You may already be wondering: Leopardi is Italian, so why is this post in English? Well, we've been on the moonlight theme lately, so it's a good place to have "Alla luna", by Leopardi, and while we're on his poems, might as well include another one, namely the far more well-known "L'infinito", to avoid either a completely out-of-theme post with just that or a post with just that to be placed who knew where. Here's a list of the translations, with their history, starting from what is reported in a 21/9/12 14:57 collection of translations of poetry by me:
The first translation I made, found in the English notebook, thus made during English class, is the translation of L'infinito to English, dating to 20/9/11, with different lines «Beyond it endless space, and superhuman => more than h.», «Infinity my thinking mind doth drown:» (fixed after the side-by-side English-Italian text), and «’Tis sweet to me to drown inside this sea.»; the reason I made that translation then was apparently a parallel between L'infinito and an English poem being done in the class, presumably this sonnet; any such difference is fixed within the timestamp of the file mentioned above; the last line was «’Tis sweet to me to drown inside this sea.» in the original, then changed to «And sweet to me’s to sink among these waves.» by the time the file rolled around, and thus it stayed until the blog, while the version "And sweet to me is shipwreck in this sea" the old version of this post wondered about is actually from another translation, number [9] here;
Then we have the English translation of Alla luna, which the file dates to «Presumibilmente subito dopo all’altra, certo prima del 15/10» (presumably straight after the other one, certainly before 15/10/11); it appears that the line «My life was then: and ’tis, nor changes style,» dates to «27/8 11:19», but the original is probably lost, as I don't think it was in a notebook and I don't have it on my computer; at any rate, the below translation is the one in the file;
Then we have the Chinese version of L'infinito, which was made on 27/8/12 as the below original version; this also appears in a Google file from Session 118, which is dated 10/3/13, while the previous session 117 is from 5/3/13; I don't know which came first, if this or the other Chinese; however, the poem collection from Aug 2012 puts this one first, and this was also revised first on Dec 19 2017 (intermediate revision), and rerevised first on Dec 26 2017 (latest revision, which affects everything but ll. 3-5, 8, 11, and 14) in this Fb note, so that's the order I'm going with; the changes of the first revision went like this, as per messages in my Fb chat with myself:
Ll. 2-3 at 16:47;
Ll. 4-7 at 16:52, where 6-7 are «Wubian de kongji, he chaoren de jijing / He zui shen de anjing; (bing nali jihu)», i.e. 无边的空间，和超人的寂静 / 和最深的安静；（并那里几乎）, where the parentheses mean that this was not new (i.e. from the previous version), and I'm assuming "kongji" was meant as "kongjian" but, typing on mobile, the 'n' turned to a backspace and deleted the 'a';
L. 7 is fixed at 17:32 in a message including 8-10, l. 9 missing the comma after shasha;
The last line at 17:36;
Ll. 11-14 at 19:25;
As for the revision in the note, here is the history as per screenshots from 26/12/17:
18:33:50 l. 1 is 我从来爱这个孤单的小山, and at 13:34:04 the classifier is about to be fixed;
13:34:42-13:35:08 figuring out the classifier for 树立;
13:39:54 we see kongji typed out as 空间 in l. 6, which still has 寂静;
13:40:04 we see l. 7 with 安静;
13:41:14 we see l. 9 with the original 来 in pinyin, ready to be characterified;
13:46:05 安静 highlighted in l. 7, ready to change to 平静;
13:46:40 寂静 in l. 6 highlighted, probably to change to 沉默;
Between 13:46:40 and 13:48:14 l. 10 got characterified and its 寂静 became 沉默;
13:52:00 we see up to the penult line characterified, and in that line 淹没 is presumably about to be changed; this change was somehow integrated into the intermediate revision, which seems to be incorrect;
Then typing till 13:57:12, when we see the last line being changed, as 在 is highlighted; yes, THAT one changed too, and quite a bit too; 13:57:21 入这沧海里海南为我甜蜜 has 海南为我甜蜜 highlighted; no idea where that 海南 came from; 13:57:36 we see …是的下沉海南为我甜蜜; 13:57:58 we see …俄不会让u / 海南为我甜蜜; 13:58:04 we see 入u这沧海里海南为我甜蜜; 13:58:08 入zu这沧海…; 13:58:31 入这沧海里海南为我甜蜜的下沉; 13:58:35 the spurious 海南为我 is selected, ready for deletion; what a messy history for that line :);
Writing this draft (in a very different form) in the afternoon of Dec 29 2017 brought a couple extra tweaks: 在这些植物来沙沙 => 在这些植物中沙沙, and 而今活着／的而它的声音。我思想这样 => 而今活的／而他的声音。我的思想这样;
Then we have the Chinese translation of Alla luna, which appears in the below "original" version in the file, save for the line 哦我亲亲的月亮。不过回忆, which gets its change between the 24/9/12 21:50 translation collection and the 9/8/13 17:25 file of translations to and from Chinese (why this wasn't in the older Chinese translations files beats me); actually, this last change happens in the Google file from between 5/3 and 10/3/13 I mentioned above, which also changes l. 1 to «哦最亲切的月亮，我才记得», i.e. replacing 优美 with 亲切 which is wrong, and l. 5 to «同就像此刻，满的阐明着它。», i.e. replacing 并满的阐明它 with 满的阐明着它 (the pinyin somehow ended up hybridizing the two, corresponding to 并满的阐明着它); as said above, I revised this on Dec 19 2017 (intermediate revision, which is in a single self-message from 22:45) and further revised on Dec 26 2017 in the afternoon (latest revision, changing only ll. 2-5); here is the screenshot history for the latest revision:
14:00:15 we see l. 2 already changed;
14:00:37 we see l. 3 typed in the intermediate form;
14:02:01 ditto l. 4;
14:02:22 l. 5 was characterified directly in the latest form, with 他 in place of 它;
14:02:56 心 in l. 3 ready to be changed to 内心, 14:05:03 I'm adding ze after 充满, 14:05:08 it's changed to zhe;
14:05:46 I'm typing out l. 6 after fixing l. 4;
14:12:46 the characterification is nearing its end
the 发现->出现 in l. 6 happened in the intermediate revision, but apparently was lost on the way to this note, which contains the final version except for having 发现, which of course I fixed on the blog.
So let's jump in!
O grazïosa luna, io mi rammento
Che, or volge l’anno, sovra questo colle
Io venia pien d’angoscia a rimirarti:
E tu pendevi allor su quella selva
Siccome or fai, che tutta la rischiari.
Ma nebuloso e tremulo dal pianto
Che mi sorgea sul ciglio, alle mie luci
Il tuo volto apparia, che travagliosa
Era mia vita: ed è, né cangia stile,
O mia diletta luna. E pur mi giova
La ricordanza, e il noverar l’etate
Del mio dolore. Oh come grato occorre
Nel tempo giovanil, quando ancor lungo
La speme e breve ha la memoria il corso,
Il rimembrar delle passate cose,
Ancor che triste, e che l’affanno duri!
O moon so full of grace, I can recall
That I, one year ago, upon this hill,
With anguish full, oft came to gaze on you:
And you did hang upon that forest then
As you do now, enlightening it all.
But cloudy then, and trembling for the tears
That rose upon my brow, unto my lights
Thy visage did appear, for full of grief
My life was then: and ’tis, nor changes style,
O my belovèd moon. And yet ’tis good
For me to that recall, and count the age
Of my great grieving. O how pleasing is
In the young age, when still a journey long
One’s hope doth face, a short one memory,
The reembodying of past events
However sad, with trouble still alive!
Ó zuì yōuměi de yuèliàng, wǒ cái jìde
Wǒ yī nián yǐqián zài zhè xiǎoshān zhī shàng
Chōngmǎn jídù tòngkǔ cháng lái kànjiàn nǐ:
Nǐ yòu céng xuánguà zài nàgè sēnlín shàng
Tóng jiùxiàng cǐkè, bìng mǎn de chǎnmíng tā.
