Exegi Monumentum Research Articles

O legado clássico de Horácio em Sá de Miranda e Ricardo Reis

In Portuguese literature, revisitations of Classical Antiquity, particularly the Greek philosophical doctrines of Stoicism and Epicureanism, as well as the literary genres cultivated in Latin literature by Horace, are projected onto Sá de Miranda, in the Renaissance period, and onto the modernist avant-garde heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, Ricardo Reis. Themes such as carpe diem, exegi monumentum, and non usitata, in the manner of Horace, are reactualized in the works of Portuguese poets. The aurea mediocritas, the awareness of the inexorable passage of time, and the conception of utile et dulce are constant thematic and theoretical elements that resonate in Sá de Miranda and Ricardo Reis, although modified by the reasons of time. To carry out this study, hermeneutic and comparative methods of analysis are applied to the works of Sá de Miranda and Pessoa in order to scrutinize the similarities and differences of the authors with Horace.

Classicist, the Romantic and an Uncertain Eternity

In the second half of the 20th century, the Young Wave of Polish poets (the avant-garde poets born in the mid-1940s) clashed with Zbigniew Herbert (a member of the wartime generation, born around 1920) over generational differences. This dispute revolved around poetics (“plain speech” versus “classicism”) and subject matter: whether poets should deal with “contemporary times” meaning current events, especially focusing on politics, or whether they should rather invoke topoi of Mediterranean culture in order to view current events in the context of the permanent values of European culture. For Herbert, this was also a question of the writing strategy, as he felt that topicality should not dominate the interpretation of the poem and that poetry should survive past communism. Adam Zagajewski was chosen as a representative of the New Wave because his early clash with Herbert propelled him to the position of an adversary. Sadly, both Harbert and Zagajewski failed in their attempt at an exegi monumentum, as the educa- tion system of today has abandoned the classical tradition and many allusions to it are simply incomprehensible to today’s high school or even college graduates. Knowledge of recent history is not in demand either. Both poetics are unintelligible to a wider audience and in this sense they have failed.

1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution by Paul Werth

Reviewed by: 1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution by Paul Werth Valeria Sobol (bio) Paul Werth, 1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 213 pp., ill. Index. ISBN: 978-0-19-882635-4. Paul Werth's new book offers an intriguing reinterpretation of Nicholas I's reign, typically viewed as a stagnant and oppressive period of Russian history, sandwiched between the Decembrist uprising of 1825 and the era of Great Reforms that followed Russia's catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War. Focusing on one specific year, Werth argues instead that the 1830s in Russia was a time of "dynamism, innovation, and consequence" (P. 2), when a "quiet revolution" took place "that unified and integrated the country, while also serving to embody a Russian nation in institutions and practices" (P. 201). On the surface, the year 1837 was relatively inconspicuous, lacking the dramatic ruptures and transformations we typically associate with a revolution. And yet, the argument goes, that year was punctuated by developments that, when viewed in retrospect, had long-term consequences and ultimately proved critical to the formation of modern Russia. The book consists of ten chapters, each telling the story of a particular event in Russian history that occurred in 1837 and, as the author argues, played a crucial role in ushering Russia into the modern age. It starts with the death of Alexander Pushkin in a duel in January 1837, prompting the creation of the myth of the national poet, and ends with the December 1837 fire that destroyed the Winter Palace, which then was quasi-miraculously restored by Easter of 1839. In between the reader will find chapters examining a range of important developments: the creation of the first Russian opera, the future Alexander II's tour of the empire, the birth of the provincial press, and the construction of the first railroad in Russia, among others. Each of these events, to a lesser or greater degree, as Werth shows, unified the Russian population not just as imperial subjects but also as a nation–both physically, through its first railroad, and symbolically, through its first national poet and first national opera, as well as the first intense philosophical inquiry into the essence of the Russian national character by Petr Chaadaev (chapter 3). According to Werth, "a Russian nation, in short, was emerging within the empire" as a result of the confluence of these individual events (P. 3). In the introduction to the book, Werth explains that its chapters can be read separately or consecutively, depending on the reader's interests and background. Indeed, each chapter follows the same structure, [End Page 295] starting with an intriguing "hook" that introduces the topic and ending with a conclusion and notes; each can be read as a self-contained piece. In some cases, the author draws connections between the chapters, with varying degrees of success. (I personally did not find his attempt to link the publication of Chaadaev's "Philosophical Letter" to the cult of Pushkin and the veneration of Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar particularly convincing.) In general, while the individual analyses do add up to support the overarching argument about the significance of 1837 (and the 1830s more broadly), more conceptual links between chapters would have strengthened the author's central claim. Overall, the chapters are somewhat uneven in regard to the use of primary research and the level of originality. The chapter on Pushkin is based largely on secondary sources and tells a story that is rather familiar to most Russian literary scholars and Pushkin aficionados. The author makes it clear that each sketch is addressed less to specialists who "may take issue with simplifications designed to keep the text accessible and brief" (P. 4) than to general readers and is intended to pique their interest in the subject. And yet I cannot help but wish for a more nuanced analysis of Pushkin's famous poem "I have built myself a monument," which is part of a long "Exegi Monumentum" tradition going back to Horace, rather than an original and prescient work as it appears from Werth's discussion. Closer attention to the translation of the original text would also be welcome...

