The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace

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Гораций. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace

PREFACE

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION

BOOK I

I. MAECENAS ATAVIS

II. JAM SATIS TERRIS

III. SIC TE DIVA

IV. SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS

V. QUIS MULTA GRACILIS

VI. SCRIBERIS VARIO

VII. LAUDABUNT ALII

VIII. LYDIA, DIC PER OMNES

IX. VIDES UT ALTA

X. MERCURI FACUNDE

XI. TU NE QUAESIERIS

XII. QUEMN VIRUM AUT HEROA

XIII. CUM TU, LYDIA

XIV. O NAVIS, REFERENT

XV. PASTOR CUM TRAHERET

XVI. O MATRE PULCHRA

XVII. VELOX AMOENUM

XVIII. NULLAM, VARE

XIX. MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM

XX. VILE POTABIS

XXI. DIANAM TENERAE

XXII. INTEGER VITAE

XXIII. VITAS HINNULEO

XXIV. QUIS DESIDERIO

XXVI. MUSIS AMICUS

XXVII. NATIS IN USUM

XXVIII. TE MARIS ET TERRA

XXIX. ICCI, BEATIS

XXX. O VENUS

XXXI. QUID DEDICATUM

XXXII. POSCIMUR

XXXIII. ALBI, NE DOLEAS

XXXIV. PARCUS DEORUM

XXXV. O DIVA, GRATUM

XXXVI. ET THURE, ET FIDIBUS

XXXVII. NUNC EST BIBENDUM

XXXVIII. PERSICOS ODI

BOOK II

I. MOTUM EX METELLO

II. NULLUS ARGENTO

III. AEQUAM, MEMENTO

IV. NE SIT ANCILLAE

VI. SEPTIMI, GADES

VII. O SAEPE MECUM

VIII. ULLA SI JURIS

IX. NON SEMPER IMBRES

X. RECTIUS VIVES

XI. QUID BELLICOSUS

XII. NOLIS LONGA FERAE

XIII. ILLE ET NEFASTO

XIV. EHEU, FUGACES

XV. JAM PAUCA ARATRO

XVI. OTIUM DIVOS

XVII. CUR ME QUERELIS

XVIII. NON EBUR

XIX. BACCHUM IN REMOTIS

XX. NON USITATA

BOOK III

I. ODI PROFANUM

II. ANGUSTAM AMICE

III. JUSTUM ET TENACEM

IV. DESCENDE CAELO

V. CAELO TONANTEM

VI. DELICTA MAJORUM

VII. QUID FLES, ASTERIE

VIII. MARTIIS COELEBS

IX. DONEC GRATUS ERAM

X. EXTREMUM TANAIN

XI. MERCURI, NAM TE

XII. MISERARUM EST

XIII. O FONS BANDUSIAE

XIV. HERCULIS RITU

XV. UXOR PAUPERIS IBYCI

XVI. INCLUSAM DANAEN

XVII. AELI VETUSTO

XVIII. FAUNE, NYMPHARUM

XIX. QUANTUM DISTAT

XXI. O NATE MECUM

XXII. MONTIUM CUSTOS

XXIII. COELO SUPINAS

XXIV. INTACTIS OPULENTIOR

XXV. QUO ME, BACCHE

XXVI. VIXI PUELLIS

XXVII. IMPIOS PARRAE

XXVIII. FESTO QUID POTIUS

XXIX. TYRRHENA REGUM

XXX. EXEGI MONUMENTUM

BOOK IV

I. INTERMISSA, VENUS

II. PINDARUM QUISQUIS

III. QUEM TU, MELPOMENE

IV. QUALEM MINISTRUM

V. DIVIS ORTE BONIS

VI. DIVE, QUEM PROLES

VII. DIFFUGERE NIVES

VIII. DONAREM PATERAS

IX. NE FORTE CREDAS

XI. EST MIHI NONUM

XII. JAM VERIS COMITES

XIII. AUDIVERE, LYCE

XIV. QUAE CURA PATRUM

XV. PHOEBUS VOLENTEM

CARMEN SAECULARE

PHOEBE, SILVARUMQUE

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I scarcely know what excuse I can offer for making public this attempt to "translate the untranslatable." No one can be more convinced than I am that a really successful translator must be himself an original poet; and where the author translated happens to be one whose special characteristic is incommunicable grace of expression, the demand on the translator's powers would seem to be indefinitely increased. Yet the time appears to be gone by when men of great original gifts could find satisfaction in reproducing the thoughts and words of others; and the work, if done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior pretension. Among these, however, there are still degrees; and the experience which I have gained since I first adventured as a poetical translator has made me doubt whether I may not be ill-advised in resuming the experiment under any circumstances. Still, an experiment