To his mind
the taste of the scholar is the test -- the good trans-
lation the one that affects this Greek or Latin scholar
as the original does.
the taste of the scholar is the test -- the good trans-
lation the one that affects this Greek or Latin scholar
as the original does.
Catullus - Stewart - Selections
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd
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? SELECTIONS FROM CATULLUS
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? SELECTIONS FROM
CATULLUS
Translated into English verse with an
Introduction on the theory of Translation
BY MARY STEWART
BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER
THE COPP CLARK CO. , LIMITED, TORONTO
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? Copyright, 1915, by Mary Stewart
All Rights Reserved
Thb Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
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? To MY Sister
L. S. B.
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? Oh, Sister of mine, so beloved.
Oh, dear heart of my heart, can it be
You are dead, you are gone.
And the world still goes on
In darkness unending for me?
They buried the gold of the sunshine
With the gold of your beautiful hair.
And the blue of the skies
With the blue of your eyes.
Ah, nothing is left that was fair!
And you -- is it well with you. Sister,
You who so loved the breeze and the light.
And the laughter and love
And the glad life above,
Down there all alone in the nightf
Ah, God, is there never an answer?
Cant she hear, though in anguish I cry?
Little soul, fair and white.
Lost and lone in the night --
Dear God, can such loveliness die?
Then glad like a flower in the spring time.
With the gold of the sun in her hair.
And the blue of the skies
In her wonderful eyes.
Is she waiting for me somewhere?
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? CONTENTS
Page
An Experiment in Translation 9
Selections from Catullus
I 29
// 30
/// 31
V 32-
VII 33
VIII 34
IX 35
XIII 36
XIV 37
XXVI 38
XXVII 39
XXX 40
XXXI 41
XXXIV 42
XXXV 44
XXXVIII 46
XLIII 47
XLVI 48
XLVIII 49
L 50
LI 51
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? CONTENTS
Page
LII 53
LXV 54
LXVIII A 55
LXX 58
LXXII 59
LXXIII 60
LXXVI 61
LXX XVII and LXXV 63
LXX XVI 64
XCII 65
XCVI 66
XCIX 67
CI 68
CII 69
CVII 70
CIX 71
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? CATULLUS
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? CATULLUS
An Experiment in Translation
IN offering new translations of the classics the
translator anticipates the critics Why-did-
you-do-it? by hastening to explain himself.
Hence the prologue. In fact, no one can
play much with translating w^ithout pretty seri-
ously asking himself why he does it, and thereupon
finding himself hopelessly tangled in a mesh of
questions about the place of translations and the art
of translating.
There can no longer be any question about the
place of translations in modern literature. All an-
cient literature and all modern, in any tongue save
English, are accessible to the great mass of people
only in translation. We may talk as we please
about the beauty of the original and the impossibility
of adequate translation, but the fact remains that for
most of us it is translation or nothing. Nor is this
altogether regrettable. Even if it were possible for
all of us to learn Latin and Greek well enough to
read the great epics, it would scarcely be worth
while for all of us to do it. Though the scholar
has his place, and a very necessary one, no language
9
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? 10 CATULLUS
can ever mean to us what our own language does,
not even a modern, living tongue; and. If this is
true of a living tongue, what is to be said of a dead
one? Even the scholar who knows his Greek so
well that he reads Homer Instead of translating
him, and has an ear so atuned to the sonorous
phrase that he enjoys Its music, must still read the
stirring epic as an English man, not as a Greek ; as a
modern, not as an ancient. And however rich his
knowledge of etymology, it cannot fuse with life
the dead word of a dead people. Language is a
living, growing thing, quivering, glowing, moving,
connected by a thousand-thousand invisible capil-
laries with the life of today. For the English per-
son the English language has a subtlety of meaning
and a richness of connotation that no other tongue
can possibly have. It Is bound up with his exper-
ience, not only racial but personal. The power of
a word Is measured by myriad Influences, drawn
from every experience with which it may be as-
sociated in the mind of the individual. And the
beauty of literature is so dependent on this unex-
pressed meaning of word and phrase we dare to say
no original in a dead tongue could give to an English
ear the aesthetic pleasure of a good translation.