Dàn nǐ de liǎn wèi zài méitóu shàng fāxiàn
De lèishuǐ duì wǒ de yǎnmù kànqǐlái
Húnzhuó hé chàndǒu, yīnwèi wǒ de shēnghuó
Chōngmǎn tòngkǔ: hái shì, bìng bù biàn zuòfǎ,
Ó wǒ qīn’ài de yuèliàng. Bù guò huíyì
Yǐjí bǎ wǒ tòngkǔ de shíhou shùshù
Wèi wǒ shì hǎo. Ó duōme de xǐhuan de
Zài niánqīng shíhou, dāng xīwàng hái bǎ cháng
De lǚxíng, huíyì bǎ duǎn lǚxíng yǒngyǒu,
Gěi guòqù de chūláishì xīn de shēntǐ,
Suīrán hěn bēishāng, bìng tòngkǔ hái chíxù!
Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,
E questa siepe, che da tanta parte
De l’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quïete
Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e ’l suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s’annega il pensier mio:
E ’l naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.
This solitary hill to me has been
Forever dear, like this hedge, which doth close
So great part of the last horizon’s sight.
But sitting here and watching, in my thought
Beyond it endless space, and over-human
Silences, and the deepest quiet e’er
I for myself create; for little there
My heart gets not a fright. And as the wind
I hear a-rustling ’midst these plants, I do
Compare that silence infinite with this
Voice: the eternal comes then to my mind,
Along with the dead seasons, and the present
And living, and its sound. And thus in this
Immensity my thinking mind doth drown:
And sweet to me’s to sink among these waves.
Wǒ cónglái ài zhè zuò gūdān de xiǎoshān
Yǐjí zhè dào shùlí, yīnwèi tā yǐncáng
Zuìhòu de dìpíngxiàn hěn dà de bùfèn.
Dàn zuòzhe níngshìzhe, zài wǒ sīxiǎng lǐ
Wèi zìjǐ chuàngzào zài tā de nèibiān de
Wúbiān de kōngjiān hé chāorén de chénmò
Hé zuìshēn de píngjìng; ér wǒ de nèixīn
Zài nàr jīhū jīnghuāng; ér tīngdàozhe fēng
Zài zhèxiē zhíwù zhōng shāshā, bǎ nà ge
Wúbiān wújì de chénmò bǐ zuò zhèlǐ
De shēngyīn: Yǒnghéng jiù rù wǒ sīxiǎng lǐ
Gēn yǐ sǐqù de shíqí ér jīn huó de
Ér tā de shēngyīn. Wǒ de sīxiǎng zhèyàng
Zài zhè duàn wú gēn wúbiān zhōng lái yānmò.
Rù zhè cānghǎi lǐ shì tiánmì de xiàchén.
Wǒ yīzhí céng ài gūdān de zhè xiǎoshān
Yǐjí zhè ge shùlí, yīnwèi tā yǐncáng
Zuìhòu de dìpíngxiàn hěn dà de bùfèn.
Dàn zuòzhe níngshìzhe, zài wǒ sīxiǎng lǐ
Wèi zìjǐ chuàngzào zài tā de nèibiān de
Wúbiān de kōngjiān hé chāorén de jìjìng
Hé zuì shēn de ānjìng; ér wǒ de nèixīn
Zài nàr jīhū jīnghuāng; ér tīngdàozhe fēng
Zài zhèxiē zhíwù lái shāshā, bǎ nà ge
Wúbiān wújì de jìjìng bǐ zuò zhèlǐ
De shēngyīn: Yǒnghéng jiù rù wǒ sīxiǎng lǐ
Gēn yǐ sǐqù de shíqí ér jīn huózhe
De ér tā de shēngyīn. Wǒ sīxiǎng zhèyàng
Zài zhè duàn wúgēn wúbiān zhōng lái nìshuǐ.
Zài zhè cānghǎi lǐ wéinán wéi wǒ tiánmì.
Today we have a wonderful poem by Sappho, whose source is a nightmarishly holey and faint papyrus which I deciphered long ago and recorded all the notes to into a total of ~4 hours of audio, which I have no time to trancribe, and that is why the critical note is gonna be a spoiler with an extract from my Paracritical Note (if you know enough Italian and dare to venture into that thing, you are welcome to do so, but don't complain to me about any messiness), and the critical notation will stick to my file. [The note has since been put in at the end.] It is a shame that I have to do this, because the text here is a big mess, and Edmonds contributed to messing it up with creative amendations and sloppy critical notation, but it would be more of a shame not to post it.
The meter is stanzas of three lines, with scheme cr+gl || gl || phal (cretic foot + glyconian line, glyconian line, phalecian hendecasyllabic), and is kept in Latin and rendered as –u– –u–uu–u– || –u–uu–u– || –u–uu–u–u–u in Italian and English, with –u– rhyming with the two –u–uu–u– and the phalecians rhyming between consecutive stanzas. Some of the glyconians have anaclasis in the original, which I took advantage of by allowing –u–u–uu– in Italian and English. Also, the first 2-3 stanzas were translated to German too.
Let us go translation by translation:
The Italian was the first to be started:
The first step is the following manuscript, dated to 16/12/10 and found on a "poem sheet":
Attide, molto lungi da me e da te NCara Anattorïa or è,
'N] Sardi, spesso si volge qui in pensare
Memore della vita passata: te
Certo pari a dea nota le'
Riteneva, e gioiva in tuo cantare.
We then have the manuscript on the SP5 printout, which is presumably from before 21/12/10 since that is the date of the next item, and reads:
Attide, molto lungi da me e da te
Cara Anattorïa or è,
'N] Sardi; spesso rsi volge qui in pensare,
Memore della vita passata: te
[C[ert]o pari a dea note le'
Riteneva, e gioiva 'n tuodciadir cantare
It seems that the change in the last line was simply ignored;
Indeed, the "new in Sappho file" OS10 from 21/12/10 has the first 30 lines, in the form below except for three changes discussed one or two items below; this translation is probably what the "poem sheet" is referring to when it says «21/12 a Tonani rediens verto cuncta vertibilia poetice fragmenti “Αριγνώτα” Italice et ultimum versum reconstruere Græce termino.» (on 21/12 coming back from Tonani [my homeopathic doctor living near Bergamo while I was in Brianza] I translate to Italian all that is poetically translatable of [this fragment] and I finish reconstructing the last line of Greek);
The remaining lines appear in a translation tidbits file from 22/12, aka OS11, in the below form except for the inmetricality mentioned in the Trivia section below, which I anyway scrapped from here on 29/8/21;
Speaking of 29/8/21, on that day «gioiva 'n tuo cantare», «Pena, e ch'i' noi andiam», and «con aure plurime» became what they are now at 13:55, 13:57, and 13:57 respectively; the first of these three was actually already done in the tesina, presumably between the creation date (19/5/12 21:51) and the last edit date (20/5/12 16:10) of the earliest tesina file, which includes it; unfortunately, anything that happened in the tesina files got lost for the blog until I unearthed these files because of an unappliable change I found for the Hymn to Aphrodite;
The next to be mentioned is the Latin;
We start with another SP5 manuscript:
Atthi, te mequ’ Anactorĭast ama-
ta longinqu'ibi, Sardibus,
Sed sæp’ huc ea vertit inde mentem
Nos uti vivebamus; habebat ea
Te certe similem deæ
Notæ, maxuma glæt'erat canente.
The next step is the file S9, from 5/1/11, where this all becomes as below, except l. 4 remains «Nos uti vivebamus: habebat ea»;
The file S11 from 1/2/11 then adds from l. 26 to the end, in the form below, except the thing mentioned in the Trivia below, and another change in l. 27 mentioned in this list further down; I confess I couldn't be bothered to look through a bunch of pages of poem noteblock to find a possible manuscript of this part;
Then we have the "poem noteblock", giving us "10/2 nct in lct" (night between 10/2/11 and 11/2/11 in bed - it actually says 10/1 but it's miswritten, since S11 from 1/2 doesn't have this part) the old English translation of fragment SFac (see index for that), the tweak to the Italian of the same, and the following manuscript:
Nuncque Lydis in muljeribus micat,
Utque, sol cum occiderit,
Luna tum digitis rosis creatis
Omni'adsuperesat sider', atque lu-
cem dat ‹–uu–ux› Aaeequal'et flo
‹xx› floribu' pulchribus quoqu' agris.
