Can you be romantic in English? Song lyrics
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lyrics:
testi
are full of ways to say: “I love you.” You could choose the simple “Love, love me do, you know I love you,” by the Beatles; or the sweet: “I fall in love with you every single day,” as in the Ed Sheeran song. Or the weird
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weird:
strano
“I love you like a fat kid loves cake,” as the rapper 50 Cent put it.
roses are red
But if you’re looking for a more traditional way to express your love this Valentine’s Day, here’s a quick tour of English love poetry.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you
Le rose sono rosse
Le viole sono blu
Dolce è lo zucchero
Ma non quanto sei tu
This Valentine’s Day, thousands of cards will be sent containing these simple lines. They’re so common they’ve become a cliché, but there is a meaning behind them. In the language of flowers, red roses symbolise passionate love and blue violets represent faithfulness
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faithfulness:
fedeltà
. This poem is so well known that it’s easy to subvert, and plenty of people have. Children in school playgrounds
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playgrounds:
parchi giochi
have fun with joke versions like this one:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Onions stink
And so do you
Le rose sono rosse
Le viole sono blu
Le cipolle puzzano
Ma tu puzzi di più
Of course, in the Twittersphere,
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SPEAK UP EXPLAINS
"Twittersfera". Questo neologismo, composto dal nome del social e la parola sphere, indica il mondo di Twitter in cui interagiscono gli users (‘utenti’). Anteriore ad esso è blogsphere, che si riferisce all’insieme dei blog presenti nella rete.
you’ll find plenty of humorous memes like these two:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Vodka is cheaper
Than dinner for two
Le rose sono rosse
Le viole sono blu
La vodka costa meno
Di una cena a tu per tu
Roses are red
Violets are blue
If you buy me €3.99 flowers from Lidl
Your life won’t be worth living
Le rose sono rosse
Le viole sono blu
Se mi regali fiori del Lidl da €3,99
Che ti fulmini Giove!
why roses?
There are so many flowers that could represent love, so why choose the red rose? Well, the association of roses and love goes back to ancient Greece where the rose was one of the symbols associated with Aphrodite, the goddess
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goddess:
dea
of love. The rose’s strong perfume and soft petals also add to its associations of sensuality.
In English poetry, the rose as a symbol of romantic love first appears in a 14th century translation by Geoffrey Chaucer of an earlier French poem, Le Roman de la Rose. In it, the narrator receives advice from the god of love about how to win the love of his lady. This love is symbolized by a rose.
from scotland to the states
Some of the best-known lines about love and roses are by Scottish poet Robbie Burns, in a version of a traditional love song:
Oh my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune
Il mio amore è una rossa, rosa rossa,
appena sbocciata in giugno;
il mio amore è una melodia
che si suona accordati
I expect you’ve noticed the spelling mistake Luve/Love. It’s because Robbie Burns was writing in the Scots language, which is a bit different from English.
the perfect rose
Dorothy Parker, the American poet and satirist, wrote a typically amusing
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amusing:
divertente
poem about receiving “one perfect rose” from a lover. She ends the poem with the lines:
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose
Perché nessuno mai mi ha mandato ancora
una limousine perfetta, sai dirmelo?
Ah, è sempre la mia fortuna, ricevo solo
una rosa perfetta
So, using the rose as a symbol of love, or comparing your beloved
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beloved:
amato/a
to a rose, is traditional in English poetry, but some poets have used other less conventional images to express their passion.
love bites!
One of the greatest writers of English love poetry, John Donne (1572-1631), wrote a very famous love poem called The Flea
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flea:
pulce
. Although fleas don’t often appear in love poetry, this poem is, in fact, quite erotic. Donne writes about being bitten
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to bite:
pungere, mordere
by a flea to illustrate how passionately he feels and how much he wants to have sex with his beloved.
It [the flea] sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be
Prima ha succhiato me, e ora te:
In questa pulce s’è mescolato il nostro sangue
nothing like the sun
Shakespeare certainly knew how to write about love; his play Romeo and Juliet is the classic love story of all time. And yet, throughout his work, Shakespeare avoids
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to avoid:
evitare
clichés about love. In his Sonnet 130 he laughs at cliched poetry that traditionally exaggerates women’s beauty by saying their eyes are like the sun, their skin as white as snow, etc. Shakespeare’s sonnet starts: “My mistress
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mistress:
amante
eyes are nothing like the sun.”
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks
Gli occhi della mia donna non sono come il sole;
Il corallo è molto più rosso delle sue labbra:
Se la neve è bianca, allora perché i suoi seni sono grigi?
Se i capelli sono filamenti, fili neri crescono sulla sua testa
Ho visto rose variegate, rosse e bianche,
Ma non ho visto alcuna rosa sulle sue guance
It’s honest and doesn’t exaggerate. So, when at the end of the poem he finally expresses his love, we know he really means it. This is true love. Happy Valentine’s Day!