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Translating Roman Elegy

Vincent Katz

In this essay about my experience translating Roman Elegy, I hope to demonstrate some of the ways in which translation can be a useful tool for literary analysis. At the same time, translation of poetry is an attempt to create an art work, something different from analysis. I will be writing specifically about the experience of translating the Latin of elegists of the first century BCE (primarily Propertius, though I will touch on Tibullus and Ovid) into the particular American language of my era.

My poetic diction has been influenced by the poets of the New York School as well as the Black Mountain School. These poets regularly mix high and low language; the vernacular is given equal importance to the literary. The New York poets engage in flights of poetic and linguistic imagination. I should also mention the sonnets of Edwin

Denby, with their difficult condensations of phraseology and classical learning. These poetic models would prove useful when I came to approach the task of translating

Sextus Propertius.

Analyzing translations of poetry, one finds that subtly — or not so subtly — interpretation is woven into the work of translation. Some translators, feeling that the poetry is too strange or remote for the contemporary reader, will smooth out the source text by glossing patronymics, explaining arcane mythological or cult references or historical context with which the translator feels the poet’s contemporaries would be familiar but confronting which the contemporary reader will be lost. I disagree with this method of translation. I believe that the translation should remain close to the - 2 - referential quality, as well as to the language, grammar and syntax of the source, as those will best represent the linguistic qualities of the poetry. Poetry is characterized primarily by these linguistic qualities, even more than by its ideas. All the references and context that the editor feels necessary should be supplied in notes or essays accompanying the translation.

With Propertius, the first consideration is the text. Propertius has a late and problematic manuscript tradition. A study of editions and commentaries made it clear that readings in Propertius were more often open to debate than those of most other

Roman poets. Taking as a model the complex and often difficult contemporary poetry with which I was familiar, I began to think that many of the irregularities in Propertius’ poetry might not be the result of textual corruption but in fact be due to the inventive genius of the poet. In contemporary poets like John Ashbery and Denby, one often finds syntax stretched to the breaking point and actually broken. Expressive power is achieved by condensation, elision, and outright rupture of syntactical logic.

Why could a similar thing not be happening in Propertius’ poetry? I became more comfortable with Propertius’ elisions and compressions, his mixtures of high and low tones. I decided to respect the manuscript readings to the greatest extent possible. I would follow a verbal substitution when the manuscript reading was nonmetrical in an unfelicitous way, rarely for any other reason; I did accept some transpositions of couplets. Neologisms, unparalleled usages, not to mention difficult syntax, would all be allowed, interpreted as the straining and pushing of a poet trying to put extreme emotion into a new style. In order to make these experiments more explicit, I will discuss in my essay Propertius’ expressive uses of verb tenses, metaphor

(particularly sexual metaphor), rhetoric, tone, and vulgarity. - 3 -

I had wanted to make an anthology of Greek and Latin poems in translation, but

Douglas Messerli, the publisher of Sun and Moon Press, with whom I discussed the idea, said he would prefer to publish a translation of a work that existed as a book in antiquity. I thought immediately of Propertius’ Monobiblos, and Sun and Moon published my translation in 1995 with the title Charm. I subsequently translated all Propertius’ poems (169 pages in Latin); these translations were published in 2004 by Princeton

University Press as The Complete Elegies Of Sextus Propertius. I will refer to these publications as Charm and Complete Elegies.

Relying mainly on the Oxford Classical Text, edited by E. A. Barber (second edition, 1960), I referred extensively to the commentary by W. A. Camps (Cambridge).

I decided to include in Complete Elegies a Latin text facing the translation. This text reflects my decisions regarding readings by textual critics of the manuscript tradition. I am not a textual critic. However, the translator must make decisions in regard to the text, as well as in regard to interpretation. In the selections below, for Propertius, I give my Latin version of the text, followed by the translation. For the selections of Ovid and

Tibullus, I give the Oxford Classical Text Latin, followed by my translations. If no citation is given, the translation is my own.

Translation, like criticism, is an ever-evolving practice. Just as the critic may change his or her reading of text with time and age, so the translator finds his or her solutions changing somewhat over the years. Partially, this has to do with evolutions in the target language. “Babes,” for instance, in poem 2.22a.20, which I used to translate

Propertius’ formosas, I might change now to “hotties,” and I would probably want to use

“lover” instead of “sweetheart” for cura in poem 1.1.36. - 4 -

I should point out that, while doing my translations of Propertius, I never referred to any other translator’s versions, and in fact, the only translation I had read before doing my own was J. P. McCulloch’s; I had also read Ezra Pound’s Homage To

Sextus Propertius.

Poem 1.1 seems a good place to start analyzing translations of Propertius. My Latin for the first eight lines of the first poem, as published in Complete Elegies, is precisely that of the second Oxford edition:

Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis, contactum nullis ante cupidinibus. tum mihi constantis deiecit lumina fastus et caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus, donec me docuit castas odisse puellas improbus, et nullo uiuere consilio. et mihi iam toto furor hic non deficit anno, cum tamen aduersos cogor habere deos.