"Scribo postridie 7:024-7:09 ante colat, et compleo" (I write [these things] the day afterwards [=11/2/11] at 7:04-7:09 before breakfast, and I complete [them as follows]):
cem msali dat e' atque æ-
quale (floribu' …)
Then it goes on on 11/2:
Atque ros pulchr'illic superest rosis,
Mollibus superestque an-
Thryscis et melilot'habente flora.
Multaqu'errans, dulcis memor Atthidis
Tenellæ, sibi studio
{MPectus molle edit}que corque pœnā,
=>{Molli͞a pectora est}
Atqu'eo magne clamat eāmu' nos,
Novimusqu'ea: nox per au-
res multas pelagus peri͞ens redicit.
Facil'haud est nobis similes dea-
bus amabilem esse form',
Etsi corpus habes t' ạAdonideum.
Why I proposed "alte clamat" when it's like "acutely", I don't know, but OS19 (see below) ignored it, so whatever;
By OS19 on 14/2, we have the full Latin, in the form below save for the changes in the next items;
The tesina now has something to say here: between file 13 (created 22/6/12 18:20 and last edited same day 22:15) and file 14 (created and last edited 27/6/21 10:52), I changed «Nōs ŭtī [v]īvēbāmŭs: [hăbēbăt] e͞a» to «Quōmŏdō [v]īvērēmŭs: hăbēbăt e͞a», «ǣ- / quālĕ flōrĭbŭ’ plūrĭbūs quŏqu’ āgrīs» to «[…] flōrĭbŭ’ plūrĭbūs ăgrōrŭm» (which I fix to «[…] t' agrorum» on 6/10/21 at 12:30 for reasons of meter), and «x] pĕr [ǣ]thĕrĕm [–ux» to «xx–u] pĕr ǣthĕrĕm», where the brackets were always wrong because, as fixed below, the equivalents of "per" and "æ" are not present in the papyrus;
Finally, on 19/9/21 at 16:39, the "utque" of l. 8 of the Latin became either uti or sicut, and on 25/9/21 at 0:37 I chose uti; and on 3/1/24 at 15:27, l. 18 «Mōlli͞a pēctŏră ēstquĕ c[ō]rquĕ pœ̄nā» becomes «Mōllĕ pēctŭ' cǒmēstquĕ c[ō]rquĕ pœ̄nā»;
The actual last thing happened on 15/6/24, as I was planning the commentary to this translation for a future Ψάπφω ἀ Λεσβία episode; among other possible tweaks, I noticed "Sed sæp' hic ea vertit inde mentem", or "huc" to be more correct, doesn't make sense: "she often turns her mind hither from here"? So at 18:19 I came up with a fix; I presume the uti->sicut suggestion was also from around that time? Definitely between 16:08 and 18:59;
The very last thing is actually from 30/3/25 17:48, fixing the ill-inserted "Quomodo viveremus" on the spot as I recorded the comments; only works with the newest incipit.
Finally, the English; this one is simple; we first have a manuscript on a "poem sheet", dated "5/1 noctu in lecto" (night between 5 and 6/1/11 in bed):
Atthis, dear Anactorïa far from here
Thee and me, in Sardis, I hear
Lives now, often a-think of us she might
And how we used to live: she did surely þee
Equal hold to known Goddess þee
Singing she used to hear with most dalighṭ
S9 is a weird thing; it is in a folder called "5.1 parata" (prepared 5/1), but then it includes these lines, rejecting "great delight" and keeping everything as proposed above, save for adding a comma after Goddess; maybe it's actually 6/1 as its metadata suggest; Idk; anyway, then we have S10 on 9/1/11, which gives the original form below directly, save for the Trivia section below; the final form is the fruit of some fixes from 30/3/25 (dew fix at 19:28, crossing the sea fix at 19:33, nectar fix at 19:35), and hopefully a fix to the Wandering tercet from right now on 1/4/25… done it 15:41-15:49, mulled it over till 15:54 but couldn't think of anything better;
But wait: what about the German? Well, the first line is found on the poem notebook, in the form below save for initially not eliding «lieb'» (or rather initially eliding it?), and dated to "Vespere 11/1" (11/1/11 in the evening); then we have the rest manuscripted on the poem noteblock:
25/1 me vestiens [25/1/11 getting dressed]:
Wohnt in Sardis jetzt, fern von hier,
Aber oft sie sein Denken hier betriebt.
Colatione inde pro von aus ponere cogito. In schl ~7:51 hæc scribo. [During breakfast I then think of putting aus in place of von. I write this at school around 7:51.
Well… I thought I'd find the whole thing on the same page, but no, this is where the page stops, and there are a bunch of pages afterwards filled with other stuff; the remainder of this translation is definitely after 21/2, if it is manuscripted; if it is, I will find it tomorrow (I have a couple other posts to edit tonight, and it's already 1:38), and if it isn't, then it's an S19 residue, thus from between 21/2 and 28/8.
[Atthis, dear Anactorïa far from here,
Thee and me, in] Sardi[s, I hear,
Lives now, of]ten [remember] us she might
And how we use[d to l]ive: she did surely thee
Equal [hold] to known Goddess, thee
Singing she used to hear with most delight
Now shines she ’mong the Lydïan maids, as we
When the sun has gone down do see
Rosy-fingerèd moon a-shining bright,
With more light than the stars around her give might
Th’ briny sea she doth set alight,
And the country which many flow’rs delight,
Poured is dew pretty there, and there flower do
Tender anthrysks and roses too,
And the melilot with its many͜ a flower.
Wandering tender Atthis remembering,
In her tender breast oft cravìng
Her devours, and i’ th’ h[ea]rt of pain a shower,
Lou[d] shouts she that we go there to her; which we
Well do k[n]ow, for the night, the sea
Cro[ssing], tells what her many͜ an ear descries,
[H]ar[d] it is f’r us a Goddess’s beauty,͜ in this
World to equal, A[do]nis’s
Be[au]ty thou[gh] with your own ’bove others flies,
[–u– xx–uu–ux
xx–uu through the s]ky
And [x–uu–u] Aphrodite
[–u– xx] nectar out she did pour
From a golden [u–ux
xx–] with her hands Persuasion [–
–u– xx–uu–u] did
[xx–uu o]ft [ux
xx–uu–u–u–
–u– xx] to the Gerestæum
[xx–uu] dear [u–
xx] nothing [unk]nown [u–u–
–u–] I [sh]all come [to the t]emple [x]
………………
………………
[Atthis, dear Anactorïa far from here,
Thee and me, in] Sardi[s, I hear,
Lives now, of]ten [remember] us she might
And how we use[d to l]ive: she did surely thee
Equal [hold] to known Goddess, thee
Singing she used to hear with most delight
Now shines she ’mong the Lydïan maids, as we
When the sun has gone down do see
Rosy-fingerèd moon a-shining bright,
With more light than the stars around her give might
Th’ briny sea she doth set alight,
And the country which many flow’rs delight,
Pretty dew has poured down there, and there flower do
Tender anthrysks and roses too,
And the melilot with its many͜ a flower.
Often she wanders, and she remembers thee,
Tender Atthis, so lovingly
That her longing and pain her h[ea]rt devour,
Lou[d] shouts she that we go there to her; which we
Full well k[n]ow, for, cro[ssing] the sea,
Night tells us what her many͜ an ear descries,
[H]ar[d] it is f’r us a Goddess’s beauty,͜ in this
World to equal, A[do]nis’s
Be[au]ty thou[gh] with your own ’bove others flies,
[–u– xx–uu–ux
xx–uu through the s]ky
And [x–uu–u] Aphrodite,
She poured out nectar [–uu–ux]
From a golden [u–ux
xx–] with her hands Persuasion [–
–u– xx–uu–u] did
[xx–uu o]ft [ux
xx–uu–u–u–
–u– xx] to the Gerestæum
[xx–uu] dear [u–
xx] nothing [unk]nown [u–u–
–u–] I [sh]all come [to the t]emple [x]
………………
………………
[Atthi, dir liebẹ Anactorïa, und mir,
Wohnt in] Sard[is jętzt, fern aus hier,
Abėr o]ft sie sein [Dę]nkėn hiėr bėtriebt,
Und bėdęnkt wie wir [w]ohnten: wie dann, sie dęnkt,
Dich ein' Göttin, und Zeit sie schenkt
Nach dein Singėn, das sie, wie dann, ja liebt.
