Simon says:
Here is the sundial at about 1:50 pm and another of me in pain before
I became the elephant man.
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Beneath it is written:
…quae abibis in loca
nee ut soles, dabis locos?
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what does this mean?
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2 Replies to “Sundial”
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It’s traditional to have a Latin inscription on a sundial. I chose something suitably enigmatic so that it would be durable, that also reflected the passage of time and the flight of the spirit (flight of ducks).
These were reputed to be the last words of the Emperor Hadrian:
Animula vagula blandula
hospes comesque corporis,
quae hunc abibis in loca,
pallida, rigida, nudula,
nec, ut soles, dabis iocos?
His body is bidding farewell to his soul. Sparsely, you could translate it as follows:
Wandering soul, my lifelong companion,
where will you go, pale, lifeless, naked,
now that the joke we have shared is over?
David Malouf wrote a poem about these words in which he used 7 translations. Translation is (of course) a difficult and variable thing.
It/s from Hadrian’s address to his soul, about the transition between mortality and timelessness.
See Leigh Hunt and the Poetry of Fantasy.