Warden’s translation of the first eight lines of 1.1 is close to the source, despite a few intrusions:

She was the first to enslave me, and she did it with her eyes; till then I’d never felt love’s poison arrows. This time I did — he soon put an end to my haughty looks, pinned me down on the floor with his foot on my neck. He’s a harsh tutor — and this is what he’s taught me: to keep to tarts and live life off the rails. And now it’s been going a year this restless passion, with the gods against me all the time.

He separates the two ideas — she was the first, she did it with her eyes — a separation

I believe necessary. Line two, however, introduces “poison arrows,” whereas contactum nullis ante cupidinibus has no such arrows. Warden misses the provocative contactum, with its senses of touch and disease (central to Propertius’ conception of love) and - 5 - downplays cupido, using the neutral “love,” whereas cupido introduces the range of obsessive sexual desire Propertius will focus on in his poems. “Haughty looks” captures lumina fastus, though it leaves out the persistency in constantis, a persistency that will soon be channeled into another pattern, that of slave-like devotion. Warden moves the important “down” concept in deiecit from line three to four and adds a floor, but the foot on the narrator’s neck is just right. He misses the donec moment, substitutes the too-funny “keep to tarts” for the shocking contempt of castas odisse puellas (which, we soon learn, is Cynthia’s contempt), while his “live life off the rails” works well for nullo uiuere consilio.

The Penguin translation, by Shepherd, and the Oxford translation, by Lee, are both works by highly esteemed classical translators. Both translators are intimately versed not only in Propertius’ work but in the entire genre, and in classical poetry in general. Such commitment fires a scholar’s enthusiasm to represent every semantic subtlety present in the source. These translations are very close to Propertius in terms of ideas. The connotations that attach to certain English usages may or may not be appropriate to the original. Tone, in Propertius, is very volatile. He can be extremely erudite in one couplet and downright vulgar in the next, in a way that rarely happens in

Horace or Vergil.

Shepherd’s version of 1.1.1-8 goes thus:

Cynthia was the first To capture with her eyes my pitiable self: Till then I was free from desire’s contagion. Love Then forced me to lower my gaze of steady hauteur And trampled my head with his feet Until, perverse, he had taught me to demur At faithful girls and live without taking thought. A whole year, and my frenzy does not flag, Though I’m forced to know the gods’ disapprobation. - 6 -

He hews very closely to Propertius’ metaphors and turns of phrase. Every important concept and linguistic pattern is included. He is also careful with word placement, isolating improbus, as the appositional “perverse,” between commas. The issue here is one of diction. Starting with “my pitiable self” for miserum me, we find a weakening of the source’s intensity of painful emotion. Terms in Propertius are usually extreme.

Miser is one of the key terms in Roman elegy, and a strong word must be chosen for it:

“fool,” or perhaps, “loser.” “Sufferer” might work in certain situations. “Hauteur” is too fancy for this particular passage; Propertius is capable of high erudition, but here he is stating his case in plain, if powerful, language. The same weakness mars the choices of

“trampled” and “demur” for pressit and odisse. Finally, “disapprobation” seems like a term a child might receive for bad behavior. It does not do justice to the devastating force contained in aduersos deos.

Lee’s solutions are tonally more apposite:

Cynthia first, with her eyes, caught wretched me Smitten before by no desires; Then, lowering my stare of steady arrogance, With feet imposed Love pressed my head, Until he taught me hatred of chaste girls — The villain — and living aimlessly. And now for a whole year this mania has not left me, Though I am forced to suffer adverse Gods.

Lee includes all the Propertian concepts and preserves the syntactical flow. However,

“smitten” is inappropriately archaic and misses the connotations of contactum noted above. “Arrogance” is a good word to use, as it is a key Propertian concept, usually possessed by Cynthia. “The villain” is again somewhat old-fashioned, but it does an excellent job of paralleling the placement and meaning of improbus. - 7 -

In my own translations, I tried to develop an appropriate American tone for

Propertius. My first two lines are the same in both Charm and Complete Elegies: “Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes, a fool / who had never before been touched by desires.” I needed a full stop after “Cynthia was the first.” I felt it justified by the initial power of Cynthia prima in the source. It is the first poem of the first book, a programmatic poem, and the first phrase of the first line stands on its own as materia prima: Cynthia prima. This will be the main subject of Propertius’ love poems. Further, I felt the other possibilities were weaker. I could have written, “Cynthia was the first to catch me with her eyes,” but this leaves strange semantic possibilities — that some other woman might have caught the narrator with Cynthia’s eyes at a later date, or another woman might have caught the narrator earlier with another part of her body.

To spell readings out like that makes them seem absurd, but when embedded in the translated phrase their problematics are more subtle. In my opinion, two separate ideas are present in the source: Cynthia was the first; and it was her eyes that caught the narrator.

My second version of lines 3-4 is closer to the syntax of the original, and this is the direction I moved in the more I worked with the poems, in an attempt to preserve the defining qualities of Propertius’ art. I can still recall the motivation for my earlier version, however. It comes from wanting to produce an English equivalent with similar rhythmic swagger to the original that retains a similar semantic complexity. I chose to write “I really hung my head in shame,” as that allowed me to connect that line to the next line, by having the pronoun “it” take the place of “my head.” In my mind, the concept of “down,” expressed in deiecit, was central to the thought, and I was able to include that. If Love cast down his look, it meant his eyes were now looking down. - 8 -

From that it followed his head was, or soon would be, hanging down. That, to my later, stricter, viewpoint, was going too far, as it was reading something into the text that is not explicitly there. My next extension in Charm went even farther. I extrapolated from Love’s casting down the narrator’s look of pride the conclusion that he would feel shame. It is not clear that a sense of shame would automatically attach itself to the experience of losing one’s pride.