A good translation -- "Aye there's the rub. "
Mathew Arnold in his scholarly essay, "On Trans-
lating Homer," has set up a standard of translation
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? CATULLUS II
which, according to Mr. Calvin Winter (In The
Bookman for March and April, 1911), has been
guilty of fastening a lot of bad translations. Mr.
Arnold says that the first requisite of a good transla-
tion is faithfulness to the original. With this we
heartily agree. It is when he defines his criterion
for faithfulness that we must differ from him.
There has been current for a long time the idea that
a good translation is one which would afEect the
English reader as the Greek or Latin original af-
fected a Greek or a Roman. As Mr. Arnold points
out, this is an impossible standard, because nobody
knows just how the original affected the ancients.
However, we feel that the test Mr. Arnold him-
self imposes is scarcely less possible.
To his mind
the taste of the scholar is the test -- the good trans-
lation the one that affects this Greek or Latin scholar
as the original does. The man who knows his
Greek is the judge. Mr. Winter points out the
fallacy of this criterion as follows: "It is difficult to
imagine any method for getting away more com-
pletely from the original spirit of the Iliad than to
so translate as to have It give to the average modern
reader the same impression that it makes upon the
typical middle-aged professor of dead languages. "
These standards, he farther adds, "are precisely
those which tend to develop a school of glorified
cribs. . . . The translations that live, the transla-
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? 12 CATULLUS
tions that we like to think of as a part of English
literature, are of a different sort. They are from
the pen of writers who have made their names
glorious for something besides the echoing of other
men's thoughts, and who have insisted, even in their
translations, on remaining original. . . . Transla-
tions have a vitality and a vogue in direct ratio to
the writer's spirit of independence. " This judg-
ment of Mr. Winter is substantiated by some of the
best translations in English. They have been made
by men who were literary artists as well as scholars.
Let us discuss for a moment what we mean by a
good translation. Obviously the first aim of the
translator is to make a faithful translation. On this
point there is practically a general agreement. A
faithful translation is one that is true to the idea
and spirit of the original rather than to the word
and letter. The method of the translator will vary
according to the subject matter and the purpose for
which the translation is intended. There are two
kinds of literature: (a) the literature of informa-
tion and (b) the literature of beauty. Plainly, in
the translation of the first class the ideal is one of
accuracy and clearness. This, of course, is com-
paratively easy, presupposing, on the part of the
translator, merely a knowledge of the foreign lan-
guage (and, we may add incidentally, of his own),
and a thorough understanding of the subject matter
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? CATULLUS 13
in hand. The translation of the second class -- pure
literature -- involves an additional quality which, for
want of a better term, we may call literary sensi-
bility. The translator must make not merely a
transcript of the idea but a species of belles lettres,
a sort of new creative thing in itself. The function
of pure literature is to please and interest no less
by its form than by its content. Hence a good trans-
lation of a masterpiece must be in itself a kind of
masterpiece. "As it takes a thief to catch a thief,
so it takes a poet to catch a poet. "
We approach any translation from three points
of view -- first, the purely scholarly view point whose
ideal is accuracy and thoroughness. This seeks a
pretty literal translation, one that will keep the
facts as straight as possible, and it is the primary
essential of all good translation. Second, the schol-
arly-literary view point, which aims not only at an
accurate transcript of ideas but at an appreciation
of them in relation to their own setting. This
means keeping the "flavor" of the original, trans-
lating one-self, so to speak, into the past rather
than the original into the present. This too, is an
essential quality of a good translation. And third,
the purely literary view point, which would make
of the original a "new original," a bit of real litera-
ture which, while true to its source, is equally true
to its end; that is, faithful to the original and sig-
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? 14 CATULLUS
nificant to the reader. This last viewpoint involves
and implies the other tw^o. The needs of scholar-
ship may often go no farther than accurate trans-
lation and appreciative interpretation, but w^ithout
the literary "touch," they w\\\ fall short of true
translation. For herein lies the life-giving property
that must animate the solid framework of scholarly
information, and color and illuminate the grace and
form of scholarly appreciation. This is the trans-
lator's contribution to literature. The scholar's
work merely goes to pile the shelves of fact, to
heap up the raw material out of which real litera-
ture is made.
