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I am also listening to Iolanthe but the stupid Xanga-Amazon thingy neglects its existence!
{expression of muted discontent}
Catullus III: Everybody’s got to do it sometime…
When I started using this Xanga as a medium for sharing my translations, I focused on relatively more minor poems, so as not be redundant with the (markedly more skillful) translations that are freely available online and in print. But today, I just felt like Catullus III, so forgive me for being trite and doing the Catullus everyone sees ad nauseum in the AP curriculum. Overexposure aside, the beauty of this poem is breathtaking, even on the fifty-gazillionth reading. I have tried, as always, to do it some semblance of justice.
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,
et quantumst hominum venustiorum:
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.
nam mellitus erat suamque norat
ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat.
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:
tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis
o factum male! o miselle passer!
tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.
Mourn, O Venuses and Loves*
And all the lovely ones there are:*
My lady’s sparrow is dead,
The sparrow, my lady’s pet,
Whom she loved more than her eyes.
For honey-sweet he was, and knew
His mistress as a girl does her mother,
Nor would he move from her lap,
But capering this way, that way,
Cheeping always to his mistress alone.
He who now fares the shadowed path
From which they say no one returns.
But blight on you, blighted shades*
Of Orcus, which devour all pretty things:
Such a pretty sparrow you’ve snatched from me.
O for shame! O wretched sparrow!
Your work is it now, that my lady’s
Dear eyes are swollen and red with weeping.*
* See Merrill’s excellent commentary on the plurals in this line (Available online here )
* This line is particularly tough in English. Goold and Lee differ markedly here, and I have chosen, as they did, to render it loosely.
* The repetition here is used in order to preserve the male/malae repetition in the Latin, though again, inflected forms rather defeat my command of English. Catullus’ use of repetition is very interesting to me.
* “Dear” is not explicitly in the text, but I use it here because of the double diminutive in this line. It’s a highly debatable choice. A quick survey of the two translations I happen to own proves not so helpful. Lee’s “Eyelids” is just too strange, where as Goold’s “darling eyes” seems to me to be overkill.
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In Other News
While Google searching for articles on the medieval transmission of Catullus, I accidentally came upon this fascinating review. I need this book! To let my inner valley girl out for a second, scholia are so totally awesome. The history of classical authors in manuscript is so totally awesome. Virgilian (and for that matter, Ovidian or Ciceronian) exegesis is awesome. Excuse me while I descend into yet another fit of drooling love for academe…
Related MS available at the Beinecke (swoon):
MS 834 --- Servius, 4th cent.
[Commentaries to Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics:]
ms. on paper, in Latin, signed by the scribe Alvisius.
Milan: ca. 1450
24 days until I have access to a real research library! 24 days until Dictionary of the Old English Corpus! I am bloody sick of having to check seven manuscripts for the sense of one word. And one need not forget… 24 days until I do not get that stupid ‘Access Restricted’ message every time I need to read an article on Project MUSE. Thank GOD (or, er, the humanistic tradition) for institutional subscriptions.
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| | Posted 8/2/2005 1:55 AM - 41 Views - 6 eProps - 2 comments
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