Пушкин-памятник в поэтической картине мира Булата Окуджавы

The poems of Bulat Okudzhava, “Aleksandr Sergeich” and “Tourist family is photographed at the Pushkin Monument,” are analyzed through the system of contexts. These are traditional poems in the “ekphrasis” genre, reflecting the cult status of the monument by Opekushin, various debates with the tradition of poems “to the monument” by Mayakovsky and Brodsky, and Pushkin’s works united in the reception of the modern poet by the ideas of benevolence and gratitude. Okudzhava’s interpretation of the “bronze Pushkin” was inspired by the idea of a poetry monument. The theme of mercy from Pushkin’s poem “Exegi monumentum” is realized in “Aleksandr Sergeich” by the connection between the title, the dedication, and the content. The dedication of the poem “Tourist family is photographed at the Pushkin Monument” to a friend of his youth is considered through the author’s creative task: the poet and photoartist Tsybulevskiy becomes a judge in a dispute with Samoylov (“Amateur photographer”). Finally, the disagreements between the distant interlocutors become imaginary, as is the conflict between the “little man” and eternity “in front of Pushkin.” After substantiating the meaning of the allusion to Pushkin’s “Birdie” in the poem’s refrain, a conclusion is made: the metaphor of the soaring souls of “little people” develops the idea of “Aleksandr Sergeich”, with a monument symbolizing a hierarchy of values. Okudzhava’s interpretation of Pushkin’s monument was not influenced by prejudice against the “deadening” (Mayakovsky) or “ice-cold” (Brodsky) bronze form. For Okudzhava, the spirituality of the “bronze Pushkin” signifies his harmonizing role in modern life.

The Oxford Guide to Middle High German

The Oxford Guide to Middle High German

HORACE'S MONUMENT

Exegi monumentum aere perenniusregalique situ pyramidum altius,quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotenspossit diruere aut innumerabilisannorum series et fuga temporum.Horace, Odes 3.30.1–5I have finished a monument more durable than bronze and higher than the royal situs of the pyramids, the kind which neither biting rain nor the uncontrolled North Wind can destroy, or the procession of unnumbered years or flying time. The paper argues that altius in line 2 is variously inappropriate; a clue to the true reading is to be found in the passage of Pindar to which Horace is alluding.

Футуристическое подражание Горацию

The article presents an analysis of Alexey Kruchenykh’s and Velimir Khlebnikov’s collective poem Pamiatnik (The Monument), published in the futurist brochure Slovo kak takovoe (“The Word as Such”; 1913). The poem belongs to the “genre” of emulations of Horace’s “Exegi monumentum aere perennius…” (Carmina III, 30), quite widespread and important in Russian poetry. Kruchenykh’s and Khlebnikov’s poem contains, on the one hand, parodistic references to the well-known “monument” poems of Alexander Pushkin and Gavriil Derzhavin. At the same time, the futurist Monument represents an entirely serious continuation of the tradition of the Horace emulations, reflecting the authors’ self-confident conviction of their poetic immortality and of the avoidance of the oblivion by means of the proper creative work.

