Ode I.11
by Horace (circa 84-54 BC)
translated from Latin by Mary Jane Myers
Locónoé, the gods decree
the destined lives of you and me.
Toss out Chaldean horoscopes,
we’re not to know, though we have hopes.
It’s better patiently to bear
the firm diktats of Jupiter.
We might live many winters more,
or right now on this Tyrrhen shore
as waves drum on the pumice cliff
we might drop dead.
we might drop dead. Dear, here’s my riff:
filter your new-pressed wine; curtail
plans to a Lilliputian scale.
Time’s vanished, even as we speak,
as grapes ooze juices at their peak.
You can’t control the Fates’ design.
So pluck this day from life’s lush vine.
Latin Original
Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. Ut melius quicquid erit pati
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Ode III.30
by Horace
translated from Latin by Mary Jane Myers
I’ve raised a monument more adamant
than bronze: the pharaohs’ pyramids aren’t as tall;
unruly north winds, or Tempestus’ squall
can’t ruin it; nor the years’ relentless count,
that marks the pitiless onrush of time.
I’ll never wholly die, my vibrant heart
will parry Death, perpetual seeds will sprout
from fresh-sung praise, as long as priests still climb
with silent virgins up the temple hill.
A poor Apulian, I; where Daunus ruled
with humble means my people, wild, unschooled.
The Aufidus convulses there. Through skill—
Aeolic meters merged with Roman vowels—
I’ve triumphed. Take a bow, Melpómené,
you gifted lyric genius to me.
Be kind, and crown my head with Delphic laurels.
Aufidus: a river in southern Italy
Melpómené: the Muse of tragedy
Original Latin
Exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.
non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus
et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium
regnavit populorum, ex humili potens,
princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos
deduxisse modos. sume superbiam
quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica
lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.
Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018.
They are both worthy translations, but I prefer Ms. Myers’ version of III.30. It stays close to the length of the original, maintaining the quatrain structure. Myers has done the difficult job of adding English rhyme, but she deftly avoids the problems that often come with that: farfetched word choice, and failure to be faithful.
Her rendering of I.11 is done in tetrameter rhyming couplets. This inevitably makes the English somewhat longer than the Latin original, and also adds a kind of sing-song quality that comes across as folksy, gnomic wisdom poetry. The eight lines of the Latin are much more compressed, and icy in their finality.
But choosing whether or not to use rhyme when translating a poem where there is no rhyme in the original is a choice every translator has. Sometimes it works well, and other times the difficulties can be overwhelming. These two show tremendous skill.
Joseph
Thank you for your kind words. For the first time, this last winter, I attempted to understand the mechanics of “translation.” The art is a complicated brain-teaser, as you know. I have found the whole exercise helpful to develop my English-poetry-writing craft. But I have no desire to go further into these translation-woods! These forests are very dark, very overgrown with tangled undergrowth, and shelter very fierce monsters hunting for their dinners!
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Mary jane, thank you so much for undertaking these translations. It is a much-needed effort and a great contribution to the world of classical poetry. You are making the ancient world accessible to the modern! This is a great gift.
I enjoyed both of these translations and have just enough Latin to appreciate your choices. I have one small issue, however, with word-choice: “Lillipution” — a word which refers back to Jonathan Swift and the Lilliput of his Gulliver’s Travels in 1726. Because the word is so strongly associated with an 18th century work, it struck me as anachronistic. I think rephrasing this would improve tthe piece. I don’t think “microscopic” would work either. Perhaps simply “greatly shrunken” scale…?
A minor quibble in otherwise excellent work.
Brian, I agree that there is a problem with some modern words when dealing with ancient texts. Not ALL modern words, because we have to speak in ways that address contemporary times. But you have a point about “Lilliputian” and “microscopic.” The association with Swift, and with a more scientific age, make for what we might call “anachronism of tone.” I don’t think these are a major problem with the above translations by Ms. Myers, but there is a contemporary translation of Homer floating around that is an absolute horror, with ancient Greek women speaking like California Valley girls, and Achaian warriors who sound like yuppie metrosexuals. I won’t say who the translator is, but I assure everybody here that it isn’t our guy, Michael Solot. His translation of the Odyssey is awesome, and for the ages.
Dear Brian
Thank you for your helpful close reading. I agree with you–I perhaps should have killed my darling–that lovely specifically Swiftian word that rolls off the tongue so delightfully. Perhaps not capitalizing the word would soften the reference to Swift, which alerts an erudite reader such as yourself to an exact time period, and may pull that reader up short. (In an earlier draft, I used a lower-case for the first letter “L”–but then changed my mind because in Merriam-Webster it’s still capitalized).
