pothos.org

Hello, Alexanderphiles! This is my first entry in this forum, and I'm happy to have joined in. I am looking for a poem by Robert Lowell that I found quoted in http://www.triangle.com/books/zane/stor ... 3152c.html
Another research brought me to http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/l ... oems1.html , where I discovered two titles: "Death of Alexander" and "Xerxes and Alexander", but no texts (unless I've not been able to find the appropriate links). In Italy, where I live, some "Selected poems" by Lowell have been published,but those are not included. I'm interested in poems about Alexander, although I think he'll never find the Homer he longed for (but... who knows?). Thank you and kind regards to all
Azara

Greetings Azara,I,too, have collected poems about Alexander and his times over many years, and also have some originals that have been sent or given to me for the collection.At this time I am packing for a major move but if you reply to me at philoalexandros@hotmail.com so I have your email, I will be happy to contact you when I am finally settled and the books have arrived and send you either copies or links.Regards,
Sikander

ooh, me too, me too!! Can I get some too?

Sikander, I'd also love to see what you have in the way of poems. Do you have the Lowell poems - you didn't say? I've also been collecting poems and references to Alexander in literature (as has Marcus), but not for that long. I didn't know of these, so, Azara, needing an excuse to get out and about, I went to the library and picked up a volume of Robert Lowell's collected poems. There are actually four poems with Alexander in the name, although the one called Xerxes and Alexander is actually a rearranged version of excerpts taken from a longer poem called The Vanity of Human Wishes (A Version of Juvenal's Tenth Satire). Alexander also gets a brief mention in a couple of other poems. I'm going to copy all four poems here as I anticipate no problem with copyright laws - these four take up two pages out of almost twelve hundred! Also want to briefly mention a snippet from his poem on the Spartans at Thermopylae. where Lowell says they "combed one another's golden Botticellian hair at the Pass". Golden Botticellian Spartans?! Well I guess that's what poetic license is all about. :-)I just did a test on a disappearing thread and it seems that the format here doesn't allow for line breaks so I will have to put in paragraph breaks instead for the poems to scan. It means I'll have to give each poem its own post or I'll run out of room. And if anyone has any criticism of the them, do please remember that I'm only the messenger. :-)Best regards,Amyntoros

Xerxes sailed the slopes of Mount Athos (suchthe lies of poets) and paved the sea with ships;his chariots rolled down a boulevard of decks,breakfasting Persians drank whole rivers dry - but tell us how this King of Kings returnedfrom Salamis in a single shipscything for searoom through his own drowned . . .One world was much too small for Alexander,double-marching to gain the limits of the globe,as if he were a runner at Marathon;early however he reached the final goal,his fatal Babylon walled with frail dry brick.A grave was what he wanted. Death aloneshows us what tedious things our bodies are.

His sweet moist eyes missed nothing - the vague guerilla,new ground, new tactics, the time for his hell-fire drive,Demosthenes knotting his nets of dialectic -phalanxes oiled ten weeks before their trial,engines on oxen for the fall of Tyre - Achilles . . . in Aristotle's annotated copy - health burning like the dewdrop on his fleshhit in a hundred calculated salliesto give the Persians the cup of love, of brothers - the wine bowl of the Macedonian drinking bout . . .drinking out of friendship, then meeting Medius,then drinking, then bathing, then sleeping, then meeting Medius,then drinking, then bathing . . . dead at thirty two - in this life only is our hope in Christ.

The young man's numinous eye is like the sun,for three days the Macedonian soldiers pass;speechless, he knows them as if they were his sheep.Shall Alexander be carried in the templeto pray there, and perhaps, recover? Butthe god forbids it, "It's a better thingif the king stay where he is." He soon dies,this after all, perhaps the "better thing." . . . No one was like him. Terrible were his crimes - but if you wish to blackguard the Great King,think how mean, obscure and dull you are,your labors lowly and your merits less - we know this, of all the kings of old,he alone had the greatness of heart to repent.

Alexander extended philosophyfarther than Aristotle or the honest man,And kept his foot on everything he touched - no dog stretching at the Indian sun.Most dogs find liberty in servitude;but this is a dog who justified his statue - Diogenes had his niche in the Roman villashonored as long as Rome could bear his weight - cunis, cynic, dog, Diogenes.Poor Diogenes growling at Alexander,"You can do one thing for me, stand out of my sun."When the schoolboys stole his drinking cup,he learned to lap up water in his hands - "No men in Athens . . . only Spartan boys."

