Quando si è giovanissimi [see translation following] e ci si imbatte per strada in una ragazza che è il nostro tipo se ne rimane come folgorati, e il dolore è tanto più acuto quanto più difficile (o impossibile) è la soddisfazione di tale desiderio, improvviso e assoluto.
[When we are extremely young and we stumble upon a girl in the street who is our type we are like struck dumb and our pain is all the more acute the more difficult (or impossible) is the satisfaction of our desire, sudden and absolute.]
Un brano di Jack Kerouac rende bene questa vitalità disperata tipica della primissima gioventù (da “On the road” che sfogliavo giorni fa; mi sembra di ricordare che anche J. D. Salinger abbia scritto qualcosa di simile):
[A passage by Jack Kerouac renders well this desperate vitality typical of early youth (from “On the Road” I was leafing through days ago; I think I remember J.D. Salinger wrote something similar too)]:
“I had bought my ticket and was waiting for the LA bus when all of a sudden I saw the cutest little Mexican girl in slacks come cutting across my sight. She was in one of the buses that had just pulled in with a big sigh of airbreaks; it was discharging passengers for a rest stop. Her breasts stuck out straight and true; her little flanks looked delicious; her hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with timidities inside. I wished I was on her bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world”.
ψ
In realtà al personaggio di “On the road” le cose poi vanno bene perché i due si ritroveranno casualmente nello stesso autobus e ne nascerà una storia, ma la descrizione della pugnalata è intensa e comunque credo sia esattamente ciò che ciascuno di noi, uomo o donna, ha provato più volte dai 10-12 anni in poi.
[Actually things ended up well for Kerouac’s character since the two will accidentally meet in the same bus and a love affair will ensue, although the description of the ‘stab’ is intense and in any case I believe it is exactly what each of us, man or woman, has experienced several times from 10-12 years of age onwards.]
Roma! I think I’m feeling a little faint.
That is to say, I have no idea what this post is about.
Are you always so irresponsible with words on a Sunday afternoon? 😉
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I can be even worse than that, as my blog attests.
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Jenny, the post is consistent with Giovanni deep Romanness. Have you never heard of those Roman Casanovas?
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@Paul
@Jenny
Ah ah ah Paul, you are unique.
Jenny, I’ll soon explain, or translate. I am now watching a TV program on how Italy is falling to pieces 🙂
Update: tomorrow folks. Too late now.
And I am not a Roman Casanova, Paul, quite au contraire.
And you people from the New World would be perfect hadn’t you this problem with sex and with conversation about it 😉
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Inimitable Man of Roma: No explanation or translation necessary. I get it.
I was teasing, which I am very, very fond of doing.
I can’t resist playing the role that is expected of me.
It’s charming, what you’ve written. Charming and true. True. Cheers!
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Happy to learn my sort is not reproducible. Tomorrow.
And continue teasing, I love it.
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Kerouac and Burroughs and Ginsberg put into language (among other creatives) what all of us–especially those of us past our prime–feel at the sight of someone in his prime.
The image recalls a free time when anything was possible.
I have a good friend who seems to be completely comfortable with aging and with the fact that the younger men don’t look at her anymore.
She has always said, ” We’ve had our time.”
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Cheri, you got it wrong because of my Italian (see the translation now). It’s about what all of us in our prime have felt at the sight of someone else in his / her prime. It’s all about the intensity of love rapture from 10-12 years of age onwards.
And I’m glad I am not ‘stabbed’ any more in the street. It was an extremely painful (though delightful) feeling.
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I must be a dirty old man because beautiful young women still tingle me some, stab is too strong. After all being on a diet does not forbid a look at the menu.
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Who is not tingled, Paulus. And I don’t think the ladies here are not tingled as well by young males in their full glory.
But stabs …
And I’m also tingled by any of my female readers and get flirtatious at times – inexcusably bad.
And Casanova was Venetian, not Roman.
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Casanova may have been Venitian but his name is now a common noun for flirtatious men all over the world and that, I think, includes Rome.
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So Montreal too. I’ve noticed you’re around here longer when female readers pop up Paulus.
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At any rate there seems to be more female than male bloggers anywhere. Of course, save in China, women are 52% of the earth’s population.
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You mean we should blog in Chinese not to fall into temptation? 🙂
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I find this discussion hilarious. It makes me think of all the stabs and arrows I get from Mozart. It’s just not fair.
