NOVELTIES
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.

This is my translation of a Latin epigram by the English poet Thomas Campion. In Campion’s era some English poets continued to write poems in Latin and/or Greek. For instance, John Milton and Andrew Marvell wrote poems in Latin, while Shakespeare was criticized by Ben Jonson, if I remember things correctly, for having “little” Greek and Latin.

Not being “versed” in the senior languages was seen as a deficiency in literary circles back then. Shakespeare was called an “upstart crow” for daring to write “litter-chure” without a proper university degree. How could he properly quote the ancients if he couldn’t read them in their original languages? The Bard of Avon was doomed to failure and obscurity … or perhaps not, since the English language was finally in vogue in England (where for centuries English kings had been unable to read, write or even speak the mother tongue, preferring French, Latin and Greek).

My title is a bit of a pun, because novels were new to the world when they first arrived, and were thus considered by the literary elites to be “novelties” not on par with more serious verse plays. Some of the more popular early novels were “subversive” (pardon the pun) explorations of ****** naughtiness, through characters like Tom Jones, Moll Flanders, et al.

Campion probably didn’t have such campy (enough with the puns, already!) novels in mind when he wrote his epigram, since the more titillating (cease! desist!) ones had yet to arrive. But perhaps he would prove to be a “profit” (I’m udderly hopeless!).

Keywords/Tags: Campion, Latin, translation, epigram, novels, novelties, booksellers, publishers, authors, pimps, ******, prostitutes, prostitution, exotic, positions

Novelties
by Thomas Campion
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Booksellers laud authors for novel editions
as pimps praise their ****** for exotic positions.

*

Original Latin text:

IN LIBRARIOS
by Thomas Campion

Impressionum plurium librum laudat
Librarius; scortum nec non minus leno.

Keywords/Tags: Campion, Latin, translation, epigram, novels, novelties, booksellers, publishers, authors, pimps, ******, prostitutes, prostitution, exotic, positions, quote, quotation, saying, witticism, bon mot

You don't know strength until you have been a real ***,
You have no idea how deep this **** really goes,
Its not for the faint of heart nor you squares,
Too much of the game is not being sold but shared,
The cold breeze that chills your bones at night,
The dark eyes of other girls standing under the streetlight
They don't understand our struggle or see our strength
They only know the bad and try to stop it at any length
Yet we all share the same vision with similar goals
Inspired to stay down by his game that has no holes
We have all been given instructions to carry out fast
Breakin a trick make him give you his very last
Show him your down for him add it up
He will take care of your trap and stack it up
Every real 304 stands up when her folks is around
Every real p loves a real one who's down for his crown
Some say its silly to pay a **** your hard earned doh
But it races through our veins so when he sends me I go
Maybe I'm a dreamer and he is the merchant of dreams
And I am investing in our future crazy as it seems
But when he speaks I believe in the words that are spoken
And I make sure that I don't get too deep in my emotions
A **** is a born and from day one he is already game
To build himself a stand up *** and and get his fortune and fame.
So a message out to those of you who don't know
They say pimpin ain't easy but it takes true strength to be a real ***.