greek&roman

  Diffugere Nives   (Horace,   Odes   IV.vii) by A. E. Housman The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws And grasses in the mead renew their birth, The river to the river-bed withdraws, And altered is the fashion of the earth. The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear And unapparelled in the woodland play. The swift hour and the brief prime of the year Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye. Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers Comes autumn with his apples scattering; Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs. But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar, Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams; Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams. Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add The morrow to the day, what tongue has told? Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had The fingers of no heir will ever hold. When thou descendest once the shades among, The stern...

 

Horace, Odes Book II.XX (Johnson) Now with no weak  unballast   wing A poet double-form’d I rise, From th’envious world with scorn I spring, And cut with joy the wondering skies. Though from no princes I descend, Yet shall I see the blest abodes, Yet, great  Maecenas   shall your friend Quaff nectar with th’immortal Gods. See! how the mighty change is wrought! See how  whatre   remain’d of man By plumes is veil’d; see! quick as thought I pierce the clouds a tuneful swan. Swifter than  Icarus  I’ll fly Where  Lybias   swarthy offspring burns, And where beneath th’inclement skis The hardy  Scythian  ever mourns. My works shall propagate my fame, To distant realms and climes unknown, Nations shall celebrate my name That drink the  Phasis or the Rhone . Restrain your tears and cease your cries, Nor grace with fading flours my hearse. I without funeral elegies Shall live forever in my verse. Horace, Odes Book II.XX (Johnson) No...

  Catullus Louis Zukofsky and his wife, Celia, experimented with homophonic translations (something pioneered by Pound, I believe) of the Roman poet, Catullus (c.85-54 BC). That is, they tried to get both the meaning and the actual SOUNDS of the Latin across, in English. The results range from the wacky to the impressive. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know Latin—just try sounding out these few lines from poem 8 phonetically: Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire, et quod vides perisse perditum ducas. fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles... (for whole poem in Latin, click  here  --you can also click through to English translation.) Then read the first lines of Louis Zukofsky's translation aloud: Miss her, Catullus? don't be so inept to rail at what you see perish when perished is the case. Full, sure once, candid the sunny days glowed, solace, when you went about it as your girl would have it, you loved her as no one else shall ever be loved. Billowed in tumultuous joys and affia...

  CATULLUS 112 Multus home es, Naso, neque tecum multus homost qui descendit: Naso, multus es et pathicus. Literal translation by Celia Zukofsky: Much a man you are, Naso, and that you much a man it is who  comes down: Naso, much you are and pathetic/lascivious. Cornish edition in the Loeb Classical Library (used by the Zukofskys): You are many men's man, Naso, but not many men go down town with you: Naso, you are many men's man and minion. Peter Green (2005): You're such a macho guy, Naso, yet few other macho guys seek your company. How so? Naso, you're macho—and a queen. The Zukofskys's homophonic version (1969) Mool ’tis homos,’ Naso, ’n’ queer take ’im mool ’tis ho most he      descended: Naso, mool ’tis – is it pathic, cuss.  

    Ave Atque Vale Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row! So they row'd, and there we landed-"O venusta Sirmio" There to me through all the groves of olive in the summer glow, There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, Came that 'Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless woe, Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago, 'Frater Ave atque Vale' - as we wandered to and fro Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

Catullus 101 By ways remote and distant waters sped, Brother, to thy sad graveside am I come, That I may give the last gifts to the dead, And vainly parley withi thine ashes dumb; Since She who now bestows and no denies Hath taken thee, hapless brother, from mine eyes But lo! these gifts, these heirlooms of past years, Are made sad things to grace thy coffin shell; Take them, all drenched with thy brother's tears, And, brother, for all time and forever, hail and farewell. Translation by Aubrey Beardsley   

    Cy Twombly. Discourse on Commodus (1963) Catullus 101  Many the peoples many the oceans I crossed --  I arrive at these poor, brother, burials  so I could give you the last gift owed to death  and talk (why?) with mute ash.  Now that Fortune tore you from me, you  oh poor (wrongly) brother (wrongly) taken from me,  now still anyway this -- what a distant mood of parents  handed down as the sad gift for burials --  accept! Soaked with tears of a brother  and into forever, brother, farewell and farewell.  -                                                                            (translated by Anne Carson)  from "Nox"

  Book VII :73 Tell me, Maximus You’ve a house on the Esquiline, house on the Aventine, and Patrician Street owns a roof of yours too; add one with a view of poor Cybele’s shrine, one Vesta’s, one Jupiter’s old, one his new. Tell me where to meet you, tell me where to find you: Who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere at all.