New incipit, new Latins
While the Edmonds beginning is quite convincing, it does require two corrections, precisely two additions of iota subscripts. You see, neither θέᾳ nor ἀριγνώτᾳ have an adscript one, but σᾷ δὲ μάλιστ' ἔχαιρε μὀλπᾳ has both adscripts. That feels a bit too much to me now. Hence this Latin SE question from a Voigt app crit suggestion, and its Quora cross-post. After Nick Nicholas's answer to the latter, since ἴκελος with genitive seems to be a late thing and very implausible in Sappho, the Edmonds beginning could not be saved by that strategy (σὲ θέας ἰκέλαν ἀρι-/γνώτα‹ς›), so I should abandon it. What to do about these translations then?
Well, the English and Italian are badslation anyways. However, the Latin was to be fixed up. So I devised my own beginning, which you see below, on 10/8/24 at 0:40 with Ὦ as the first word, which changed to Ὦμ' at 9:33 on 11/8.
On 13/8/24, I finally sat down and took a good look at this thing, at 19:14-19:38 (with a couple tweaks while assembling the result on 15/8/24 at 19:21-19:26), inserting the latest integrations into it, and fixing whatever I didn't like. In this context, at 19:21, I also came up with the integration Αὔτ' ἐς ἴερον ἴξομαι, which I now realize doesn't quite complete the line. I also translated the new incipit. As I added this here on 18/8/24, I realized I hadn't fully translated the new incipit, thinking only the first tercet needed fixing. So I fixed ll. 5-6 at 0:49.
Below, I give the whole text with the new incipit and the new Latin, and then the Edmonds incipit with its fixed translation.
New integrations, yet another incipit, more Latin shenanigans
Two new integrations were made in the second part. The first one is first attested at 2:44 on 25/5/24, and it's σθ̣αι· σὺ [κάλ]λ̣ος ἔχησθ' Ἀ[δ]ωνίδηον, fixing the parchment-incompatible σθ̣', ἀι σὺ [καὶ χ]ρ̣ό‹'›. The second one was conceived 24/12/24 15:24, and is και]τ̣' ἄπουρ̣[" ἀπάλαισ]ι̣ χέρσ̣ι̣ Π̣εί̣θω. Pretty sure the ἀπάλαισι was older, but the ἄπουρ' was probably discovered then.
Then I started recording the parchment (not papyrus!) analysis video, and l. 2 looked more like Σαρδι[ than Σαρδε[, which once again threatened the incipit with untenability. While going to bed that night, I thought: «Is Σάρδισιν a thing?» (12/2/25 2:19). So I asked this Quora question, and as per Nick Nicholas's answer, no, this isn't a thing in Aeolic, but yes in Ionic. In Aeolic, Σαρδίεσσιν would have been the form, which is absolutely inmetrical here. So on 13/2/25 at 15:06-15:11 I concocted the new incipit, taking πρὸς σὲ from Blass apud Voigt, and finally accepting the long-known ἀπὺ Σαρδίων.
Since the Latin is supposed to go into Sicilian Sappho, I had to modify it accordingly. First, however, on 16/2/25 at 19:47, I tampered with ll. 20-21, as both previous versions made it sound like the many ears were night's means of repeating Anactoria's cries, but that is of course nonsense. At 19:53-54 I dealt with the ἄπουρ' with «Longe; mānibu' <> Persuāsjō», then changed to the below at 19:57, with Teneris which then changed to Mollibus at 19:57. At 10:58-20:01 I fixed the incipit. As for the [κάλ]λ̣ος, it was already in the above new Latin, except the Greek doesn't reflect it for some reason.
[–u– xx] adque Gerǣstium
Carǣ [–uu–ux]
N]ōtum omnibus est q[uod ipsa illum
T]empl’ [ad]ībō [x–uu–ux]
…………………
…………………
Trivia
L. 33 was read by Bibliotheca Augustana as ending with «†ἐδάην† μαι-», clearly inmetrical, which prompted the just as inmetrical Latin translation «xx–uu–u] †dĭdĭcī† [x», and the tentatively-inmetrical-but-it-doesn't-really-come-across-because-of-no-vowel-lengths translations «xx–uu]†impara͜i†[u–x» and «xx–]†I did learn†[u–u–» in the other two languages. Then, in the tesina, I fixed that inmetricality as «ε‹ι› δάην μαι-», and the Latin became «xx–] dĭdĭcī [u–u–x», the Italian «xx–] impara͜i [u–u–x», the English… didn't change (doesn't come across, huh?), all presumably between the creation date (19/5/12 21:51) and the last edit date (20/5/12 16:10) of the earliest tesina file
Critical Note
The timeline here appears simple. I mean, there is only one source, P.Berol. 9722 fol. 5, right? Wrong. If you look closely, you will see there are two fragments joined. And I'm not saying the beginnings of lines beyond l. 21 are on a separate fragment: looking closely you'll see a few ever so small "isthmuses" connecting that to the upper part. Nope, it's the endings of those lines that are separate, and only joined by a perfect margin match and sellotape. Indeed, that part seems to have been published in Lobel's edition of Sappho, which means after Edmonds', and indeed Edmonds, apart from cutting his poem short at precisely l. 21, seems to have been missing l. 21's end, given the reading he gives is incompatible with the papyrus. That must have come from trying bloody hard to read letters he just did not have in the mess that this papyrus is. The source is discussed in the transcriptions post, which gives the following text:
A questo punto Arignṓta. Per la prima terzina ho preso il testo di Edmonds, sempre per pura completezza. Nel v. 4 avevo adottato la sua versione, poi, per incomprensione della funzione dell’ãś (ṓś pŏt’ ĕzṓŏmĕn bíŏn; ãś ĕ́chĕn), sono ritornato a B.A., mentre per i vv. 5-6 ho adottato in pieno Edmonds, perché Arignṓta come nome non ci stava più dato che si parla di «Anactŏría phíla», e per renderlo aggettivo occorreva il dativo thĕ́ai, quindi thĕ́ais’ non era accettabile, per cui per non abbreviare la ai occorreva una consonante come il digamma che vi ho messo come Edmonds. Sĕlánna è fra ‹› perché correzione di mḗna, come riportato da Rosati e segnalato da un documento reperito su internet che riporta il poema come «Bella come un astro» corredato da varie note. Ivi i completamenti non esistono, neanche per il v. 4, che è «ṓs p[...]ĕzṓŏmĕn .[», mentre il 18 è «lĕ́ptan pŏi phrĕ́na k[a]r[chárōi] bŏ́rētai». Io accetto la versione kĕr d’ ásai, ove imĕ́rōi è dat. d’agente per lĕ́ptan phrĕ́na, acc. alla greca, e analogamente, parallelamente, ásai e kẽr, e il tutto dipende da bŏ́rētai, perché, a quanto ne so, rispecchia meglio la pergamena-fonte, il P(apyrus) Berol(inensis). Fino a qui è tutto abbastanza liscio come comprensione, poi c’è l’incompletezza più totale, che per 5 versi è suscettibile di completamento (J.M. «nõin g’ á[p]ysta [nỳx] pŏlý‹ō›ś / garyíĕ[i di’] álŏ‹ś› pa[rĕ]ṇṛẹ̆ọ̆[ísaś],», Diehl secondo safopoemas «νώντ' ΑΊπ]υστα t' Ύμήναος / γαρύ[ει δι' ]δλος πόρων το μεοσον», ossia «νῶντ' ἄπ]υστα τ’ ᾿Υμήναος / γαρύ[ει δι' ]ἄλος πόρων το μέσσον»), e qui per scegliere dovrò per il v. 21 tradurre, mentre per il 20 non vedo cosa c’entri l’Imeneo con questo poema, perciò seguo Edmonds, anche se nŏin è duale, che in eolico dovrebbe esser scomparso; poi però dal 24 nessuno l’ha completato e per ora non mi vengono idee, benché abbia tradotto in poco tempo fino al 18, o meglio, tradotto prosasticamente e mentalmente, processo che amo definire «compren-sione» distinta dalla «traduzione» in poesia. Lo schema è già scelto e sperimentato sulle prime due terzine: il cretico è reso come un «trisillabo» tronco, che rima con l’imitazione di due gliconei che lo seguono, mentre il falecio è imitato come ritmo e rima fra coppie di terzine, stile adonio nelle strofe saffiche e xx–uu–uu–ux in tĕthnákēn d’ adŏ́lōś thĕ́lō, cui conservo questo titolo nonostante il primo verso sia ora cambiato.
