A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

absit invidia

Latin Phrases
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Let there be no ill will; an apology offered when something might seem boastful or offensive.

Detailed Definition
Absit invidia is a formulaic expression asking that no envy or resentment attend a statement. In poetry and rhetoric, poets use it as a form of modesty topos, acknowledging the audacity of their claims or comparisons before making them. It creates a tone of humility that paradoxically heightens the grandeur of what follows. It appears in odes, celebratory verse, and any poem that risks the appearance of arrogance in its praise.
Example
Example in poetry:
Horace begins several odes with an absit invidia gesture, apologizing in advance for the boldness of comparing his work to that of the Greek lyric masters; A poet dedicating a collection to a lost friend might write absit invidia — let there be no ill will — before comparing that friend's gifts to those of the immortals; Ben Jonson uses the absit invidia topos in his praise poems, carefully disclaiming any appearance of flattery before proceeding to lavish praise; A contemporary poet invoking absit invidia might use it ironically, drawing attention to the very envy they claim to be warding off; The absit invidia gesture appears in Spenser's dedicatory sonnets, where he acknowledges the audacity of offering his verse to great patrons while asking their indulgence
Additional Notes
Absit invidia functions as a form of the classical modesty topos, known in rhetoric as the recusatio, by which a poet disclaims the adequacy of their own work before proceeding to make large claims. The phrase creates a performative tension: by saying let there be no ill will, the speaker simultaneously acknowledges the possibility of envy and implicitly draws attention to whatever achievement might provoke it. Students should recognize absit invidia as a sophisticated rhetorical move rather than a simple expression of humility. Related terms include recusatio (a formal refusal of an epic subject in favor of a slighter one, which paradoxically elevates the chosen subject) and captatio benevolentiae (the capturing of the audience's goodwill at the beginning of a speech or poem). The phrase is particularly useful when analyzing the opening gestures of odes and panegyric verse.
Also Known As
let there be no envy absit invidia verbo no offense intended
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