«Exegi monumentum»: the reflection of Schumann’s images in the Variations by J. Brahms on the theme by R. Schumann op. 23

«Exegi monumentum»: the reflection of Schumann’s images in the Variations by J. Brahms on the theme by R. Schumann op. 23

Epitáfio satírico de D. Francisco de Quevedo e a escritura como <i>Damnatio Memoriae<i/>

Propõe-se a análise de epitáfio satírico de Dom Francisco de Quevedo com o objetivo de compreender como estão articulados nele o topos poético do "Exegi monumentum aere perennius", de origem horaciana, as tópicas próprias do gênero "epitáfio", como, por exemplo, a "admoestação" aos passantes, e o cômico, por efetuação da "maledicência" (bomolochia). Lê-se a Poética de Aristóteles com o objetivo de compreender o que se entendia por cômico e os dois grandes subgêneros em que ele estava dividido desde a Antiguidade, e perscrutam-se poéticas dos séculos XVI e XVII em que a doutrina aristotélica sobre esse gênero foi atualizada. Por fim, demonstra-se a articulação entre poética/cômico e retórica demonstrativa.

Exegi monumentum: от оды к исповеди. Изменение сюжетного кода

Exegi monumentum: от оды к исповеди. Изменение сюжетного кода

The Mode of Mortal Consciousness in 19th-Century Russian Poetry: Genesis and Ethnocultural Peculiarities

This article considers the genesis of death-related themes and the formation of the mode of mortal consciousness in the individual practice of modern Russian poets. The phenomenon of mortal consciousness, along with the understanding of the existential tragedy of man as a mortal being, emphasises special forms of overcoming the tragic state. The author substantiates the three most widely used concepts of immortality found in the works of Russian poets: 1) the concept of social immortality, dating back to Horace’s Exegi monumentum aere perennius…; 2) the concept of poetic immortality, based on the mythological topos of Elysium (originating in the works of Batyushkov and Zhukovsky); and 3) the concept of personalistic (existential) immortality. It is proved that, unlike the first two, the third concept of immortality is deeply personal and individually variable by nature, directly connected with the mode of mortal consciousness. Referring to the methods of contemporary ethnopoetics and contemporary historical and intertextual analysis, the author compares works by Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Boratynsky, and Lermontov with non-Russian sources (Jung, Gray, Shakespeare, Chenier, and Byron), which makes it possible to reveal the evolution of foreign influences in Russian space and clarify the nature of the national reception of precedent texts as a result of ethnocultural factors. The most significant determinants of national culture are death, sleep, and love for a deceased lover. The texts of the Russian poetic tradition, considered in terms of ethnocultural peculiarities, are combined into supertext unities comparable to receptive cycles. Such supertext unities may be limited to the work of one author, as is confirmed with reference to Lermontov’s poems May 16, 1830, Night I, Death, The Last House-Warming, Dead Man’s Love, Sleep, Alone I Set out on the Road… At the same time, such unities may go beyond the boundaries of an individual oeuvre and into an intertextual dialogue between contemporaries, i. e. Pushkin’s elegy Breathing Youthfully with Sweet Hope…, The Vanished Joy of My Crazy Years… and Boratynsky’s poem From Chenier, in their appeal to Shakespeare’s precedent texts (monologue To be or not to be…) and those by Chenier (Elegy XXXVI).

