- οἳ τὰς ἀληθεῖς τῶν ποθουμένων θέας
- ἀμηχανοῦντες ὡς παρόντων προσβλέπειν,
- τὰς εἰκόνας ὁρῶντες αὐτῶν, ὡς λόγος,
- παραμυθοῦνται τῶν ἐρώτων τὴν φλόγα.
‘Being at a loss to look upon the true aspects of those they long for—as when they’re present—they gently coax the flame of their passions when they see their likenesses, as it were.’
Notes: I’m moving farther and farther away from doing a line-by-line translation. It seems that as the lines go on Michael’s syntax is less straightforward, which would make for clumsy and unwieldy translations.
So Michael follows up on his description of himself as a lover playing in the shadows of his lost love (ancient Athens), and here he plays with the word εἰκόνας, which I think should not be taken as physical ‘pictures’ (like Byzantine Polaroids), but possibly mental pictures, or more likely (I think) similarities in others or little things that remind one of another. The same way that you might look at a lover’s scarf or listen to a favorite song, Michael must console his passion still with the shadows, the likenesses of the absent Athens. He has texts and ruins, which are not really ‘pictures’, but hints of the Athens that he can’t see or touch.
But then there’s that word that I translated as ‘gently coax’ above but then rendered ‘console’ in the notes: παραμυθοῦνται. This verb really means ‘to encourage’, and if we we want to be overly literal we might say ‘to tell stories to.’ It comes to mean ‘to console’ and so on, but I have my doubts whether Michael wants his flame to be softened. I think instead he wants the flame to grow, or at least to continue burning strongly, and so he does encourage the flame of his passions. This works metaphorically as well as physically: by speaking gently he feeds the flame. But what does this speaking entail? Continued study and teaching of the classics? His own literary output (such as the present poem)?
I would think ‘yes.’ In the absence of the Athens he had fallen in love with, he maintains his passion by seeking out and responding to its vestiges, and by adding his own voice to the tradition.