The more faithful rendering brings in the personification of Love earlier, allowing it to dominate a four-line sequence. Including “until” for donec reflects the increased intensity of the narrator’s suffering under Love — it has a lasting effect. The same applies to “perversely.” Propertius enjambs improbus at the beginning of line six almost as a vocative. We will see that vocatives are an important tool in Propertius’ expressive arsenal. Here, he lays the word in there tauntingly, and I tried to translate improbus, in

Complete Elegies, in a way that keeps the syntactic flow going, reflecting the Latin, while simultaneously sticking out on its own, like an epithet.

Here is my translation of these opening lines, from Charm:

Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes, a fool who had never before been touched by desires. I really hung my head in shame when Love pressed down on it with his feet. He taught me to hate chaste girls! He was cruel when he told me to live without plan. It's already been a whole year that the frenzy hasn't stopped. Even now, the gods are against me.

In Complete Elegies, I have the same section as:

Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes, a fool who had never before been touched by desires. Love cast down my look of constant pride, and he pressed on my head with his feet, until he taught me to despise chaste girls, perversely, and to live without plan. - 9 -

Already, it’s been a whole year that the frenzy hasn’t stopped, when, for all that, the gods are against me.

It should be clear from what I have written so far that I believe the best translations of Roman elegy should try to preserve the look of the Latin. This is not an external choice, but one imposed by the conviction that the best translation will preserve the syntax and also, as far as is possible, word order, enjambment, and other effects of placement in the source. The structural impact of the couplet is central to

Roman elegy, particularly in Propertius. There is an almost psalm-like rhythm to the rise and fall of the dactlylic hexameter/iambic pentameter distich. The translations I find most successful try to find an equivalent for this effect.

I have tried to adhere to Propertius’ particular use of tenses. There are subtle distinctions in using different tenses in English. For 2.1.5-8, my Latin in Complete Elegies reads:

siue illam Cois fulgentem incedere uidi, hoc totum e Coa ueste uolumen erit; seu uidi ad frontem sparsos errare capillos, gaudet laudatis ire superba comis;

Lee (also reading incedere uidi in line 5) has:

Suppose she steps out glittering in silks from Cos, Her Coan gown speaks a whole volume. Suppose I spot an errant ringlet on her brow, Praise of the lock makes her walk taller.

In the first couplet, he has removed the narrator (uidi) altogether; in both first and second, he transforms perfect verbs into presents. This has the effect of compressing the action, of removing a distance or dimensionality of effect. McCulloch likewise keeps the action in close temporal relations. He also (probably reading iuuit instead of uidi in - 10 - line 5) brings a generalized “you” into a situation which is clearly between the narrator and his lover:

If you would have her walk glittering clothed in Coan tunic this whole volume will be Coan-clothed. If her hair falls in her eyes, I say her hair is splendid & she walks exalted & delights in my praises;

Slavitt goes even farther afield, as though riffing on the poem’s ideas, turning four lines into six:

All she has to do is enter a room, a dazzle of flowing silk from Cos, and a book is born, as if I had found the idea in a hiding place in her pocket. An errant wisp of hair that strays from her forehead is enough to inspire a poem, or that queenly knack of her posture and my joy at the way she holds her head when she walks…

In contrast to these approaches, I have found that closely following the poet’s grammar and imagery provides a translation that is a more accurate representation of the original, gaining power, as does the Latin, from condensed language in a tightly rhythmic cadence:

If I’ve seen her walk, radiant in Coan silk, then this entire volume shall be made of silk. If I’ve seen her hair falling loose across her face, she goes contented, arrogant in my praise.

The Latin in line 8 is laudatis superba comis — literally something like “arrogant in the praise her hair received” — but the clear emphasis on the “I” in the Latin of lines 5 and

7 makes it acceptable to attach the possessive pronoun “my” to the praise. One could try to distinguish between capillos in line 7 and comis in line 8. Lee does, using “ringlet” and “lock,” perhaps in an effort to show how ridiculous the obsessions of the elegiac poets could be, but I read the tone in this passage differently, as one of awe, not bathos, and have preferred to accentuate Cynthia’s arrogance. - 11 -

Poets create patterns of rhythms and sounds, and it is essential for a translator to remain sensitive to word usage and repetition of words in the source text. Within a poem, I try to translate a repeated Latin word by the same English word, to parallel how the poet used repetition in the original, usually in order to make the word’s meanings more manifold. Conversely, across several poems, two different Latin words may be translated by the same English word. In the original, and also in my translation, continuity is tighter within single poems than among separate poems.

Working to clarify connotation is an essential task in translating Propertius.

