"Sixteenth year" means the boy is fifteen, not yet turned sixteen....But if one has a desire for those still older, he no longer plays, but now seeks “And answering him back.” Doesn't this mean the man desiring boys over 16/17 is looking to get fucked, rather than doing the fucking? That is, he's a sick fuck who doesn't belong in civilised society. It seems much more likely to me that it's reverence directed towards the boy's beauty, which naturally commands humility, not that such boys were literally considered off limits. Are you saying, of the poem, that when a boy goes past 16/17, extrapolating from previous lines, he becomes so desirable that the man just faints away? It's a fucking hilarious concept, I have say. Imagine if Tadzio had been 18 instead of 14! No, that wouldn't have worked, Gustav would have dropped dead in the foyer at first sight of the young man's beard coming in. You would be well aware of the poets' sad laments caused by a boy growing his first hairs on chin or butt. Signs of adult male characteristics arriving was the end -- not the beginning of some even stronger hidden yearning! The poet is exercising his licence, playing with a brute biological fact that all Greeks recognised.  |