Poussin, Nicolas. Helios and Phaethon with Saturn and the Four Seasons. 1635, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany.
• TRANSLATION •
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 |
The palace of the sun was high by means of lofty columns
bright with gold twinkling and with bronze imitating fire, The highest peak of which shining ivory was covering, the two doors of silver were causing the doors to radiate with light Work surmounts matter: for Vulcan evgraves that even surface surrounding the middle ground of both the Earth of ground and sky, which overhangs the world. The wave has the cerulean gods, Triton of frothy seas and the ambiguous Proteus and Aegaeon pressing the back of huge whales by means of his arms and Doris and the daughters, some of which are seen to swim some sitting on the rock to exhaust the young head of hair, some carried by means of a fish: all not one face however not diverse, of such a kind is to be proper of sisters. The ground carries men and cities and forests and beasts and rivers and nymphs and other divinities of the countryside. This imposed above is the image of the shining sky, and the six signs from the right hand entrance and just as many from the left. From which simultaneously the offspring of Clymene came from the limit to the hill and entered the doubted roof of his father, immediately he bears the expressions of his father and he stopped from afar; and not truly he was bearing the nearer light: covered by a purple robe Apollo was sitting in a throne with the emeralds shining bright. By the right hand and on the left side the days and months and years and the lifetimes and placed in even spaces the hours and the young Spring was standing with a girded crown having been flourished, naked Summer was standing and she was bearing a crown of ears of corn and Autumn was standing dirty with grapes having been trampled and glacial Winter with rough white hair. In the middle place the Sun himself saw by eye, which observed all, the young man of the republic trembling from the strangeness, and said “What is the cause of your journey? You seek this citadel, prodigy, Phaethon, by no means which is to be denied ?” He answered: “O immense light of general mankind, Apollo father, if you give to me the use of this name, and not Clymene hid the false fault under an ancestral image, give true pledges by you, father, through which the child will be confided, and you take away this delusion from our minds!” He had spoken, yet father laid his head about every twinkling ray and he ordered to approach and given by embrace he said “not you are to be denied my dignity, and Clymene put forth the true birth, also so you doubt the lesser, you ask for any gift you wish, you bear with me granting that! You wealthy witness of the promise which is to be vowed by the swamp, unknown to our eyes!” With difficulty he had given over favorably, he asked for that chariot of his father and in the law the day of Mercury and a means of control of the horses. |