Sexual connotation is one of the most expressive factors in the diction of Propertius’ love poetry. It can be found in isolated instances, as well as in the large-scale metaphors discussed below. To give an example of the sexuality in Propertius’ language, one might cite line 2.1.4, ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit, which I have translated as “The girl alone erects my genius.” Here, Propertius gives credit for the special quality of his love poetry not to the muse Calliope, not to the god Apollo, but to his girlfriend, Cynthia.

The irony, as often in Propertius, suggests a reading that pushes the meaning of the line to its limits. The tone is one of elevated repartee. He has referred in line 1 of this poem to his love poems (amores). In lines 5 and following, he will be lapsing into sensual reveries, inspired by Cynthia, and then, in lines 13 to 16, imagining a vigorous sexual interlude. All of this taken together suggests a powerfully sexual reading of line 4, which is why I chose the word “erects” for facit, highlighting an analogy between his genius or talent (ingenium) and his sexual desire, or literally, his genitals.

I used the same English word, “erected,” in another sequence, translating a different Latin word from that used in poem 2.1. In 2.3.8, Propertius writes numquam tollitur ullus amor, which I translated as “never is any love erected.” Here, amor and - 12 - tollitur make a sexual interpretation even clearer than in 2.1. Other usages earlier in the poem — cecidit spiritus ille tuus (2), which I translated as “that resolve of yours fallen” and studiis seueris (7), which I have as “rigid zeal” — lean towards a sexual reading in line

8.

Another key concept for Propertius, and one whose verbal expressions the translator must take extra care in conveying, is that of pride, or contempt. The adjective superbus is often used by Propertius in this context, and we have already encountered the noun fastus in the third line of the first poem. There, I translated it as

“pride,” as it was possessed by the male narrator, and I felt the emphasis was more on his foolhardiness than on the destructive power inherent in the “contempt” wielded by

Cynthia. In 2.1.8, I have translated superba, describing Cynthia, as “arrogant.” In 1.15.1,

Propertius uses levitas to describe the thing he most feared from a relationship with

Cynthia — that she would not take their relationship seriously. In that context, I translated levitas by the English “contempt.” I used “contempt” again in 1.18.5, this time to translate the Latin fastus, and again in 2.8.16 for uerba superba. Here is my Latin for

2.8.13-16, followed by my translation:

ergo iam multos nimium temerarius annos, improba, qui tulerim teque tuamque domum? ecquandone tibi liber sum uisus? an usque in nostrum iacies uerba superba caput?

So was I totally ridiculous all those years, you slut, when I supported you and your household? And when have I ever been free of you? Or will you continue to dump your contempt on my head? (2.8.13-16)

This concept began in the poems as the narrator’s foolish pride, which was quickly dashed by Cynthia’s contempt. After suffering much abuse, the narrator, in poem 2.11, fantasizes that Cynthia herself, without the narrator to praise her, will suffer the - 13 - contempt (contemnens, 5) of a traveler, who passes her burial spot. The same emotion is felt in poem 3.25, a goodbye poem whose passion belies its sincerity. Here, fastus

(15) is modified by superbos, as the narrator imagines Cynthia as an exclusa:

exclusa inque uicem fastus patiare superbos, et quae fecisti facta queraris anus! (15-16)

and shut out, may you suffer proud contempt in your turn, an old hag, and lament that what you once did is done now to you! (3.25.15-16)

In attempting to keep my translations close to the original text, I strove to preserve Propertius’ rhetorical effects. While I did not follow a metrical formula, I did try to imitate Propertian effects of word placement and also the statement-and- response nature of the Propertian elegiac couplet. Rhetoric can be thought of as the way a writer constructs his arguments, the form into which she or he puts ideas and examples to make the most compelling case. In poetry, persuasiveness is based on sound and rhythm as much as on ideas. I do not strive to make aural references to

Latin texts, yet one can approximate Latin’s rhetorical effects in English. Comparing a passage of Latin with my English version allows the reader to observe how I have attempted to find a suitable substitute for the anaphora in the original. I thought it was important to give a sense of the rhythmic force of this passage. Since Latin is an inflected language, whereas English is not, I was not able to begin each phrase with “me.”

I therefore decided to move the “me” to the end of each line or half-line. Here is the

Latin for 2.6.9-14, as published in Complete Elegies:

me iuuenum pictae facies, me nomina laedunt, me tener in cunis et sine uoce puer; me laedet, si multa tibi dabit oscula mater, me soror et cum qua dormit amica simul: omnia me laedent: timidus sum (ignosce timori): et miser in tunica suspicor esse uirum.

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And here is my translation:

Portraits of youths and their names destroy me — the tender voiceless boy in his cradle destroys me! Your mother destroys me, if she gives you lots of kisses, so do your sister and her girlfriend, who sleeps with her. Everything destroys me: I’m cowardly (pardon my fear) and in my madness I suspect there’s a man inside that dress.

