“Excellent question, Georgie.What do you think?”
She glared at him.“Teacher’s trick–putting it back to me.I take it you don’t know either.”
“Partner.My partner is as capable of reasoning that out as I am.”
She shot him a scathing look of disapproval but continued her analysis.“If she is making a statement about her work, then the ‘roses’ would be her poems?”
“Brilliant.Yes, they certainly could be.If you read ‘roses’ as her epigrams, what is she saying?”
“Unless someone is or has been loved by Aphrodite, they cannot understand what sort of poems she has written.”She frowned thoughtfully, and suddenly he saw her face light up.Georgiana, excited by new insights, captivated him.Her passion enchanted him.
“The beloved of Aphrodite would understand the arts of love.Unless you—the reader—understand the arts of love, you won’t understand my poems.That’s what she is saying!”She danced around him.
“Are you sure?”The teacher in him wouldn’t let it rest.
“What else can the roses be?If it is about her life, perhaps she means her children.‘You can’t appreciate what sort of beauties my children are...’The rest of the poem doesn’t follow then.”She thought about it silently for a while.
He knew he should offer some ideas, but watching her gave him pleasure; and the direction of his thoughts was extremely improper.His ideas about the epigram and about Georgiana were as erotic as Nossis of Locri probably intended.
“Perhaps she refers to the ladies of Locri.”
She shocked him; he couldn’t hide it.It amused her to continue; he could see it in her devilish eyes.“If the ladies of Locri are roses, then no one who is without knowledge of the sensual arts—as someone beloved by Aphrodite would be—could appreciate them or know what sort of ‘flowers’ they are.”She peeped at him impishly.“Have I totally given up all hope of propriety?”
“Yes.”He schooled his features to disapproval, or at least he tried to.
She laughed at him.
“But it is a pagan poem,” he went on.“You wouldn’t expect it to be entirely proper for a sheltered English maiden.”
“Maiden Aunt, I fear is more accurate,” she said in a huff, “and notso sheltered!”
He didn’t speak.He thought of all the things she still had to learn and allowed realization to grip her.
“Could Nossis be referring in some fashion to herself?”Her eyes lit up with awareness.
The light in them held him fast.Georgie learned quickly.Monday’s lesson in the sensual arts, brief as it was, had already broadened her vision of the poems.
“She could.”He swallowed before he continued.“What are you suggesting?”He wondered if she could even imagine the imagery that poets used for a woman’s most feminine anatomy.Roses were the least of it.
“Perhaps she is saying that only someone really loved by Aphrodite would appreciate her own...”She groped for a word.He watched in horrified fascination.She was on her own with this one.
“...charms,” she said at last.“Her beauty?Her body?”She looked at him, challenge in her eyes and vulnerability in every line of her face and posture.
Andrew found reasons to study his fingers.He spoke very carefully.“Exactly how do you propose to convey that in English?”
“I don’t.”Her wicked grin was as unexpected as her answer.
She sobered and continued.“It is impossible to tell from the context which interpretation is correct.Nor could we express my suggestion about the ladies of Locri without the risk of communicating ideas that are mine and nothers.It is likely that the roses are poems, but I refuse to say ‘poems.’I think in this case we will call a rose a rose and let the reader draw her own conclusions.”
“Our readers are to be ladies, are they?”He noticed she no longer doubted there could be readers.
“And why not?Perhaps married ladies will see one meaning and young girls another.Our choice of ‘desire’ for line one would undoubtedly set up a variety of interpretations.”
“Young girls?”He gasped.“Yesterday you didn’t believe our work would be printed.Today you think it will invade the school rooms of young girls.How likely is that?”
“Not very.Far more likely this work will never see the light of day in English.The more we go on, the more I wonder if that isn’t the safest result.”
“Are you losing your nerve?”Still wavering, Georgiana?