Joseph Russo

Joseph Russo William Austin, Jonathan Clark, Emily Erickson, Judith P. Hallett, and Kimberly Hunter Hodie laudamus virum doctissimum qui effecit ut viveret Maeonides, aere perennior, etiam si Tenedos et Ide non commemorantur.1 Etsi bonus Homerus etiam dormivit2, in suis laboribus tamen hic numquam erravit. Natus in municipio ubi concordia creat robur,3 adeptus est gradum Baccalaurei Artium apud universitatem ubi nihil fit sine magno labore.4 Gradus Magistri Artium Doctorisque Philosophiae adeptus est apud universitatem plenam lucis veritatisque,5 illustrem propter canem formosum.6 Scripta sua tunc incipiebant, serius perseverabant hunc poetam versutum illustrare.7 Sed est quoque eruditus in originibus Siciliae, terrae transformatae fabulis iraque Cyclopis,8 qui quoque cursum Ulixis flexerat. Ille adeo fabulis Siciliae fruebatur ut Polyphemus ipse cursum a Sicilia flectere non posset. Sic erat amor domus. Annos triginta docuit prope urbem conditam ab Amicis9 ut vir non solum doctior, sed etiam meliore doctrina imbutus,10 locupletans animos iuvenum, luculenta [End Page 576] studia pariens, et semper benignissimus discipulis suis. Plaudamus igitur Joseph Russo. ________ Today we honor a most learned man who has helped guarantee the immortality of Homer’s works. Although even the good Homer nods, this man never faltered in his career. Born in Brooklyn, he received his BA from Brooklyn College. After earning both his MA and PhD from Yale University, his writings then began and later continued to illuminate “the poet of many turns.” But he is no less knowledgeable about the origins of Sicily, a land shaped by myths and the anger of a Cyclops, who had bent the course of Odysseus. Yet he so savored this lore that Polyphemus himself could not divert his attention from Sicily. Such was his love for home. For thirty years he taught at Haverford College in the Philadelphia suburbs, enriching young minds, producing brilliant research, always the soul of kindness to his students. Let us thus applaud Joseph Russo. William Austin, Jonathan Clark, Emily Erickson, Judith P. Hallett, and Kimberly Hunter University of Maryland, College Park Footnotes 1. Ovid, Amores 1.15.9–10: vivet Maeonides, Tenedos dum stabit et Ide, / dum rapidas Simois in mare volvet aquas and Horace, Odes 3.30: exegi monumentum aere perennius 2. Horace, Ars Poetica 359: indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus 3. Eendraght Maeckt Maght, Dutch for “Unity makes strength,” official motto of Brooklyn 4. Nil sine magno labore, motto of Brooklyn College. 5. Lux et veritas, motto of Yale University 6. Handsome Dan, the bulldog and mascot of Yale University 7. Homer, Odyssey 1.1 πολύτροπον, much-turned, rendered into Latin as versutum by Livius Andronicus 8. Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.870–897; Acis was crushed with a giant boulder by a jealous Polyphemus, but became the Acis river. 9. The Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers 10. Non doctior, sed meliore doctrina imbutus, motto of Haverford College Copyright © 2018 The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc

Meeting Poets

Meeting Poets Phoebe Taplin (bio) The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk, and Irina Mashinski, eds. Penguin www.penguin.co.uk/books 572 Pages; Print, $18.00 The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry includes work by 70 writers, including the nineteenth century poet (and friend of Leo Tolstoy), Afanasy Fet. In one of his condensed and lyrical poems, Fet imagines a young woman, after his death, reading his verses; the poem ends, in Robert Chandler’s translation: We two shall breathe a life outside of time; and we shall meet—here—as you read. This thoughtful, new anthology keeps at its heart the sense of poetry’s ability to transcend time and to make emotional connections between writer, translator and reader. Biographical details and historical background precede each set of poems. (Fet’s German mother eloped with a Russian nobleman; his girlfriend set fire to herself—probably on purpose—and died). These shifting contexts, and Chandler’s powerful introduction stressing the enduring importance of poetry in Russia, are always interesting, but the volume’s glory lies—as it should—in the poetry itself. Chandler’s acclaimed translations of Andrey Platonov and Vasily Grossman helped introduce these previously-neglected, Soviet writers to western audiences. Chandler has spent years collaborating on the new anthology, which includes one of his own poems in a brief final chapter of works by non-Russians. Co-editors, Boris Drayluk and Irina Mashinski, are also both poets and translators and have tackled authors from Tolstoy to Nikolay Zabolotsky. The impossibly difficult task of selecting 500 pages of poetry from an entire literary heritage has been guided as much by aesthetic criteria as by academic or historical ones: “…our aim,” writes Chandler, “has been to include only translations that work as poems in English.” This painstaking process has made the volume a monument to the translator’s art. Many Russian poets were themselves also translators. Fet translated Schopenhauer, Virgil, Goethe; Boris Pasternak’s versions of Shakespeare are still well known in Russia. Marina Boroditskaya compares a poem in translation to “an alien spaceman” trying to “breathe the harsh local air.” The power of her metaphor, translated by Ruth Fainlight, shows that some poems can indeed “live” in a foreign language, even if, in other cases “the sacred honey” refuses “to be poured into strange vessels.” Poet and translator Willis Barnstone wrote in his treatise The Poetics of Translation (1995): “A translation dwells in imperfection, using equivalents and shunning mechanical replicas.” Much of Barnstone’s wisdom is made flesh in the new Penguin anthology; he wrote about “moving between tongues,” inevitably acquiring “difference” because “the words and grammar of each language differ from every other language.” But the Penguin Book’s editors also recognise that sometimes meter is part of meaning and rhyme, although much harder to achieve with the less inflected endings of English words, often cannot be ignored altogether. “Form, I believe, matters,” writes Chandler. The questing, necessarily-approximate nature of translation is underlined in the anthology by including two very different versions of Fyodor Tyutchev’s famous lines about the baffling enigma that is Russia. Chandler’s version of Tyutchev’s much-translated “Silentium” is, appropriately, a model of lyrical economy; the refrain “—and be still” that closes each verse resonates more than verbose, earlier translations. The scale of the editors’ work is impressive: 50 translators of nearly 400 poems, ranged in chronological order, celebrate 230 years of verse. The selection starts in the eighteenth century, moving swiftly to Pushkin and contemporaries, followed by an almost unprecedented focus on the twentieth century and a taste of more recent poetry. The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry addresses huge and perennial themes: love and death, poetry itself, what it means to be Russian. Some poems are so fraught with significance in the Russian national consciousness they take on a monumental quality. Antony Wood’s translation of Pushkin’s Exegi Monumentum (itself a version of a poem by Horace) captures this: Long will there be a place for me in people’s hearts,because in my harsh age I sang of Liberty… The Russian lines are inscribed on the base of...