Propertius, more than either of the other two Roman elegists, delights in juxtaposing vastly different tones within the same poem. Sometimes, these diverging tones are paralleled by a distinction between the immortal and mortal worlds. In poem

2.25, for instance, the poet contrasts mythological figures, who suffered because of their devotion, with the modern Roman man, who cannot decide what type of girl he likes best. The language parallels the difference in status: “It was better to be turned to stone by the Gorgon’s face, / or even if we suffered the Caucasian vultures” (2.25.13-14) for “Gorgonis et satius fuit obdurescere uultu, / Caucasias etiam si pateremur auis,” followed by “you’ve seen some of our girls: both types drive you nuts” (2.25.44) for uidistis nostras, utraque forma rapit. Other times, Propertius’ purpose is to show how similar the divine and human worlds are. In poem 1.13, Propertius brings the immortal and mortal together to intensify a sexual image:

nec mirum, cum sit Ioue digna et proxima Ledae et Ledae partu gratior, una tribus; illa sit Inachiis et blandior heroinis, illa suis uerbis cogat amare Iovem.

No wonder, when Jove’d do her — she looks just like Leda, she’s even prettier than Leda’s child, one of the three. She’s sexier than Inachian heroines. With her words, she forces even Jove to love her. (1.13.29-32)

There are many passages in Propertius’ poetry where the informal tone requires - 15 - the use of vulgarity. I have found this quality provokes a strong reaction in readers, some of whom believe its use in English is not appropriate to the Latin original. I believe that vulgarity is necessary in English to get across the effects of anger, exultation, surprise, jealousy, and humor in the original. Often, a word of direct address provides such a challenge for the translator. In 1.3.39, improbe is such a case (cp. 1.1.6 and

2.8.14). It depends largely on one’s reading of the tone of Cynthia’s complaint in this passage. If one imagines her using high-flown language to voice her complaint in a calm, collected manner, then terms such as “villain” or “shameless man” might work. If, however, we imagine someone who is worldly and given to lascivious behavior, then it is not a stretch to imagine that person using violently provocative language. The rhythm, too, and the placement of the word improbe seem to me to call for special emphasis.

Therefore, I translated it by the common American term “asshole”:

o utinam talis perducas, improbe, noctes, me miseram qualis semper habere iubes!

If only you could experience the nights you always force me to endure, you asshole! (1.3.39-40)

McCulloch’s version captures the mood and language accurately, though he translated noctes as a singular, perhaps to highlight the particular occasion:

Damn you, may you lead the sort of night that I am forced to, you debauched drunkard.

Likewise, in poem 1.14, the intensely sexual imagery of the Latin provides the tonal suggestion for a rough vernacular translation of lines 15-16. In particular, the emphasized rhythmic effect of placing nulla at the beginning of line 16 calls for a similarly - 16 - emphatic expression in English. Lines 9-16 reveal a gradually building fervor, interweaving low and high elements:

nam siue optatam mecum trahit illa quietem, seu facili totum ducit amore diem, tum mihi Pactoli ueniunt sub tecta liquores, et legitur Rubris gemma sub aequoribus; tum mihi cessuros spondent mea gaudia reges: quae maneant, dum me Fata perire uolent! nam quis diuitiis aduerso gaudet amore? nulla mihi tristi praemia sint Venere!

When she prolongs our hotly desired rendezvous or drives our whole day in lingering sex, then the Pactolus’ waters flow under my roof, and a pearl is plucked from the Ruber! Then my joys promise kings will yield to me! May they remain till the Fates command my death! Who enjoys wealth when their love is down? Prizes ain’t worth shit with Venus angry! (1.14.9-16)

Other instances that occasion vulgarity refer to the violent emotions associated with the sex act, in particular the jealousy arising from thoughts of one’s beloved having sex with another partner:

atque utinam, si forte pios eduximus annos, ille uir in medio fiat amore lapis!

And I hope, if by chance I’ve lived a pious life, that man may turn to stone while he’s doing you! (2.9a.47-48)

In this case, I translated in medio amore by “while he’s doing you.” It seems an appropriate rendering, the English in fact no more vulgar than the Latin. In 2.16.13-14, I took the literal Latin word membrum and the explicitly sexual word libido as keys to the following interpretation:

at tu nunc nostro, Venus, o succurre dolori, rumpat ut assiduis membra libidinibus!

But you, o Venus, help us in our suffering: let him bust his dick from too much fucking! (2.16.13-14) - 17 -

Another purpose for using vernacular is humor, as in poem 3.23, on the subject of the narrator’s lost or stolen writing tablets. In this case, the poem purports to quote an actual message (let’s imagine a text message!) from a mistress to her absent lover:

forsitan haec illis fuerint mandata tabellis: “Irascor quoniam es, lente, moratus heri. an tibi nescio quae uisa est formosior? an tu non bona de nobis crimina ficta iacis?”

Perhaps those tablets carried the following messages: “I’m so pissed, you loser! Why were you late yesterday? You think you’ve found a hotter girlfriend? You say I cheated on you? Bullshit!” (3.23.11-14)

Perfidus, the vocative I have chosen to translate as “faithless bitch” in 2.9a.28 and “slut” in 2.18b.19 (I translated impia as “whore” in 2.9a.20 and improba as “slut” in 2.8.14), makes a return appearance in book four as “bastard,” when Cynthia’s ghost returns to shower blame on the narrator. Significantly, on this occasion, as on many others, a reference to the sexual act is nearby (4.7.19 in this case, saepe Venus trivio commissa est).