[…]
Quanto al framm. di cui si stava parlando, per la terzina da “kēthi d’ ĕ́lthēn”, traducendo, ho visto che pŏ́rōn tŏ̀ mĕ́ssŏn ha poco o nessun senso, quindi seguo Edmonds con parĕnrĕŏísaś, scoprendo fra l’altro che hálś è femm. e non neut. o masch. come pensavo. Mi spiace solo di non riuscire a tenermi il tŏ̀ mĕ́ssŏn che è sicuro secondo qualunque altra fonte. Per la terzina seguente, tra ámmi thĕ́aisi di Edmonds e aimithĕ́aisi di B.A. scelgo di seguire Edmonds perché preferisco un dat. di vantaggio che specifica per chi “è facile” (ĕýmarĕś [ĕ́sti]) che eliminarlo e andare a parlare di semidee anziché di dee. Per l’ultimo verso di questa terzina vedo che Campbell segnala “A[dōn]ídēon”, che adotto, pur non trovandolo in Edmonds seppure Campbell lo porti come suo. Nel Lyra Græca, Edmonds si ferma a parĕnrĕŏísaś. È un peccato eliminare parti note (seppur con grandi lacune) di poemi di Saffo, e lui avrebbe potuto tentare una ricostruzione, secondo me, dato quel che vedo nel suo lavoro. Tante lacune sono incolmabili, e mi costringeranno, forse, a tradurle in prosa, per via dello schema metrico difficile che ho scelto. Forse in Latino riuscirò a sistemarle.
Time to source and justify my completions.
Stanza 1 is just Edmonds.
It is hard to see a zeta in the papyrus, and most likely it had a weird shape or was another letter, but I believe it could have been a zeta. I mean that of ezoomen in l. 4.
From l. 5 to l. 17 the completions are so standard they are regarded as certain by Campbell and LP.
The rest follows Edmonds where possible.
Then ll. 22-23 are Campbell, I believe.
L. 24 is, AFAICT, my own.
Couple of notes now.
In l. 4, Edmonds reads ἆς, not ὠς, but I couldn't make sense of it so I followed BA. I now guess he thought of it as Aeolic for "ἔως", "in the time when, as long as, until".
Ll. 4-5 are problematic in general because l. 5 is generally read -σε θέᾳ σ' ἰκέλαν ἀρι- or -σε θέαισ' ἰκέλαν ἀρι-, whereas I see a likely enough digamma to follow Edmonds. Reading the other ways renders completions above impossible. The θέαισ' way, moreover, produces Ἀριγνώτα as a name in ll. 5-6, and is what GW and BA followed. Indeed, GW has the poem titled Ἀριγνώτα.
In l. 18, Edmonds reads κῆρ' ἄσᾳ, as in the papyrus, but that forces him to put ἰμέρω with Ἄτθιδος, and translate "remember Atthis' desire" or "remember Atthis with desire", whereas I like to see the structure parallelism of ἰμέρῳ - λέπταν φρένα with κῆρ - ἄσᾳ, a chiasm. The apostrophe is anyway doubtful in the papyrus. Campbell has κᾶρι σᾷ, another source online had κ[α]ρ[χάρῳ], and this is just counter-papyrus.
Next stanza is complex. Besides the reading mess of the first two lines (first one in particular), we have the alternative "νῶντ' ἄπυστά τ' ᾽Υμήναος", reported by safopoemas as Diehl's, which I dismissed as having the Hymenaeum totally out of place, and the alternative "απυστονυμ[..] πόλυς" drom Campbell, which is incompletable but certainly respects a possible reading of the papyrus. Edmonds has the problem of the dual νῷν, which is supposed to have been lost in Aeolic, but maybe Sappho was inspired by Homer to take it up? Also, in l. 21, the actual way to go is Campbell's "δι' ἄλος πόρων τὸ μέσσον". I originally rejected it as incomprehensible in favor of Edmonds' δι' ἄλος παρενρεοίσας, but luckily the translations all omit that part, meaning they work for both versions, so I just changed the text.
The last completed stanza has standard completions in the first two lines, and my own completion in the last one, and the χρό' is impossible because the papyrus contradicts it with ]ρος.
That said, I give you the LP vs. Voigt vs. Campbell comparison, part 1 and part 2, and end this note.
The rest of the poem is not completed in any way, and is the standard version save perhaps for reading a few extra monosyllabic words right after lacunas where others more prudently kept them tied to the lacunas. Except I just saw a ναν where I have λοϊα and a ἐδάην where I have like ησενη, so not really. Actually, there is one completion: the πόλλακις, which is because it's not impossible, and because of the translations. Also, Ἀδωνίδηον is apparently from an article by Edmonds (so says Campbell implicitly), and an alternative to "ἄμμι θέαισι" in l. 22 is "αἰμιθέαισι", which I dismissed since it lacks a dative of "for whom it's easy" and I saw no reason to mention demigoddesses instead of goddesses, and I still can't see any. Between the last edit of this and the checkup, I found this Italian anthology which has one more completion (or more if I don't recall correctly) in the part where nectar is mentioned. Won't include it here, but the text of that edition will end up as is in The Rest of Sappho in the group dedicated to stuff from said anthology, and in the Spanish, Chinese, and Modern Greek editions of Sappho.
Finally, I fixed the critical notation in Latin and English, which is crazy precise with even angled brackets mimicked, but didn't feel like bothering with the Italian. And that is it.
