This was an essay I set myself regarding some of the issues I’ve stumbled across in my translation of the Monobiblos; it can be found in Consilium, the Balliol Classics Journal.
“Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis”[1]
So with capturing eyes the girl inflames the poet’s world and Propertian love elegy in all its anti-Roman sentiment provides the window onto a world of the romantic and the erotic. Now we find that Love is a word too often abused judging from the presuppositions of a society that bandies such a term so readily whilst seemingly failing to value its reality, and Lust as Love mars our conceptions of both all too often. It is with this slightly bleak and yet all too apparent perspective that I should like to examine the concept of Love within the Monobiblos from an erotic perspective and ask the question of how far Propertius’ professed love for Cynthia is perhaps based on an erotic infatuation as well as a glorious conceit of, if not epic, then elegiac proportions. I should note before beginning any discussion that Propertius’ professed ‘love’ might well have transformed itself into something more complex, mature and developed than a simple desire to get one’s end away but that if this should be the case it nonetheless remains that his entire structure could be built upon the foundations of erotic desire; it is with this in mind that I shall proceed.
There’s no better place to start than at the beginning so we shall take a look at the first elegy in the Monobiblos, the elegy in which we are not only presented with the girl but a number of themes that will continue throughout the course of the elegies. The poetic ideas of love as madness (furor[2]), the lover as suffering from some form of illness (facite illa meo palleat ore magis[3]) the concept of travel and far off journeys (ferte per extremas gentes et ferte per undas[4]), and the general sense of the amator as one who experience suffering and misery (vitate malum[5]) are all set out for the reader. The erotic elements of the poem might not leap out immediately but it would appear that they are nonetheless present and that perhaps there is a tendency for translations toward a sentimental interpretation. A consideration of the second line helps shed some light onto the ambiguity and sexual potential inherent in the elegy.
“contactum nullis ante Cupidinibus.
previously untouched by Cupid’s arts” (1.1.2)
The ambiguity lies in the translation of cupidinibus for what are Cupid’s arts referring to? Should it be a sentimental translation such as ‘pangs of love’ or more realistically a general sense of desire? Joan Booth sees that “the sexual sense of cupidinibus (‘lustful longings’) is the primary one”[6] and even if this is overstating the case we nonetheless should take into account the cognate verb cupido and its sense of desiring or wanting when translating this word. If it be a desire then what it is it a desire for other than to be with or possess the object desired; from the outset we have an erotic undertone to Propertius’ love for Cynthia.
The idea is further developed by the mention of nostra Venus in line 33, ‘my Venus’ or ‘my love’ but what is this love if not the poeticized sexual desire for Cynthia? Booth draws our attention to a passage from Ovid’s Heroides in which Paris woos Helen.
“si reddenda fores, aliquid tamen ante tulissem,
nec Venus ex toto nostra fuisset iners.
vel tua virginitas esset libata vel illud
quod poterat salva virginitate rapi
if you had needs to be rendered, I would first have taken some pledge,
nor would I have allowed our love to lie inert
either your virginity I would have taken or else
I would have taken what I could and left your honor intact”[7]
Booth’s view of the usage here of nostra Venus heavily emphasizes the potential sexual nature of its translation.
“Given that Venus is “one of the standard neutral nouns of the educated language for sexual intercourse”[8],‘our venus’ could be taken as reference to the potential sexual relationship with Helen which Paris is claiming that he, unlike Theseus before him would never have allowed to remain inactive.”[9]
Still whatever potential may exist of a sexual relationship between Propertius and Cynthia it is clearly the lack of its successful conclusion that gives the poetry its meaning; our constant poet is stretched out in long nights of frustrated desire. The emphasis on these drawn out nights is an important point that we should consider not only in elegy 1 but also elegy 14 and even more remarkably in elegy 3 where we have a similar view from the constructed Cynthia. Why should it be the nights that love comes to visit in full force and leave its wretched victim tossed and turned upon a stormy ocean of insecurity and violent emotion? Quite simply because it is in the dark of the night that lovers tangle lips and never is the contrast between love’s successful realization and the cold emptiness of the bed brought into sharper focus than when night rolls in and brings not whispered passions but empty hands. So it is that we have the picture of ‘miserum toto iuvenem versare cubili’[10] as the young man stretches out wretchedly across his bed presumably in a similar manner to that of Propertius ‘nam me nostra Venus noctes exercet amaras’[11]. Nor is this apparently limited to our poet for Cynthia, given her voice in elegy 3, berates the wayward Propertius for having wasted the hours ‘meae noctis’[12] of ‘my night’ and, as much as she has been troubled by the thoughts of Propertius dwindling those hours away in the arms of some other woman, her anxieties stem from his absence, from his failure to show up and bring their mutual desire to a suitably climatic end.
