The Ultimate Vehicle of Earthly Bliss - 14. Love me, but . . .

How marvelous the depth and rage and range of emotion in these words!  It shows that sometimes love and desire is almost a "steady state," and sometimes "passionately panting present personally pressing proclivity."  I'm not expressing this as well as I would like, but these lines are like luscious lovely lilies with sweet fragrance caressing our senses of inner beauty.

What a sensual poem of desire this is! And yet, it’s also steeped in distress, for the last stanza makes clear that this love cannot be acknowledged, cannot be fully known as it was meant to be. Thank you for this translation. 

On 4/21/2024 at 10:42 AM, ReaderPaul said:

How marvelous the depth and rage and range of emotion in these words!  It shows that sometimes love and desire is almost a "steady state," and sometimes "passionately panting present personally pressing proclivity."  I'm not expressing this as well as I would like, but these lines are like luscious lovely lilies with sweet fragrance caressing our senses of inner beauty.

Thanks for reading, ReaderPaul, and for revealing the poem sent you up to poetic heights! Schwabe's work is universally sensual, and I feel lucky to have encountered her in the first place. Thanks again  

On 4/21/2024 at 12:10 PM, Parker Owens said:

What a sensual poem of desire this is! And yet, it’s also steeped in distress, for the last stanza makes clear that this love cannot be acknowledged, cannot be fully known as it was meant to be. Thank you for this translation. 

Thank you, Parker. Pierre Louÿs' fake Ancient Greek poems set the world on fire (at least amongst women-loving women). He may have originally created these Bilitis poems as a form of male erotic interest in "what women can get up to", but it nevertheless maintains its place in LGBTI2S+ belle lettres because of the love Lesbian readers felt for the work. You may or may not know, but the first Gay Rights group for women in the U.S. was titled "The Daughters of Bilitis"