The sweetness of honey & the sting of bees
Today after tutoring the boys,I felt like reading a book of poems or quotes.Since Ms.Sal's book collection is pretty extensive,borrowed one from her,titled The Sweetness of Honey and The Sting of Bees,A Book of Love from the Ancient Mediterranean by Michelle Lovric & Nikiforos Doxiadis Mardas(ini nama sebenar die..bukan olok2..hahaha).
The book of love poems/quotes from Greek gods to philosophers were divided into 13 chapters of poems/quotes + 2 chapters on Love & Gods/Poets.The poem below is in the Beautiful Loved One chapter--this is under the 'True love is blind' part.You'll understand why it is so if you read the one below...;)
A swarthy one is "honey colored",
A foul and filthy one is "au naturelle"...
A stringy and wooden one is a "gazelle",
A squat dwarf is "one of the Graces" and "full of wit",
A monstrous huge one is "phenomenal" and "full of grandeur",
If she stammers and can't speak,"she has a charming lisp"'
A mute one is "shy",
A shameless,hateful chatterbox is "a little cracker:,
One who looks starved to the point of death is "a slender sweetheart".......
One with a fat lip is "all kiss"
Lucretius
De Rerum Natura IV
Reading the one above,I can't help but laugh and thought of how true it is when a person is blinded by love,they tend to only see the good in everything that their beloved does.Sadly enough,it has never happen to me(but I don't wish for it to happen anytime soon actually..love is a distraction for me right now..hahaha).
The other one that I really like is this poem...
It's under the Seduction chapter....*blush*
As the sweet-apple bushes,
On the end of its branch,
On top of the tree's top-most fork,
It is forgotten by the apple-pickers.
No---it's not that they've forgotten it,
They just couldn't quite reach it....
Sappho
fragment 105
And lastly,this one is under the Absence and Longing chapter..awww...
I grieve,
"That my mother did not bear me finned like a fish,
That I might dive down into the ocean,
And kiss your hand--if not your mouth.
And I would bring you white lilies or
The red petals of velvet poppies burst open.
But even now,my darling,I will learn to swim...
So I may taste of the sweetness to be had,
Living with you in the dim of depths!"
Theokritos
Idyll 11(The Cyclops)
The Cyclops,Polyphemus,was in love with the sea-nymph Galatea,and here laments their fundamental,and ultimately insurmountable,incompatibility.... T_T
2 comments:
well, literature ppl :D
heee.
oh gosh!
that's write...
obviously i'm taking literature as my minor...heheh
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