Whenever possible, I tried to preserve Propertius’ metaphors in English, as I believe metaphor is one of the principal strengths great poets wield, and I wanted to expose English readers to this poet’s invention. For 2.20.23-26, I have translated:

interea nobis non numquam ianua mollis, non numquam lecti copia facta tui. nec mihi muneribus nox ulla est empta beatis: quidquid eram, hoc animi gratia magna tui.

besides, for us, the entrance is always easy, always the abundant acts in your bed. Not one of my nights was bought with fancy presents: whatever I was came from the great generosity of your spirit.

The key word in this passage is ianua in line 23. Coupled with lecti in the following line, it possesses a highly sexual charge. Ianua, of course, is the word for doorway, and the - 18 - entire metaphor of the amator exclusus can be seen as a sexual one, with the locked, guarded, doorway to the mistress’ abode standing for her guarded sexual organs, which the lover is at great pains to enter. Here, though, I have used “entrance” instead of

“doorway,” as multiple connotations are at play in this passage. I have translated nobis in line 23 as a first person plural; it could be translated as first person singular, but the emphasis on “you” and “I” in the previous line (“cum de me et de te compita nulla tacent”) suggests reading nobis as inclusive, indicating a shared experience. So it is not “I am always able to gain easy entrance,” but “the entrance is always easy for us.” This

“entrance” then means something different from a man gaining access to a woman; it means access to shared joy for both of them.

Sexual metaphor is one of the most powerful kinds of metaphor in Propertius’ poetry. This appears in standard poetic tropes, such as the boy Love with his bow and arrows and also in a trope Propertius develops to great lengths — that of love as a military adventure. The military metaphor is important, as it strengthens the claim

Propertius makes that love poetry is of equal importance to epic poetry and that a life devoted to love is preferable to a life of war. We find, in 1.6.29, the admission, “I wasn’t born to praise or fighting,” followed by the explanation, “the Fates forced me to my own kind of military.” Many other examples follow. In 2.1, the programmatic poem of his second book, Propertius compares sex, and by implication erotic poetry, not only to epic but specifically to martial epic:

seu nuda erepto mecum luctatur amictu, tum uero longas condimus Iliadas:

When, nude, her dress ripped away, she wrestles with me, then truly we compose lengthy Iliads. (2.1.13-14)

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Later in the same poem, Propertius uses the standard rhetorical trope of comparing aptitudes (fates the Greeks would call them), putting sex (and again by implication erotic poetry) on a par with the occupations of soldiers, sailors, farmers, and shepherds, albeit the language describing the lover’s typical act (“nos contra angusto versamus proelia lecto”) differs drastically from what we imagine of the others’ activities:

nauita de uentis, de tauris narrat arator, enumerat miles uulnera, pastor ouis; nos contra angusto uersamus proelia lecto: qua pote quisque, in ea conterat arte diem.

The sailor tells of winds, of bulls the farmer, the soldier recounts wounds, the shepherd sheep. Writhing against one another on a narrow bed’s our battle: as far as each is able, let him, in that art, waste the day. (2.1.43-46)

The lives of soldier and lover are contrasted again in poem 2.7. Propertius is constantly aware of the expectations of the Roman military state, particularly the demand that he himself should produce poetry celebrating that state. As part of his recusatio, his argued statement of inability to perform this task, Propertius, addressing Maecenas in poems

2.1 and 3.9, claims it is not in his nature. However, Propertius’ desire to cast love as a military activity shows how strongly this cultural imperative played on him and also his great ability to use irony to twist the state’s values:

unde mihi patriis natos praebere triumphis? nullus de nostro sanguine miles erit. quod si uera meae comitarem castra puellae, non mihi sat magnus Castoris iret equus.

Where will I get sons to offer for triumphs of the state? None from my blood will be a soldier. But if I were lodging in real camps — my girl’s — Castor’s great horse wouldn’t go fast enough for me. (2.7.13-16)

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Wealth can be seen as a metaphor for sex in 2.16.17-18 and 2.32.41-42. Poetry as medicine is the metaphor in 1.10.18. Mythology works by metaphor, and Propertius’ vision of death is couched in the metaphor of the two waters, two different paths one may take to the underworld. In 4.7.55-56 he contrasts them as follows: “For separate resting places are allotted beyond the vile stream, / and each party is rowed across different waters” (for “nam gemina est sedes turpem sortita per amnem, / turbaque diuersa remigat omnis aqua”). At the end of the final poem of his final book (4.11.101-

102), he returns to this metaphor: “…may I be worthy by merit, / my bones conveyed by the honorable waters” (for … “sim digna merendo, / cuius honoratis ossa uehantur aquis”).

The other two Roman Elegists whose work we have, Tibullus and Ovid, present fewer difficulties to the translator in terms of their language. Tibullus works with many of the same motifs and concepts as Propertius. However, he is much less inclined to irony; nor does he mix high and low language the way Propertius does. Tibullus’ use of the elegiac couplet is less sharply defined than Propertius’. Propertius uses the couplet as an expressive vehicle, with the pentameter often reflecting, sometimes commenting on, sometimes changing tone from, the hexameter. In Tibullus, one line flows after another, with less sense of the couplet functioning as a unit. Here are the opening six lines of the first elegy in Tibullus’ first book, in my translation:

Diuitias alius fuluo sibi congerat auro et teneat culti iugera multa soli, quem labor adsiduus uicino terreat hoste, Martia cui somnos classica pulsa fugent : me mea paupertas uita traducat inerti, dum meus adsiduo luceat igne focus.

