Love Songs Of The New Kingdom
(JOHN L FOSTER)
There''s not that much in Love Songs of the New Kingdom:
each poem starts on a new page; some are accompanied on the facing page by
hieroglyphic versions (which will be purely ornamental to most readers, and the
original texts were in hieratic anyway); and there is a good selection of
halftones (reproductions of ancient Egyptian paintings). This only leaves room
for some fifty poems, many of fewer than a dozen lines. Love Songs is,
however, an extremely attractive volume, which I enjoyed as much I''ve enjoyed
any collection of love poetry.
The poems themselves are pleasantly lacking in self-consciousness or
artificiality. They have a very modern feel to them ? if they weren''t over
three thousand years old they could almost have been written yesterday (but
perhaps not a hundred years ago). I have no idea how much this is due to the
translation (into free verse), but it makes them a good antidote to the
distance which can make ancient Egypt
seem so mysterious. They may also shed light on debates about the extent to
which love is a human universal. Here''s a sample:
Astray or captured, all bear witness
to the consumate skill of this lady,
Shrewd at her craft and perfected by heaven.
Her hand has the feel of new-blown lotus,
Her breast the delicate scent of ripe berries
her arms twine like vinestems, and tangle,
And her face is a snare of fine-grained redwood.
And I? Who am I in this recital? ?
The proverbial goose
(and my love it is lures me)
Tricked by her tasty bait
to this trap of my own ingenious imagining.
With some similarities to the Song of Songs, the poems in Love
Songs of the New Kingdom should appeal to anyone who appreciates that as
love poetry.
Resumos Relacionados
- The Collected Poems Of Emily Dickinson
- Kambaramayanam
- Secret Feelings
- Gitanjali
- 100 Love Sonnets
|
|
