Publius
Ovidius Naso (43 BC - AD17) was born at Sulmo on March 20, 43 BC of wealthy
parents who survived the civil war. Ovid and his older brother were taken
by their father to study in Rome, where Ovid gave up legal studies for
poetry. The popularity of that verse, his family connections, and the
public offices held all allowed Ovid to move in aristocratic circles,
and he married three times. His Ars Amatoria (which referred to
the banishment of Augustus's daughter Julia's for an affair with the son
of the emperor's old enemy Mark Antony) angered Augustus, however, and
Ovid's attempted apology, Remedium Amoris, went in vain. Augustus
was particularly offended by Ovid's flippant attitude to his morality
drive intended to establish family values in Rome. Ovid then committed
some unknown political indiscretion and found himself banished in AD 8
to the frontier town of Tomi, at the mouth of the Danube on the Black
Sea. Attempts at reconciliation failed, even when Augustus was succeeded
by Tiberius, and in Tomi Ovid died, probably in AD 17, as much a victim
of imperial politics as his own celebrity among the capital's fast set.
Ovid's
poetry was enormously popular in first century Rome, and has been
an important influence on European poetry from the Renaissance to the
present. The Metamorphoses and Fasti provided abundant material
to quarry, and the poetry appealed by its brilliant rhetoric, dissimulation
and discrete irony. Ovid's wrote pleasingly from the first. His Amores
extolled the charms of his mistress, Corinna, possibly a composite figure.
The succeeding Heroides were elegies in the form of imaginary love
letters from famous women in Greek mythology. Ars Amatoria (The
Art of Love) and Remedium Amoris (The Remedy of Love) were not
only witty treatises on the art of seduction and intrigue, but went some
way towards placing men and women on an equal footing. The Metamorphoses
were some 250 interwoven stories written in the epic hexameter. His Fasti,
an irreverent but informative poem on the Roman calendar, was terminated
by the poet's removal to the Black Sea. There, in a garrison town among
non-Latin-speaking barbarians, he wrote Tristia (Sorrows) and Epistulae
ex Ponto (Letters from the Black Sea), both protesting at his unjust
exile with fine elegy and independence.
The Sanskrit translations explore the
difficulties presented by quantitative measures, and here we shall simply
see how translators have dealt with a familiar Latin author. We start
with one of the more popular translators, Rolfe Humphreys (1894-1969),
who used an irregular blank verse. The piece is taken from Metamorphoses 7, and describes
the plague at Aegina. It starts:
A dreadful plague came upon our people. Juno
Hated our land, named for a rival of hers,
But this we did not know; we thought the cause
Was mortal, and we fought with every resource
Of medicine against it, but the evil
Had too much strength for us. In the beginning
Was darkness, and a murk that kept the summer
Shut in the sullen clouds, four months of summer,
Four months of hot, south wind, and deadly airs. {1}
The first thing to notice is the measured tone. Ovid can be very detached,
but here he's describing in serious calamity in serious language, and
Humphreys is similarly somber. The measure is broken, with an hiatus after
'plague': two beats and then three, the structure being emphasized with
alliteration on 'p'.
A dréadful plágue | cáme upón our péople
||||
That's a solemn drumbeat, difficult to follow, and Humphreys doesn't
attempt to.
Juno hated our land || named for a rival of hers, |||
Though he does pick up an echo in line 3:
but thís we díd not knów |||
and again in:
we thóught the cáuse was mórtal |
and, after a lapse of:
and we fought with every resource of medicine against it || but the
evil |
with:
had tóo much stréngth for ús |||
We should also note the assonance in 'thought', 'cause' and 'mortal',
which is echoed, if only faintly, in 'fought' and 'resource'. Something
similar operates in the lines preceding: 'plague' and 'came, followed
by 'hated' and 'named'.
Summarizing, the strategy seems to have been to:
1. introduce a rhythm with a strongly structured line, and then echo
some aspect of it over the lines that follow.
2. lengthen lines with marked assonance.
That strategy can be more deftly employed, of course, as in the lines
that follow, with their play on 's' and 'm':
In the beginning was darkness and a murk that kept the summer | shút
in the súllen clóuds || four months of summer ||
and a tapering off to just two beats, in:
our mónths of hót, south wínd | and déadly
áirs |||
The result is a relaxed blank verse that can accommodate stretches of
uninspired rendering (every resource of medicine against it ),
and modulate pleasantly between a conversational and formal tone.
So that we have something to compare, here is the charming Sandys 1632
rendering, which is quietly-paced:
By Iuno's wrath, a dreadfull pestilence
Deuour'd our liues: who tooke vnjust offence,
In that this Ile her Riualls name profest.