The Lifelike Statues of Ovid and Pushkin's Orthodoxy

Ovid's imitation of Horace's Exegi monumentum is the culminating image of the ekphrastic and iconic modes of the many lifelike statues in Metamorphoses . In the fourth century, classical concepts of metamorphosis and metaphor play an integral role in the formulation of Eastern Orthodox concepts of Incarnation and theosis . This article demonstrates the intersection of the Ovidian and Orthodox paradigms of the lifelike statue in Pushkin's imitation of Horace and its various Russian manifestations: Monument (1836). Analysis refines notions of the conflict between word and image in the poem to emphasize the mutually enlightening progressions of matter and spirit as a continuum, not a binary opposition, challenging traditional interpretations of Monument. Pushkin's concept of his poetic legacy rejects the notion of a static immortality, privileging writerly over readerly reception as the fundamental component of his life after death. The sulunar pit that Pushkin references in the second stanza is read not as a future sympathetic reader, but as a future innovative writer that will transform Pushkin's works into new ones, thereby ensuring the poet's vital and earthly immortality. Pushkin's sculptural myth becomes a paradigm for allusion as the rite by which the sacred life of poetry is perennially renewed.

«Бессмертие души моей...»: К вопросу о генезисе Пушкинского стихотворения «Я памятник себе воздвиг»

Pushkin's overcoming of death is represented by two aspects of his work: stoical Christian acceptance of death, and identification of immortality of soul with artistic legacy. A special role in the understanding of this issue is given to the Kamennoostrovsky cycle of poems. Choosing the semantic counter-poles of the cycle, Pushkin opposes absolute spiritual death (Italian Imitation) and salvific death, which introduces people to Eternal life (Earthly power). Poet's final contemplation of his past ideals in the poem From Pindemonti shows the alteration of the ideological emphasis in his artistic consciousness: Antiquity vector is transformed into pure aesthetics, whereas his fear of death is relieved by Christian values. These ideas reach their climax in the poem Exegi Monumentum (I have erected a monument to myself), which accomplishes Pushkin's spiritual quest of his later years, though it is not a part of his Kamennostrovsky cycle of poems. It has been pointed out that Pushkin's bequest/manifesto themes and motifs first appeared in his Lyceum works and can be traced throughout all his creative periods.

«Бессмертие души моей...»: К вопросу о генезисе Пушкинского стихотворения «Я памятник себе воздвиг»

Pushkin's overcoming of death is represented by two aspects of his work: stoical Christian acceptance of death, and identification of immortality of soul with artistic legacy. A special role in the understanding of this issue is given to the Kamennoostrovsky cycle of poems. Choosing the semantic counter-poles of the cycle, Pushkin opposes absolute spiritual death (Italian Imitation) and salvific death, which introduces people to Eternal life (Earthly power). Poet's final contemplation of his past ideals in the poem From Pindemonti shows the alteration of the ideological emphasis in his artistic consciousness: Antiquity vector is transformed into pure aesthetics, whereas his fear of death is relieved by Christian values. These ideas reach their climax in the poem Exegi Monumentum (I have erected a monument to myself), which accomplishes Pushkin's spiritual quest of his later years, though it is not a part of his Kamennostrovsky cycle of poems. It has been pointed out that Pushkin's bequest/manifesto themes and motifs first appeared in his Lyceum works and can be traced throughout all his creative periods.