The very nature of love elegy builds from the simplicities of the human condition a poetic construction and in many cases an overly sentimental or fanciful mythology that shrouds unsatisfied sexual desire in an overly romantic cloak. We have already seen how nostra Venus can be read as the potential physical relationship between two lovers nonetheless poetic in its way, but if we were to read nostra Venus as mea Venus the idea becomes even more simplistic
“But, then again, if nostra = mea, yet another possibility suggests itself: that nostra venus means ‘my sexual energy’ or ‘my penis’, a euphemistic usage of venus also well attested [see Adams, 89]”[13]
Such a reading helps us to understand a little further the mention of vacuus Amor in 1.34 as an empty, unsatisfied sexual desire from which stems this poeticized account of the malady that is love.
It is worth spending some time examining unsatisfied sexual desire in elegy 3 for in this poem we have of course got not only Propertius’ objectification of Cynthia but that same woman’s apparent words to him set against a backdrop of heroic ideation. Propertius likens Cynthia to Ariadne, Andromeda and an exhausted bacchant girl and there’s good reason for such comparisons given that all have a potential eroticism to them. Ariadne will of course be discovered and made love to by Bacchus, Andromeda has been rescured by Perseus who take her as a lover, and a bacchant exudes a constant potential for erotic activity, in any case Propertius assumes the role of Bacchus and Perseus to Cynthia’s Ariadne and Andromeda, a noble and heroic transposition of his own sexual desire and end to his feelings. Nor would it appear that he is entirely alone in this conceit given that Cynthia herself, tearfully remonstrating with her wayward man, describes how she distracted herself whilst waiting for him to come stumbling back home.
“nam modo purpureo fallebam stamina somnum,
rursus et Orpheae carmine fessa lyrae
For a first I staved off sleep with purple thread
then, tired with the song of the Orphic lyre”[14]
Is this reference to sewing an allusion to the long suffering Penelope waiting for the return of her husband? And what do we make of the reference to Orpheus in line 42 if not a subtle allusion to the dead Eurydice who awaits her lover in the underworld. In both cases Cynthia places herself in the position of mythological female and in both cases she is one who is separated from her lover by space and death. What is particularly interesting in this comparison she makes is that if Propertius is her Odysseus or Orpheus then the tradition makes it quite clear that both men are deeply in love with their respective women[15], so much so that they brave tempestuous journeys in order that they might be together once more. Yet Cynthia’s tears and remonstrations make it quite clear in this instance that, if Propertius is her Odysseus, it’s not enough that he might be in love with her, his physical presence is necessary and, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, his duty or task is to ‘prove it all night’.
David Harmon, emphasizing exactly this point, sees Cynthia’s words as in fitting with the Propertian game of mythologizing the sexual.
“There is the suggestion, the possibility implicit in her words not only that she shares his heroic fantasies (Cynthia acts the part of a heroine) but that she wishes he would carry those nights which he imposes upon her, to their fitting (i.e., an heroic) conclusion.”[16]
The’ noctes me miseram quales semper habere iubes’[17] that Propertius imposes upon Cynthia coincide with the ‘me nostra Venus noctes exercet amaras’[18] that Propertius himself suffers. In both instances, it seems reasonably clear that a love that transcends time and space is simply not enough, physical contact and sexual satisfaction are necessary even if ultimately insufficient.
This physical over the metaphysical, sexual over the spiritual, is perhaps best understood when we consider elegy 19 in which Propertius makes a great song and dance about not fearing death but instead the separation from Cynthia that death would entail. Barbara Flaschenriem summarizes a rather different point of view.
