Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel

Author:Christopher de Hamel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241003091
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

(‘In the middle of sweet springtime, not in May but a little before [this is an accepted conjecture, for the manuscript actually says “non in malo”, which makes less sense], as the bright sun shone, a maiden with a pretty face stood under the green foliage playing a pipe. I came there assigned by fate. No nymph has such beauty, or is worth the equal of her bare foot. When she saw me hurrying [another conjecture, for the scribe wrote “que me iusto festinante”], she fled with her bleating flock [she was evidently a shepherdess], overcome by fear …’) During the course of the next verses he catches up with her, offers her a necklace, which she scorns, but he nevertheless pins her to the ground and kisses her, or more, and afterwards her only concern is that her father and brother should never know, and especially not her mother, who, as the girl says, is worse than a serpent (“angue peior”). As folk songs (and teenage experiences) go, it is fairly normal.

A much finer piece of literature is the great poem opening on folio 23r:

Dum Diane vitrea

sero lampas oritur,

et a fratris rosea

luce dum succenditur,

dulcis aura Zephiri

spirans omnes etheri

nubes tollit, sic emollit

vi chordarum pectora

et immutat cor quod nutat

ad amoris pignora …

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