''Pervigilium Veneris'' (or ''The Vigil of Venus'') is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meaning ...

of uncertain date, variously assigned to the 2nd, 4th or 5th centuries. It is sometimes thought to have been by the poet Tiberianus, because of strong similarities with his poem ''Amnis ibat'', though other scholars attribute it to Publius Annius Florus, and yet others find no sufficient evidence for any attribution. It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-night festival of

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

(probably April 1–3) in a setting that seems to be

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

. The poem describes the annual awakening of the vegetable and animal world through the "benign post- Lucretian" goddess, which contrasts with the tragic isolation of the silent "I" of the poet/speaker, against the desolate background of a ruined city, a vision that prompts Andrea Cucchiarelli to note the resemblance of the poem's construction to the cruelty of a dream. It is notable for its

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...

which marks a transition between Classical Roman poetry and

medieval poetry Poetry took numerous forms in medieval Europe, for example, lyric and epic poetry. The troubadours and the minnesänger are known for their lyric poetry about courtly love. Among the most famous of secular poetry is ''Carmina Burana'', a manuscr ...

. It consists of ninety-three verses in

trochaic septenarius In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius or trochaic tetrameter catalectic is one of two major forms of poetic metre based on the trochee as its dominant rhythmic unit, the other being much rarer trochaic octonarius. It is us ...

, and is divided into

strophe A strophe () is a poetic term originally referring to the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. The term has been extended to also mean a structural division of a poem containing stanzas of varyi ...

s of unequal length by the refrain:

The ending

The poem ends with the nightingale's song, and a poignant expression of personal sorrow: The nightingale and swallow motif refers to the myth of the two sisters Philomela and Procne, one of whom was turned into a nightingale and the other into a swallow. In the myth, Procne was unable to speak, having had her tongue cut out; but when she was transformed into a swallow, she found her voice again. The words were famously quoted by T. S. Eliot in the ending of his poem ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of Modernist poetry in English, modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the ...

''. The reference at the end is to a legend that the people of

Amyclae Amyclae or Amyklai ( grc, Ἀμύκλαι) was a city of ancient Laconia, situated on the right or western bank of the Eurotas, 20 stadia south of Sparta, in a district remarkable for the abundance of its trees and its fertility. Amyclae was one ...

, a town near

Sparta Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referr ...

, made a law that no one was to speak of the Spartans' approach; so that when the Spartans came to attack the city in the 8th century BC, no one gave a warning; hence the proverb ("more unwilling to speak than Amyclae itself").

English verse translations

There are translations into English verse by the 17th-century poet Thomas Stanley (1651); by the 18th-century "graveyard school" poet

Thomas Parnell Thomas Parnell (11 September 1679 – 24 October 1718) was an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He was born in Dublin, the eldest son of Thomas Parnell (died 1685) of Maryborough, Queen' ...

(1679-1718); by Sir

Arthur Quiller-Couch Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (; 21 November 186312 May 1944) was a British writer who published using the pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication '' The Oxford Book of English Verse ...

in ''The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q"''; by

F. L. Lucas Frank Laurence Lucas (28 December 1894 – 1 June 1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during ...

(1939; reprinted in his ''Aphrodite'', Cambridge, 1948); and by

Allen Tate John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979), known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and poet laureate from 1943 to 1944. Life Early years Tate was born near Winchester, ...

(1947; see his ''Collected Poems'').

Musical settings

The poem has appealed to 20th-century composers and has been set to music by

Frederic Austin Frederic William Austin (30 March 187210 April 1952) was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is best remembered for his restoration and production of ''The Beggar's Opera'' by John Gay and Joha ...

for chorus and orchestra (first performance, Leeds Festival, 1931); by Timothy Mather Spelman, for soprano and baritone solo, chorus and orchestra (1931); by

Virgil Thomson Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclass ...

as "The Feast of Love", for baritone and chamber orchestra, text translated by himself (1964); and by George Lloyd for soprano, tenor, chorus, and orchestra (1980).

Modern editions

*''

Editio princeps In classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand. For ...

'' (1577) * Franz Bücheler (1859) * Alexander Riese, in ''Anthologia Latina'' (1869) * E. Bahrens in ''Unedierte lateinische Gedichte'' (1877) * S. G. Owen (with

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...

) (1893) * D. R. Shackleton Bailey in volume six of the Loeb classical library: ''Gaius Valerius Catullus, Tibullus and iberianusPervigilium veneris'', G. P. Goold, editor, translated by Francis Warre Cornish, John Percival Postgate, John William Mackail, second edition, revised (Harvard University Press, 1988) *Andrea Cucchiarelli. ''La veglia di Venere. Pervigilium Veneris'' in BUR ''Classici Greci e Latini''. Biblioteca Universale (Milano: Rizzoli, 2003) . Paperback. With notes and facing translation in Italian. This new edition, with Latin text based largely on Shackelton Bailey, includes a brief anthology of commentary – from Voltaire to contemporary criticism (pp. 51–60) and an up-to-date bibliography (pp. 61–72). There is also an appendix (pp. 155–65) of texts and Italian translations of some of the most famous poems of late antiquity devoted to the theme of the rose – many from the so-called ''Latin Anthology'', a collection of poems from the imperial age thought to have been assembled at Carthage "during the cultural renaissance of Vandalic Africa in the 5th century CE. This appendix highlights the vitality of the rose

topos In mathematics, a topos (, ; plural topoi or , or toposes) is a category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topological space (or more generally: on a site). Topoi behave much like the category of sets and possess a notio ...

and of the symbolism associated with it, which spread from the ancient world into European literature of all ages, and it offers the reader a welcome opportunity for reading and appreciating, this time in an Italian translation, a series of poems scarcely studied or known."Tiziana Privitera
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, June 3, 2004
On the Carthaginian so-called "Latin Anthology", see als
Andrew H. Merrills, ''Vandals, Romans and Berbers: new perspectives on late antique North Africa'' (Ashgate, 2004).
pp. 110 and passim. *William M. Barton (2018)
''The Pervigilium Veneris: A New Critical Text, Translation and Commentary''
Bloomsbury.

Influence

John Fowles John Robert Fowles (; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others. Aft ...

' '' The Magus'' ends indeterminately with the vigil's refrain, a passage to which he often directed readers wishing greater clarity about the novel's conclusion.

References

Attribution *

External links

''The Pervigilium Veneris. A Latin text''Another site with the Latin
(''Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine'', June 1843)

{{Authority control Latin poems Ancient Roman erotic literature