“In these lines (1.19.1-6) the speaker claims for his love a power and a consequence which far outlast all physical contact with his mistress: death and its grim trappings, he announces, hold no terror for him now.”[19]
But for all his protestations, Propertius indulges in a wonderful piece of sophistry here, death does hold a fear and that fear is his separation from Cynthia, his reference of the dead Protesilaus’ visit to his wife Laodamia in lines 7-10 paradoxically puts the lie to his claims of his love transcending his mortality.
“ illic Phylacides iucundae coniugis heros
non potuit caecis immemor esse locis;
sed cupidus falsis attingere gaudia palmis
Thessalus antiquam venerat umbra domum
There, the heroic son of Phylacus, of his dear wife
unable to banish the memory, in his blind abode,
but in his desire to touch his joy with phantom hands,
this man of Thessaly returned to his home of old.”
In his commentary on these lines Robert Baker describes the weightiness of the lines as suggesting “the intensity, the long-lastingness and the other-worldliness of Propertius’ love for Cynthia”[20] but this seems to miss the salient fact that Protesilaus longs to touch his wife once more, there’s no ambiguity in the infinitive attingere, his inability to do so is a constraint upon his desire, which of course demands physical contact. He wishes to be present for his wife as more than a shade because the love he feels is a needy construct that seeks consummation and exists wholly in the world of the living not the dead. So it is with Propertius’ high-minded claims that his love for Cynthia will transcend death, for they serve the purpose of his urgent desire that they may ‘dum licet, inter nos latemur amantes’[21], why? Because when death interposes itself between the lovers, their physical relationship will be sundered, and so just as Catullus will urge Lesbia:
“nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
When our own brief light has faded
there will be a perpetual night we’ll sleep.”[22]
As a reason that they may indulge in numberless kisses while they still enjoy the light of life, so too does Propertius use this metaphor of death to dramatize “the urgency of desire and the impediments that perpetually thwart or defer its fulfillment.”[23] Put simply our constant poet does fear death for he fears the day he will no longer be able to touch Cynthia and so he imparts what physical presence he can into his conception of death in lines 21-2
“quam vereor ne te contempto, Cynthia, busto,
abstrahat a nostro puluere iniquus Amor,
how I fear that you’ll spurn my tomb, Cynthia
and unjust love will drag you from my ashes.”
There’s a wider point that could be made about conceptions of death and the importance of being remembered but I don’t wish to do such a complex topic the injustice of a few throwaway lines of argument. The important point here is that Propertius creates a physical presence for himself after his hypothesized death and then he binds Cynthia to his mortal remains, it’s all he can do to keep that physical contact between himself and his lover but it’s readily apparent that this physical contact is something of a sine qua non in his conception of love.
Yet finally, what is all this urgency, this desire, this sexual frustration? Is there futility in Propertius’ desperate claims upon the body of Cynthia, the answer that I would suggest is, yes, yes there is. I have already mentioned that physical passion is the necessary factor to Propertian love but equally I have noted that for all its necessity it is insufficient, but what do I mean by this? For something of an explanation I should like to turn to a passage in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura
“denique cum membris conlatis flore fruuntur
aetatis, iam cum praesagit gaudia corpus
atque in eost Venus ut muliebria conserat arva,
adfigunt avide corpus iunguntque salivas
oris et inspirant pressantes dentibus ora -
nequiquam, quoniam nil inde abrader possunt
nec penetrare et abire in corpus corpora toto;
Lastly, when clasped body to body they enjoy the flower
of their age, at the moment when the body foretastes its joy
and Venus is on the point of sowing the woman’s field,
they cling greedily close together and join their watering mouths
and draw deep breaths pressing teeth on lips;
but all is vanity, for they can rub nothing off
nor can they penetrate or be absorbed body in body.”[24]
Lucretius emphasizes the futility of the sex act, for all its passion, for all its heady feeling of closeness it is, in so many cases, the frustrated act of two people trying ultimately to possess one another wholly and completely. Such an achievement is impossible and every attempt a further not-so-good intention paving the thoroughfare to a self-constructed hell. This essay has tried to concentrate in identifying lust, sexual desire and yearning as the fundamental foundation of Propertius’ professed ‘love’ for Cynthia, and an equation between lust and love was no throwaway title but absolutely crucial in understanding what we’re seeing in Propertius’ love elegy; for our constant poet has committed the grievous error of mistaking lust as love and so his pain will be endless. Martha Nussbaum, in her excellent discursive analysis of love in The Therapy of Desire, describes the self-defeating goal of such lovers.
