#cinna the poet

[minutia-r]

Happy Ides of March to all who celebrate! Here's my Cinna the poet/Cinna the conspirator sonnet:

But mightier than these, both pen and sword— Though you may make Rome's streets run red with blood And I, with one precisely chosen word, Can float your name untouched above the flood— Is time, but not the blind, remorseless foe Who crushes all beneath his sandaled feet Inevitable as empire, and as slow For in the end, the race goes to the fleet. No pen is quick enough to catch your breath The way it catches quick against my skin; No dagger's keen enough to deal the death That, in the dying moment, dies again: Each one a Rubicon. The die is cast, And, worse than senseless, slips into the past.

(on AO3)

[caterpillarinacave]

Anyone named Cinna should stay inside this week

[iamstandingwater]

it's late and I'm feeling emotional about Cinna the poet. the scene is short and easily overlooked but to me it essentially distills the nature of tragedy perfectly. he is a regular Roman citizen, no one of note and he will only be collateral damage in the great scheme of political machinations and grand acts of war that are to come. he senses danger, he feels that he is not safe on the streets but still he is drawn out of his house. his attackers are nameless faceless Mob creatures who represent how violence enacted on the political stage spreads fast and brutalises the rest of society. Cinna is a poet. Art is the first victim of unlicensed brutality. he is never mentioned again.

[strangelittlelad]

rest in peace Cinna the poet all he did was make bad rhymes and have the same name as Cinna the conspirator :[

[catilinas]

repetition and reenactment and the cycle 🔄👍

[ging-dong]

happy ides of march everyone

rip julius caesar you would’ve loved ai deepfakes

[no-where-new-hero]

true to blake form, why is cinna my favorite character in catching fire

[t0yearnf0r]

I’m stuck in a hole again

I keep thinking about how Catullus died. I read an article whilst doing research for my dissertation, and lord forgive me I can’t remember what it’s called, and the writer pointed out that, since Catullus’ poems aren’t particularly organised, it’s possible that he died rather suddenly, or over a short period of time, where he wasn’t able to organise his works before he passed. I literally cannot stop thinking about this.

I wonder how he died. Was it some kind of illness? Was he assassinated? He did write some pretty inflammatory stuff about people… one website said he died of exhaustion, but I couldn’t find out what source they got that from so I’m taking that with a grain of salt. I wonder what you guys out there think?

I also think about his parents. They’re relationship seems to have been pretty good, from what you can gleam in his poetry. They’d lost their elder son - Catullus’ brother - and it had clearly torn Catullus to pieces. I wonder how they reacted when he died? Especially it was sudden. They lost both of their sons young (guessing on the part of his brother, catullus is said by Saint Jerome to have been around 30). I wonder what that felt like.

I think of his friends too. Catullus hyped up Cinna’s Zmyrna so hard lmao, I wonder how he felt. Calvus too - his great love Quintilia (I think her name was?) died at some point - and Hortalus, to whom poem 65 is dedicated. They must’ve been relatively close, I wonder how they felt.

Caesar too. They definitely didn’t get on lmao but if you believe Suetonius, they managed to patch up their difference at some point, and he may have been relatively friendly with Catullus’ father. Was he relieved to see the back of him? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m sure Cicero was.

Who knows? I wish I did. I think about the subject of Catullus’ death way too much.

[porciaenjoyer]

julius caesar was SO good by the way

[criticalrolo]

everyone is forgetting the funniest part of Julius Caesar. It’s when the mob is searching for Cinna to kill and they find a guy with the same name and go TEAR HIM FOR CONSPIRACY and the guy is like no I’m a poet I just have the same name!! and they pause and then go. TEAR HIM FOR HIS BAD VERSES and kill him anyway

[tetheredfeathers]

I have this headcanon that Katniss is a very good poet/writer. Her thoughts have always been so poetic, like who the hell calls a boy she fake loves "dandelion in the spring, that means rebirth instead of destruction" like be fr. And at the end of Mockinjay she says something like I make a list in my head of every good thing I've seen someone do.

Post mockingjay she spends her days in the woods writing for hours and hours. It's good therapy for her as well, she writes about Prim, Rue, Cinna, Finnick, Boggs, Peeta's father. Sometimes she writes down her nightmares, fears, the arena, her time in District in 13.

But mostly she writes about Peeta, how she is so afraid of loosing him, and that she's so grateful he came back to her. She writes about how nice it feels to run her fingers through his blonde curls, and his eyelashes oh my eyelashes, miss girly has 5 whole pages dedicated to his eyelashes. She writes about his strong arms, how they ripple when he's kneading dough and how he effortlessly lifts her into his arms like she weighs nothing. She writes and writes and writes.