To help you men in your plight, please turn your ears to
La Boheme “Quando m’en vo’ soletta” Act II. Female revenge. Yes!
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“La don’è mobile qual plume al vento”, “Femme est volage, bien fol est qui s’y fie”. Mais nous les aimons quand même.
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C’est une des raison pour laquelle j’aime les hommes.
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Ne le dites pas trop fort Geraldine.
Paul et moi, nous sommes des véritables boucaniers en vêtements de brebis. Et les faiblesses des femmes, nous les idolâtrons. Même si ‘la donna è danno’, even if woman is damage, on est prêts à tout pardonner.
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I’m still laughing. I have to write the words:
When I saunter alone
Down the street,
People turn and gaze;
Any my beauty they survey
From head to feet.
Then I savour the hidden longing
That gleams in their eyes
And from visible attractions
Can deduce my concealed charms
Sourrounded by this cloud of desire,
How happy I am!
Any you who know this, who remember and yearn,
Why do you shun me so?
I know full well
That you would rather die
Than speak
Of your torment!
Puccini
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Oui, tourment, et joie. Woman can revenge herself quite a lot.
È sempre misero
Chi a lei s’affida,
Chi le confida – mal cauto il core!
Verdi
[Il est toujours malheureux
Celui qui se fie à elle,
Celui qui lui confie – imprudemment son cœur !]
Always miserable the man who trusts her, who confides in her – and so forth.
Mais – Paulus l’a dit – nous vous aimons, peu importe.
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Ah yes! To be wounded by the beauty of another. At any age, I’ll run the risk of a grazing from a stray arrow.
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It’s called ‘an arrow’ because it kills sweetly.
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perir dans la volupte des tourbillons! 🙂
Verdi et Mozart
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La morte più bella.
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WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and sigh.
William Butler Yeats
(Not that I was the least bit distracted at work today…)
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Wonderful.
You mean you didn’t get ‘stabbed’ today by anyone at work? But they say affairs start mostly at one’s workplace 🙂
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Those who say so must not be lawyers.
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Oh gosh, you too like Richard??
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I don’t think I ever went spoony over anybody I saw passing in the street. And I’ve always had grave doubts about how much men really have invested in women. My life experience convinces me that most are more interested in playing with trains, or the moral equivalent.
But I suppose poets have sort of a professional obligation to have these experiences. I’m just reminded of what Robert Bly (a really crappy poet) said about these archetypal moments: “If a man should actually tell you ‘you are my anima,’ run like hell.”
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Ah ah ah, Sled, Sled, you are the cherry on the pie in the end of this conversation!
Well, I don’t know, I went ‘spoony’ (‘was stabbed’ is more appropriate) many times between 12-17 (and later) while seeing a girl passing in the street. I came home and felt very unhappy – thence the ‘personal’ category of this post – since being shy I didn’t dare try pick her up like that, in the street, whatever Paul thinks of my womanising habits.
And I assure you, men are not only interested in trains.
And Kerouac felt no moral obligation.
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“My womanising habits”, I think nothing of them, I just read what you write here and there and nothing more, I assure you.
But then we all have the right to remain silent and what we say may be held against us.
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Ok Paul, non ti preoccupare, capisco.
And I have nothing to be silent about, unless you mean this blog, which is pretty innocent after all.
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That “capisco” is mafia talk but, by all means, keep on blogging and being innocent.
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I surely will, count on it.
And I still capisco.
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You are probably right about Kerouac and morals. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say *professional* obligation (as with Yeats, whom jenny quoted above; I read him over and over).
I certainly had some stupid crushes when I was younger, it was just never that “augenblick” kind of experience, nor a stab either. I always started out having excited conversations about a score of fascinating things with some man and ended up hunting around on the floor for my BVD’s at two in the morning (perhaps cherry was not the right fruit to mention). Maybe if men walked around with the contents of their brains projected on a screen overhead. But I’m still afraid that if it were a pie (not cherry) chart most of it would say “trains…” (video games, chess, football, cars, etc.).
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I get a big kick coming here and listening to/reading the conversations. Yes, growing old does take us back to the days when we drooled and desired and the object of our desires would drool back and get the message. Giovanni, you shy? I wouldn’t have known! Paul, you still? I wouldn’t have guessed.