of this kind may have an advantage of its own, even when it is unsuccessful; it may serve as a piece of embodied criticism, showing what the experimenter conceived to be the conditions of success, and may thus, to borrow Horace's own metaphor of the whetstone, impart to others a quality which it is itself without. Perhaps I may be allowed, for a few moments, to combine precept with example, and imitate my distinguished friend and colleague, Professor Arnold, in offering some counsels to the future translator of Horace's Odes, referring, at the same time, by way of illustration, to my own attempt.

The first thing at which, as it seems to me, a Horatian translator ought to aim, is some kind of metrical conformity to his original. Without this we are in danger of losing not only the metrical, but the general effect of the Latin; we express ourselves in a different compass, and the character of the expression is altered accordingly. For instance, one of Horace's leading features is his occasional sententiousness. It is this, perhaps more than anything else, that has made him a storehouse of quotations. He condenses a general truth in a few words, and thus makes his wisdom portable. "Non, si male nunc, et olim sic erit;" "Nihil est ab omni parte beatum;" "Omnes eodem cogimur,"—these and similar expressions remain in the memory when other features of Horace's style, equally characteristic, but less obvious, are forgotten. It is almost impossible for a translator to do justice to this sententious brevity unless the stanza in which he writes is in some sort analogous to the metre of Horace. If he chooses a longer and more diffuse measure, he will be apt to spoil the proverb by expansion; not to mention that much will often depend on the very position of the sentence in the stanza. Perhaps, in order to preserve these external peculiarities, it may be necessary to recast the expression, to substitute, in fact, one form of proverb for another; but this is far preferable to retaining the words in a diluted form, and so losing what gives them their character, I cannot doubt, then, that it is necessary in translating an Ode of Horace to choose some analogous metre; as little can I doubt that a translator of the Odes should appropriate to each Ode some particular metre as its own. It may be true that Horace himself does not invariably suit his metre to his subject; the solemn Alcaic is used for a poem in dispraise of serious thought and praise of wine; the Asclepiad stanza in which Quintilius is lamented is employed to describe the loves of Maecenas and Licymnia. But though this consideration may influence us in our choice of an English metre, it is no reason for not adhering to the one which we may have chosen. If we translate an Alcaic and a Sapphic Ode into the same English measure, because the feeling in both appears to be the same, we are sure to sacrifice some important characteristic of the original in the case of one or the other, perhaps of both. It is better to try to make an English metre more flexible than to use two different English metres to represent two different aspects of one measure in Latin. I am sorry to say that I have myself deviated from this rule occasionally, under circumstances which I shall soon have to explain; but though I may perhaps succeed in showing that my offences have not been serious, I believe the rule itself to be one of universal application, always honoured in the observance, if not always equally dishonoured in the breach.

