No More Learning

Luna! Don't rise yet. She's coming, and must not be seen by the neighbor!

Breezes, rustle the leaves: muffle the sound of her feet.

And as for you, little poems, o grow and flower, your blossoms

Cradling themselves in the air, tepid and soft with love's breath.

Wafting, betray to Quirites, as Midas' reeds did with cheap gossip,

One happy couple in love, and their sweet secret, at last.




XXIV

I in the back of the garden, the last of the gods, in a corner,

Ineptly formed, must I stand. Evil the inroads of time.

Cucumber vines grow entwining about this primeval lingam,

Cracking it almost in two under the weight of the fruit.

Faggots are heaped all about me against the cold of the winter,

Which I so hate for the crows settling then down on my head,

Which they befoul very shamefully. Summer's no better: the servants

Empty their bowels and show insolent, naked behinds.

Filth, above and below! I was clearly in danger of turning

Into filth myself, toadstool, rotten wood!

Now, by your efforts, O noblest of artists, I shall recover

With fellow gods my just place. And it's no more than my due.
Jupiter's throne, so dishonestly won, it was I who secured it:

Color and ivory, marble and bronze, not to mention the poems.

Now, all intelligent men look upon me in kindness. They like to

Form their own image of me, just as the poet has done.

Nor do the girls take offense when they see me--by no means the matrons.

None finds me ugly today, though I am monstrously strong.

Half a foot long, as reward, your glorious rod (dear poet)

Proudly shall strut from your loins, when but your dearest commands,

Nor shall your member grow weary until you've enjoyed the full dozen

Artful positions the great poet Philainis describes.




ABOUT THE ELEGIES


Goethe cultivated a special, italianate hand for this portfolio of
twenty-four "elegies," so called because he was emulating the elegiasts
of Imperial Rome, Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus. The Elegies have
never before been published as here, together in the cyclical form of
their original conception. Experts even denied that the two priapeia (I
& XXIV) were by Goethe at all, although they are in the same hand as the
rest. To be sure, these two are not numbered, so that I was long
undecided as to just what their proper position might be. At one time I
imagined they must belong at the middle of the cycle where at the end of
Elegy XIII Priapus' mother summons her son. Obviously Goethe, just
returned north from his two years in Italy (1786-88), and alienated from
prim, courtly friends (especially since he had taken a girlfriend into
his cottage), had no thought of publication when he indited these
remembrances of Ancient Rome. But he did show them to close friends,
one of whom was the wonderful dramatist Friedrich Schiller. In 1795,
Schiller undertook a new periodical, Die Horen. This thoughtful and
responsible man initiated the journal with an essay of his own,
explaining how forms of entertainment are actually at the same time our
primary modes of education. It makes for pretty difficult reading in
our present, less interested epoch.