Let another pile up mountains of shining gold - 21 -

and acquire many acres of farmland; let him fear for his hard work when his enemy’s near, may the battle cry put to flight his sleep : as for me, let my poverty convert me from inactivity, until my hearth shines with a hearty flame.

If we compare this to the opening of Propertius’ 1.1, we can see right away a difference in tone. It is challenging, in Tibullus’ case, to find words of an appropriate elegance, with mellifluous rhythms that match those of the original. However, there is little difficulty identifying the tone and maintaining it throughout the poem.

Ovid also uses motifs and characters familiar to us. His particular contribution to Roman elegy is that the sexual language and subject matter is specific, more so than either Propertius’ or Tibullus’. The tone seems to present some sharp turns, but in fact they are mainly conventional. There is not, in Ovid’s Amores, the same emotional intensity one finds in Propertius’ poems. This, again, makes finding the words to translate Ovid less of a challenge. Here is my translation of the opening of the first poem of the first book of Ovid’s love poems:

Arma graui numero uiolentaque bella parabam edere, materia conueniente modis. par erat inferior uersus; risisse Cupido dicitur atque unum surripuisse pedem. ‘quis tibi, saeue puer, dedit hoc in carmina iuris? Pieridum uates, non tua, turba sumus. quid, si praeripiat flauae Venus arma Mineruae, uentilet accensas flaua Minerua faces? quis probet in siluis Cererem regnare iugosis, lege pharetratae uirginis arua coli? crinibus insignem quis acuta cuspide Phoebum instruat, Aoniam Marte mouente lyram? sunt tibi magna, puer, nimiumque potentia regna: cur opus adfectas ambitiose nouum? an, quod ubique, tuum est? tua sunt Heliconia tempe? uix etiam Phoebo iam lyra tuta sua est?

Weapons and bloody wars in heavy meters I was preparing to publish, the mode fitting the matter. - 22 -

The second verse was the same; Cupid, they say, laughed and snatched one foot away. ‘Who, cruel Boy, gave you this right over our songs?’ The Muses’ poet, not yours, are we. What, if Venus should snatch golden Minerva’s weapons, should golden Minerva brandish lit marriage torches? Who would approve that Ceres should rule in mountain forests, that the lands of the quiver-bearing virgin be rightfully cultivated? Who would assume Phoebus’ famous hair and sharp spear, while Mars plays on the Aonian lyre? There are many great and powerful realms for you, Boy : why does your ambition try to win this new work? Is everything now yours? Does Helicon now belong to you? Is Phoebus’ lyre still safely his?

Let us compare this to Propertius 3.3.13-24. In Ovid’s passage, the narrator blandly chastises Cupid. His argument — “to each his own” — is (as the poet knows) not effective, since Cupid should by rights be expected to influence erotic poetry. Ovid synopsizes the dilemma in a question: “sunt tibi magna, puer, nimiumque potentia regna

/ cur opus adfectas ambitiose nouum?” (lines 13-14), “There are many great and powerful realms for you, Boy / why does your ambition try to win this new work?”

Propertius, by contrast, has Apollo attacking the narrator, contrasting his ambition with his natural gifts. As often in his poetry, Propertius expounds on this idea with a variety of metaphors: poetry is represented as a river, a field, a book read by a girl, and a sea.

Propertius is able to summarize this in the effective sententia: “mollia sunt paruis prata terenda rotis” (line 18), which I translated as “small wheels are for tilling soft fields.”

Ovid’s thoughts are rhetorical, the language used to convey them functional. Propertius uses unconventional language to condense and stretch ideas.

As mentioned earlier in this essay, I had read Ezra Pound’s Homage To Sextus Propertius prior to working on my own translations. Although I did not refer to the Homage - 23 - during my translation process, I later found that certain phrases of Pound’s had lodged themselves in my ear. For the opening line of poem 3.16, Pound (Homage III) has

“Midnight, and a letter comes to me from our mistress.” What I like about this is how it tries to parallel the word placement of the Latin’s “Nox media, et dominae mihi uenit epistula nostrae”. Following Pound, I too used the historical present: “Middle of the night, and a letter comes from my mistress.” Another opening of Pound’s I admire is

“Me happy, night, night full of brightness; / Oh couch made happy by my long delectations” (Homage, VII) for “O me felicem! o nox mihi candida! et o tu / lectule deliciis facte beate meis!” (2.15.1-2). This time my solution was quite different: “Lucky me! radiant night! and you / couch made fertile by my pleasures!” I found I could circumvent Pound by remaining close to the ground, as it were, closer to Propertius’ original grammatical and syntactical impulses.

The Homage is prescient in its approach to text and to the concept of the cultural other. Many poets today compose versions of texts based on sound alone, or take an idea from a source and make variations on it, or re-combine textual elements using language-recognition software. Pound opened up this area, with its potential for stirring volatile debate, with his approach in the Homage. It is not a work of scholarship; it is a compelling work of poetry. Especially surprising is the willful and critical way

Pound recombined Propertius’ text, almost as if he were extrapolating from the shakiness of textual tradition. The Homage is a reminder that a translator is a creator of literature.