What are the ear marks of a good translation?
( I ) It must be interesting to the generation for
which it is written, must speak straight from the
heart, direct and spontaneous, in the idiomatic Eng-
lish of the day, bearing no halting syntactical hy-
brids; (2) it must be true to the original in fact
and in spirit, carrying the same dignity, nobility,
grace, or whimsicality that the original bore. And
for this end a literal translation is often the last
thing wanted, either of word or of form. For ex-
ample -- well-bred Romans might have listened with
equanimity to certain words that shock a well-bred
American. To translate literally the word that was
in the original would be to translate the shock
which was not in the original; and this would be
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? CATULLUS 15
faithless. Again certain figures, allusions, and the
like, full of significance to the people for whom
they were written may tall quite empty on a modern
ear. It is for the translator, then, to find for these
adequate substitutes or paraphrases as far as po-i
sible. For example, Catullus LI I reads literally --
"What reason is there, Catullus, why you should
delay dying; vile Nonius is in the curule chair,
Vatinius sw^ears by the consulate, why then, Catul-
lus, do you delay dying? " In translation, a mean-
ingless and offensive lot of words truly, but in the
original, pointed, trenchent, clever. Catullus used
the specific names Nonius and Vatinius because to
the ears of his generation concrete examples of de-
bauchery and bribery illustrated in the names of
prominent citizens were far more vij^orous than ab-
stract terms. But these names mean nothing to us.
The abstract qualities say far more. So we have
translated the lines as follows -- true to the spirit, we
maintain, and certainly clearer to the reader.
Why wait for deaths Catullus, zvhy not be
done ivith life?
Corruption in the Curule chair, and in
The Senate strife.
Venality is honored, and bribery is rife.
Why wait for death, Catullus, why not be
done with life?
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? i6 CATULLUS
On the other hand, to have substituted modern
names for Nonius and Vatinius would have been
going too far, would have destroyed the flavor, and
produced a paraphrase not a translation.
The translator's task is indeed a difficult one,
one calling for versatile abilities. He must find the
phrase that will contain the spirit as well as tran-
scribe the fact. He must be en rapport not only
with the language itself but with the milieu of that
language, must be a part of its vitality, so to speak,
and understand and know its contemporaneous sig-
nificance. One generation does not fully under-
stand the literature of another of the same tongue
without more or less copious annotations, which are
in themselves a kind of translation. We can't read
Chaucer without a glossary, nor Shakespere without
notes. How then shall one nation comprehend an-
other without annotations, or one age grasp an-
other without such illumination. A good translation
is a kind of condensed and concatenated annotation.
After all, we keep on translating whether we know
it or not, all the time. There isn't much new knowl-
edge; there's just a lot of fresh thinking about old
subjects. And each generation keeps on translating
the thoughts of the last into its own vernacular.
Hence arises the need of new translations of old
classics. Virgil translated for the seventeenth cen-
tury might not be just Virgil to the twentieth, and
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? CATULLUS 17
we see Homer with glasses colored by a somewhat
different experience from that of Pope. It is not
strange, therefore, if we should want to make our
own translations.
Catullus has something different for us from what
he has had for any other people at any other time,
and so we want to interpret him in our own way.
That people keep on translating Catullus is rea-
son enough why they should. He has something
for them or they wouldn't take the trouble. That
a writer does live is reason enough for his immor-
tality. It is to be expected that he have a sort of
vogue, a rise and wane of popularity. Ages are dif-
ferent, and one age's vogue is another's aversion.
