The Death and Burning of Tibullus

The Death and Burning of Tibullus

The Death and Burning of Tibullus

O goddess of the Dawn, O queen
Of the salt spume, for Memnon dead you weep
The silver dew, for swift Achilles wine dark
Billows and flights of dying halcyons,
For immortality is scant safeguard
Against the sad decrees of destiny:
Weep then O Elegy, let flow your hair
Unbound and wild in falling waves of mourning!
Now truly the sad flute reveals your name,
For he, Tibullus, glory of your mournful piping,
And flesh emptied of your song, burns now,
Stretched out on a dry pyre that scales the heavens.
Look, here is Venus' little boy, his quiver
Is empty, his bow  broken, and his torch
Extinguished. Wretched he comes, his wings hang low,
With open hand he batters his bare chest.
Around his neck disheveled locks soak up
His tears, and trembling sobs spill from his lips.
They say he grieved as for his brother, Aeneas,
When he was borne, O Iulus, from your house.
Nor was his mother less heartbroken when
Tibullus died, than when the savage boar's
Sharp tusk gored her young lover in his groin.
Truly they call us poets sacred, saying
We are beloved of the gods, that in us
The god dwells. And yet harsh death must  sully all
Things sacred  and lay hold of each of us
With hands that smother all our mortal light.
Were father and mother any use to Thracian
Orpheus? Could animals, charmed by his song
Undo the snare of ineluctable fate?
That divine father mourned for Linus, plucked
His unresponsive lyre, chanting
In woodland shadows, "Grieve for Linus dead!"
So was it for Maeonia's singer, he
Who like cool droplets from Aganippe's
Well, wets the lips of bards with sacred
Waters: even he sunk into Avernus.
Only song escapes the ravening pyre.
The poet's work, the fame of struggling Troy,
The thread unraveled, and the weave undone
By nightly guile, these are what will last.
Delia was his first love, Nemesis
His last: together will they garner fame.
What use are prayers? What help Egyptian sistra?
What good is it to lie in bed alone?
A fine and private grave awaits us all.
When wicked fates snatch up the good -- forgive
My blasphemy -- sorrow drives me to think
That watchful providence does not exist!
Though you be dutiful, , yet will you die.
As you worship so then will harsh death
Drag you out of the sanctuaries
Into the darkness of a hollow tomb.
Put trust in well-wrought song-- look here, Tibullus
Lies dead: all that remains of what he was
Will scarcely fill this little urn. Is it
Really you, sacred bard, whom the pyre's flames
Have seized? Is it your breast that they
Have not feared to devour? Such wicked flames
Could have consumed the golden sanctuaries
Of all those gods whom mortal men revere.
She who holds the heights of Eryx turned
Away her gaze, and still there are those who
Do not deny that she did not refrain
From weeping, yet far worse would it have been
Had cursed Phaeacian earth been heaped up high
Over your nameless corpse, but here at least
Your mother did your final obsequies,
And as your life fled, closed your sodden eyes.
It was there that your sister came, her hair
Unkempt and torn, to share in your grief- stricken
Mother's anguish, and Nemesis, and she
Who was your love before, joined their sad kisses
To those of your mourning family,
And heaped your pyre with fitting sorrow
And did not cover it with desolation.
Delia, departing, spoke: "More happily
Was I beloved of you! You lived so long
As you were burning in my fire." But then
Your Nemesis reponded: " Why do you
Usurp my loss, my grief? He clung to me
When his hand failed in death."  Yet if there be
Something of us, beyond mere name or shade,
You will, Tibullus, dwell there in the valley
Of Elysium. May you come, crowned with ivy,
Learned Catullus, with your Calvus.
And you too, Gallus, if the charge be false
That you wronged your friend, come who are so free
Of blood and spirit. These are your shade's companions..
If any shade survive the body,  you,
Tibullus, have increased the number of
The blessed. May your bones, I pray, quiesce
In the shelter of your urn,  and, may you,
Earth, rest lightly on this poet's ashes.
Be not harsh with him, you winds and rain,
For though the poet dies, a well-wrought phrase
May yet defeat the silence of the grave.

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This is an old poem. It is one of my personal favorites, and is as much about the power of poetry as the events it references. Hence I am posting it now and hope you will all enjoy and appreciate it in its brief resurrection.

Although chunks of this poem are literal enough to be used as a trot, it isn't a translation. In parts of it I have taken liberties of addition and expansion, some paraphrase and circumlocution. And I have introduced an anachronistic reference to a famous poem by Andrew Marvell. I trust that these poets have no descendants who will step forward to sue me for theft of intellectual property.

Ovid's little funeral poem has long been among my favorites. The lines flow with grace, restraint, and dignity. The gravity of the moment is mitigated by observance of some lighter conventions of erotic poetry. A good example is the introduction of the weeping Cupid, who brings a childlike simplicity to love's loss and final farewell. Near the close of the poem is another such occurrence, namely the proud exchange between the poet's two mistresses, Delia, his former love and Nemesis, his final liaison. Whether this exchange be a product of sound psychological observance or a veiled slur against women will not be answered in this poem, but I lean toward the former position. The ladies' rivalry in grief and Ovid's earlier remarks about their fame in poetry remind me of Ronsard's grave and wise melancholy in one of his famous Sonnets pour Hélène, where the lover's power over the poet and her inspiration of him are not explicit, but rather are manifested through the image of her reciting his verses in old age and recognizing herself and her beauty in them:

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.