Thomas Hardy and Thomas Gray: The Poet's Currency

Why did Hardy, a major novelist, call his novels mere journeywork and say that they been superseded ... by the more important half of my work, the verse?' Consistently, over a writing career of more than 70 years, Hardy maintained that his literary vocation was that of a poet, not a novelist. His novels were what he did for a living; his poetry-enabled by the success of his novels-was what he did for immortality. Where novels for Hardy somehow pander to the society, poems resist it and yet also command it by seeking higher ground. What accounts for the force of Hardy's self-definition, given the artistic quality of his novels? What we have not realized is a key influence on Hardy's sense of his vocation. Thomas Gray is, of course, only one of a number of influences felt by Hardy in the 1860s, from the perennial influence of Shakespeare's use of the Horatian Exegi Monumentum theme to the contemporary influence of Swinburne. But Gray, I would argue, is a key influence because of his unique combination of aestheticism and anxiety about the public culture.

The Myth of A. S. Pushkin in Russia's Silver Age: M. O. Gershenzon, Pushkinist

Gershenzon's intellectual development and Pushkin the biographical study of Pushkin - Gershenzon and the professional Pushkinists Pushkin's modernist aesthetics - Gershenzon and the philosophical interpretation of Pushkin Gershenzon's Pushkinistika in practice - The queen of spaces, The little tragedies, The little house in Kolomna and The belkin tales World War One and the development of Gershenzon's Pushkinistika - Pushkin's wisdom Pushkin's aesthetic testimonial - Exegi monumentum and the debate over Pushkin's true service Pushkin in the revolution - Gershenzon's final period 1921-1925.

Art, Mortality, and the Drama of Subjective Responses in “A Toccata of Galuppi's”

Exegi monumentum aere perennius.… non omnis moriar. From Horace onward, the relationship of art to human mortality has been a major theme in literature – and one which obviously interested Browning, if we may judge from some striking variations he worked on it. In “Cleon” and “Abt Vogler,” for example, his speakers address the subject from very different points of view: Cleon, the pagan, argues that the fact his art will survive after his death cannot in any meaningful way confer immortality on him and that, as an artist, he even more than others is painfully aware of his own limited life; Abt Vogler, on the other hand, confident of the changelessness of God's good, sees in his art a promise that both he and his improvisation will endure. Given Browning's penchant for pushing ideas to extremes and turning them in unusual directions, it is not surprising that he would treat the topic in other less predictable ways – as he did, for example, by making the inert changelessness of works of art in “The Statue and the Bust” comment ironically on human failure to act, or by endowing the worldly and sensuous Bishop at St. Praxed's with an appropriately literal faith in the kind of immortality a suitably artful tomb would confer upon him. It is not surprising, then, that similar topics would appear in “A Toccata of Galuppi's.”

Horace C. 3. 30: The Lyricist as Hero

Exegi monumentum aere perenniusregalique situ pyramidum altius,quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotenspossit diruere aut innumerabilisannorum series et fuga temporum. 5non omnis moriar multaque pars meivitabit Libitinam: usque ego poster acrescam laude recens, dum Capitoliumscandet cum tacita virgine pontifex:dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus 10et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestiumregnavit populorum, ex humili potensprinceps Aeolium carmen ad Italosdeduxisse modos. sume superbiamquaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica 15lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.(I have finished a monument more lasting than bronze and loftier than the pyramids' royal pile, one that no wasting rain, no furious north wind can destroy, or the countless chain of years and the ages' flight. I shall not altogether die, but a mighty part of me shall escape the death-goddess. On and on shall I grow, ever fresh with the glory of after time: so long as the pontiff climbs the Capitol with the silent Vestal, I, risen high from low estate, where wild Aufidus thunders and where Daunus in a parched land once ruled o'er a peasant folk, shall be famed for having been the first to adapt Aeolian song to Italian verse. Accept the proud honour won by thy merits, Melpomene, and graciously crown my locks with Delphic bays.) (Bennett)