One day Peeta eyes her notebook curiously, he sees her with it all the time but never has the guts to ask her what's in it. One day he finally gives in and asks her, and Katniss blushes furiously before saying 'just some stuff I wrote'. He asks if he can see it, and she reluctantly hands it to him, it's not that Katniss minds letting him see it, she's just a bit shy. Peeta immediately starts crying right through the first couple pages, Katniss gets all nervous and asks him if she wrote something wrong. He cries even more at that and reassures her that nothings her wrong just that her words are beautiful he can't help it.

When he reaches the more later part of the book, he gets all cheeky and teases her about how badly downn she is for him. She get's all defensive and pretends to get mad and leave. He pouts and apologizes 'I'm sorry birdie, come here'. He wraps his big strong arms around her, carries her upstairs and he makes love to her all night long.

Later he smirks to himself and says 'I can't believe I ever thought that Gale stood a chance'

[shrike-wasteland]

Sejanus and Coriolanus as a name

Sejanus was a Roman soldier, who was eventually executed for treason.

Sejanus Plinth was a peacekeeper, nicknamed 'Bullseye' for his great marksmanship, who was a rebel and eventually executed for conspiring treason against the capitol.

Roman Sejanus was a friend of the emperor but this didn't help him in his time of need, Sejanus Plinth became 'friends' with Coriolanus who ended up betraying him and leading to his death.

Coriolanus' name comes from a Shakespearean play- and a historic Roman figure- a tragedy with the hubris of power. we see the fatal flaw in the play to be his pride, never allowing the people to be heard.

both of these names have Roman heritage, linking them together but the meanings are fused with tragedy, Coriolanus is a tragic play [not historic as it isn't English history] and Sejanus was a rebel who was betrayed. lots of the Capitol names have either Roman or Grecian influence, Tigiris is Latin, Cinna is Greek, [although Cinna is also Shakespearean, he was a poet in Ceaser, conspiring against the tyrannic ruler] this shows a highbrow attitude the capitol have in naming their children.

i have always thought they would name their child something historic for the brag-ability of the cultured name, the way we see with the upper class and celebrities, these names are unnatural to us, something foreign to a casual name like John or Sarah.

the district born characters [like Sejanus] also have 'odd' names, but alot are through the ties to their district, unlike Sejanus, who's name is a possible illusion to his Ma not fully believing in the wealth of the capitol unlike his father.

this is just a fraction of my thoughts on these names!!! i will be writing more!!!

[vorbarrsultana]

Lestat & books (TVL edition)

Featuring all works of literature mentioned in the text of The Vampire Lestat.

Mark Twain, mentioned without any specific works of his;

William Shakespeare, with "Macbet" being a particular favorite. "Tommorow, and tommorow, and tommorow" is also Lestat's favorite monologue to perform;

Henry Rider Haggard, a British novelist who wrote "King Solomon's Mines' and "Cleopatra";

Dashiell Hammet, "The Maltese Falcon" about the adventures of Sam Spades;

Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Francis Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio and Dante Alighieri are the most famous;

Charles Dickens ("A Tale of Two Cities", I imagine, or "Great Expectations". Post-trial Lestat might also like "A Christmas Carol")

Ernest Hemingway post-1930, possibly "For Whom the Bell Tolls", which seems to be his novel most in line with Lestat's taste in literature;

Denis Diderot, the Enlightenment philosopher and writer, co-creator & chief editor of The Encyclopédie, also wrote La Religieuse, a novel that featured very outspoken critique of the Catholic Church;

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who famously wrote "The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right" & "Discorse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men", and was the main inspiration of the Jacobins during the French Revolution;

Voltaire, both as philosopher ("Letters concerning the English Nation", "Idées républicaines", etc.) and playwright ("Oedipus", "Iréne", "Socrate", etc.);

Pierre Corneille (a playwright: "Le Cid", "Horace", "Cinna" and "Polyeucte");

Jean-Baptiste Racine (another Classicist French playwright, author of "Alexandre le Grand", "Andromaque" & "Iphigénie");

Molière, yet another French playwright ("Don Juan, or, The Stone Banquet", "L'Amour médecin", "Psyché");

Whatever classics Lestat has read in Latin during his & Gabrielle's stay in Venice. She specifically mentioned Plutarch, Egyptian and Greek myths;

John Polidori, "The Vampyre";

Sheridan Le Fanu, "Carmilla";

And, with great distaste, Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

[garland-on-thy-brow]

Senatorial-totally-not-conspiratorial beauty contest, bonus round for those who did not make it into the main poll. Gellius was not a senator at the time of the totally-unrelated-event, but he became one later so he is included by popular request. His brother is included by analogy.

