You’re right, Punky, but this is an easy fix. We can just say,
“To think it! Paris judged awry, prize gave
To Venus!–bribed by mortal wench, the knave!”
Welcome, amrussell, and thanks for joining in.
You will all have to pardon the intrusion but Ive been looking for a thread to jump in on, and a discussion on The Aeneid will [hopefully] work well.
Although it is anachronistic, Vergil does use the word “Italiam” – in the accusative because of the “ab” that comes before it. This is, afterall, an purposefully anachronistic narrative – Italy has already been founded, and the Romans are now attempting to reconcile certain cultural and literary conflicts in order to create a more concrete identity.
The lack of a linear temporal progression is made especially clear in Book Six, where Aeneas descends into the Underworld to visit his dead father – at which point there is a juxtaposition of the past, the present and the future. That is to say the dead, Aeneas and his guide, and the future Romans [including Aeneas’ sons, pointed out by his dead father]. Coincidentally, this occurs right in the middle of the twelve-book epic [although it has been a topic of debate whether Vergil intended to make the epic longer] – Hi, I need a life.
Also, Internaut, I have never seen a rhymed-couplet translation of this epic, particularly as a literary piece in a language like Latin where word-order is malleable and thereby the actual placement of words tends to lend meaning to a passage. How does it offer more “poetic license”? Im a formalist, at heart, and was just wondering …
Glad you like the translation, amrussell, and good to see more people coming on board here. But I think you are mistaken in your quibble, as The Sibyl has just pointed out. Whether or not Aeneas would have used the name Italy, Virgil (yes, I know vergil) certainly did, and I use it just when he does, lines 2 and 13:
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora,…
Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni,
Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe
ostia,…
(If, by a remote chance, you are making a different point - that Italy is a modern English name, and that I should have used Italia, I reject that immediately. Should I also have used Troia, Karthago, and Iuno? No!)
Now, quibbles for The Sibyl. Italiam is indeed the accusative of Italia, but this is not shown by the use of ab, which is used with the ablative (here, with oris, ablative plural of ora: so from the shores). Italiam would need ad, to get to Italy. But it is a typical epic archaism in Virgil’s practice to omit this preposition. (See discussion in R.G. Austin’s commentary on Aeneid I, Oxford, 1971, pp. 28-29.)
Now, I quote The Sibyl (one has so little occasion to do so, these days):
Also, Internaut, I have never seen a rhymed-couplet translation of this epic, particularly as a literary piece in a language like Latin where word-order is malleable and thereby the actual placement of words tends to lend meaning to a passage. How does it offer more “poetic license”? Im a formalist, at heart, and was just wondering …
Well, take some examples. The one undisputedly great English translation of Aeneid is Dryden’s, which is in rhymed couplet’s throughout:
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate,
And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate,
Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town;
His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
And so on, from magnificence to magnificence.
And of course Homer has been worked into rhyming English many times. A sample from Pope (Odyssey XIII):
The Sun descending, the Phaecian train
Spread their broad sails, and launch into the main:
At once they bend, and strike their equal oars,
And leave the sinking hills, and less’ning shores.
While on the deck the Chief in slience lies,
And pleasing slumbers steal upon his eyes.
Now, I’m not sure I that know what point you are making about word order. Of course I agree that word order is very usefully flexible in Latin, and expressive in itself. But so is it in English, to a lesser degree. In rhyming English verse one can get away with much that can’t be done in prose. Normal English prose order would change Dryden’s His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine to Restored his banish’d gods to divine rites. Of the two inversions here, the second is necessitated by metre and rhyme, and also results in a beauty lacking when prose order is used; and the first is a purely elective inversion, showing the flexibility that our language is capable of in the service of aesthetic elevation.
As for poetic licence, again I’m not certain what I should say. Perhaps just again that the expectations in rhymed verse are different, given the immense difficulty of balancing a demanding form, fidelity to the detail of the original’s content, and fidelity to the spirit of the original’s content - along with the imperative to produce a satisfying English poem, which is the first requirement of verse translation.