Cheri, and the rest of the women here, we have felt a deep pain in our middle ages, when men no longer looked our way-not that we wanted them to, after all we had better things to do then-but it gave us confidence and a hidden joy that lasted us for days.
Good conversation.
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Tomorrow, Rosaria. It’s late now here.
______________
Rosaria, I have been shy at least until 17-18, then I learned.
And we all – men and women – feel pain when we age and realise that certain things – that differ according to gender, since we are different – belong to the past.
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Rosaria: To your second observation, I say:
Judi Dench
Helen Mirren
Chrissie Hynde
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Good point. I was thinking that, since I am really distinctly ugly from the collar bones up, middle age has been kind to me. In high school boys amused themselves by scorning me; now guys twenty years my junior ask me if I will show their wives how to work out like I do.
My high-school English teacher, who was fifty-five when I was in her class, had remarkable legs. (I don’t know why, because she lived on bourbon and tobacco.) Young men from her classes returned from college and came to sit at her feet and imbibe the classics. And look at her legs, as one of them anonymous liked to tell her in 2 a.m. phone calls.
Lightning strikes in all kinds of places, it seems.
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@Jenny
Yes, of course.
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@Sledpress
I certainly had some stupid crushes … it was just never that “augenblick” kind of experience, nor a stab either … maybe if men walked around with the contents of their brains projected on a screen overhead
You nailed something here, ie the Cardinal bird case, only reversed. Probably men are more ‘visually’ drawn at first (the teacher’s legs), which – in the case of a sudden crush in the street – generally includes both the physical and the moral.
Which is attested also by Kerouac’s depiction. Of the Mexican girl we imagine something not only of her hips, breasts etc. but also of her inner personality (“her eyes were great big blue things with timidities inside”).
And legs, arms, hands can express something way beyond the physical (not to mention eyes).
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PS
Perhaps I was not exact when I wrote:
I believe it is exactly what each of us, man or woman, has experienced several times from 10-12 years of age onwards.
But who the hell knows. All this is so darn mysterious for both sides of the aisle.
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How easily, I notice, women abandon the question of desiring and refocus on the question of being desired.
God dammit!
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It’s not that we don’t have the experience (though as I said, I never had any intense feeling about a glimpsed stranger; I don’t begin to understand that.) We have all learned that if we let it slip that we feel desire we’ll be taunted, jeered at and kicked to the curb. Tender memories of high school.
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You know, Sled, that’s what I feared was behind this. That’s lousy.
And I agree with you that a glimpse of a stranger (with the possible exception of a Johnny Depp look-alike) isn’t enough. Write me poems!
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Ouch. I wrote poems for a guy once and the next time I called him on the transatlantic cable he asked “Have you written me any more poems?”
Actually, I’ve written all kinds of poems for guys. The guys (none of whom gave the poems more than a lick of attention) are gone, the poems are still there, some on my blog even; maybe that’s adequate payment for letting our hair down.
Enough of that kind of thing and you do your best to stop having intense feelings of any kind, though. There is neither praise nor reward to be found in it.
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Sledpress! You’re breaking my heart.
Isn’t that just the way it goes. Where is it written that the muse should also be a fan of poetry?
Of course the poems are payment enough!
I’m stopping by your place this weekend to hunt them down.
By the way, in your gravatar, I notice, your hair is up. Mine’s down. 🙂 🙂 😉
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Yup! I stuck it up and left it that way.
I’m afraid I’m sounding a bit gloomy. It’s been a gray, cold, depressing week around here and Christmas always irritates me, alas.
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You can say what you like here dear Sledpress. You’ll get over the whole thing after the Christmas period.
There are many things I found obscure in your exchange. Hair up and hair down for example. And I don’t know what’s the effect of a poem on a man, I never received one.
I’d like to read yours.
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@Sledpress
@Jenny
I don’t dare follow you two on this slippery ground 🙂
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One word: cleats
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Cleats?
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Cleats are small spikes attached to shoe soles to prevent slipping on icy surfaces. Probably not a large market for them in Rome save for golf shoes perhaps.
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Thanks Paul. Now I understand. So many words in this language. My dictionaries are worn out.
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Man of Roma: To modify your own words slightly: You people from the Old World would be perfect hadn’t you this problem with sex and with conversation about it.
I notice you have a new post…begins with something about the Pope, I think. What’s this? All croce, and no delizia?
OK, I’m done being snarky now.
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Touché. And yes, it is no delizia and all croce as far as I’m concerned.