[spacecowboywhit]

CaesarFacts for the Ides of March

The Julii family claimed to trace their origins to a son of Aeneas after the fall of Troy, making them direct descendants of the goddess Aphrodite/Venus.

Caesar grew up and kept his main residence all his life in the Suburra, the poorest neighborhood of Rome, famous for its sex workers, immigrants, gang violence, theft, and crime.

As a youth, Caesar ran with a fashionable counter-culture group. They wore their togas "loosely belted in a feminine fashion, with fringe trailing on the ground". Basically, Roman punks in torn jean jackets and safety pins.

During the notoriously bloody dictatorship of Sulla, Caesar chose to marry Cornelia, the daughter of Sulla's enemy, Cinna. Caesar was only saved by the intervention of his mother's family and the Vestals.

Not wanting to be in Rome, he took a diplomatic post in Bithynia. A short post turned into a long one, as he became... very close... to King Nicomedes and moved into the palace. Caesar was called the "Queen of Bithynia" there and in Rome. Later, King Nicomedes willed Bythinia to Rome, care of Caesar, as Good Friends(tm) do.

On his way back to Rome, he was captured by pirates and held for ransom. Caesar was insulted that they only asked 20 talents of silver for him and demanded that his ransom be set to 50.

On the way to being exchanged, he was obnoxiously relaxed and friendly with the pirates, writing poetry at them and joking about how he was going to raise a navy and crucify them all. Upon being released, he did indeed raise a navy and crucify them all.

Despite being a patrician, Caesar was not super wealthy early in life. He funded his early political career by borrowing extreme amounts of money. Cleverly, this made his lenders realize that the only way he could pay them back was to have a successful career and win elections, forcing them to back him beyond the loans.

Cornelia died young, and Caesar married Pompeia, the granddaughter of Sulla, the dictator who wanted him dead. They kept it close in Rome.

Caesar divorced Pompeia after the Bona Dea scandal, in which the senator Clodius Pulcher crossdressed to sneak into a sacred, women-only holy ritual being hosted by Pompeia.

Caesar was quite possibly a slutty, slutty bisexual horndog. The gossip called him "every woman's husband and every man's wife". This just makes me want to high-five him though.

In the aftermath of the Catiline Conspiracy, Cato the Younger was arguing to the Senate that Caesar should be tried, since he was friendly with several conspirators. A message arrived for Caesar and Cato demanded it be read aloud in case relevant. It was from Cato's sister, thanking Caesar for their recent, vigorous lovemaking. Caesar was not tried.

Caesar was apparently an accomplished poet, though none of his works survive. His prose is excellent though, so it's not a stretch to imagine.

Besides being consul and ultimately dictator, he was also high priest of Jupiter as a youth and later Pontifex Maximus, the ultimate high priest of Rome, for the last 20 years of his life. Normally, the elected priesthoods were a complete political dead end due to a lot of restrictions on the office. Not being able to look at blood or touch weapons puts a damper on military success, for example. Caesar used his legal expertise to find loopholes to those restrictions, which let him continue his career.

[eighttwotwopointthreethree]

who lives, who dies, who tells your story: a write up of new swan shakespeare's julius caesar

it's been a while since i watched a live production of shakespeare! and i hadn't really expected to spend this interval of my summer doing so, but the new swan shakespeare festival at UCI was doing julius caesar, which, if you know anything about this blog, is like my number one most favourite shakespeare play. so of course i had to go see it. and you can go see it, too, if you're in socal, alongside their production of as you like it, and the complete works of shakespeare (abridged) (which, if you've ever seen the reduced shakespeare company's filmed version, is really hilarious).

why is julius caesar my favourite play? i mean, besides the homoeroticism in the text between brutus and cassius (#brutecass4lyfe), julius caesar to me is just one of the most human of tragedies, one of the most prescient political dramas ever done. back in 2017, shakespeare in the park did a JC production that, controversially, portrayed the man as a donald trump-type figure. and you know what, they've got a point. julius caesar was a populist. literally, his faction was called the populares; he claimed to represent the will of the people, but ultimately was taking power for himself.

granted, brutus and cassius themselves were not scrappy revolutionaries trying to change the world for the better, for all that brutus likes to cloak himself in honour and high-minded ideals. their faction, the optimates, were of the ruling class in rome. they represented the people in power who disliked caesar's broader appeal. shakespeare (via cribbing from plutarch) points out that many of the optimates were simply mad they did not seize power the way caesar had. cassius was indeed born as free as caesar, with as many of the privileges and ruling rights as caesar; why should cassius bend the knee to caesar when the bitch can't even swim?