I too am “a formalist at heart”, O Sibyl! If you saw my translations of Mallarmé and Valéry you’d see what I mean. But here, unaccustomed to working with Latin, I imitate what I consider the finest examplars, and am happy to attempt what Dryden and Pope do: use the noble and understood English epic medium of heroic couplets where Homer and Virgil used their native hexameters. They do not respect the integrity of the original’s lines, and I don’t either (though I expand the number of lines far less that Dryden does). Working from modern European verse (which is really my element), I would never do such a thing; and I use rhyme just as my original uses it, rigorously preserving the rhyme scheme. If you want to see the unhappy results of working with an unnatural English line, glance at Cecil Day Lewis’s translation:
I tell about war and the hero who first from Troy’s frontier,
Displaced by destiny, came to the Lavinian shores,
To Italy - a man much travailed on sea and land
By the powers above, because of the brooding anger of Juno,
Suffering much in war antil he could found a city
And march his gods into Latium, whence rose the Latin race,
The royal line of Alba and the high walls of Rome.
Useful, interesting, and faithful line by line. But not beautiful or natural English verse, and so, in the end, unfaithful to Virgil’s supremely beautiful Latin.
Punkyova, you’re absolutely right, of course; and my face is a suitable shade of red. I was thinking of Arachne at the time. I must make amends, and offer the following reworking of the offending line (which, forgive my hubris, I prefer to Humble Servant’s):
The insult dealt her pride when (how it galled
To think it!) Paris judged awry and gave
The prize to Venus – coarse, unthinking knave!
So true, so true. I skipped the oris. Youre absolutely right, and my apologies for not being more careful. As for the word order, let me explain … if I say, in English, “The man crossed the street to wave hello to Cicero” – thats just dandy. If I were to switch it around and say, “The man street to Cicero hello crossed to wave,” things get a tad bit more confusing. Our language isnt fond of inflection, really, except for making something plural by adding an s, and so forth. So, in Latin, lets say the author wanted to focus on his main topic – Cicero, for example – he could put his name first in the sentence, and the ending [dative], would show that. Very a la Horace.
My point being [and I used to have one, really], by making it rhyme, do we lose some of the more subtle emphasis intended by the author … ? Translation has always been a fascination of mine. What can be gained, lost, transformed through a process of translation … ? You mention “fidelity to the detail of the original’s content,” and although I understand that, I think it also transforms the intent of the author. That being said, have you ever read Walter Benjamin’s “Task of the Translator”? I think you would enjoy it, particularly because you have obviously done quite a bit of translation. Though Im about to butcher his stunning text, he essentially says that the replica can lend much to the original – especially because he esteems the latter as an “unattainable other.”
Too much for my presently tired mind, but do look at it whenever you have the chance.
Also, my translation is by Fitzgerald who tends to stick fairly close to the text, or has done so in this translation and in others I have read of his for Homer. His first lines read:
“I sing of warefare and a man at war.
From the sea-cost of Troy in early days
He came to Italy by destiny,
To our Lavinian western shore,
A fugitive, this captain, buffeted
Cruelly on land as on the sea …”
Not bad, actually. And I do it injustive by cutting him short so quickly.
Enough rambling, though. The translation is extremely magnificent – even as its own piece. Another issue Benjamin indirectly brings up is that of parody, mimicking, or imitation. I think of those issues each time I compare the original with a translation, so excuse the flood of questions and comments.
Ah, Sibyl. In the spirit of your own avowed (and engaging) “flood of questions and comments”:
I have done a good deal of translation, as you have gathered, and I have read much on the theory of translation (indeed, have written a little). Perhaps I’ll revisit Benjamin as you suggest, but I have no time to just now. Have you read George Steiner on translation (especially After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, OUP, 1975)? He’s wonderful. A quote:
List Saint Jerome, Luther, Dryden, Hölderlein, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Ezra Pound, Valéry, MacKenna, Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, Quine - and you have very nearly the sum total of those who have said anything fundamental or new about translation.
