One of the main characters of The Ides of March is Catullus, the damaged, diseased, brilliant, athletic, dying poet. As it happened, Your Humble Blogger had a very nice conversation about Catullus, back in college, concerning the poem that Thornton Wilder features:
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
It is one of those odd memories, almost sensual. Sitting around talking about poetry, how collegiate. A friend of mine had come from class, and we were killing time before heading to the dining hall. I don’t remember who else was there, or what time of day, or what semester it was; I remember his hair, and his chin, and his hands as he laughed. As it happens, the fellow who brought up the poem was himself damaged, diseased, brilliant, athletic and, in a sense neither of us knew about at the time, dying.
Love we (my Lesbia!) and live we our day,
While all stern sayings crabbed sages say,
At one doit's value let us price and prize!
The Suns can westward sink again to rise
But we, extinguished once our tiny light,
Perforce shall slumber through one lasting night!
Kiss me a thousand times, then hundred more,
Then thousand others, then a new five-score,
Still other thousand other hundred store.
Last when the sums to many thousands grow,
The tale let's trouble till no more we know,
Nor envious wight despiteful shall misween us
Knowing how many kisses have been kissed between us.
I recall, clearly, his glee at the thousand, hundred, thousand kisses, and his disdain for the eternal night with which Catullus prefaces those kisses. No, not disdain, but agreement with the poet that perpetual darkness is a goad to the exuberance of countless kisses.
Not that my friend was given to excess, himself. Nor was he, nor was I aware of the desperation in the poem’s tone, the dark edge of the demands in the face of the censorious elders or the malignant watchers. It’s not the happy poem we thought it was at the time. Nor were we the happy people we thought we were. And yet we were happy, and all.
When my friend died, not so long ago, I was thinking I should use a bit of the poem as a eulogy. As Thornton Wilder quotes it ‘Suns set and are able to rise again/But once our feeble light has set/Night is f’rever and must be slep’ out.’ Those words were in my mind, at his memorial, when I hugged old friends, and laughed, and chatted. But it would be wrong to give those lines without the ones that follow them, with their sensuality, and the ones that follow those, with their paranoia.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of love.....so, quick,
Maryann, give me a kiss, another, more......
Suns come suns go, but when this small breath blows
Out, there'll be little kissing, so kiss me quick
Handfuls, hundreds, a number beyond numbering,
Grains of sand, electrons filling all the void,
The whole wild world, this universe.
That's what I need, to sate and satisfy
Your crazy lover.
But watch out, sweet, the CIA
Will want those figures, feeding them night and day
Into computers to see if they can see
Something subversive in so much activity,
Spying on kisses for a foreign enemy.
Not only does death put out the lights and put an end to kissing, but it puts an end to growth. I would like, today, to sit down and talk about this poem with my friend, and see if he sees in it what I do, these days. I would like to find out how his interpretation has changed and grown. Except, of course, that for a couple of years now, it hasn’t.
One of those things about art—poetry, sculpture, music—is how a person’s reaction to it changes over time. As my Gentle Readers will be aware, I frequently reread books I like. I step back into the river. It’s one of those things I can do, while I live. It’s not the same water; it’s not the same foot getting wet. I have no idea, finally, how many kisses have passed between us, between the ink and the eyes. I lose count. Each kiss is different, each moment a new person takes over from the last, to experience it again anew over along afresh also.
That idea, that’s what I want to go back and tell him, there next to pink walls and wing chairs, with portraits looking at yet another conversation about poetry, encouraging us in our youth, with the dining hall waiting, and the sun setting, or rising, or more likely long down, and the smell of parsley.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.