Snow Snowing
The opening lines from Émile Nelligan's "Soir d'hiver" came to mind
Ah! comme la neige a neigé!when I read Alice Oswald's rendition of an extended simile from Homer's Iliad
Ma vitre est un jardin de givre
Like snow falling like snowMemorial is subtitled in its American edition as "A Version of Homer's Iliad" but I prefer the British edition which gives "An Excavation of the Iliad".
When the living winds shake the clouds into pieces
Like flutters of silence hurrying down
To put a stop to the earth at her leafwork
And through the magic of search engines and keywords, I am reminded of the description of Ulysses in Book III of the Iliad thanks to a text by Françoise Létoublon "Les récits d’Ulysse" to accompany an exhibition (Homer and the Muses) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
L’image de la neige, énigmatique, a été commentée dans des sens divers et la traduction de Mugler par "flocons de neige" est peut-être fallacieuse : plutôt que comme une douce neige ouatée et silencieuse, la parole d’Ulysse tombe probablement dru comme une tempête de neige, tempête qui relèverait en effet du sublime.Soft batting or blizzard: snow.
Source: http://expositions.bnf.fr/homere/arret/04.htm
Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744) opts for the soft but penetrating snow (his translations of Homer have been made available online through a Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication).
But when Ulysses rose, in thought profound,I have drifted far from Nelligan. And there is no way back. Snow has covered the tracks.
His modest eyes he fix’d upon the ground;
As one unskill’d or dumb, he seem’d to stand,
Nor raised his head, nor stretch’d his sceptred hand;
But, when he speaks, what elocution flows!
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows,
The copious accents fall, with easy art;
Melting they fall, and sink into the heart!
And so for day 1150
05.02.2010
