Kevin's Classics

When I read poetry, it is often either Greek or Latin, and preferably short. That's one of the reasons I like Greek epigrams as they meet both criteria. Hopefully you can appreciate these three poems too. There is not much to say more, rather than I have chosen them for their theme on love. The titles are my own as are the translations.

International Cat Day I have a confession to make: despite being heavily exposed to the internet, I am not a cat lover. Please, don't start to wreak an havoc. It's not like I harnass a profound distaste for cats, but I would simply choose a dog over a cat any day of the week. In fairness dogs are just better companions than cats, but enough of this blasphemy. Today is the International Cat Day (and you know it is important since it has its own twitter hashtag). So in honour of this special holiday, I present to you fable from antiquity that heavily portrays the nature of cats. And frankly, I believe that a cat would act accordingly if it had the opportunity: not that they are deceitful, but they are always following their own best interests. 

This post is focused around the first chorus song, the parodos, in the Clouds. This song introduces the choir to the audience and informs them how to perceive the chorus; you can do only so much with costumes and attributes, especially in antiquity. As such, we can learn a lot on the nature of clouds according to the Greek in the 5th century BCE. Being personified godlike characters, the clouds reveal not only how they act as natural phenomena, but also as divine beings (although the divine aspect is a satirical jest of Aristophanes, yet there must lie some truth beneath this association).

A new blog post where I discuss the opening scene of Aristophanes's Clouds and give my reasons why I can relate to the protagonist in his opening lines. It contains the same theme as my Monday Mornings post so you may suspect I'm a bit intrigued by the process of sleeping.

One thing is certain. In love and in war, every promise is empty.

I have finally finished the first translation of my Translating Tibullus project (i.e. the last poem of book 1 about which I made an earlier post a couple of weeks ago). During the translation process, I came across some interesting themes in this poem, including the nature of death, idealisation of military life, and much more. But for now, I will not have you read the whole poem since I don't want to share my whole work immediately with you: patience is virtue. Instead, I will focus on the ending of the poem as this was most thought-provoking, heart-warming, and eye-opening.

This blog post is my first attempt at writing a poem in Latin. I hope you enjoy what I've fabricated in the couple of hours I spent on it. It is a short poem in the tradition of the Roman elegists I've been reading and must feel familiar for those who have read my translations of Ovid and Tibullus. The Latin is a bit stale since I am not experienced (like most people) in writing Latin poetry. That being said, I gave careful consideration to the meter, so feel free to read it out loud. You should be hearing the elegiac couplet as you are reading it.

After having posted a translation out of the blue on Tuesday , I return to it on Thursday. In today's post, I revisit the genre of Roman elegiac love poetry and how Tibullus fits into that genre. I  will explain why I started with Elegy 10 and how it relates to Tibullus's other Elegies in book 1. To conclude, I will add some remarks to my Dutch translation (and discuss some emendations). Hopefully, you have obtained a better understanding of the poem!

As you have read from the title, this topic will be Tibullus Elegies. This particular work fascinates me and I am going to attempt to translate the first two books into Dutch since the most recent translation is from the year I was born.

Having to wake up at 6:00AM sucks, but it's  less of a hassle when you consider that this has been going on for centuries

A (false) dilemma Not every argument you make can be as strong as you have intended it to be. Other arguments are deliberately false since you know that the view you are upholding is unfeasible (an intentional fallacy ).

Introduction:   It has been a while since I posted something, but I am back with something new for you to chew on: my own rhythmical translation of Ovid's Amores 2.5, the poem known as 'Kisses' or 'No love is worth that much'.