carpe diem

December 10, 2014
Take the Day

We’re still on this: Horace (I.4) and Ernest Dowson (Vitae Summa Brevis) - How do we spend our wine-and-roses days, knowing they don’t last; if we’re only between dreams? 

     I asked Tom Nashe, who knows a little Latin (and a little more Greek), if he would make a translation of the original carpe diem poem, at least the poem in which that phrase (carpe diem) first appears, another ode of Horace, I.11 (tu ne quaesieris). Here’s what he “came up with – loosely,” he emailed me. “Don’t mention me by name.”

                    Don’t ask, Leuconoe – better not to know

                    the ends the gods will give us; forget

                    astrology and other foolery.  Better to take

                    what comes: many winters (if the gods will) or just this one,

                    wearing out the sea against the shore.  Wisdom

                    is this: in forgetting, too, long hopes.  Pour the wine

                    as if your time is short, the jealous moment

                    running away even as we speak.

                    Take today.  Do not assume tomorrow.

But "take the day" or seize the day, for what?  Here (in I.11) for wine. In I.4 (See here, yesterday's post.) for dance, for love, for that handsome boy over there (you know, with the wavy hair).

What else?

to be continued