He deals quite a bit with both Dryden and Benjamin. Let me now quote a little from Dryden, touching on rhyme:
Hannibal Caro is a great name amongst the Italians; yet his translation of the Aeneid is most scandalously mean, tho’ he has taken the advantage of writing in blank verse, and freed himself from the shackles of modern rhyme, (if it be modern; for Le Clerc has told us lately, and I believe has made it out, that David’s Psalms were written in as errant rhyme as they are translated.) Now, if a Muse cannot run when she is unfetter’d, ‘t is a sign she has but little speed. I will not make a digression here, tho’ I am strangely tempted to it; but will only say, that he who can write well in rhyme, may write better in blank verse. Rhyme is certainly a constraint even to the best poets, and those who make it with most ease; tho’ perhaps I have as little reason to complain that hardship as any man, excepting Quarles and Withers. What it adds to sweetness, it takes away from sense; and he who loses the least by it may be call’d a gainer. It often makes us swerve from an author’s meaning; as, if a mark be set up for an archer at a great distance, let him aim as exactly as he can, the least wind will take his arrow, and divert it from the white. (Aeneid, Translator’s Introduction)
I have to agree. It is enormously difficult to do translation in rhyme, and one must, in using it, “swerve from an author’s meaning”. The translator’s path is, as I have laboured to express and to demonstrate, steep almost to the point of impassibility. Yet I revel in walking this tightrope, and follow those who least wobble the wire for me - Dryden and his kind.
As for Fitzgerald’s unrhyming translation, it is fair and crisp. But again, he makes his task easier than some of us do. Nor does he translate line for line. I admire also the unrhyming translation by Theodore Williams:
*Arms and the man I sing, who first made way,
predestined exile, from the Trojan shore
to Italy, the blest Lavinian strand.
Smitten of storms he was on land and sea
by violence of Heaven, to satisfy
stern Juno’s sleepless wrath; and much in war
he suffered, seeking at the last to found
the city, and bring o’er his fathers’ gods
to safe abode in Latium; whence arose
the Latin race, old Alba’s reverend lords,
and from her hills wide-walled, imperial Rome.
*
But I apply to him the same strictures. There are also the efforts of Allen Mandelbaum:
*I sing of arms and of a man: his fate
had made him fugitive; he was the the first
to journey from the coasts of Troy as far
as Italy and the Lavinian shores.
Across the lands and waters he was battered
beneath the violence of High Ones, for
the savage Juno’s unforgetting anger;
and many sufferings were his in was -
until he brought a city into being
and carried in his gods to Latium;
from this have come the Latin race, the lords
of Alba, and the ramparts of high Rome.
*
Quite serviceable, but he is not on the tightrope with Dryden and my humble self! And, though these are pentameters (and unmatched to Virgil’s lines), the breaks between them are most un-English-blank-verse-like, so as almost to make them not verse at all.
Now, who is to say that these unrhymed translations are more faithful than our rhymed ones, even in the detail? For the detail is not just in the prose-renderable content, but includes much that is irreducibly poetic, and requires all the poetic means at the English translator’s disposal.
Errata:
In my last post, I wrote couplet’s where I meant couplets. And of course the accusative can (relevantly here) go with in as well as ad. If I were not such a self-conscious pedant, I could have let these peccadillos pass without comment now, as I do other lapses of which I have become aware.
Ok, it’s your translation, but let me put in one more plug for somehow restoring the word “mortal” to Juno’s complaint. She seemed really irked that she would be thwarted by a mere, pesky mortal.
Welcome, The Sibyl.
Discussion starts Tuesday!
Yes, Humble Servant, there is something to be said for including the mortal idea at that point. There are innumerable ways of doing this, of course. Here is one that does not involve too much re-working:
The insult dealt her pride when (how it galled
To think it!) mortal Paris judged, and gave
The prize to Venus – impious Trojan knave!
I like this because it also includes the reminder that Paris was of the Trojan side (note the echo of the j sounds in judged and Trojan, too). For impious (accent is correctly on first syllable) one could substitute wanton or brazen, and these would each have the additional benefit of resonating strongly with Trojan. Look at the version with brazen:
The prize to Venus - brazen Trojan knave!
There is a binding richness introduced by the play of the v, n, pr/br, ize/aze sounds. In fact, I’ve convinced myself: I prefer this version.
Anyway, I regret that I have no more time to give to this translation, now. I am satisfied with having completed the 33-line prologue; and I think I shall return to the task some time. Other projects have priority in the meantime. (Thanks for the useful comments, colleagues.) I’ll certainly be interested in the discussion of Book I.
Excellent job, Internaut. I am impressed you took it as far as you did. Thanks for the brain exercise–looking at the lines as you translated gave me a much better insight on the distance between the Latin and English rhymed/unrhymed translations, a very useful perspective to have.
Look for the discussion thread tomorrow, Tuesday, May 15th.
Just posting a link to the continuation of this discussion.