Pervigilium Veneris is a Latinpoem of uncertain date, variously assigned to the 2nd, 4th or 5th centuries. It is sometimes thought to have been by the poet Tiberianus, because of strong similarities with his poem Amnis ibat, though other scholars attribute it to Publius Annius Florus, and yet others find no sufficient evidence for any attribution. It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-night festival of Venus in a setting that seems to be Sicily. The poem describes the annual awakening of the vegetable and animal world through the "benign post-Lucretian" goddess, which contrasts with the tragic isolation of the silent "I" of the poet/speaker against the desolate background of a ruined city, a vision that prompts Andrea Cucchiarelli to note the resemblance of the poem's construction to the cruelty of a dream. It is notable for its Romanticism which marks a transition between Classical Roman poetry and medieval poetry. It consists of ninety-three verses in trochaic septenarius, and is divided into strophes of unequal length by the refrain: The poem ends with the nightingale's song, and a poignant expression of personal sorrow:
The poem has appealed to 20th-century composers and has been set to music by Frederic Austin for chorus and orchestra ; by Timothy Mather Spelman, for soprano and baritone solo, chorus and orchestra ; by Virgil Thomson as "The Feast of Love", for baritone and chamber orchestra, text translated by himself ; and by George Lloyd for soprano, tenor, chorus, and orchestra.
Andrea Cucchiarelli. La veglia di Venere. Pervigilium Veneris in BUR Classici Greci e Latini. Biblioteca Universale . Paperback. With notes and facing translation in Italian. This new edition, with Latin text based largely on Shackelton Bailey, includes a brief anthology of commentary – from Voltaire to contemporary criticism and an up-to-date bibliography. There is also an appendix of texts and Italian translations of some of the most famous poems of late antiquity devoted to the theme of the rose – many from the so-called Latin Anthology, a collection of poems from the imperial age thought to have been assembled at Carthage "during the cultural renaissance of Vandalic Africa in the 5th century CE. This appendix highlights the vitality of the rose topos and of the symbolism associated with it, which spread from the ancient world into European literature of all ages, and it offers the reader a welcome opportunity for reading and appreciating, this time in an Italian translation, a series of poems scarcely studied or known."
Influence
made a reference to the poem in the 429th line of his modernist work The Waste Land as, "Quando fiam ceu chelidon – O swallow swallow". John Fowles' The Magus ends indeterminately with the vigil's refrain, a passage to which he often directed readers wishing greater clarity about the novel's conclusion.