Controlling “register” is tricky, isn’t it? The other three words/phrases that are fairly contemporary are “riff” (very contemporary–a jazz term) “drop dead” and “diktats”. So overall, I’ve chosen a fairly “contemporary” register. When a translator does this, the poem may slide more to the “imitation” side of the translation/imitation spectrum.
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
Dear Mary Jane — Let me add just one additional comment on the question of word choice in translation. The one place where full use of very recent modern diction is OK is in comical or satirical verse. When translating Catullus or Martial (or even the fierce Juvenal), contemporary slang not only works well in places, but in some instances is practically inevitable to catch the down-to-earth tone of the original text. Even in some of the Satires of Horace this may hold true.
Where one has to avoid very new or overly hip slang is in poems of a more serious or exalted nature. In those cases what I have called “anachronism of tone” is made worse by making a poem of high seriousness sound like it was written by a flighty or mischievous poet with no sense of propriety.
Mary Jane, I especially like your Ode I.11 for its translation of the form. Each unrhymed Horatian line becomes a rhymed couplet. You move the material around as needed for English syntax, of course, but your decision shows a suitable attention to form as well as meaning, sometimes lacking in lyrics translated from any language, by poets who find the meaning suited to an unrelated form they invent or prefer. Here your metric fluency, too, admirably evokes enjoyment. That goes for both poems! And in III.30 you aptly capture the author’s conversationally audacious address to his muse.
Margaret
Thank you so much for your kind words. Gosh, this translation business is tricky, isn’t it?
Most sincerely
Mary Jane
A Lilliputian note via Ezra Pound:
No translation has to reproduce all aspects of the original.
It can choose to concentrate on only some aspects.
It can leave part of the original out.
It may even add to it or rearrange it in order to accomplish the translator’s purpose.
Dear BDW
Thank you for your reference to Pound. His is definitely an important voice in the debate (sometimes a war!) over the theory and practice of translations. Should translations be “faithful” or “creative”? A wide spectrum!
Most sincerely,
Mary Jane
That note from Pound is merely a defense of his own deeply flawed (and frequently lousy) translations. His translations from Propertius are an embarrassment.
Thanks for the read, MJ. The classics are a bit above my pay grade, but still very relatable.
In a certain way, English, despite being “about half” etymologically Greek and Latin, is more modern than any “Classic”, as discussed by T. S. Eliot in “What is a Classic”; so when we go to translate any classic, the very language we start with is new-fangled.
What I admire about Ms. Myers work is her literary criticism, as seen in her paragraph on Margaret Coats’ “The Precious Blood”; so I did wonder what she would make of Horace’s Odes. But what of the diction of a poem, like “Extinction”?
Anyway, on a Light-er Note:
The Lilliputians Analyze the Oracle of Light
We found an object in his pocket that intrigued our minds,
a flat, rectangular device, one side was dark, one shined.
Upon the glowing side, we saw strange figured-shapes arrayed
in rows and columns all about, which at a whim were changed.
Though we could move them all about, we could not reach inside.
Because of some material, such access was denied.
He put it next to us. It was about two-thirds our size.
We stood in awe before its screen, for it amazed our eyes.
And we conjecture that it is the god he worships, since,
he said he seldom did a thing without consulting it,
and told us that he carried it to bed with him at night.
So we believe that it must be his Oracle of Light.
BDW:
LOL! Clever-issimo! Did you write this poem?
Most sincerely, Mary Jane
“The Lilliputians Analyze the Oracle of Light” is a poem first printed on the Internet on August 18, 2017, carrying the charichord of Educable Wires. This dodeca’s point of view is that of Jonathan Swift’s Lilliputians from “Gulliver’s Travels”—and uses Swift’s remarkable irony as a starting point for its themes, not least of which is nomophobia.
Although I regard the poetry of Horace as nothing less than extraordinary (unlike Ezra Pound), one can always connect with text in opposing ways, as, for instance, in the following tennos:
Horace Redux
by Aedile Cwerbus
I have not made a monument more durable than bronze,
or higher than the pyramids, or lovelier than swans.
I have no great memorial as powerful as rain,
as strong as wind, as lasting as time’s ever-destined reign.
And I shall wholly die, no part of me escape death’s bite;
like vestal virgin and high priest, I shall succumb to night.
Without renown, I’ll dwell where Alph the sacred river ran,
in twilight’s desert kingdoms, poorer than the poorest man.
I did not bring Greek rhythms to our tongue, Melpomene,
so likewise toss those dry-leafed laurels you have offered me.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet who still contemplates ancient Rome; here Horace (65 BC – 8 BC) is in his sights. Allusions to S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) are intentional.