In response to the point from Judy Rawson and the reply from Lorenzo Enriques:
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. The two are probably equivalent, even without
cremation, but dust may be the dominant image. Petrarch laments in "Gli
cchi di ch'io parlai si' caldamente" that his lady's features turned into
"poca polvere ... che nulla sente". Foscolo ("Dei sepolcri") writes of "la
polve degli avi". In "The Soldier" (1914) (the poem beginning "If I should
die, think only this of me") Rupert Brooke writes of himself as dust
("there shall be / In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; a dust whom
England bore..."). Montale's Arsenio works its way from "la polvere / sui
tetti" to "la cenere degli astri" --- the latter image being associated
with the sign of a "vita strozzata".
On a less serious note, the proverb that Lorenzo Enriques quotes sounds
very elegant in Italian:
"Bacco, tabacco e Venere
riducono l'uomo in cenere"
It's difficult to match that in English (especially as "l'uomo" is nowadays
almost untranslatable):
"Booze, fags and sex
grind us into wrecks."
Too monosyllabic & brutal. Something more dactylic, then?
"Drinkin' and smokin' and..."
No, perhaps not. Something more literal?
"Wine, tobacco and Venus..."
No, again perhaps not. As a generic compromise:
"Things that we oughtn't be doin'
Eventually lead to our ruin."
But is there an exact English proverbial equivalent?
Cormac O Cuilleanain
Department of Italian
Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
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Telephone +353-1-6081527
Home tel. & fax +353-1-2831393
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