Next to Horace, Catullus seems to us the most
modern of the ancients -- that is, if there is any most.
They are all contemporaries when we get acquainted
with them. It is amazing to find out how
modern all these writers are, which is just
another way of saying how ancient human nature
is. "As it was in the beginning, is today official
sinning," chants Mr. Kipling, "and shall be for-
evermore. " It is this continuity of human nature
that gives us a friendly feeling for the classics. All
the big feelings are the same, and the little ones
aren't so surprisingly different; rather they are sur-
prisingly alike. Common follies strike quicker sym-
pathies than common virtues; congenial foibles and
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? 1 8 CATULLUS
superficial graces offer a readier intimacy than fun-
damental principles. We can weep with anybody.
Grief is universally the same; but we laugh only
with those who understand. It is just here that
Catullus is so "modern. " He saw the grace in
things, in manners, customs, fashions, politics and
society. In short, for all the intimacies of daily liv-
ing he had a quick eye and a felicitous phrase. Not
only did he feel the passion and pathos of life, but
he was keenly sensitive to all the nuances of light
and graceful feeling, and it is in delicate apprecia-
tion of the finer sentiments that Catullus excels.
His incite is less profound than that of Horace but
it is more subtle. Keenly alive, quiveringly sensi-
tive to all that touches a human being in emotional
experience, he had pre-eminently what Burns would
have called sensibility. And he is like Burns, too,
has more in common with him than with any other
lyric poet, unless it be Shelley. In life he was cir-
cumstanced more like Shelley, a gentleman in birth
and breeding, well educated and wealthy, in spite of
the "cobwebs" in his purse, the result rather of
extravagance than poverty. In temperament he was
more like Burns, wild and turbulent in passion,
fierce in love and relentless in hate. And when he
took to satire and invective he out-Burnsed Burns.
At times he was so coarse, brutal, and indecent it
is hard to believe he could ever be gentle, graceful,
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? CATULLUS 19
and noble. However, we must remember the age
allowed excesses of speech we would not tolerate. By
nature he was intense, yet simple and ingenuous;
by education, refined, sensitive, and exquisite. Love
was at once with him a mighty passion and a deli-
cate sentiment. While he touched the superficial
graces -- and disgraces -- of living in a half playful
tone, life was to him always a tremendous emotion.
A mo et odi, he sang, and this was the index of his
temperament. There was nothing lukewarm about
him. He loved his friends and hated his enemies --
joyed with the mad rush of a mountain torrent and
sorrowed with the weight of a deep sea dirge. Per-
haps no one can write lyric poetry who does not live
intensely.
Few facts are known of the life of C. Valerius
Catullus. He was born at Verona, or near there,
about B. C. 84 and died at Rome thirty years later.
The dates of his birth and death are variously giveii^
but the divergence is not wide. B. C. 87-84 for the
birth; B. C. 57-54 for the death. He was con-
temporary with Cicero and Lucretius.
There is reliable evidence that he was of good
family, since his father was the friend and host of
Caesar; that he had wealth, for he owned a yacht
and two or three country estates, a villa at Sirmio
and another on the edge of the Sabine hills. At an
early age he went to Rome where he mingled with
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? 20 CATULLUS
the gay and extravagant society of the period. Here
he found many friends, notably Cornelius Nepos
to whom he presented his volume of lyrics in the
graceful little dedicatory poem, Cicero, FabuUus
and Veranius, and chiefest in his own eyes and
closest to his heart, Licinius Calvus, a young poet
like himself, to whom he adressed some of his most
charming verses. (XIV, LIII, XCVI).
When he was about twenty-six years of age, he
went to Bithynia on the staff of C. Memmius who
was propraetor of the province. It was on taking
leave of this province that, stirred by the wander-
lust of youth and spring, he wrote the exquisite little
lyric numbered XLVI. And the greeting to "fair
Sirmio" celebrated his return home in lines no less
beautiful. Sensitive to every shade of emotion as he
was, it is not strange that he should have written
feelingly of both extremes. Those who best know
Wanderlust best know^ Heimweh.