Super, thanks, Linda Ann. I was doing an online search for all of these this morning without much luck - just goes to show that proper libraries can sometimes be *much* better than the Internet (but not in the UK, 'cos they're rubbish here, now).All the bestMarcus

Dear Amyntoros'
Thank you for your invaluable help! My collection is just (and slowly) coming into existence, but I'll be glad to share with you and other Pothosians what I find.
I can contribute some texts from Italian literature, but, if I don't find published translations, maybe I'll have to try to translate them myself (Fortune favours et cetera).
By the way, do you know "In 200 b.C.", by Costantin Kavafis? Its subject is the famous "...except the Lacedaemons" inscription.
Now I'm going to relish the poems you posted; let's meet again for comments. Good bye for now,
Azara

Many thanks to you too from Azara.

Hi Azara,Well, I'd like to have any Italian pieces in Italian as well as English ... so if you can't find translations please at least allow us to have the Italian!All the bestMarcus

Hello Azara,Yes, I found the Kavafis poem by accident in a book of modern Greek poetry that I bought in a library sale. Have to say that I do love that particular poem! And I second Marcus in saying it'd be great to have the Italian poetry - in one language or the other. :-)And Marcus, I had looked for these poems online as well, with no luck. It's not surprising they can't be found on the web considering how many poems Lowell wrote in his lifetime. He was one prolific writer!ATBAmyntoros

Hello, Amyntoros and Marcus. I searched the Internet for one of the Italian poems, that is "Al+¿xandros" by Giovanni Pascoli (1895). I found it cited in some international academic sites, but only as a title in some syllabuses; in my city's library there is a French version, and thatGÇÖs all I could find. So I suspect an English printed version, made by a proper translator, isnGÇÖt easily available. So, for want of anything better, I'm translating it and I'll post it soon, both in the Italian and in the English (so to speak) version. If the pothos format allows me to do so, that is. If there are problems, I'll post it in instalments, as Amyntoros did. Of course all the sound and rythm of the Italian verses will be lost, and I have no hope of exploiting the resources of the English language, but at least some of the content will pass.I'm also reflecting about Lowell's poems, but they will have to wait.Good Bye for now
Alessandra

I - We have come to the End. O holy herald, sound your trumpet:
no more land, except that one, on high,
which glitters in the middle of your shields,
o Foot Companions, a floating and lonely land,
inaccessible to man. From this last shore
you see down there, mercenaries from Caria,
the farthest Ocean river, with no wave.
You, who came here from the Haimos and the Carmel,
look, the earth shades off and sinks
into the twinkling darkness of the sky.II O rivers I crossed! You carry the motionless
forests in your clear waters,
you carry a deep murmur which remains.
O mountains I passed! After I had passed,
the view you opened before my eyes
was never so vast as what you had hidden from me before.
Blue like the sky and like the sea,
mountains! rivers! It would have been wiser
to stay, to refrain from looking ahead, to dream:
Dream is the infinite shadow of Truth.III Haw happier I was, when in my future
there was so long a way to go; so many ordeals,
so many doubts, so much destiny!
At Issus! When the camp at night
blazed in the wind, with the thousand ranks
and the dark wagons, and the countless herds.
In Pella! When in those long sunsets
You and I, o my BullGÇÖs Head, pursued the Sun,
The Sun who, amidst the dark woods,
Farther and farther glared like a jewel.IV Son of Amyntas! I did not know about ends
The day I left. Among the altars
Timotheus the flautist began to play a hymn:
Powerful breath that urged me to my fatal way,
Beyond death; and I bear it in my heart
as a shell bears the murmur of the sea.
O sounding blast, o mighty spirit
Who pass overhead and command me to seek you!
But this is the End, the Ocean, the VoidGǪ
And the chant passes and vanishes past us.-V
And so he weeps, where he came in his eagerness.
He weeps from the one eye, as black as death;
He weeps from the other eye, as blue as sky.
Because in his black eye (this is his fate)
Hope always changes into despair; while
in the blue eye his wish burns more and more.
He hears wild beasts quiver in the distance,
He hears unknown, unceasing forces
Storming the immense plain in front of him,
Like tramping elephants.VI In the meanwhile, on the rugged mountains of Epirus,
His virgin sisters spin Milesian wool
For the dear one who is away.
Late at night, with their industrious maids,
They turn the spindles with their waxy fingers;
And the wind passes, the stars pass