Having already published several poetic translations in this newsletter (of Petrarch, of Rilke, of Callimachus, and an experimental “re-translation” of Paul Celan’s German translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 5), and with plans to publish more, I thought I would conclude this week with a reflection on some of the special problems of verse translation. This review of a new, supposedly metrically accurate translation of Horace’s Odes appeared in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. It is a product of the violence of youth, when I hadn’t the slightest compunction about spilling blood to appease the gods. In my somewhat more advanced years? Still no compunction—but you’ll have to pony up to slake your bloodlust. (A free version can be found on the BMCR site; besides being adapted for non-specialists, the text below contains a number of small improvements.) Readers interested in a wider-angled consideration of issues surrounding the translation of the classics are encouraged to check out Joseph Keegin’s review (likewise paywalled) of a newly reissued essay collection by D. S. Carne-Ross for The Hedgehog Review. As I have said elsewhere, I have tended to like the idea of Carne-Ross more than the fact of Carne-Ross (and this quite apart from my esteem for Richmond Lattimore, for me my Chapman, whom the double-barrelled critic memorably savaged). I have simply found his would-be elevation of the poetic over the pedantic too often itself rather crabbed. But Keegin’s review, with its apt evocation of a vanished UT Austin milieu (now partially transplanted to Boston) may prompt reconsideration.
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