Gregorovius's Lampstand

... is the name of my new band.

I picked up a copy of Ferninand Gregorovius’s biography of Lucrezia Borgia (1874) from a charity shop, and have been reading it. My edition is the 1948 Phaidon version, translated by Ludwig Goldscheider, with many handsome illustrations, and with, for some reason, not one but two dustjackets.

I’m not sure what’s going on with the dustjackets situation, to be honest. It’s like when you buy an egg that has two yolks, or something. Anyway: the book itself is fascinating, and I am ashamed at my near-total Gregorovian ignorance, which I shall attempt to rectify going forward. But this detail from the translator’s introduction struck me:

"In the early spring of 1852, on his journey to Rome, Gregorovius saw in the Museum of Naples a beautiful lampstand found at Pompei: this bronze inspired him to write an epic poem.” An epic poem about a lampstand?? This I have to read. Although, since I assume it has never been translated, this might be a struggle, given the complexity of the German language and my incapacity thereunto. But I assume it goes something like this:

Lamp and the stand I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And proud IKEA's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the homeware store.
Long labors, both by road and path, he bore,
And doubtfully unpacked, before he won
The Living Room, and light at last outshone.