“Feeling their erotic desire as a source of weakness and instability, an ulcerous sort in the self, they seek to put an end to the pain and even shame of this vulnerable condition by a complete possession of the other that would put an end to all desire.”[25]
And what of the Propertian world of heroes, of myths, of ghosts that drift from the grave to try embracing their still living wives, what of Propertius’ drunken objectification of his sleeping Cynthia and his likening of her to mythological women? Nussbaum believes Lucretius’ poetry provides a remarkable insight into this poetic world of self-deception
“Lovers are so hooked on the stories and the clichés of love, Lucretius argues, that they hardly look at the actual person when they love.”[26]
That this deluded view of one we allegedly ‘love’ is a terrible conceit and one that most of us will readily admit to having fallen victim to ourselves at some point, should not need to be stated. To have built up such poetic fancies upon the foundation of our sexual desires and longings is perhaps a very human foible but we should always be wary of our tendencies to fall for our own deceptions and to end up mistaking the game for the reality. This essay has only touched upon much deeper issues within the Propertian corpus but I should hope that by raising some of these points it might help to unpack the admittedly complex conceptions of love and lust that we find not only in this poet but in love elegy as a whole. I should note that I have spent much of this essay using the word ‘love’ with errant abandon and the reader might well ask me, ‘what is love?’ I can only respond that if I knew the answer to that I would drink a lot less than I do, but it seems reasonably clear it means a great deal more than sexual longing. A lover’s conceit may lead to beautiful poetry, but if we should wrap ourselves up too greatly in a world of our own imagery, mistake lust for love and so submit ourselves to endless confusion, we risk losing sight of what love truly is and in doing so lose the greater part of ourselves.
Scott Carless,
Balliol College
2011
Bibliography
Adams. J. N, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, London, 1982
Baker. R. J, Propertius I, An Introduction, Translation and Commentary, Aris and Phillips Ltd, Warminster, 2000
Booth. J, ‘Nostra Venus”, “Vacuus Amor” and the Ending of Propertius 1.1: Double Trouble?’, Mnemosyne, Vol 54, 339-345
Catullus, Carmina, Mynors. R. A. B, Oxford Classical Texts, OUP, 1958
Flaschenriem. B, ‘Loss, Desire, and Writing in Propertius 1.19 and 2.15’ Classical Antiquity, Vol 16, 259-277
Harmon. D. P, ‘Myth and Fantasy in Propertius 1.3’ Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974) Vol 104, 151-165
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Rouse. W. H. D and Smith. M. F, Loeb Classical Library, HUP, 1975
Nussbaum. M, The Therapy of Desire, Princeton University Press, 1994
Ovid, Heroides XVI-XXI, ed Kenney. E. J, Cambridge University Press, 1996
Propertius, Elegos, Heyworth. S. J, Oxford Classical Texts, OUP, 2007
[1] Propertius I.1.1
[2] Ibid, 7
[3] Ibid, 22
[4] Ibid, 29
[5] Ibid, 35
[6] Booth, 343
[7] Ovid, 16. 159-162
[8] J.N Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982 189)
[9] Booth, 341
[10] Propertius I. 14.21
[11] Propertius I.1.33
[12] Propertius I.3.37
[13] Booth, 342
[14] Propertius, I.3.41-2
[15] Odysseus might have spent several years consorting with Calypso but Penelope does seem rather ‘forgiving’ of his transgressions.
[16] Harmon, 165
[17] Propertius. I.3.39-40
[18] Propertius. I.1.33
[19] Flaschenriem, 261
[20] Baker, 168
[21] Propertius, I.19.25
[22] Catullus, V
[23] Flaschenriem, 263
[24] Lucretius, IV. 1105-1111
[25] Nussbaum, 174
[26] Nussbaum, 175
