Did Sextus Propertius (Rome, 55 BC) invent Western romantic love?
Properitus is one of the first to write gendered opposition poem sequences to one maddening beloved (Cynthia) a trope repeated endlessly in the Western poetic tradition: Dante’s Beatrice, Petrarch’s Laura, Sir Philip Sidney’s Stella, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, are just a few examples.
One surely can’t put it down to one poet: one could say Western Romance was invented by Augustan Rome, where loose morals, personified by loose women, unraveled the Empire in a manner that made news while it was happening. Sex became a weapon of revolt not only among women, but among competing males.
Woman’s liberation in Rome meant sex outside of marriage, which, of course, gets the poet’s juices flowing: the poem just isn’t necessary inside a stable marriage; outside the marriage, however, the writing of a poem becomes the man getting up an unofficial document, an erotic certificate, of a woman not officially his.
The Roman love elegy is not just the male celebrating love, it also represents the male in panic mode: how to control one’s beloved?
We could go so far as to say that the poem during the reign of Augustus invented Western romantic love.
RETURN AND RETURN AGAIN—SEXTUS PROPERTIUS (trans, James Laughlin)
How she let her long hair down over her shoulders, making a love cave around her face.
Return and return again.
How when the lamplight was lowered she pressed against him, twining her fingers in his.
Return and return again.
How their legs swam together like dolphins and their toes played like little tunnies.
Return and return again.
How she sat beside him cross-legged, telling him stories of her childhood.
Return and return again.
How she closed her eyes when his were wide open, how they breathed together, breathing each other.
Return and return again.
How they fell into slumber, their bodies curled together like two spoons.
Return and return again.
How they went together to Otherwhere, the fairest land they had ever seen.
Return and return again.
O best of all nights, return and return again.
If the British Empire, a male-dominated, naval empire, was the modern-day Greece, its rival Germany was Rome.
D.H. Lawrence, son of a Welsh coal miner, eloped with a German Barnoness, Frieda von Richtofen.
Romantic love is, in the simplest terms, the reverse of war: the male, instead of the brave soldier, runs to the woman to hide in/with her.
Lawrence wishes to be lost “by the Isar” (a river in Germany) where “no one knows us.”
Propertius seeks shelter in the “love cave” of his lover’s hair.
The men wish to disappear with their women.
RIVER ROSES—D.H. LAWRENCE
BY the Isar, in the twilight
We were wandering and singing,
By the Isar, in the evening
We climbed the huntsman’s ladder and sat swinging
In the fir-tree overlooking the marshes,
While river met with river, and the ringing
Of their pale-green glacier water filled the evening.
By the Isar, in the twilight
We found the dark wild roses
Hanging red at the river; and simmering
Frogs were singing, and over the river closes
Was savour of ice and of roses; and glimmering
Fear was abroad. We whispered: “No one knows us.
Let it be as the snake disposes
Here in this simmering marsh.”
We like the language of the Lawrence better—all those delightful ‘ings.’ The ancient poems are held hostage by imperfect translations.
Lawrence advances past Propertius, 75-69.
Scarriet 
noochinator said,
February 9, 2016 at 11:36 am
CRY OF THE MASSES
Give us back, Oh give us back
Our bodies before we die!
Trot, trot, trot, corpse-body, to work.
Chew, chew, chew, corpse-body, at the meal.
Sit, sit, sit, corpse-body, in the car.
Stare, stare, stare, corpse-body, at the film.
Listen, listen, listen, corpse-body, to the wireless.
Talk, talk, talk, corpse-body, newspaper talk.
Sleep, sleep, sleep, corpse-body, factory-hand sleep.
Die, die, die, corpse-body, doesn’t matter!
Must we die, must we die
bodiless, as we lived?
Corpse-anatomies with ready-made sensations!
Corpse-anatomies, that can work.
Work, work, work,
rattle, rattle, rattle,
sit, sit, sit,
finished, finished, finished—
Ah no, Ah no! before we finally die
or see ourselves as we are, and go mad,
give us back our bodies, for a day, for a single day,
to stamp the earth and feel the wind, like wakeful men again.
Oh, even to know the last wild wincing of despair,
aware at last that our manhood is utterly lost,
give us back our bodies for one day.
—D.H. Lawrence
noochinator said,
February 12, 2016 at 10:17 pm
EDITORIAL OFFICE
Applicant for post as literary critic: Here are my credentials, Sir!—
Editor: Er—quite. But—er—biologically! Have you been fixed?—arrangé—you understand what I mean?
Applicant: I’m afraid I don’t.
Editor: (sternly) Have you been made safe for the great British Public? Has everything objectionable been removed from you?
Applicant: In what way, quite?
Editor: By surgical operation. Did your parents have you sterilised?
Applicant: I don’t think so, Sir. I’m afraid not.
Editor: Good morning! Don’t trouble to call again. We have the welfare of the British Public at heart.
THE GREAT NEWSPAPER EDITOR TO HIS SUBORDINATE
Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith,
haven’t I told you to take the pith
and marrow and substance out of all
the articles passing beneath your scrawl?
And now look here what you’ve gone and done!
You’ve told them that life isn’t really much fun,
when you know that they’ve got to think that they’re happy,
as happy as happy, Oh, so happy, you sappy.
Think of the effect on Miss Harrison
when she reads that her life isn’t really much fun.
She’ll take off her specs. and she’ll put down the paper
as if it was giving off poison vapour.
And she’ll avoid it; she’ll go and order
The Morning Smile, sure that it will afford her
comfort and cheer, sure that it will tell her
she’s a marv’lous, delicious, high-spirited feller.
You must chop up each article, make it pappy
and easy to swallow; always tell them they’re happy,
suggest that they’re spicy, yet how pure they are,
and what a sense of true humour they’ve got, ha-ha!
Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith,
have you still to learn that pith
and marrow and substance are sure to be
indigestible to Miss Ponsonby!
Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith,
if you stay in my office, you’ve got to be kith
and kin with Miss Jupson, whose guts are narrow
and can’t pass such things as substance and marrow.
Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith,
consider Miss Wilks, or depart forthwith.
For the British Public, once more be it said,
is summed up in a nice, narrow-gutted old maid.
—D.H. Lawrence
http://cuentoshistoriasdelmundo.blogspot.com/2015/06/nettles-english-d-h-lawrence.html
noochinator said,
June 11, 2016 at 9:39 pm
Speaking of the poem as erotic document, here’s a fun one:
On Reading Poorly Transcribed Erotica
She stood before him wearing only pantries
and he groped for her Volvo under the gauze.
She had saved her public hair, and his cook
went hard as a fist. They fell to the bad.
He shoveled his duck into her posse
and all her worm juices spilled out.
Still, his enormous election raged on.
Her beasts heaved as he sacked them,
and his own nibbles went stuff as well.
She put her tong in his rear and talked ditty.
Oh, it was all that he could do not to comb.
—Jill Alexander Essbaum
http://www.notellmotel.org/poem_single.php?id=78_0_1_0