While it seem'd humane, and the cause vnguest;
So long we death-repelling Physick try'd:
But those diseases vanquisht art deride.
Heauen first, the earth with thickned vapors shrouds;
And lazie heat inuolues in sullen clouds.
Foure pallid moones their growing hornes vnite,
And had as oft with-drawne their feeble light;
Yet still the death-producing Auster blew. {2}
Also on the Internet is the Garth/Dryden version, more monotonous, though
each line is stoutly constructed.
A dreadful plague from angry Juno came,
To scourge the land, that bore her rival's name;
Before her fatal anger was reveal'd,
And teeming malice lay as yet conceal'd,
All remedies we try, all med'cines use,
Which Nature cou'd supply, or art produce;
Th' unconquer'd foe derides the vain design,
And art, and Nature foil'd, declare the cause divine.
At first we only felt th' oppressive weight
Of gloomy clouds, then teeming with our fate,
And lab'ring to discharge unactive heat:
But ere four moons alternate changes knew,
With deadly blasts the fatal South-wind blew,
Infected all the air, and poison'd as it flew. {3}
The original Latin:
dira lues ira populis Iunonis iniquae
incidit exosae dictas a paelice terras.
dum visum mortale malum tantaeque latebat
causa nocens cladis, pugnatum est arte medendi:
exitium superabat opem, quae victa iacebat.
principio caelum spissa caligine terras
pressit et ignavos inclusit nubibus aestus;
dumque quater iunctis explevit cornibus orbem
Luna, quater plenum tenuata retexuit orbem,
letiferis calidi spirarunt aestibus austri. {4}
Not everything becomes clear by making a word-by-word translation using
the online facilities at Tufts University:
dira
lues
Ira
populis
Iunonis
iniquae
ominous pestilence anger because_of_people of_Juno uneven
incidit exosae dictas a
paelice terras.
falls detesting was_speaking from paelice earth
dum visum mortale malum tantaeque
latebat
in perceived mortal evil
of_such_size concealed
causa nocens cladis, pugnatum
EST arte medendi:
motive harming of_disaster fought is practical_skill
healing
exitium superabat opem, quae victa iacebat.
ruin surmounting aid, which
lived cast
principio caelum spissa caligine terras
beginning heavens thick fog earth
pressit et ignavos inclusit nubibus
aestus;
pressed also sluggish confined clouds glowing
dumque quater iunctis explevit
cornibus orbem
in four_times together
- horns
orbit
Luna, quater plenum tenuata
retexuit orbem,
moon, four_times full made_thin
- orbit
letiferis calidi
spirarunt aestibus austri. {5}
death_bringing warm breathed fiery south
wind
But, helped by previous translations, we can make a rendering even more
oppressive than the Dryden version:
Brought on by Juno came a fearful plague
to hurt the land that took her rival's name:
the full import concealed from us, who tried
the arts of healing, failed, were overwhelmed.
Thick, sulphurous clouds oppressed the earth:
four months of summer lost in roiling fog,
four months a hot and deadly south wind blew.
Or, lighten it considerably by choosing words with more open vowels and
less clogged by syllables:
We had no notion of the cause, but still it came,
the dreadful pestilence that Juno brought.
Our land was fated with a rival's name.
At first we thought the cause was natural, tried
our practices of healing: those all failed.
From this it started: fog grew on the earth
and slowly thickened into glowing clouds:
four months of summer lost in roiling mist,
four months an unhealthy south wind blew.
Or a little more colloquial:
We didn't think because our land took name
from Juno's rival it would cause such hate.
She sent a plague, no doubt a natural thing
but somehow more than medicine could touch.
It grew in evil: first were vapours, clouds
that thickened, glowed and fastened on the earth.
Four months of summer thick in mist, four months
in which a hot and deadly south wind blew.
And so on: it's all blank verse. How free or informal make it depends
on the 'voice' we're aiming at, but the medium will accommodate most things,
provided we keep accent and remember the internal structures that all
verse needs.
1. Martin, Christopher, (ed.) Ovid in English (Penguin, 1998) 340.
2. Ovid's Metamorphoses by George Sandys 1663 Virginia.edu.
3. Metamorphoses by Ovid. Translated by Sir Samuel Garth and John Dryden.
Adelaide University Metamorphoses 7. NNA.
4. P. Ovidius Naso. Bibliotheca Augustana. 7.523-533. Augsburg
5. P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses Perseus Digital Library. Sometimes slow,
but with excellent online help. Tufts