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? SELECTIONS FROM CATULLUS
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? SELECTIONS FROM
CATULLUS
Translated into English verse with an
Introduction on the theory of Translation
BY MARY STEWART
BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER
THE COPP CLARK CO. , LIMITED, TORONTO
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? Copyright, 1915, by Mary Stewart
All Rights Reserved
Thb Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
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? To MY Sister
L. S. B.
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? Oh, Sister of mine, so beloved.
Oh, dear heart of my heart, can it be
You are dead, you are gone.
And the world still goes on
In darkness unending for me?
They buried the gold of the sunshine
With the gold of your beautiful hair.
And the blue of the skies
With the blue of your eyes.
Ah, nothing is left that was fair!
And you -- is it well with you. Sister,
You who so loved the breeze and the light.
And the laughter and love
And the glad life above,
Down there all alone in the nightf
Ah, God, is there never an answer?
Cant she hear, though in anguish I cry?
Little soul, fair and white.
Lost and lone in the night --
Dear God, can such loveliness die?
Then glad like a flower in the spring time.
With the gold of the sun in her hair.
And the blue of the skies
In her wonderful eyes.
Is she waiting for me somewhere?
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? CONTENTS
Page
An Experiment in Translation 9
Selections from Catullus
I 29
// 30
/// 31
V 32-
VII 33
VIII 34
IX 35
XIII 36
XIV 37
XXVI 38
XXVII 39
XXX 40
XXXI 41
XXXIV 42
XXXV 44
XXXVIII 46
XLIII 47
XLVI 48
XLVIII 49
L 50
LI 51
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? CONTENTS
Page
LII 53
LXV 54
LXVIII A 55
LXX 58
LXXII 59
LXXIII 60
LXXVI 61
LXX XVII and LXXV 63
LXX XVI 64
XCII 65
XCVI 66
XCIX 67
CI 68
CII 69
CVII 70
CIX 71
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? CATULLUS
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? CATULLUS
An Experiment in Translation
IN offering new translations of the classics the
translator anticipates the critics Why-did-
you-do-it? by hastening to explain himself.
Hence the prologue. In fact, no one can
play much with translating w^ithout pretty seri-
ously asking himself why he does it, and thereupon
finding himself hopelessly tangled in a mesh of
questions about the place of translations and the art
of translating.
There can no longer be any question about the
place of translations in modern literature. All an-
cient literature and all modern, in any tongue save
English, are accessible to the great mass of people
only in translation. We may talk as we please
about the beauty of the original and the impossibility
of adequate translation, but the fact remains that for
most of us it is translation or nothing. Nor is this
altogether regrettable. Even if it were possible for
all of us to learn Latin and Greek well enough to
read the great epics, it would scarcely be worth
while for all of us to do it. Though the scholar
has his place, and a very necessary one, no language
9
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? 10 CATULLUS
can ever mean to us what our own language does,
not even a modern, living tongue; and. If this is
true of a living tongue, what is to be said of a dead
one? Even the scholar who knows his Greek so
well that he reads Homer Instead of translating
him, and has an ear so atuned to the sonorous
phrase that he enjoys Its music, must still read the
stirring epic as an English man, not as a Greek ; as a
modern, not as an ancient. And however rich his
knowledge of etymology, it cannot fuse with life
the dead word of a dead people. Language is a
living, growing thing, quivering, glowing, moving,
connected by a thousand-thousand invisible capil-
laries with the life of today. For the English per-
son the English language has a subtlety of meaning
and a richness of connotation that no other tongue
can possibly have. It Is bound up with his exper-
ience, not only racial but personal. The power of
a word Is measured by myriad Influences, drawn
from every experience with which it may be as-
sociated in the mind of the individual. And the
beauty of literature is so dependent on this unex-
pressed meaning of word and phrase we dare to say
no original in a dead tongue could give to an English
ear the aesthetic pleasure of a good translation.
