Anyhow, Naso was greater than both of you—well, at least as far as I'm concerned. Metrically, of course, more monotonous; but so is Virgil. And so is Propertius, for all his emotional intensity. In any case, my Latin stinks; that's why I read you all in Russian. It copes with your asclepiadic verse in a far more convincing way than the language I am writing this in, for all the familiarity of the latter's alphabet. The latter just can't handle dactyls. Which were your forte. More exactly, Latin's forte. And your Carmina is, of course, their showcase. So I am reduced to judging the stuff by the quality of imagination. (Here's your defense, if you need one.) And on that score Naso beats you all.
All the same, I can't conjure up your faces, his especially; not even in a dream. Funny, isn't it, not to have any idea how those whom you think you know most intimately looked? For nothing is more revealing than one's use ofiambs and trochees. And, by the same token, those who don't use meters are always a closed book, even if you know them physically, inside out. How did John Clare put it? "Even those whom I knew best I Are strange, nay! stranger than the rest." At any rate, metrically, Flaccus, you were the most diverse among them. Small wonder that this huffing and puffing train took you for its engineer as it was leaving its own millennium and heading for yours, unaccustomed as it may have been to electricity. Hence I was traveling in the dark.
Few things are more boring than other people's dreams, unless they are nightmares or highly carnal. This one, Flac- cus, was of the latter denomination. I was in some very sparsely furnished bedroom, in a bed sitting next to the sea- serpent-like, though extremely dusty, radiator. The walls were absolutely naked, but I was convinced I was in Rome. In fact, I was sure I was in Subura, in the apartment of that pretty friend of mine from days of yore. Except that she wasn't there. Neither were the paperbacks, nor the mirror. But the brown flowerpots stood absolutely intact, emitting not so much the aroma of their plants as the tint of their own clay: the whole scene was done in terra-cotta-cum-sepia tones. That's how I knew I was in Rome.
Everything was terra-cotta-cum-sepia-shaded. Even the crumpled bedsheets. Even the bodice of my affections' target. Even those looming parts of her anatomy that wouldn't have benefited from a suntan, I imagine, in your day either. Thewhole thing was positively monochrome; I felt that, had I been able to see myself, I would be in sepia, too. Still, there was no mirror. Imagine those Greek vases with their mul- tifigured design running around, and you'll get the texture.
This was the most vigorous session of its kind I've ever taken part in, whether in real life or in my imagination. Such distinctions, however, should have been dispensed with already, given the character of this letter. Which is to say, I was as much impressed by my stamina as by my concupiscence. Given my age, not to mention my cardiovascular predicament, this distinction is worth sustaining, dream or no dream. Admittedly, the target of my affections—a target long since reached—was markedly younger than I, but not by a huge margin. The body in question seemed in its late thirties, bony, yet supple and of great elasticity. Still, its most exacting aspect was its tremendous agility, wholly devoted to the single purpose of escaping the banality of bed. To condense the entire endeavor into one cameo, my target's upper torso would be plunged into the narrow, one-foot- wide trough between the bed and the radiator, with the tan less rump and me atop it floating at the mattress's brink. The bodice's laced hem would do as foam.
Throughout all this I didn't see her face. For the above- implied reasons. All I knew about her was that she was from Leptis Magna, although I have no idea how I learned this. There was no sound track to this session, nor do I believe we exchanged two words. If we did, that was before I became cognizant of the process, and the words must have been in Latin: I have a faint sense of some obstacle regarding our communication. Still, all along I seem to have known, or else managed to surmise in advance, that there was something of Ingrid Thulin in the bone structure of her face. Perhaps I espied this when, submerged as she was under the bed, her right hand now and then, in an awkward backward motion, groped for the warm coils of that dusty radiator.
When I woke up the next—i.e., this—morning, my bedroom was dreadfully cold. A mealy, revolting daylight was arriving through both windows like some kind ofdust. Perhaps dust is indeed daylight's leftover; well, this shouldn't be ruled out. Momentarily, I shut my eyes; but the room in Su- bura was gone. Its only evidence lingered in the dark under my blanket where daylight couldn't reach, but clearly not for long. Next to me, opened in the middle, was your book.
No doubt it's you whom I should thank for this dream, Flac- cus. Now, the hand jerkily trying to clutch the radiator could of course stand for the straining and craning in days of yore, as that pretty friend of mine or I tried to catch a glimpse of ourselves in that gilded mirror. But I rather doubt it—two torsos can't shrink into one limb; no subconscious is that economical. No, I believe that hand somehow echoed the general motion ofyour verse, its utter unpredictability and, with this, the inevitable stretching—nay, straining—of your syntax in translation. As a result, practically every line of yours is surprising. This is not a compliment, though; just an observation. In our line of work, tricks, naturally, are de rigiieiir. And the standard ratio is something like one little miracle per stanza. If a poet is exceptionally good, he may come up with a couple. With you, practically each line is an adventure; sometimes there are several in one line. Of course, some of this has to do with having you in translation. But I suspect that in your native Latin, too, your readers seldom knew what the next word was going to be. It's like constantly walking on broken glass or something: on the mental—oral?—version of broken glass, limping and leaping. Or like that hand clutching the radiator: there was something distinctly logaoedic about its bursts and withdrawals. But, then, next to me I had your Carmina.
Had it been your Epodes or Epistles, not to mention Satires or, for that matter, Ars Poetica, the dream I am sure would have been different. That is, it would perhaps have been as carnal, but a good deal less memorable. For it's only in the Carmina that you are metrically enterprising, Flaccus. The rest is practically all done in couplets; the rest is bye- bye to asclepiads and Sapphics and hello to downright hexameters. The rest is not that twitching hand but the radiator itself, with its rhythmic coils like nothing more than elegiac couplets. Make this radiator stand on end and it will look like anything by Virgil. Or by Propertius. Or by Ovid. Or by you, save your Carmina.
It will look like any page of Latin poetry. It will look like—should I use the hateful word—text.
Well, I thought, what if it was Latin poetry? And what if that hand was simply trying to turn the page? And my efforts vis-a-vis that sepia-shaded body simply stood for my reading of a body of Latin poetry? If only because I still—even in a dream!—couldn't make out her face. As for that glimpse of her Ingrid Thulin features that I caught as she was straining to turn the page, it had most likely to do with the Virgil played in my mind by Tony Perkins. Because he and Ingrid Thulin have sort of similar cheekbones; also since Virgil is the one I've read most of all. Since he has penned more lines than anybody. Well, I've never counted, but it sure feels that way, thanks to the Aeneid. Though I, for one, by far prefer his Bucolics or Georgics to his epic.