somnō lūmina victa dabam
wide
tired eyes
made plastic from
an enforced holiday of
back-lit screens and bedside lamps
Category: imago/poema 4 comments »
4 Responses to “somnō lūmina victa dabam”
Leave a Reply
if we didn't, where would we be?
wide
tired eyes
made plastic from
an enforced holiday of
back-lit screens and bedside lamps
Category: imago/poema 4 comments »
June 16th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Heal.
Heal heal.
Heal, heal, heal.
Heal, heal.
HEAL!
June 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Rich photograph by the way. I am trying to decipher the title.
So far I get:
“Rest gives the light of life.”
If it hurts don’t do it, okay?
Love, love–thinking of you!
Dadoo
June 17th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
dabam
victa
lūmina
somnō
I was giving (or, I started to give)
(my)
conquered (wearied, etc.)
eyes
to sleep…
It’s a fragment of a Petronius poem that featured in my Latin exam.
Hee hee!
June 18th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Well, it was fifty years since I took Latin, and I only took two levels of it. My teacher was a guy (whose name I think I still know, but can’t quite recall right now), who had dry pale skin, hallow cheeks and deep set eyes. His rare smiles were only controlled and uncomfortable. He seemed like a serious academic stuck with teaching 7th and 8th graders Latin. He was a contrast to all my other male teachers who tried to be jocks. He mystified me, so I enjoyed observing him because I was trying to figure him out more than than trying to pay attention to the grammar and what the hell Julius Ceasar did, accept the fact that he “crossed the Rubicon”… I didn’t care how many legions JC had or what the Gauls had. The Romans were so damned pragmatic and did not ponder over the unanswerable questions that the Greeks did.
Anyway, I cannot remember all the declensions, though some of them remind me of Italian and Polish, both of which I have only a slightly better recollection. My dictionary did not help, becasue I didn’t guess the correct root form for dabam and lumina, which is light in Latin was not listed in my dictionary, only ocula… I have to admit that I should have gotten victa as some form of victory, but I would have missed the accusative case for it.
I would have enjoyed being in the class, that class, with you, especially if I knew I could actually keep up with the pace. I wish I was in a place where I could study Greek and Polish, though, especially, or brush up even on my Italian.