Monday, June 06, 2011
Jacob Balde, Silvae 8.13
I am greatly indebted to Karl Maurer for giving me a preview of his English translation, Latin text, and notes on a very interesting poem on the theme of aboricide—Jacob Balde, Silvae 8.13.
Translation:
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Translation:
To Andreas Aigenmann, S.J. A Meditation on Death occasioned by the destruction of trees. When with both of us watching the above-praised Adam Holle cleaned up the garden of the College of Munich. A.D. 1645Latin text:
Nothing exists, that Age does not knock down.
Death harvests everything.
You see trunks, born when William was our King,
onto their own tombs crash.
Noble, hacked at by axes, a tree sounds – 5
glides – covers the whole yard.
This hangman, our axe-bearer, hunts the garden,
Lycurgus, just like you
and if a fruit-tree shows one shrivelled limb
he dooms it to destruction. 10
Beneath the blows it may as if in grief
groan, when about to fall,
and try to slow the steel with sappy tears;
but soon, cut down, it falls.
The end and origins of human life 15
hide in this somber image.
Lictor for plants, our ADAM has the shape
and the mandate of Death.
Dryads spin threads in trees, in us the Parcae,
and either threads they cut. 20
The acorn-bearing infant of a holm-oak
or her boy thick with leaves
is given to fall to earth, to kneel against
the big trunk of its parent.
No marvel, that we die by the same laws 25
by which we came to be.
But one thing, one thing, grieves me, Aigenmann,
and grieves the orchard’s birds:
our Gardener cares more for Nature’s laws,
her honor, than Death does. 30
Near Death, we are like some blind gladiator;
worth less than a cheap trunk.
No one clips off a shoot that just now sprouted
into its mother’s lap:
he executes the old, dry, withered stalks, 35
the pensioners of the forest;
but we in youth, when we have hardly grown,
are plucked before old age.
To your tenth winter is already added
a second sixtieth winter. 40
You have no fill; you want – how many eras?
You weigh how many grandsires?
You want what thicket of years? No immense forest
of life would be enough!
The wands of boys, saplings of young men, wither: 45
yet some grown willow lasts.
The first fresh down of humble tamarisk
is knocked first from the leaf! –
while you, barbaric Oak, so full of years,
stand, shaking a gray head, 50
like that upon the boughs of which, Jove let
arms of the Giants hang.
Yet I don’t envy your life. Run a course
full of Euboic dust.
But would you have me plough the swamp of Charon 55
ahead of your cracked raft?
Always you long for praise. Lead! In parades
the first rank has more pride.
Move your bier-ready old age; we will follow,
like slaves behind their master. 60
Just one small favor: pity the fresh Laurel!
White poplar, you go first!
Wherever Chance and Fate go, we obey,
O spirited old man.
Perhaps this tree being flattened by the axe 65
will give us each a bier.
Ad Andream Aigenmannum S. J. Meditatio Mortis, ex interitis arborum. Quum, utroque spectante, supra laudatus Adamus Hollius, Collegii Monacensis hortum repurgaret Anno M.DC. XLV.Notes:
Usque adeo nihil est quod non quoque proterat aetas.
Omnia, fata metunt.
Adspicis, ut stirpes Guilielmo Principe natae
In sua busta ruant.
Nobilis impactis sonat icta securibus arbos, 5
Lapsaque sternit humum.
It per utrumque redux, lustratque bipennifer hortum
More, Lycurge, tuo.
Quamque notat pomum venis marcere caducis
Destinat exitio. 10
Vulneribus licet illa crepet, similisque dolenti
Proicienda gemat,
Quoque potest succo, ferrum lacrymosa moretur,
Denique secta cadit.
Scilicet humanae finem ac primordia vitae 15
Tristis imago refert.
Plantarum lictor, speciem mandataque Mortis
Noster A d a m u s habet.
Arboribus Dryades, nobis nent stamina Parcae.
Utraque fila, secant. 20
Ac fuit, ex feta quando ilice glandifer infans,
Frondifluusve puer,
In terram cecidisse datur; truncoque parentis
Applicuisse genu.
Non equidem miror, queis olim nascimur, iisdem 25
Legibus occidere.
Hoc est, hoc tantum queror, Aigenmanne (queruntur
Hoc quoque lucis aves):
Naturae legeis et fixum curat Honestum
Mors Olitore minus. 30
Subsumus Andabatae. Peioris stipite vili
Conditionis homo est.
