Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481)
‘Ad Gasparum Mercatum Valentiae Comitem.’
Non venio, Gaspar, nam sudant inguina multo
aestu, quo testes tres mihi bella movent.
I am not coming, Gaspar, for my groins sweat with so much
heat that my three testicles make wars against me.
Carlo de’ Rosmini, Vita di Francesco Filelfo da Tolentino, 3 vols (Milan: Presso Luigi Mussi, 1808) I, p. 113. My translation. Filelfo had adopted the Greek nickname ‘τριόρχις’ (‘three testicles’).
IV AD JOANNEM TORTELLIUMMaria Teresa Graziosi Acquaro, ‘Petri Odi Montopolitani. Carmina nunc primum e libris manu scriptis edita’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, XIX (1970), 7-113, (p. 54). My translation.
Corrige quos misi versus et fuste domato;
Corrigat et stultos cornea virga pedes.
IV TO GIOVANNI TORTELLI
Correct those who send you their verses and beat them with a stick:
Correct their foolish feet with a cornel switch.
Euge, an te teneo, mea lux, an somnia demens'A Dream'
Fingo mihi? Certè, lux mea, te teneo.
Somnia non haec sunt. oculis nónne intuor hisce
Flammeolósque oculos purpureásque genas
Lacteolásque manus, et eburnae frontis honorem,
Colláque non tacta candidiora niue?
Dulcia collatis ineamus proelia signis,
Dum tuta alternis lusibus hora datur.
Me miserum! nusquam es. Fallax me lusit imago.
O dolor! ô animi gaudia vana mei!
Quid queror? exacta si rem ratione putemus,
Vmbra est in misero quidquid amore boni est.
Oh! Am I holding you, my light, or am I mad,Marc-Antoine Muret, Juvenilia, ed. & French trans. Virginie Leroux (Genève: Droz 2009; 1552), p. 148.
Casting a dream? Surely, my light, I am holding you.
These are not dreams. Surely I stare into
Your flaming eyes and ruddy cheeks and
Milk-white hands, and lovely ivory brow,
And your neck whiter than snow?
Allow us to enter pleasing battles with standards opposed,
While a protected hour permits successive games.
Oh wretch that I am! You are nowhere. A false image tricked me.
Oh sorrow! Oh my spirit’s hollow joys.
Why do I lament? If we think rationally about the matter,
Whatever is good in wretched love is a shadow!
’Quantum tempus perdimus’,
clamas, ’dormiendo!’
Perditum non dixerim
tempus, si perpendo,
quam optata homini
illa res sit omni:
recreatio animi
et dulcedo somni.
Lecto mandant corporis
membra fatigata
Lethe poti homines
nec iam curant fata
dira. ita veterem
Adam ego verto:
novus fio iterum
dum ad mane sterto.
Totum refrigerio
huic est cor intentum;
iam accedet somnium,
somni ornamentum.
Mundi dum abicio
istius dolorem,
rerum formam video
plane pulchriorem.
'In Praise of Sleep'
‘How much time we waste’, you shout, ‘while asleep!’ I would not say, properly considered, that it is time so much lost as spent in the way most welcome to a man. The thing for all is the refreshment of mind and the sweetness of sleep.
The body’s tired limbs entrust themselves to bed. Men who have drank from Lethe do not now worry about fearful calamities. Thus I overthrow old Adam: I become a new man again while I snore in the morning.
Completely at rest, for this is the heart’s desire. Now a dream, the ornament of sleep, approaches. While I cast away the sorrow of that world, I see clearly the more beautiful form of things.
Carmina latina recentiora. Veterum tibiis canunt nepotes, 3rd edn, ed. by Rainardus Brune (Leichlingen: Domus editoria Rainardi Brune, 1986), p. 157.
My translations.
Paullus a Gisbice (Pavel Litoměřický z Jizbice 1582-1607)
In alium.
Dum versus scribis, dum carmina mittis in orbem,Karel Hdina, Bohemia latina: litterarum latinarum ad gentem terramque bohemoslovenicam pertinentium nonnulla exempla selecta (Prague: sumptibus societatis philologorum bohemorum, 1931), p. 76. My Translation. honos and ὄνος are homonyms.
cur tibi nullus honos? scilicet quod ὄνος.
While you go on writing verses, and while you are sending your poetry out into the world, why is it that no one honours you? Certainly it is because you are an ass.
Heinrich Bebel (1472-1518)
‘In regulum auiculam tempore frigido et hyemali cantantem.’