A good translation -- "Aye there's the rub. "
Mathew Arnold in his scholarly essay, "On Trans-
lating Homer," has set up a standard of translation
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? CATULLUS II
which, according to Mr. Calvin Winter (In The
Bookman for March and April, 1911), has been
guilty of fastening a lot of bad translations. Mr.
Arnold says that the first requisite of a good transla-
tion is faithfulness to the original. With this we
heartily agree. It is when he defines his criterion
for faithfulness that we must differ from him.
There has been current for a long time the idea that
a good translation is one which would afEect the
English reader as the Greek or Latin original af-
fected a Greek or a Roman. As Mr. Arnold points
out, this is an impossible standard, because nobody
knows just how the original affected the ancients.
However, we feel that the test Mr. Arnold him-
self imposes is scarcely less possible.
To his mind
the taste of the scholar is the test -- the good trans-
lation the one that affects this Greek or Latin scholar
as the original does. The man who knows his
Greek is the judge. Mr. Winter points out the
fallacy of this criterion as follows: "It is difficult to
imagine any method for getting away more com-
pletely from the original spirit of the Iliad than to
so translate as to have It give to the average modern
reader the same impression that it makes upon the
typical middle-aged professor of dead languages. "
These standards, he farther adds, "are precisely
those which tend to develop a school of glorified
cribs. . . . The translations that live, the transla-
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? 12 CATULLUS
tions that we like to think of as a part of English
literature, are of a different sort. They are from
the pen of writers who have made their names
glorious for something besides the echoing of other
men's thoughts, and who have insisted, even in their
translations, on remaining original. . . . Transla-
tions have a vitality and a vogue in direct ratio to
the writer's spirit of independence. " This judg-
ment of Mr. Winter is substantiated by some of the
best translations in English. They have been made
by men who were literary artists as well as scholars.
Let us discuss for a moment what we mean by a
good translation. Obviously the first aim of the
translator is to make a faithful translation. On this
point there is practically a general agreement. A
faithful translation is one that is true to the idea
and spirit of the original rather than to the word
and letter. The method of the translator will vary
according to the subject matter and the purpose for
which the translation is intended. There are two
kinds of literature: (a) the literature of informa-
tion and (b) the literature of beauty. Plainly, in
the translation of the first class the ideal is one of
accuracy and clearness. This, of course, is com-
paratively easy, presupposing, on the part of the
translator, merely a knowledge of the foreign lan-
guage (and, we may add incidentally, of his own),
and a thorough understanding of the subject matter
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? CATULLUS 13
in hand. The translation of the second class -- pure
literature -- involves an additional quality which, for
want of a better term, we may call literary sensi-
bility. The translator must make not merely a
transcript of the idea but a species of belles lettres,
a sort of new creative thing in itself. The function
of pure literature is to please and interest no less
by its form than by its content. Hence a good trans-
lation of a masterpiece must be in itself a kind of
masterpiece. "As it takes a thief to catch a thief,
so it takes a poet to catch a poet. "
We approach any translation from three points
of view -- first, the purely scholarly view point whose
ideal is accuracy and thoroughness. This seeks a
pretty literal translation, one that will keep the
facts as straight as possible, and it is the primary
essential of all good translation. Second, the schol-
arly-literary view point, which aims not only at an
accurate transcript of ideas but at an appreciation
of them in relation to their own setting. This
means keeping the "flavor" of the original, trans-
lating one-self, so to speak, into the past rather
than the original into the present. This too, is an
essential quality of a good translation. And third,
the purely literary view point, which would make
of the original a "new original," a bit of real litera-
ture which, while true to its source, is equally true
to its end; that is, faithful to the original and sig-
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? 14 CATULLUS
nificant to the reader. This last viewpoint involves
and implies the other tw^o. The needs of scholar-
ship may often go no farther than accurate trans-
lation and appreciative interpretation, but w^ithout
the literary "touch," they w\\\ fall short of true
translation. For herein lies the life-giving property
that must animate the solid framework of scholarly
information, and color and illuminate the grace and
form of scholarly appreciation. This is the trans-
lator's contribution to literature. The scholar's
work merely goes to pile the shelves of fact, to
heap up the raw material out of which real litera-
ture is made.
