I'm curious to know what you'd have rhymed with Venus!! Im glad you passed
that one up.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 1999 2:04 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Italy Library Finds Dante Ashes
>
> 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
> [log in to unmask]
> Telephone +353-1-6081527
> Home tel. & fax +353-1-2831393
>
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