Getting back to our dear old topic, love, we have 5 Sapphic fragments in various meters:
The first one is a combination of Bergk 25-24 | Edmonds 124-22 | Campbell 129(a)-129(b). It appears that this combination, contrary to what I thought when I did it, is not present "only by my fantasy", but is suggested by the source itself, said source being two consecutive quotations by Apollonius Dyscolus' treatise on pronouns, both given as examples of ἐμέθεν, Aeolic genitive of ἐγώ, "I"; I am, however, AFAIK the only one to actually complete a full Sapphic stanza out of this, taking up an addition of μᾶλλον to l. 3, which was Bergk's idea and is reported by Edmonds Campbell and Lobel-Page in the critical notes; I will spare you the details of the manuscript evidence, which you can see in any of the mentioned editions;
note that «ἔμεθεν δ' ἔχησθα λάθαν» and «ἤ τιν’ ἄλλον / ‹Μᾶλλον› ἀνθρώπων ἐμέθεν φίλησθα;» were translated separately (see trivia at end) somewhere between 13/11/10 and 5/1/11; in fact, we can be more precise, and place these translations after 21/12/10, so I'll assume they date to those Christmas holidays;
the combo only came into existence between 1/2/11 and 17/5/11; alright, let's get more precision… except none of the "new in Sappho" files have this combo, so all I can say is that it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the 4/5 "missing fragments" file, but then again, the individual fragments were translated way earlier, so maybe I didn't even consider the combo a fragment; sucks to not have any info on this… I guess we have to assume that the last "new in Sappho" file, from 7/5, is missing it because it was not done, so it was from between 7 and 17; or else, it was thought up and instatranslated, thus only ending up in the main-line file which has a gap from 1/2 to 17/5;
anyway, by the 17/5 file, everything is as in the original form; then I conceived the final last line «Τίς δέ κεν εἴην;» on 19/9/21 at 17:52, so the Italian was turned into the final form at 1:05 on 25/9/21, then the Latin was replaced by the final line at 1:06 the same day, and finally the English «Who could he be?» at 1:07; the he->they change happened on 1/7/23 at 12:48 for gender neutrality; the next day at 13:42, l. 3 took its final form; apparently there is also the integration «Τὶς δέ νύ κ' εἴη», from 18:12 7/2/21, which was lost to the Sappho medleys file and reemerged in the Todo list; this is not far from my 19/9/21 idea, but the latter doesn't insert "now" in this line, which doesn't seem warranted; I'm keeping the latter;
The second one, moving from forgetfulness and other lovers, is the "rustic woman" fragment, that is Bergk 75 | Edmonds 98 | Campbell 57. This is rather problematic, because it is a combination of two indirect quotations, one by Athenaeus with ll. 1 & 3, and one by Maximus Tyron with l. 2, and the first two are inmetrical, whereas l. 3 is a perfect greater asclepiad, which suggests placement in book 3 of the Alexandrian edition. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the inmetrical ones: Edmonds tried gl||ascl-||gl||ascl+ (glyconian, lesser asclepiad, glyconian, greater asclepiad), leaving a lacuna at the beginning of the first line, and introducing <τέον> θαλύει which I picked up for my own greater asclepiad reconstruction, whereas Bergk left holes, trying to fit the words from the quotes into the meter. Campbell gives the two lines a pair of cruces, and Lobel-Page does that too and comments "metrum frustra sanare conaberis" (you will try in vain to fix the meter). Back in the days, I reconstructed two lines with iambic rhythm and then the greater asclepiad, obtaining the metrical scheme x–uu–x–x–u–||x–uu–uu–x–u–||xx–uu––uu––uu–u–, which I rendered as u–uu–u–u–u–||u–uu–uu–u–u–||9|7, where the last line is an enneasyllabic and a heptasyllabic rhyming, and the first two rhyme between each other (and by chance at least in the Italian also with the two half-lines). Then I looked back onto it and thought, hm, weird meter, and that enclitic at line start… what about trying to reconstruct asclepiads? And I did, and you will see. The translation of those is from Dec 25 2017 around 23:15. One last thing, a quotation from the Paracritical Note: «Sul fr. 70, i primi due versi paiono inmetrici, ma aggiungendo il <τιν'> si ha un x–uu–uu–x–u–, vagamente giambico, quindi un po’ forzato, ma accettabile. Inoltre il <τιν'>, a pensarci, accresce la connotazione spregiativa: la veste che indossa è una qualunque, una da quattro soldi, neanche una veste di una qualche eleganza seppur rustica, è proprio uno straccio.» (About fr. 70 [this one], the first two lines seem inmetrical, but adding [the toi in l. 1 which came from Greek Wikisource and] the <τιν'> one has x–uu–uu–x–u– [for both lines], vaguely iambic, thus a bit stretched, but acceptable. Moreover the <τιν'>, come to think of it, increases the dispregiative connotation: the garment she's wearing is a random one, a cheap one, not even a garment of some elegance though peasantly, it's really a rag». Btw, ἐπεμμένα is a psilotic form of ἐφέννυμι, "to wear". I note this because I apparently had trouble finding it back in the days and eventually «demordo» (I give up), says the PN.
The third one is funny. What I originally had was a combination of P.Oxy. 1231 fr. 16 with two quotations, Bergk 14 | Edmonds 13 from Etymologicum Magnum, commenting on how θῶ became the uncontracted θέω in Aeolic, and Bergk 92 | Edmonds 15 from Apollonius Dyscolus' treatise on pronouns, commenting on how ἐγών was stressed on the epsilon in Aeolic, and repeated elsewhere in the same book in a different form. The two were combined in Lobel-Page and Campbell on the basis of the P.Oxy., which suggested they could fit into its poem. This got μάλιστα πάντων δηὖτε into the quotation, and caused σίννονται to lose the double nu.
The combination we are mentioning had to use that version of the translations of the quotation, with the translations of the other version being «‹–u–x–uu› Quōs ĕn’ īpsă / Māxĭmē cūrō, mĭhĭ dāmnă māxŭ- / mē făcĭūnt ‹x›», «‹–u–x–uu› Quelli ’nfatti / Ch’i͜o di più curo, danno m’ fan ne’ fatti / Più d’ogni altro. / », and «‹–u–x–u› For those indeed / I love the most, those damage me indeed / The most ‹u–x›.». Actually, the integrated version featured a retranslation to English and Italian that kept the rhythm, the originals being identical to the ones given, except the English had «More than all others.» for the last line. All of the old translations are found at the bottom.
Then P.Sapph. Obbink came along, and goodbye quotation 1 here, but quotation 2 was confirmed, and both ended up in Dearest Offspring thanks to P.GC. 105 a few fragments. Yeah those papyri cause quite a lot of havoc in Sapphic texts :). So I have a translation for a holey text completed with both quotations, and then I will have a tab two containing the new text with English only.
In any case, these are Sapphic stanzas. Concerning reading uncertainties, I will adopt P.Oxy. X's critical notation, and copy a couple of Lobel-Page notes here. l. 13: ]ε[ vel ]β[ possis, mox ]οτοιϲ[ vel ]ϲτοιϲ[, ut βρότοις legere possis, si velis. l. 15: prima litt[era] fort[asse] β, ε, ϲ, ο, simm.
UPDATE: Upon posting this, I left the P.Obbink. version saying only WIP. I then transcribed the papyrus, and on 8/4/18 at 23:20/21 I added the text, with a prose translation in English, aiming at making at least an English poetic translation.
Then, on 16/4, I finally got around to doing it. More precisely, stanza 1 was complete by 9:55, and that took ages because I had to figure out what verb ἄσαιτο was; in the end, I concluded it is from ἀάω, glossed by Perseus as "hurt, damage", and interpreted as "torment"; Obbink uses "lament", but none of my three options (ἀάω, ἄω, ἀσάω) give me that; anyway, stanza 2 was complete by 9:59, and by 10 I wrote down the change to the translation of quotation 2 which was originally conceived around 0:29 on 12/4; finally, by 10:01, I conceived and wrote down the change from "For his true love" to "For his loved one".
Initially, I did not realize one of the P.GC. fragments needed to be joined with P.Sapph.Obbink into this poem. This further combination is the source of the third tab, with an English translation which is modified 18/4/24 21:30-21:40 from that of tab 2. There are several integrations of my own there, made in the context of the Sicilian translation at my Sicilian Sappho anthology (or maybe to avoid too many gaps for the Sicilian series episode). I must say I don't know why I thought δαΐσδης was past, leading to the original «How could you endure how you tore through me / […] and molt my knees». I fixed that at 1:23 on 21/4/24.
Then I read «Tra "vecchia" e "nuovissima" Saffo. Riflessioni sul testo» by L. Benelli, where with convincing arguments he proposes a different version. I took that version, then pulled an Edmonds on it with more reconstructions (just like I did in the previous version), and then translated that to Italian Sicilian and English. Let me first expand on the integrations. The base Benelli text looks like this:
Πῶς̣ κε δή τις οὐ θαμέω̣ς ἄσαιτο,
Κύπρι, δἐσπο̣ι̣ν̣', ὄττινα̣ +μ+ὴ φίλ̣[ησθα
καἰ] θέλοι μάλιστα πάθαν χ̣άλ̣[ασσαι
οὐκ] ὀνέχησθα;
OK, the integration δύνασθαι / μήκετ' οὔτως, save for the μήκετ' which is also Benelli, is just mine from the previous version. Benelli suggests stanza 4 might echo the start of Sappho 16b, but doesn't try to reconstruct it beyond the above. Already at 15:35 on 19/6/24, after completing the Sicilian of the above (again the Sicilian pushes reconstructions :) ), I thought «Could be ὄττι τοὶς βρότοις μάκαρας γένεσθαι / Πάμπαν οὐκ ἔστιν, but then the εναμ?», and «I had Πάμπαν εὐτύχην,] εναμ without a first line completion» within 15:40. Then at 15:41 I came up with «ὄττι τοὶς βρότοις ποτε οὔ κεν εἴη» to go with that ≤15:40 idea, which left me with the ]εναμ[ to think about. «ἔνα μ[οι», I thought at 15:41. Thus
Which I translated to Italian and Sicilian then, and then I finally moved to the English, which I modified from the previous version, self-sent at 15:45, between 15:49 and 16:02. And this was all on 19/6/24.