Regule parue ales partu genuisse sinistroHeinrich Bebel, Oratio ad regem Maximilianum (Pforzheim: Ex aedibus Thome Anshelmi, 1504), fol.Oiir. My translation.
Tereor alecto. sub phlegetontis aquis
Ut sileant cunctae volucres sub frigore brumae
Deliteatque suo vel genus omne specu
Solus ad innumeros numeros modulamia fundis
Vocesque multisona gaudia multa refers
Hinc cur rex volucrum possis vel iure vocari
Ambigo. cum minimus corpus inerme geras
At reor alituum cum sis durissimus ipse
Tempore quod gelido gaudia solus habes
Uel qui appellauit Parcas quod parcere nulli
Consuerint. nomen regule parve dedit.
Swift petty king, I fear you have been assigned an
Inauspicious birth. For under the waters of Phlegethon,
under the chill of winter, all birds are silent
And as birds of every feather hide in their hollows,
You alone sing measured melodies to the countless throngs,
Only you recall the many joyful tidings and boisterous voices.
For this, I contend you can justly be called the king of birds,
For although you are geared with the smallest unarmed body,
I think you are yet the hardiest of birds,
For you alone are full of joy during the icy season.
Indeed he who gave you your name, little king, stitched up the Fates,
For they are unaccustomed to granting mercy.
Ut patet ampla mihi data cella monastica! Si quis'On a Monastic Cell'
Tendat utramque manum, tanget utrumque latus.
Lectulus et mensa est parvumque sedile. Supellex
Cui satis haec, nimis hunc quis neget esse sophum?
A spacious monastic cell opens up to me! If onePedro Ruiz de Moros, Petri Royzii Maurei Alcagnicensis Carmina, ed. by Bronisław Kruczkiewicz, 2 vols (Kraków: Sumptibus Academiae Litterarum Cracoviensis, 1903), I, p. 277. My translation.
Extends either hand here, it will touch a wall.
There is a couch and table and small seat. For whom
These possessions are plenty, who would deny he is wise?
Saevit atrox Boreas, nigro dum turbine terrasNicolaus Istvanffy, Carmina, ed. by Josef Holub and László Juhász (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1935), p. 23. My translation.
Contristat, crebris saevit hyems nivibus,
Saevit et irati, quoties tumet, aequoris unda,
Et quoties summi fulminat aula Iovis.
Saeva quidem sunt haec, at nostro in pectore longe est
Saevior occultis ignibus Alcinoe.
The savage North Wind rages while he darkens the lands with a black wind. Winter rages with dense snows. She rages and excites the waters of the angered ocean. Behold how oft the hall of highest Jupiter flashes with lightening. All these things are indeed savage, but in my heart Acinoe is far more savage than the secret fires.
José Miguel João de Portugal e Castro, Marquis of Valença and Count of Vimioso (1706-1775):
‘De repentina morte’José Miguel J. de Portugal, Epigrammatum liber unus (Lisbon: ex praelo Michælis Rodrigues, 1732), p. 35. My translation.
De brevitate queri vitae nos saepe solemus;
Cum mage sit nobis mors metuenda brevia
'On sudden death'
We often complain of how life passes by so swiftly, when a swift death ought to be more worrisome to us.
Kempo van Texel (active c. 1505-1522)
Consolatio ad animam
Tristia quum dulcis resecantur stamina viteKempo van Texel, Carmina et epigrammata pulcherrima [(Zwolle : Peter Os van Breda, 150?)], p.23. My translation.
Te vocat altitonans ni malefacta premant.
When the sorrowful threads of sweet life are cut short, the high-thunderer calls you, unless your evil deeds restrain you.
Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537)
In imaginem mortis et infantis
Qualis eras primum, qualis sis deinde futurus,
Aspice! Quod medium? spes, labor atque nihil.
On an image of death and a child
What were you at the beginning? What will you be in the future?Andrzej Krzycki, Andreae Cricii carmina, ed. by Kazimierz Morawski (Cracow: typis universitatis Jagellonicae, 1888), p. 243. My translation.
Lo! What about in the meantime? Hope, toil and nothing.
THE LIBRARY
Such a blessed library is your life's sole devotion,
Where you see so many wise and ancient faces speaking.
Notes:
Benedetto Giovio (1471-1545), Disticha, ad Franciscum Iulium Calvum (Basel: apud Io. Frobenium, 1518), p. 50. Benedetto was the brother of the more famous historian and biographer Paolo Giovio. This poem is from a collection of distichs which was printed along with Ludovico Pittorio's Sacra et satyrica epigrammata. My translation.
