25 Fulmina Martis; Non timet atri Non timet, alto Murmure vasto Qui regit alti Qui regit amplae Climata terrae. Henricus Decimator (c. 1585). 38. Climata 'regions.' 35 330 IACOBI BALDE E SOCIETATE IESU LYRICORUM LIBRI IV Jakob Balde (1604-1668), though born in Alsace, spent most of his life in Bavaria and the Tyrol. Turning from the study of law in early life to the church, he became a member of the Society of Jesus before he was twenty-one, and after his ordination in 1633 his fame as scholar and poet led to his appointment as Court Chaplain to the elector Maximilian I at Munich in 1638. In later life he was preacher and confessor to the Count Palatine at Neuberg on the Danube. Previously he had been a professor of rhetoric at Innsbruck and then at Ingolstadt. Although a voluminous poet, he attained so high a degree of perfection in imitating the classical Latin style, that his admirers coupled his name with the greatest masters of the Augustan age. Four books of Odes and one of Epodes were published in 1643, and other poems include seven books of Sylvae, a long Batrachomyomachia, a group De Vanitate Mundi, and others, making at least a thousand pages of his verse. His skill is hardly surpassed among German-Latin poets. GAUDIUM BONAE MENTIS Carmen geniale, decantatum VVarenbergae Nullo notari crimine, nil sibi Conscire, diis est ante diem frui, Potare totis plena ripis Gaudia, non modica phaselo. The ode is written in the Horatian Alcaic strophe, and may reveal something of his own feelings as an exile from boyhood. — 2. diis . . . frui: i.e. to reach heaven. Illum Syene torrida frigidis Trans Scythiam comitatur aër. Et facili lyra tacta nervo, Stat tamen in media ruina. Iam patriae melioris hospes. De pane furvo scinditur attagen. Socraticas hilaris cicutas. 5. Illum: a man like that.' - 21. attagen, etc. i.e. the coarsest food becomes for him the richest dainty. - 23. Civis sui: i.e. a citizen of his own little world, and content in his own clear conscience. 5 10 15 20 Willem de Volder, or van de Voldersgraft, corresponding to the English name Fuller, born at the Hague in 1493, translated his name into both Greek and Latin, calling himself sometimes Gulielmus Gnaphĕus, and sometimes Fullonius. After passing his baccalaureate examination at the University of Cologne in 1512, he became a teacher in his fatherland, holding various positions both in Holland and in Germany. As an adherent of the Lutheran reformation he was twice incarcerated in the prisons of the Inquisition. Recognized everywhere as a learned scholar, he also had a wide reputation as a talented writer. But none of his maturer works was able to achieve such a reputation and such wide use as the drama of Acolastus ("The Prodigal Son "), which he wrote in his earlier years for his school at the Hague. Revised, translated into at least three different German versions, into French, and into English, it is considered to have had a very important influence upon all modern drama, especially English drama. The English version was made by John Palgrave in 1540, and was dedicated to King Henry VIII. The effort of the author was unusually successful, to combine dramatic form and interest with the moral and Christian teaching of the familiar parable, without either making the story dull or sacrificing the simplicity and dignity of the Bible story. It follows the traditional forms of the classical drama, and is based so thoroughly on classical literary models that a modern edition of the play, edited by Johannes Bolte (Berlin, 1891), enumerates eight pages of parallels in classical writers. The very names of the characters, Acolastus (the unbridled one'), Pamphagus ('alldevourer'), Pantolabus ('grasp-all'), etc., give a classical atmosphere to the play. The dialogue is often very lively, and the scenes admirably adapted to actual representation. Authors upon whom Gnapheus was especially fond of drawing are, besides Plautus and Terence, Varro, Cicero, Erasmus, Horace, Vergil, and Juvenal. 280 Te exorari, ut maneas domi meis bonis Fruiturus perpetuo? Certe patrem foris ACOLASTUS Credo, pater, Sed proficiscendum est, decretum stat; me feras! PELARGUS Non possum tam blande, mi fili, dicere, Ut animum mutes? ACOLASTUS Operam omnem ludis, pater. Potius tentabo quid possim vel legibus, PELARGUS Quando obstinate operam video dare, meum Hanc zonam tibi; decem talentum rem tenet. 285 290 |