When you are old, at night, in the candle's glow,
Seated by the fire, spinning and winding thread,
You'll sing my songs  and speak the wondrous truth you know:
"Ronsard sang of me before my beauty fled."

for Memnon dead you weep
The silver dew, for swift Achilles wine dark
Billows and flights of dying halcyons...: the Latin opening of the poem is a very rhetorical, compressed hypothetical which I have turned to a more copious direct statement. The lines quoted here have no counterpart in the Latin., but in context seem appropriate:  the dew of early morning comes with Eos, the dawn, and is an appropriate accompaniment for Memnon, her son who died at Troy. The mythical halcyon  is associated with Thetis, sea goddess and mother of Achilles. In this amplification of Ovid's beginning, the goddesses and the quality of their tears are introduced separately, juxtaposed by asyndeton and ellipsis. Throughout the poem I preserve and even augment the occurrence of vocative interjections like 'O' and 'Alas.' I am not troubled by these relics of when our verse was young and exclamatory.

Now truly the sad flute reveals your name,...: elegy, in ancient times, was recited to a flute's accompaniment, and some have found a cognate in an old Armenian word, elegn, conjectured to mean flute or flute song.

They say he grieved as for his brother, Aeneas...: Cupid and Aeneas were both sons of Venus

...Iulus...: another name for Ascanius, son of Aeneas. The mention of Aeneas and Iulus is a restrained tribute to Vergil, also recently dead.

the savage boar's
Sharp tusk gored her young lover in his groin...: Adonis is Venus' young lover. Their story is one of the great fertility myths of the Mediterranean basin.

So was it for Maeonia's singer, he
Who like cool droplets from Aganippe's
Well, wets the lips of bards with sacred Waters: even he sunk into Avernus...: the reference is to Homer. Aganippe's well does not occur in the Latin. It is a spring sacred to the Muses. Avernus is the Underworld of Greco-Roman myth. "Aganippe's well" is an indirect reference and homage to Sidney, a brief echo of the opening to Sonnet LXXIV of Astrophil and Stella:

I neuer dranke of Aganippe well,
Nor euer did in shade of Tempe sit...

"Grieve for Linus dead!"  Many Latin editions print Ailinon or Ai Linon , Greek for Alas, Linus, or Woe for Linus. The poets and musicians of mythology often had a love-hate relationship with their gods., and came to bad ends: Thamyris blinded, Linus killed, Orpheus dismembered by Bacchic women, Marsyas flayed alive by Apollo, his skin hung up in a tree.

The poet's work, the fame of struggling Troy,
The thread unraveled, and the weave undone
By nightly guile, these are what will last...: the references are to the Iliad and Oddyssey. The thread and the weave are from the tale of Penelope's deception of her suitors by nightly weaving and undoing of Laertes' death shroud, so that it would never be finished and she would never have to surrender to a suitor.

Delia was his first love, Nemesis
His last: together will they garner fame.
What use are prayers? What help Egyptian sistra? The names of the ladies follow a convention of Roman erotic poetry. The mistress is not mentioned by her actual name. Instead the poet gives her a poetic name which is a metrical equivalent of her actual name. Apuleius tells us that Delia was really named Plania. Tibullus seems to have taken the secret of Nemesis' identity with him into the realm of Hades. The Egyptian sistrum is a musical instrument, perhaps a kind of rattle, used in the rites of Isis.


What good is it to lie in bed alone?
A fine and private grave awaits us all...: this is an anachronistic echo of and homage to Andrew Marvell:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But few, I think, do there embrace.

Tibullus
Lies dead: all that remains of what he was
Will scarcely fill this little urn. Is it
Really you, sacred bard, whom the pyre's flames
Have seized? Is it your breast that they
Have not feared to devour?  The description and emotions seem an accurate portrayal of a cremation outside of a crematorium. Several years ago, in Northern Thailand, as my wife's sister's oldest surviving brother, I fulfilled the duty of setting her body on fire and pushing her into the fire chamber. A few moments later I was overcome by a peculiar sense of resignation, for out of the tall chimney over the fire chamber, a thin gray and black smoke curled and rose into the cloudless blue sky. The next morning we gathered the ashes and small pieces of bone, drove over to the Mekong, where, in a narrow channel between Thailand and Laos, we pierced the urn and dropped it into the river.

She who holds the heights of Eryx: she is Venus, to whom Eryx is a sacred mountain. A little detail like this perhaps suggests how far we have departed from the natural world in our spiritual journey. Few of us pay attention to sacred mountains or leave food at places where lightning has struck or bathe at the confluence of mighty rivers.

Yet far worse would it have been
Had cursed Phaeacian earth been heaped up high
Over your nameless corpse, ..: Earlier Tibullus had gotten very ill on a journey some distance from home. He fell ill at Corcyra, modern day Corfu. To have died there would have been terrible because his family would have been absent and unable to perform the rites of the dead for Tibullus.

Nemesis, and she
Who was your love before, joined their sad kisses
To those of your mournful family,
And heaped your pyre with fitting sorrow
And did not cover it with desolation...: the sense of these lines is that Tibullus' family and his lovers performed the proper rites and didn't leave his spirit to wander, unable to enter the realm of Hades. I picked desolation to render the Latin perfect 'destituere.' The
Latin word has connotations of abandonment and forsaking.


and, may you,
Earth, rest lightly on this poet's ashes...: this is a common, formulaic closing for ancient poems of mourning. It is found a little later in Martial, and persists through the Renaissance, where we English readers may find it at the end of Ben Jonson's tender poem for his dead son.

Be not harsh with him, you winds and rain,
For though the poet dies, a well-wrought phrase
May yet defeat the silence of the grave...: these lines, which do not occur in the Latin, are essentially a new ending for the poem, a final statement of the theme of redemption and resurrection through poetry, of immortality through craft. A well-wrought phrase is suggestive of the phrase, the well-wrought urn, from Donne's poem the Canonization and Cleanth Brooks' book of the same name.