But that couldn't be enough, could it? At 1:33-1:34 the following night, I thought «ενα μοι μόνον γε / Και ποθηω και μαομ' άνδρα», and at 1:34-1:36 «ένα μοι μονον δε / Και ποθηω και μαομ' εμμεν άνδρα». This was due to realizing that ενα cannot be neuter, and thus my English «only one thing for me / I do crave» wasn't compatible with it. It also integrates the known Sappho fragment Καὶ ποθήω καὶ μάομαι (1.H.vii) into the text. It is a bit pushy to make Sappho say "Only one husband I crave to have", however. Never in her known poetry does she sing of love for a man… I communicated all this to Calcagno the next day, and at 17:50 I finally came up with «εν' αμ' αμμιν εμμεν / Μαιομ' ανθρώπων». I was unable to read ἔν, i.e. "one thing" (neuter), in there and complete the line, unfortunately. The problemi with this is that Sappho would have gone with μάομαι, so μαίομαι is unacceptable. So at 14:41 the next day I fixed that to δεύομ'. In the meantime, the English was completed at 17:57, and since δεύομαι = μαίομαι (roughly) I need not modify it again. I was also unable to complete stanza 2.
For my own convenience, I will assemble the (so far) final text of this Benelli+ version here, and then go create the new tab. And at 14:49 today, 21/6/24, I realized ποτε should be ποτα because Aeolic. And at 14:50 I integrated γε to get that damn ε̣ into my text, and probably soon afterwards translating it as the "inde]ed" you now see below.
Πῶς̣ κε δή τις οὐ θαμέω̣ς ἄσαιτο,
Κύπρι, δἐσπο̣ι̣ν̣', ὄττινα̣ +μ+ὴ φίλ̣[ησθα
καἰ] θέλοι μάλιστα πάθαν χ̣άλ̣[ασσαι
οὐκ] ὀνέχησθα;
But this was not the end of it. Indeed, on 24/6/24 at 1:59 I think of completing the Ἔνα μοι μόνον δὲ / καὶ ποθήω καὶ μάομ' ἔμμεν ἄνδρα discarded variant as Δός γέ μοι αὖτον, then at 2:03 I think of τοῦτο πάθηνν! Μοι κῆρος / Παῦσε τὰν θύελ]λαν, «But moi as a sentence starter is terrible… (2:03). Keeping the second line's integration, I think of ἄγ' αὔταν at 2:03, then φρένος δὲ or φρένων δε at 2:07, and the following evening I get φρένεσσιν at 21:30, which I immediately change to φρένεσσι, to finally come up with Εμοιγε or εμοι δε that night at 3:20; but I think I prefer φρένεσσι;
Meanwhile, on 24/6/24 at 20:21, I'd put myself to the task of translating this integration; I did Sicilian English and Italian all jumbled together; for the last one, I had stanza 3 as «Nor would k[e]ep away from me. […] / I now want to [cease from th]is pain! […] / […] For myself I am / Keenly aware»; I initially tried «Calm my heart down, please! uu For myself» at 20:24, but what rhyme can I find there? Also, all these holes… meh; so at 20:25 I started the below remake with the first line, and at 20:31 I completed it, with l. 2 starting out as «Stop the storm that makes»; btw, as I put this here tonight, 29/6/24 0:20, I thought, «on me / No ill e'er wrought, or to me as it is now?», and I'm not sure; finally, «During captioning, the change from "torment their soul" to "if he craves" became painfully apparent», as I wrote to myself 25/8/24 19:25; in other words, the Benelli+ version needed to be wholly gender-neutral, instead of starting with "their" to then revert to the original "he"; that is, "If he only craves" becomes "If they only crave" in l. 3;
The fourth one is another quotation, Bergk 40 | Edmonds 52 | Campbell 51, from Chrysippus, Negatives. Bergk Edmods and Campbell agree on my text, but Lobel-Page takes another text, "Aristaenet. Ep. I 6 (p. 16 Mazal)", as Campbell puts it, and reads δίχα, "divided in two", instead of δύο, "two". The meaning is essentially the same. The meter is a single glyconian expanded with 2 dactyls, same as Hector and Andromacha, rendered as –u–uu–uu–uu–u– in Italian and English.
The Italian originally read «Non so più ciò che credo: pensier' düe sono in me», which I changed to the present version around 23:30 on Dec 25 2017. The original version, as per the chronological index, dates back to «16 or 17/8/10 poss. twk. within 21/8/10», and this tweaked version should probably count as a remake. Shortly after 19:45 on 25/2/21 I produce a new Italian version for the edition.
The original Latin, as per chronological index, dates to «16 or 17/8/10 poss. twk. within 21/8/10». We then have a modified Latin, the fruit of a discussion with Mattia Calcagno on whatsapp between 20:36 and 24:32 on 17/3/21.
Finally, the original English is from «16 or 17/8/10 poss. twk. within 21/8/10, twk. betw. 21/12/10 and 5/1/11», whereas the new English one is from 25/9/24 22:30.
To sum everything up, the last one is an indirect quotation found in Maximus Tyron, which reads «Ἐκβακχεύεται Σωκράτης τῷ Φαίδρῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἔρωτος, τῇ δὲ Σαπφοῖ ὁ Ἔρως ἐτίναξεν τὰς φρένας ὡς ἄνεμος κατ' ὄρος δρυσὶν ἐμπεσών», «Socrates is made mad for Phaedrus by love, love shook Sappho's heart like the wind falling down the mountains onto oak trees». This justifies Bergk's choice to only read the glyconian expanded with one dactyl Ἄνεμος κατ' ὄρος δρύσιν ἐμπέσων which is his fr. 44. Edmonds, in fr. 54, e.g.'s this wildly as one and a half glyconians expanded with 2 dactyls. Campbell does what I followed in his fr. 47, i.e. a half and one glyconians expanded with two dactyls. Same thing with Lobel-Page, who comments «sed potest fieri ut totum liberius sit refingendum», «but it could happen that it all need to be remade more freely». The meter is then the same as the previous fragment. The details of manuscript traditions are left to Bergk-Edmonds-Campbell.
[M’ha͜i lasciata.͜ A͜h͜imé!] ‹Te› di me or torse
Forse͜ obli͜o, [carissima?]͜ O d’altro forse
‹Più› ch’ di me degl’uomini͜ amor ti morse?
[Chi͜ è, s’è qualcuno?]/[Chi͜ è poi costuï?]
[Me you leave. Ay me!] Now dost ‹thou› of me
Not remember, [darling?] Or ‹more› than me
Someone else of men is beloved by thee?
[Who, if someone?]/[Who may he be?]
[M’ha͜i lasciata.͜ A͜h͜imé!] ‹Te› di me or torse
Forse͜ obli͜o, [carissima?]͜ O d’altro forse
‹Più› ch’ di me degl’uomini͜ amor ti morse?
[Chi sarà maï?]
What peasantly girl your heart doth conquer now,
Some peasantly clothing a-wearing? Oh! Look how
Those horrid rags she wears above her ankles she can’t shove!
Say, what peasatly girl ‹now warms your› heart and your mind ‹as she goes
Around you› wearing that peasantly garment, and 'tis seen she knows
Not at all how to lift those filthy rags higher than ankle height?
Cypris, queen, now tell me: who could there be
That would not torment himself frequently
For his true lov[e, nor] to from pain [be] fre[e]
Wish above all?