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Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve had two poems written about me by two girls. One actually got published.
*Slicks hair back*
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Ah ah, you made me laugh. So, what are you waiting for, post them somewhere or give us a link.
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Hm. That may be a good idea!
I don’t know which poetry magazine one of them was published (I remember her showing it to me but the name escapes me) but I kept the poem she gave me somewhere. I just have to find it – and avoid my wife in the process.
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@Commentator
..you kept the poems. That’s all that matters to the poet.
@Man of Roma
It’s hard to believe you’ve never received a poem, in Roma of all places. Some could have been written and not presented. Ah, we had not thought of that.
@Sledpress
Those guys you wrote poems for may have realized how precious they were later on in life. You’re far too harsh with yourself. Writing a poem shows a lovely, sensitive heart. I’d like to read them too.
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They’re all over at my blog under the tab “Roaring In The Pines” and its sub page.
I would have been better off without the sensitive heart and a sense of self preservation instead. Men are expensive.
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Hi Sledpress,
I read your poems. Sigh! They’re real ones.
The All Saints poem hurts and Harbour Lights…well, I can see why you come with armour. Lovely. I hope you’re in a safer slipstream now.
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Thank you for reading.
I don’t think life is ever safe. Maybe I ought to write poems again, though, as these are pretty old. I don’t know whether I should be glad or regretful that I got out of the habit.
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Write them down, Sledpress. They’re already half-written in your mind anyway.
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I’ve been away today on a short trip. Tomorrow I’ll reply to you readers and carefully read Sledpress’ poems, whose heart, certainly sensitive, was not deserved by those guys.
But lemme wait till I read them, Sledpress being unpredictable 😉
I am joking, Sled. You are a wonderful person.
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Yes, Geraldine I kept many of them. What can I say? Women love a man who can squat, belch and lift a 25lb sack of potatoes in one sitting while reciting Byron.
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You are correct on the last two words only.
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Mebbe you’re right.
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@Geraldine
I dunno why the Commentator likes sometimes to appear worse than he really is.
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I want to be clear – I can’t lift a bag of potatoes.
Dead-pan doesn’t work on the net.
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I will teach you to lift anything your heart desires. 🙂
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@Geraldine
No, I haven’t received poems from any woman, although I’ve written some.
Italian women usually expect men to write poems for them. American women being more modern, it seems, you ALL have permission to write poems for ALL of us male bloggers: Paul, Richard, Philippe, me, Andreas and so forth, how’s that … 🙂
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I’ll grab my cleats.
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For fear of rolling down for laughter? This word has always been mysterious to me. Although after a while I realised why also old people in Moscow could walk on sidewalks in winter.
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Some of us (including Mr. Crotchety) did write limericks this summer. See what you miss when you go on vacation?
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But I guess we all men would prefer love poems, not limericks. I’m sure Paul would 😉
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MoR: You are charming. 🙂
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You too Jenny.
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Yes, I know, I know. We’re all ridiculously charming. It’s just one big lovefest.
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In fact all people here are charming. La festa dell’amore, che idea eccezionale. In un altro universo però 🙂
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Mor, I’m not an American woman but I think they are direct, intelligent, strong and inspiring. If you ever receive a poem from one of them, save it. 🙂
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Who said there’s some kind of objection, of non consideration, vs non American women? Whoever said that? They are ALL welcome, oh they surely are.
Of course, it is only good manners, we are now expecting heaps of words and inspiration pouring down upon us in waves 😉
PS
I will certainly save them all.
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Oh, boy, maybe this is what it will take to get me going. No promises but something might hit the wall when you least expect it.
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I’m waiting for it, drumming my fingers on my desktop.
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@Sledpress
I’ve read your poems. They do express passion, pain and disillusion in a sincere way.
Love wounds are awful, but what I can say – maybe superficially (I also need to reread your poems) – is:
don’t let such wounds destroy you dear Sledpress – destroy your humanity I mean. When we age what progressively counts are good feelings. While intellect may fade away, emotions don’t. Getting further into “the ungracious Bitch” of the poem “Invocation” – for example – can only augment sorrow in my opinion.