Non rapitur, modo qui materno surculus horti
Pullulat in gremio:
Sed vetulae tantum stirpes iugulantur, et aridae, 35
Emeritumque nemus.
Atqui nos, primis qui vix adolevimus annis,
Carpimur ante senes.
Additur ad decimam iam sexagesima brumam
Bruma secunda tuam. 40
Nec satur es vitae. quota, dic, in secula tendes?
Quot meditaris avos?
Quam silvam annorum speras? Suffecerit aevi
Nulla vorago tibi!
Tabescunt puerum virgae, iuvenumque genistae: 45
Duret adulta salix!
Heu! saepe ex humilis lanugo prima myricae
Decutitur folio!
Tu stas interea barbara annosaque Quercus,
Canitiemque quatis, 50
Qualis erat, cuius ramis pendere Gigantum
Iuppiter arma dedit.
Nec tamen invideo vitam. spatia omnia comple
Pulveris Euboici.
At nolis me stagna prius sulcare Charontis, 55
Quam tua fracta ratis.
Semper honorari petitis. praecedite. pompae
Dignior ordo prior.
Non procul a tergo senium capulare sequemur;
Servus ut instat hero. 60
Quod precor, hoc unum est. Lauri miserere virentis:
Populus alba, praei.
Ut se cumque ferant Casus et Fata: paremus
Nos, animose Senex.
Sandapilam, ferro quae nunc prosternitur arbor, 65
Forsan utrique dabit.
Meter Asclepiad IV. About the poem Balde says this in his Preface to Silvae VIII: ‘The gardener Adam Holle I extolled with praise as true, and as worthy of him, as I could; a man engrafted into my Forest both by his own merit, and because in oaken strength and shape he is equal to the very Forest. For his benefit a Meditation on Death, impressed more deeply on the heart, was assigned to me by Andreas Aigenmann, a most delicious old man, to whom I dedicated the Ode of that title: who although so old, is even now in health as good as anyone’s, free of all sicknesses, except that very recently Charon has started squeezing his foot with a gouty tow-rope.’ 3 Guilielmo principe: Balde might mean William III (1375-1435), Duke of Bavaria or William IV (1493-1550); both buried in the Frauenkirche at Munich. The latter perhaps is likelier: see n. 39 ff. 8 Lycurgus: ‘Son of Dryas, king of the Edones, who prohibited the worship of Bacchus to his subjects, and ordered all the vines to be destroyed, Ov. M. 4, 22’—L&S (he is there called ‘bipennifer’). 17 plantarum lictor: a Roman consul or praetor (in this case, the one called Death!) was preceded in the street by lictors, each bearing a bundle of rods from which an axe projected (the fasces); and if a criminal needed whipping or beheading, the lictors did it (so for ‘lictor for plants’ one is even tempted to put ‘hangman of plants’). 19 Dryads: Balde conceives of them a bit differently from how the ancients did. Each tree has a life-spirit, a Dryas (lit. ‘oak-tree goddess’), but curiously, a bit like the human Genius, the dryas is born and dies together with the tree. (See Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 257-275 and on the Genius, Horace’s haunting lines, Epist. 2.2.187 ff.) 20 utraque] utroque 1646. 29 legeis: Balde oddly scans this word as an anapest; cf. Silv. 8.22.17 where queis is scanned as two long syllables. 31 Andabatae: Roman gladiators were sometimes blindfolded for the greater amusement of the spectators. 36 emeritum: a retired soldier who draws a pension. 39 ff. tuam... dic... meditaris (etc.): nothing in the Latin identifies the “you” addressed; but it seems the oak of 49 ff. 39-40 seem to say that the addressee is 130 years old; this would put its birthday in 1515. 54 Pulveris Euboici: cf. Ovid Met. 14.135 ff., where the Sibyl of Cumae (‘Euboean’ because it was a Euboean colony) says, ‘Ego pulveris hausti / ostendens cumulum, quot haberet corpora pulvis, / tot mihi natales contingere vana rogavi’: ‘pointing to a pile of dust, I prayed foolishly to have as many birthdays as the dust had specks’; and she says that her wish was granted, to her later grief. 59 non] 1660: nos 1646. 60 hero: herus = erus (as always in Balde).
Labels: arboricide
