henstoat says he has written it for people like himself and not people like me so perhaps that does not matter. I'm not sure why I joined in this thread now I come to think of it so I'll shut up before I talk myself into trouble.

a nice challenge, Sirat, and rather easier than your earlier one. "nihil magnum in terra praeter hominem; nihil magnum in homine praeter mentem."

Very many thanks, chant. If "SIRAT" ever runs to a second edition I'll use it (if that's okay).

no probs, Sirat, and here's to hoping that "SIRAT" runs to a second, third, fourth etc addition with the Latin quotation inserted.

Dear Richard - the 90% you speak of is not 'excluded' simply because they do not understand the significance of the most obscure lines. I didn't understand The Wasteland at all when I first read it - didn't get any of the references - didn't know what was going on. Thought it was a bunch of crap. But I don't expect Eliot, or anyone else, to limit their poetry to matters I already know about, seeing as my knowledge is limited and my ignorance unlimited. The more you read the Wasteland, however, the more you appreciate how Eliot has constructed it, the more the meaning unravels itself. That, for me, is a positive experience, probably more so than what I would have experienced if Eliot had filtered the poem so that he was certain everyone who came across it could understand it on first reading. Asking the poet to restrict himself only to what other people know is nothing short of ludicrous. He is perfectly entitled to write in a language only he himself knows, if it pleases him (a la Jabberwocky) leaving the reader in a position where they can only guess what he might have meant. What about poems in a Scottish dialect? Very difficult to read - for me at least - and I might be tempted to disregard the poem completely. But there is simply no grounds for me to demand that a poet who writes in a Scottish dialect write instead in words that I can understand. You place immense restrictions on the freedom of poetry with your disapproval of anything an audience can't immediately grasp. I do write my own thoughts in my own words most of the time. But it is certainly not worthless to compose your thoughts through references to other poets, and through lines of theirs - it can allow a deeper and more subtle meaning.

I think what richard is getting at, I may be very wrong, is a question of intention. To put it another way, what does the writer seek to 'do' to the reader by their stitching together of particular words and sounds? I don't think that richard is saying that certain things shouldn't be written, but asking why someone would want to do so. Why choose Latin? Why not Jamaican Patois? Why not Urdu? It all comes down to the sense of intention as the author or poet is writing. What model of the world do they want to present and convince others of? What relationship do they feel that they have with their potential audience? These questions aren't too important to readers, as readers are unlikely to get a chance for a question and answer session with a writer in the way that can happen here. I do think, and I detect this in richard's post, that they are important questions for the writer themselves to ask of themselves. Just what am I trying to do? The answer that you just want to tell a good story or make a good poem isn't sufficient. Once your thoughts pass out of your head onto a page they are inbedded in a society and a world. Where do they fit into that?

Mark, the study of the classics, in my view, is the foundation of our culture. and culture is simply an expression of what is best in society: philosophy, decent government, justice, art, language. in answer to your question, why Latin and not Urdu, one answer might be that, as well as adding a sense of mystery and exoticism to a poem, as well as enhancing textural structure by linguistic variety, as well as falling within a tradition of drawing on classical poetry that goes far back in the history of English poetry, the poet is also nodding towards one of the cultures that gave us our idea of what culture is, or should be, today. the question why Latin and not Urdu seems, in my view, a strange one. it seems to ignore our cultural history. and, if the maxim 'we may know our ends by our beginnings' is an accurate one, it would seem to ignore our future as well.

Face it: si facias amnia is a bloody weird thing to say in a poem. Acknowledge it and more on. Don't try to disguise it as being a culture thing. To end this discussion and keep the thread within its margins: well done, Henstoat, keep up the good work.