[Wha]t would your mind be as you tea[r] through me
Idly with strong shivers, and melt my knee
With [des]ire [u–uu] not [u–
Having been said
–u] you; I want [uu–u–
–u th]is to suffe[r u–u–
–u–u–u]; as I myself
Very well see.
…
…
…
…
Πῶς̣ κε δή τις οὐ θαμέω̣ς ἄσαιτο,
Κύπρι, δἐσπο̣ι̣ν̣', ὄττινα̣ +δ+ὴ φίλ̣[ησι
κωὐ] θέλοι μάλιστα πάθαν χ̣άλ̣[ασσαι;
πῶς] ὀνέχησθα
Cypris, queen, now tell me: who could there be
That would not torment himself frequently
For his true lov[e, nor] to from pain [be] fre[e]
Wish above all?
[How] can you endure [how] you tea[r] through me
Idly with strong shivers, and melt my knee
With desire, o que[en]? You [were] not to me
[Hostile] a[t a]ll,
[I now beg you]: lock me not up! I wish
[To be free from] suffering this! [u–
–u–]; Of this for myself I am
Keenly aware.
…
…
…
…
Πῶς̣ κε δή τις οὐ θαμέω̣ς ἄσαιτο,
Κύπρι, δἐσπο̣ι̣ν̣', ὄττινα̣ +μ+ὴ φίλ̣[ησθα
καἰ] θέλοι μάλιστα πάθαν χ̣άλ̣[ασσαι
οὐκ] ὀνέχησθα;
Cypris, queen, who could, if [no]t lov[ed] by thee,
Not torment their soul very frequently,
[If] they only crave to from pain be fre[e,
And] you do [naught]?
How can you now [s]trike me and tea[r] through me
Idly with strong shivers, and melt my knee
With desire, o great[est]? You on[ce] to me
N[o ill] e'[e]r wrought,
And [away from me] you would never stay
Stop the sto]rm [that's making my heart so sway!
Stop] my suffering! For myself, I say, I'm
Keenly aware
[That no] m[or]tal [could eve]r [come to be
In full joy;] one [person alone] with [me
I do crave inde]ed. …
…
Οὐκ οἶδ' ὄττι θέω· δύο μοι τὰ νοήματα.
Non so più che pensar: due pensieri vi sono in me.
Che pensare non so: due pensieri mi stanno in cuor.
Love to me gave a blow
In the heart, like the wind down a mount ’gainst the oaks does blow.
Trivia for completeness
Since my files originally took the texts from Wikisource Greek, I had parts of the third poem above as separate fragments, one of them in a different version. The latter got its "version B" from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri volume, I suppose. I present them and their translations below for the sake of completeness (more like for the sake of the chronological index so that I can forget about the two oldest things soon enough and avoid having to put poem three as started super early because of these separate pieces of it :) ).
I also had parts of the first poem separate, and in fact the combination is wholly my work, although others had thought about it before (cfr. intro to the poem). These parts are fragments c and bb below (yeah, the numbering in my files was fricking weird, because I used Greek Wikisource numbering, and then added a bunch of fragments from Bibliotheca Augustana and had to use letters for those).
Yep, love again. But this time in Greek. Yes, we are going back to Sappho after quite some time.
Today, I have… how many poems? This is a very good questions. Let's start by saying it's 3 distinct quotations: one is a single line found in Hephaestio's Handbook of meter, the following one is another line found in three other books, and the third one is 4 lines again in Hephaestio. Now my three main references, Bergk Edmonds and Campbell, all agree in putting the first two into the same poem, on the basis of a quote from Terentianus Maurus's Handbook of meter (this one in Latin, the other one was in Greek) which goes "Cordi quando fuisse sibi canit Atthida / Parvam, florea virginitas sua cum foret", which has both a paraphrase of the first line and an adjective of the second one, and is also the basis for Edmond's in-between line Ἆς ἔμ' ἀνθεμόεσσ' ἔτι παρθενία, σὺ δὲ, «As I still had my flowery virginity, and you», and maybe other things I can't find. So that would make two poems.
Some, however, for I don't know what reason, decide to split the last quote into two isolated couplets, making 3 poems. I don't see any reason to do so, so I'll make these two poems. [Well, I read a paper about that after posting this, and it convinced me that the joining is a flawed argument, but since this post has to include translations from high school where I had no idea anyone argued against these being joined, they stay joined for this post.]
In the first one, the only oscillation between those references is ἔμμεν / ἔμμεν', which doesn't change the meaning one bit. I have no arguments for one or for the other, so I'll just be lazy and stick to whatever I have in my translations file.
In the second one, we have δαὖτε / δηὖτε and δόνει / δύνει. For the latter, I feel δόνει is the only choice with a fitting meaning, and most codices have that, so I'll take it. For the former, written evidence seems to point to δ' αὖτε, and only Campbell changes the alpha. I assume it's on the basis of the δηὖτεs in the Hymn to Aphrodite. Whatever the case, the meaning doesn't change one bit, so I'll just be lazy as with poem 2. And that is my critical note.
The meter of poem 1 is xx–uu–uu–uu–ux, which is kept in Latin and rendered as –u–uu–uu–uu–u– with consecutive lines rhyming in English and Italian (cfr. Hector and Andromacha, which is written in the same meter). The Italian translation, minus l. 2, is from 6/8/10 as per my diary from back then, but the diary doesn't report it, and thus it first appears in the 16/8 file, as below; in that same file, the original English shows up, with «wi' no grace», for which see below, being thus from between 26/7 and 16/8; as for the Latin, within 17/8 it must have been done, as the diary says that I translated everything left up to fr. 36 and this was fr. 33; once again, it is a file's residue, in this case the 2/11/10 one, so between then and 17/8 tweaks may have occurred; one last tweak happened between 10/8/11 and 28/8/11: the addition of «t'» in l. 3.
All of this leaves l. 2 out of the equation. I only found out it existed in blog times, it would seem. I typed that translation above on 18/12/17 at 21:15/16, not realizing it fit the meter (or maybe I did, but never wrote it down). Then 18/8/24 23:36 I translated l. 2 to Latin, stealing it from Terentianus Maurus mostly, but mistakenly writing flōrida instead of flōrea, which I soon corrected. The English then got «As I was in the flower of maidenhood still, u–» (23:39), «and a / Little child […]» (23:39), and the tweak «without grace» at 23:51. The Italian got its l. 2 within 4:38 on 11/9/19, for the Italian edition I recently launched. Then I read a bit of intro, and found that translation. Realizing it was metrical, I tweaked l. 3 19/8/24 12:43, obtaning the remake below. I had the doubt that that translation above might be an excerpt from Edmonds, but nope, he has «I loved you, Atthis, long ago, when my own girlhood was still all flowers, and you—you seemed to me a small ungainly child.» for the whole thing.
The meter of poem 2 is xx–uu–uu–ux, kept in Latin and rendered as –u–uu–uu–u– with consecutive lines rhyming in English and Italian. The older translations are all S5b residues, thus from between 16/8 and 21/8/10. The English appears there exactly as below, the Italian has typos "sciogliemi 'il" and "infincibile" which are fixed in S9 (so between 9/12/10 and 5/1/11), and the Latin starts out with «Odisti volitas ad e' Andromedanque nunc» as its last line, which is in the meter of poem 1, and gets fixed to the form below in S6, thus between 23/8/10 and 2/11/10. The English remake is from 13/5/24 23:48-14/5/24 0:10.
So let's jump into the poems!
Long ago, o my dear little Atthis, I did love thee.
[As I was in the flower of maidenhood still, and a]
Little child without grace at that time you did seem to me.
Long ago, o my dear little Atthis, I did love thee.
[As I still had my flowery virginity, and you]
Like a small little child without grace did then seem to me.
Body-melting again love investeth me,
Sweet and bitter a beast, never won can be.
Now, my Atthis, the thought of myself to thee
Loathed’s, Andromeda end of a flight’s for thee.
Love the body-dissolver doth strike again,
Sweet and bitter a beast that can ne'er be slain.
Now, my Atthis, you hate to but think of me,
With great speed to Andromeda, ay, you flee