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The remaining metres may be dismissed in a very few words. As a general rule, I have avoided couplets of any sort, and chosen some kind of stanza. As a German critic has pointed out, all the Odes of Horace, with one doubtful exception, may be reduced to quatrains; and though this peculiarity does not, so far as we can see, affect the character of any of the Horatian metres (except, of course, those that are written in stanzas), or influence the structure of the Latin, it must be considered as a happy circumstance for those who wish to render Horace into English. In respect of restraint, indeed, the English couplet may sometimes be less inconvenient than the quatrain, as it is, on the whole, easier to run couplet into couplet than to run quatrain into quatrain; but the couplet seems hardly suitable for an English lyrical poem of any length, the very notion of lyrical poetry apparently involving a complexity which can only be represented by rhymes recurring at intervals. In the case of one of the three poems written by Horace in the measure called the greater Asclepiad, ("Tu ne quoesieris,") I have adopted the couplet; in another ("Nullam, Vare,") the quatrain, the determining reason in the two cases being the length of the two Odes, the former of which consists but of eight lines, the latter of sixteen. The metre which I selected for each is the thirteen- syllable trochaic of "Locksley Hall;" and it is curious to observe the different effect of the metre according as it is written in two lines or in four. In the "Locksley Hall" couplet its movement is undoubtedly trochaic; but when it is expanded into a quatrain, as in Mrs. Browning's poem of "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," the movement changes, and instead of a more or less equal stress on the alternate syllables, the full ictus is only felt in one syllable out of every four; in ancient metrical language the metre becomes Ionic a minore. This very Ionic a minore is itself, I need not say, the metre of a single Ode in the Third Book, the "Miserarum est," and I have devised a stanza for it, taking much more pains with the apportionment of the ictus than in the case of the trochaic quatrain, which is better able to modulate itself. I have also ventured to invent a metre for that technically known as the Fourth Archilochian, the "Solvitur acris hiems," by combining the fourteen-syllable with the ten-syllable iambic in an alternately rhyming stanza. [Footnote: I may be permitted to mention that Lord Derby, in a volume of Translations printed privately before the appearance of this work, has employed the same measure in rendering the same Ode, the only difference being that his rhymes are not alternate, but successive.] The First Archilochian, "Diffugere nives," I have represented by a combination of the ten-syllable with the four- syllable iambic. For the so-called greater Sapphic, the "Lydia, die per omnes" I have made another iambic combination, the six-syllable with the fourteen-syllable, arranged as a couplet. The choriambic I thought might be exchanged for a heroic stanza, in which the first line should rhyme with the fourth, the second with the third, a kind of "In Memoriam" elongated. Lastly, I have chosen the heroic quatrain proper, the metre of Gray's "Elegy," for the two Odes in the First Book written in what is called the Metrum Alcmanium, "Laudabunt alii," and "Te maris et terrae," rather from a vague notion of the dignity of the measure than from any distinct sense of special appropriateness.

From this enumeration, which I fear has been somewhat tedious, it will be seen that I have been guided throughout not by any systematic principles, but by a multitude of minor considerations, some operating more strongly in one case, and some in another. I trust, however, that in all this diversity I shall be found to have kept in view the object on which I have been insisting, a metrical correspondence with the original. Even where I have been most inconsistent, I have still adhered to the rule of comprising the English within the same number of lines as the Latin. I believe tills to be almost essential to the preservation of the character of the Horatian lyric, which always retains a certain severity, and never loses itself in modern exuberance; and though I am well aware that the result in my case has frequently, perhaps generally, been a most un-Horatian stiffness, I am convinced from my own experience that a really accomplished artist would find the task of composing under these conditions far more hopeful than he had previously imagined it to be. Yet it is a restraint to which scarcely any of the previous translators of the Odes have been willing to submit. Perhaps Professor Newman is the only one who has carried it through the whole of the Four Books; most of my predecessors have ignored it altogether. It is this which, in my judgment, is the chief drawback to the success of the most distinguished of them, Mr. Theodore Martin. He has brought to his work a grace and delicacy of expression and a happy flow of musical verse which are beyond my praise, and which render many of his Odes most pleasing to read as poems. I wish he had combined with these qualities that terseness and condensation which remind us that a Roman, even when writing "songs of love and wine," was a Roman still.

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