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.

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 G

gaudia certaminis

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

The joys of the contest; the pleasure and exhilaration found in competition and struggle.

Detailed Definition
Gaudia certaminis expresses the paradoxical joy found in contest, conflict, and struggle. In poetry, it appears in athletic odes, martial verse, and poems celebrating the spirit of competition. It draws on the classical Greek ideal of agon, the contest as a means of self-discovery and the revelation of excellence. Poets use it to celebrate the beauty of effort, the pleasure of opposition, and the way that struggle, whether athletic, artistic, or intellectual, brings out the highest human capacities.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pindar's epinician odes are the supreme expression of gaudia certaminis — the joy of the athletic contest as a form of human excellence and divine favor; A student writing about competitive sports — a race, a chess match, a wrestling bout — might use gaudia certaminis to explore the paradox that genuine competition can be a form of friendship and mutual enhancement; Homer's funeral games for Patroclus in the Iliad are the epic expression of gaudia certaminis — the contest as a means of honoring the dead, celebrating the living, and discovering who one is under pressure; A poet writing about artistic competition — a slam, a prize contest, a literary rivalry — might invoke gaudia certaminis to explore the way that competition can heighten creativity and generate genuine joy alongside anxiety; Nietzsche's concept of agon, which he traced to the Greek tradition, is philosophically related to gaudia certaminis — the conviction that human excellence requires the stimulus of genuine competition
Additional Notes
Gaudia certaminis draws on the deep Greek and Roman tradition of the agon — the contest — as one of the fundamental structures of cultural life. The great Panhellenic games (Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, Nemean) were not merely athletic events but religious festivals and occasions for the highest poetry, since Pindar's epinician odes were commissioned to celebrate the victors. Students should note that the gaudia certaminis are paradoxical: the joy is found in the contest itself, not merely in winning, since the contest reveals capabilities that peace and ease do not. This makes gaudia certaminis distinct from mere competitiveness or the desire to win: it describes the particular pleasure of exertion, opposition, and the discovery of one's limits. Related concepts include the agon (contest) as a cultural structure, areté (excellence revealed through contest), and the concept of the hero as one defined by the challenges they overcome.
Also Known As
joys of the contest pleasures of the contest joys of competition
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