brutus, idealist that he is, also could not justify bending the knee. he did not want to lose his own power, though he couches it in shakespeare as a wish to remain free. it's through brutus' rhetoric about freedom that we get the idea of brutus and cassius as revolutionaries, when in truth all they wanted was to return to the pre-caesar status quo. and when they determined that the best way to usher in the revolution is through violence and bloodshed, they set forth the main tragedy of the play: that a revolution begun in blood will end in blood. we've seen this play out throughout the centuries: the french revolution, the russian revolution, pretty much every violent coup that ends in repressive regimes. as long as there are despots, there will be fodder for julius caesar productions. (cassius was onto something when he wondered how many times their actions would be played out in the future "in states unborn and accents yet unknown"!)

this timelessness was felt in the new swan production. the costuming was at parts roman-inspired, though not all the way through--people wore tunics reminiscent of southeast asian clothing, or hoods and masks, or--in the second half of the play--military camo atop their tunics marking their allegiances. one notable setting was the one for octavian and antony's conversation, set in what looked like a public bath. another notable costuming choice was caesar's majestic outfits--flowing, regal, queenlike.

the production notes mentioned a deliberate casting decision of 50-50 male-female roles, with antony, caesar, and cassius notably played as female, with their pronouns changed in the text to refer to them as female. calpurnia, caesar's wife, is taken out of the text and her lines given to lepidus instead, and the characters refer to him as caesar's husband--which does cause an interesting dynamic when lepidus says non-calpurnia lines in the bathhouse scene with antony and octavian. other roles were also condensed--cinna the conspirator was taken out of the text except in the scene with cinna the poet, titinius (our beloved plothole man) had his lines given to metellus cimber, and some of strato's lines were given to casca. also, strato's role in holding brutus' sword is entirely excised, which means that brutus stabs himself at the end, rather than implicate someone else in his death.

all in all, these changes led to a tighter-paced production, where the side characters like casca and metellus cimber were given more of a character arc than in the original. giving titinius' role to metellus cimber, for example, made cassius' death make more sense, because there was already established rapport between metellus cimber and cassius in the first part. (i would argue that in this production casca and cassius had more chemistry, though...)

another notable doubling choice was giving caesar's actor the lines for cinna the poet. i think that was striking for the production, because it made cinna the poet's death at the hands of the mob have a striking implication for this caesar's. who deserves to die, and who was just an innocent caught at the mercy of mob justice? was it only cinna? or was it caesar and cinna? if you ask mark antony, of course, she would say it was both of them. this production's mark antony did an excellent job in taking control of the narrative after caesar's death. i'm used to JC productions going to intermission after caesar's burial, but new swan deciding to do so after the dogs of war monologue certainly told me that that was the turning point--that by letting antony have any share in the narrative, brutus had signed the death warrant for his ~perfectly justified~ revolution. his idealism--his persistence in "civility" and "playing fair", was his fatal flaw.

a couple other scattered thoughts:

i could see that the production was more firmly on the 'bromance' side of the brutecass debate.

which, fair, yes, that is how people have traditionally read the dynamic, but i'm always a good sucker for a cassius obsessed with brutus to the point of dragging him down the path of destruction with her, and would love to see a bit more of this cassius' manipulative ability.

this cassius is fiery, sarcastic, and i do love the way she sinks to her knees in the tent scene when she offers her heart for brutus to stab, but...

i don't think this brutus is quite picking up what cassius is setting down. he's a liiiiiittle bit too heavy on the stoicism. the passion that he showed portia in her ONE scene with him? that's what i would have liked to see out of him in the tent scene, and in that forever and forever farewell cassius scene.

maybe i've just got deranged brutecass brainrot, but i do feel like the devotion that the two characters express to one another in the text itself is part of shakespeare's sympathetic portrayal of them.

i mean, otherwise, all we've got of cassius and brutus is that dante thinks they're such horrible betrayers that they're now forever being chewed on by satan in the ninth circle of hell, next to judas freaking iscariot. brutus and cassius are, as far as classic lit is concerned, sharing the afterlife together.

that's why their devotion to one another in shakespeare's play is so compelling. it's like cassius' one redeeming feature, that he's so unerringly loyal to brutus and only thinks the best of him. while brutus allowed himself to be seduced into cassius' conspiracy, and his own devotion to honour ends up signing away their lives.

and yet when cassius tries to warn him against letting antony take control of the narrative, cassius was still too in love with brutus to actually put his foot down and say no and stop it.

also this production's portia stole the show. in her one scene she was just incredible. badass. girlboss. 100/10 no notes.

according to the dramaturg, who was sitting near us during this showing, this show's caesar was an understudy because the other actor got covid? you literally couldn't tell because this caesar was spectacular. such mean girl energy. regina george would've been proud.

anyway, go see the production! or go see new swan's as you like it, or the complete (abridged) works of shakespeare. there's plenty of showings for the rest of this summer, and you'll be in for some solid acting and good fun.