What is more interesting, than that the citations of Horace here outpoll those of Frank O'Hara? For one thing, I think we can say, Reaganism killed abstract expressionism: today's temper is remarkably materialist and literal. Who can mind? Augustus made the literal more glorious than we've ever done.
Very well, then. When we say, home, we must mean houseplacething, where olderpeople still live and make their noises; not center, not core, but real estate. And we don't mind this, either. (Frank O'Hara didn't much care about a home). It just means that Whit and I cannot consider going home, and we would very much like to do that.
And we don't mean, for a fresh shirt.
Gyges, driven ashore
At Oricum by the storm that the Wild Goat
Constellation was the cause of, weeps, Alone, through the sleepless night.
Horace
The Odes
Faithfulness
iii, 7, 2
David Ferry, translation
op. cit.
Never again...but you carry it with you. Mostalgia creeps.
ReplyDeleteword verif: twivia
I should have reprinted the rest of the ode; it's quite libidinous, but I thought Saturday had enough of that already. I think it was the great Marxist philosophe, Simone Signoret, who warned that nostalgia isn't what it used to be, and I've found this true of mostalgia, now that you mention it. In fact all algae of my acquaintance, while we know there's no point in fighting it, is infernally creepy, if sometimes in a decorative way.
ReplyDeleteBelly laugh!
ReplyDeleteWas it the noises of olderpeople? In any case, you are too bracingly kind to inquire; one might be corrupted.
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