What are the ear marks of a good translation?
( I ) It must be interesting to the generation for
which it is written, must speak straight from the
heart, direct and spontaneous, in the idiomatic Eng-
lish of the day, bearing no halting syntactical hy-
brids; (2) it must be true to the original in fact
and in spirit, carrying the same dignity, nobility,
grace, or whimsicality that the original bore. And
for this end a literal translation is often the last
thing wanted, either of word or of form. For ex-
ample -- well-bred Romans might have listened with
equanimity to certain words that shock a well-bred
American. To translate literally the word that was
in the original would be to translate the shock
which was not in the original; and this would be
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? CATULLUS 15
faithless. Again certain figures, allusions, and the
like, full of significance to the people for whom
they were written may tall quite empty on a modern
ear. It is for the translator, then, to find for these
adequate substitutes or paraphrases as far as po-i
sible. For example, Catullus LI I reads literally --
"What reason is there, Catullus, why you should
delay dying; vile Nonius is in the curule chair,
Vatinius sw^ears by the consulate, why then, Catul-
lus, do you delay dying? " In translation, a mean-
ingless and offensive lot of words truly, but in the
original, pointed, trenchent, clever. Catullus used
the specific names Nonius and Vatinius because to
the ears of his generation concrete examples of de-
bauchery and bribery illustrated in the names of
prominent citizens were far more vij^orous than ab-
stract terms. But these names mean nothing to us.
The abstract qualities say far more. So we have
translated the lines as follows -- true to the spirit, we
maintain, and certainly clearer to the reader.
Why wait for deaths Catullus, zvhy not be
done ivith life?
Corruption in the Curule chair, and in
The Senate strife.
Venality is honored, and bribery is rife.
Why wait for death, Catullus, why not be
done with life?
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? i6 CATULLUS
On the other hand, to have substituted modern
names for Nonius and Vatinius would have been
going too far, would have destroyed the flavor, and
produced a paraphrase not a translation.
The translator's task is indeed a difficult one,
one calling for versatile abilities. He must find the
phrase that will contain the spirit as well as tran-
scribe the fact. He must be en rapport not only
with the language itself but with the milieu of that
language, must be a part of its vitality, so to speak,
and understand and know its contemporaneous sig-
nificance. One generation does not fully under-
stand the literature of another of the same tongue
without more or less copious annotations, which are
in themselves a kind of translation. We can't read
Chaucer without a glossary, nor Shakespere without
notes. How then shall one nation comprehend an-
other without annotations, or one age grasp an-
other without such illumination. A good translation
is a kind of condensed and concatenated annotation.
After all, we keep on translating whether we know
it or not, all the time. There isn't much new knowl-
edge; there's just a lot of fresh thinking about old
subjects. And each generation keeps on translating
the thoughts of the last into its own vernacular.
Hence arises the need of new translations of old
classics. Virgil translated for the seventeenth cen-
tury might not be just Virgil to the twentieth, and
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? CATULLUS 17
we see Homer with glasses colored by a somewhat
different experience from that of Pope. It is not
strange, therefore, if we should want to make our
own translations.
Catullus has something different for us from what
he has had for any other people at any other time,
and so we want to interpret him in our own way.
That people keep on translating Catullus is rea-
son enough why they should. He has something
for them or they wouldn't take the trouble. That
a writer does live is reason enough for his immor-
tality. It is to be expected that he have a sort of
vogue, a rise and wane of popularity. Ages are dif-
ferent, and one age's vogue is another's aversion.
Next to Horace, Catullus seems to us the most
modern of the ancients -- that is, if there is any most.