Although, who on earth am I to give such advices lol … my life is far from perfect. I kind of know what the medicine is in many cases (or I think I know), but I often hesitate to take it 🙂
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Well, the Bitch is the Muse, or the tyrant Aphrodite. Every promise which you make Goes unfulfilled until it break. It would all be easier if we could be happy without what is going to make us unhappy in the end. Is the metaphor for that the Worm Ouroboros or the famous Ko-Ko bird? (Scratches head)
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Yes, it would be easier dear Sled. And I know nothing of those fantasy sagas lol.
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The Ouroboros or Uroboros serpent eateth his own tail.
http://www.mu6.com/uroboros.html
The legendary ko-ko bird flies in smaller and smaller circles, until it disappears up its own… well, it disappears. 🙂
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I see, interesting links and concepts.
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I have to admit, I’m not very intellectually agile when it comes to poetry.
And MOR, for the record, I found that poem – and a couple of others to boot.
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Don’t boot them. That’s very unkind to the authors. 🙂
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Maybe that’s why I kept them. They poured a part of them onto me.
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Not out of a boot, I hope.
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@Commentator
We are waiting for them then.
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Non lo so che devo fare.
Peut etre le mettre sur mon propre blog?
Ou bien ici chez Man of Roma?
I am so confused.
Which is very easy to do to me.
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Wherever you like. And don’t be confused. The basics of life are simple after all.
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I see someone has a “boot” fetish.
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You started it.
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You people pls behave. This is an extremely serious blog 🙂
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I need to be spanked.
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You don’t need to thank me for spicing up the thread a little.
By the way.
I do it because I love.
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Now that’s spice!
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@Commentator
@Sledpress
I cannot but understand love and the rest. But, you (I mean you two) have spiced up the thread a bit too much maybe. At any rate, nothing being too spicy for Roma – eternal loose woman and she-wolf – I’m only afraid of the Swiss guards running like hell after us with their sharp spears 🙂
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@Geraldine
Some [poems] could have been written and not presented. Ah, we had not thought of that.
You aroused my curiosity here.
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@Mor
Here is a little list of American poets: Ezra Pound, T. S. Elliot, Hilda Doolittle and E. E. Cummings. They represent a wonderful example of poems and will serve as great fodder for your keen intellect and/or when you are simply bored stiff.
Celtic poetry is possibly too imaginative, unanxious and spacious for you.
Bear in mind the ancient Romans could only manage a few skirmishes with the Celts on the margins. They returned home affrighted. It would grieve me to do that to you, my friend.
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My personal favorite American:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crowe_Ransom#Poet
http://www.poemhunter.com/john-crowe-ransom/
wikipedia’s article calls him a minor poet. I am reminded of something Graves once said in university address, I think: “Mr. T. S. Eliot is a major poet; I am a minor poet. The difference is that minor poets can still fall in love.”
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🙂 😉 🙂 however, we are gracious.
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Forever indebted to you for your graciousness, my sweet Celtic Geraldine.
If you’d only bestow a return match upon me, I’d be even more indebted. And ready for any Roma-Gallia skirmish – provided it implies some fun, the real meaning of which is of course mysterious to a non English mother tongue 🙂
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PS
And my father being from Northern Italy (once Gallia Togata) I cannot but have Celtic blood in my veins as well. Which muddles things.
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I gather I’ve been missing a lot of fun… How are you?
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Hi Ana!
I am very well, thank you, passing through these holidays kind of unscathed (so far).
Yes, some fun. Talking history one gets 20 comments, talking love one gets 110 (to this moment).
Tell me about you. Mexico is a dream.
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@Geraldine
@Sledpress
There’s something I don’t get here: I was asking for love poems written by female bloggers /readers in favour of male bloggers (which incidentally may include MoR), and not for poems mostly written by men and simply indicated to us by female bloggers /readers.
There’s a difference – that even a mind like mine can fathom 🙂
But thanks. I’ll taste some of them a bit nonetheless.
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Oh, we are just throwing you hors d’oeuvres while the cooks are busy in the kitchen.
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Ah, capisco (I understand). Makes me then water even more for the dishes being prepared.
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@ slepress, thanks, I check this out when I return.
@ Mor: you didn’t understand my humour at all. I won. 🙂
I’m off for a while to the Franks where I will sharpen my sword. This has been fun. In the words of Jack Kerouac, just to stay on topic:
“Peace Out, Man” to all here.
Slan
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I’m pretty dumb sometimes. I really am.
It has been fun for me too.
Happy holiday in the land of the Franks or wherever you’re going. No need to sharpen your sword. I surrender.
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