'ducitur aetas', cf. 'cui florida ducitur aetas, / Tu quoque pone animos vere monente graves'. Desiderius Erasmus, Poems, trans. by Clarence H. Miller, ed. by Harry Vredeveld, 2 vols (Toronto; London: University of Toronto Press, 1993), I, p. 270 [Poem 106.103-104].
 | |
| Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), The Library (Musée départemental Maurice Denis "The Priory", Wikicommons) |
Domingo Andrés (c. 1525–c. 1599), ‘De fele’
In praedam inuehitur quasi concita fulminis ales,Domingo Andrés, Poesías Varias del alcañizano Domingo Andrés, ed. & trans. José María Maestre Maestre (Teruel: Instituto de Estudios Turolenses de la Excma, 1987), p. 208 [Lib. III.CLV]. English Translation by L.M.P.
Estque omnis fetus sputaque feles edax.
As if by a rushing thunderbolt the bird is attacked, fitting prey,
And the cat gorges thus on all the little birds, even to their very spittle.
Pietro Barozzi (1441-1507) - In Rhinocerontis Picturam,
Quam quidam sibi Italicorum Principum, versibus parum modestis subscribi fecit.
Rhinoceros pedibus melior, Leo viribus illumMy translation:
Qui fugis, hunc qui stas elige in arma, Ducem.
Sed cave, arenosum ne cum te litus ad usque
Pertuleris, falsis praecipiteris aquis.
Nec te, quae falso jactantur, amara venena
Interimant, tumidi sed magis unda Freti.
The rhinoceros is swift on foot; the lion, who flees from him is
greater in strength. Favour the one who stands fast at arms, Duke.
But beware when you have reached the edge
of the sandy shore, lest you fall into the treacherous waters.
And the bitter poisons deceptively tossed about
do not kill you, but rather the wave of the swollen sea.
Notes:
Petrus Barrocius, ‘Petri Barrocii patricii Veneti episcopi Bellunensis dein Patavini oratio consolatoria, et carminum libri tres’ in Anecdota Veneta nunc primum collecta ac notis illustrata, ed. by Giambattista Maria Contarini (Venice: Typis Petri Valvasensis, 1757), pp. 193-268. (p. 263).
pedibus melior. cf. Virgil, Aeneid, IX.556.
The rhinoceros’s horn was believed to neutralise poison.
The Gujarat sultan Muzaffar Shah II gifted a rhinoceros to king Manuel I of Portugal in 1515; sketches of it soon after reached Germany inspiring Albrecht Dürer's famous engraving, which in turn inspired several centuries of slightly fantastic depictions of rhinos. But what did this picture, from before the 1515 rhino exhibition in Lisbon, look like? Perhaps something imagined from Greek and Roman sources? Perhaps a unicorn? In any case, i will be looking out for more signs of quattrocento rhinoceroi.
‘Octava Augusti’
Conuiuae tetricas hodie secludite curas,‘On the Octave of August’
ne maculent niueum nebula corda diem.
Omnia sollicitae ponantur murmura mentis,
ut uacet totum pectus amicitiae.
Non semper gaudere licet. Fugit hora: iocemur!
difficile est fatis subripuisse diem.
Today, banquet-companions, cast off your gloomy anxieties,Notes:
Lest our hearts blot with darkness this snow-white day.
Let all the murmurs of a fretful mind be laid aside,
So that a full heart allows time for friendship.
One cannot always rejoice. Time flies: Let us make merry!
For it is difficult to steal a day from the fates.
Laurentius Corvinus (1465-1527)
'Hortatur studentes, ut rura aliquando petant.'
Auricomus medium dum scandit Phebus ad axem,
Et canis estivos efflat ab ore dies.
In nemus ire iuvat densaque iacere sub alno,
Raucus arenosa qua sonat amnis aqua;
Quaque salutiferos exalat floris odores
Vernus et aprico gramine ridet ager.
Florigera eliciunt sopitam rura Minervam,
Sublevat ingenium pingue susurrus aque.
Rure fatigati revocant sua robora sensus,
Et capiunt vires languida membra novas.
'Students are encouraged to travel to the countryside while they still have the time'
Golden-braided Apollo climbs ascends to the middle of the pole,Notes:
and Sirius breathes out the summer days from his lips.
It is pleasant to enter the woods and repose under a shady alder tree,
where the raucous river resounds on the sandy water;
Where the vernal field exhales the flower's health-giving fragrances
And rejoices in the sun-drenched grass.
Flowering fields solicit sleepy Minerva,
The whispers of water stimulate their fertile nature.
In the countryside, exhausted minds regain their vigour,
And tired limbs seize new strengths.