They are all contemporaries when we get acquainted
with them. It is amazing to find out how
modern all these writers are, which is just
another way of saying how ancient human nature
is. "As it was in the beginning, is today official
sinning," chants Mr. Kipling, "and shall be for-
evermore. " It is this continuity of human nature
that gives us a friendly feeling for the classics. All
the big feelings are the same, and the little ones
aren't so surprisingly different; rather they are sur-
prisingly alike. Common follies strike quicker sym-
pathies than common virtues; congenial foibles and
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? 1 8 CATULLUS
superficial graces offer a readier intimacy than fun-
damental principles. We can weep with anybody.
Grief is universally the same; but we laugh only
with those who understand. It is just here that
Catullus is so "modern. " He saw the grace in
things, in manners, customs, fashions, politics and
society. In short, for all the intimacies of daily liv-
ing he had a quick eye and a felicitous phrase. Not
only did he feel the passion and pathos of life, but
he was keenly sensitive to all the nuances of light
and graceful feeling, and it is in delicate apprecia-
tion of the finer sentiments that Catullus excels.
His incite is less profound than that of Horace but
it is more subtle. Keenly alive, quiveringly sensi-
tive to all that touches a human being in emotional
experience, he had pre-eminently what Burns would
have called sensibility. And he is like Burns, too,
has more in common with him than with any other
lyric poet, unless it be Shelley. In life he was cir-
cumstanced more like Shelley, a gentleman in birth
and breeding, well educated and wealthy, in spite of
the "cobwebs" in his purse, the result rather of
extravagance than poverty. In temperament he was
more like Burns, wild and turbulent in passion,
fierce in love and relentless in hate. And when he
took to satire and invective he out-Burnsed Burns.
At times he was so coarse, brutal, and indecent it
is hard to believe he could ever be gentle, graceful,
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? CATULLUS 19
and noble. However, we must remember the age
allowed excesses of speech we would not tolerate. By
nature he was intense, yet simple and ingenuous;
by education, refined, sensitive, and exquisite. Love
was at once with him a mighty passion and a deli-
cate sentiment. While he touched the superficial
graces -- and disgraces -- of living in a half playful
tone, life was to him always a tremendous emotion.
A mo et odi, he sang, and this was the index of his
temperament. There was nothing lukewarm about
him. He loved his friends and hated his enemies --
joyed with the mad rush of a mountain torrent and
sorrowed with the weight of a deep sea dirge. Per-
haps no one can write lyric poetry who does not live
intensely.
Few facts are known of the life of C. Valerius
Catullus. He was born at Verona, or near there,
about B. C. 84 and died at Rome thirty years later.
The dates of his birth and death are variously giveii^
but the divergence is not wide. B. C. 87-84 for the
birth; B. C. 57-54 for the death. He was con-
temporary with Cicero and Lucretius.
There is reliable evidence that he was of good
family, since his father was the friend and host of
Caesar; that he had wealth, for he owned a yacht
and two or three country estates, a villa at Sirmio
and another on the edge of the Sabine hills. At an
early age he went to Rome where he mingled with
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? 20 CATULLUS
the gay and extravagant society of the period. Here
he found many friends, notably Cornelius Nepos
to whom he presented his volume of lyrics in the
graceful little dedicatory poem, Cicero, FabuUus
and Veranius, and chiefest in his own eyes and
closest to his heart, Licinius Calvus, a young poet
like himself, to whom he adressed some of his most
charming verses. (XIV, LIII, XCVI).
When he was about twenty-six years of age, he
went to Bithynia on the staff of C. Memmius who
was propraetor of the province. It was on taking
leave of this province that, stirred by the wander-
lust of youth and spring, he wrote the exquisite little
lyric numbered XLVI. And the greeting to "fair
Sirmio" celebrated his return home in lines no less
beautiful. Sensitive to every shade of emotion as he
was, it is not strange that he should have written
feelingly of both extremes. Those who best know
Wanderlust best know^ Heimweh.