It seems to me that translation reveals, more acutely than any other form of interpretation, two opposed readings of the poetry of Propertius. Quintilian wrote,

“The most brief and elegant exponent [of elegiac verse] is in my opinion Tibullus; there - 24 - are those who prefer Propertius. Ovid is less restrained than either, Gallus more harsh” (I.O. 10.1.93; translation by M. Winterbottom in Russell and Winterbottom,

Ancient Literary Criticism, 394). It is possible to interpret Quintilian’s comments to mean that Propertius possesses, to a lesser degree than Tibullus, the same stylistic qualities of being tersus and elegans, which we might define in English as “polished” and “rhetorically refined.” In that view, Propertius is a balanced, predictable poet, lacking the ability or desire to convey strong emotion.

I would argue, on the contrary, that the subject of all Roman elegy is intense emotion and that, in their different ways, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid all strive for linguistic, syntactical and stylistic means to convey the turbulent emotional landscape of the lover. Ovid characterized Propertius’ poetry as blandus (Tr. 2.465; 5.1.17) and tener

(Ars 3.333). Blandus in the world of Roman Elegy means something like “smooth” or

“alluring.” Propertius styles himself a blandus amator in poem 2.3 (l. 16), which I translated as “Mr. Smooth.” Blandus is also a term Propertius’ narrator uses of his poetry when he claims (in I.8b.39-40) to have won Cynthia not through gifts but by his words (“hanc ego non auro, non Indis flectere conchis, / sed potui blandi carminis obsequio”), which I have translated as “I was able to sway her not with gold, nor with

Indian conches, / but with the blandishment of alluring poetry.” It may be that Ovid is referring more to the character of Propertius’ poetry as a tool for seduction than to its linguistic qualities. Although tener can mean “weak” or “soft,” I believe Ovid is using the word to describe Propertius as a someone devoted to sensual pleasures, a decadent.

If we take it as a given that Propertius’ poetry is meant to convey violent emotion, then we should expect the matter of the poetry — the vocabulary, the grammar, and the syntax — to reflect that violence, and that in fact is what we find. As - 25 - regards the poetry of Tibullus and Ovid, I would characterize both poets’ work as more polished than Propertius’, where polished means that loose ends are tied up, meter is used in more predictable ways, syntax follows more recognizable patterns, and tone is kept more consistent. Propertius ends up being more inventive, and therefore more exciting, as a poet, because he allows loose ends to remain loose, experiments more with effects of meter, pursues syntax whose condensed, ambiguous nature suits his subject matter, and juxtaposes drastically different tonal effects. Translation has the ability, and the duty, to express a judgment on these matters.

Guide to Further Reading

For those who want to delve more deeply into some of the ideas discussed in this essay,

I enthusiastically recommend the following texts. Betty Radice, in her introduction to the Penguin edition, gives an excellent, clear, explication of the manuscript tradition and much else. W. G. Shepherd’s “Translator’s Foreword” to the same volume gives a personal account of his battle with “Sextus Pound.” Michael C. J. Putnam’s commentary on Tibullus raises the commentary itself to a literary form and is particularly good on the idealizing nature of Tibullus’ elegiac imagination. I highly recommend as well

Putnam’s essays on Propertius and Tibullus in Essays on Latin Lyric, Elegy, and Epic. W. R.

Johnson’s foreword to Charm is a tour de force of cultural criticism. Georg Luck, in The

Latin Love Elegy, remains the most elegant and perceptive overview. Pound should be consulted: not only the Homage, readily found in his collection Personae, but also the illuminating pedagogue of The ABC of Reading: “LISTEN to the sound that it makes.” And - 26 - for approaches of mind to literature that are based on personal dedication, refer as well to the essays of Charles Olson (Collected Prose, 306): “Best thing to do is to dig one thing or place or man until you yourself know more abt (sic) that than is possible to any other man.” Tutus eris… - 27 -

Bibliography of Secondary Sources

Carrier, C. trans. 1963. The Poems Of Propertius. Bloomington, IN.

Conington, J., trans. 1866. The Aeneid Of Virgil. New York.

Green, P., trans. 1982. Ovid: The Erotic Poems. London.

Greene, E. 1998. The Erotics of Domination: Male Desire and the Mistress in Latin Love

Poetry. Baltimore and London.

Humphries, R., trans. 1957. Ovid: The Art Of Love. Bloomington, IN.

Johnson, W. R. 2009. A Latin Lover In Ancient Rome: Readings In Propertius And His Genre.

Columbus, OH.

Luck, G. 1959. The Latin Love Elegy. London.

Katz, V., trans. 1995. Charm. With a foreword by W. R. Johnson and introduction by

Katz. Los Angeles.

______. 2004. The Complete Elegies Of Sextus Propertius. With introduction and

notes by Katz. Princeton and Oxford.

Lee, G. trans. 1994. Propertius: The Poems. With an introduction by O. Lyne and notes

by G. Lee. Oxford.

McCulloch, J. P., trans. 1972. The Poems Of Sextus Propertius. Berkeley.

Olson, C. 1997. Collected Prose. Berkeley.

Pound, E. 1960 (first published in 1934). The ABC Of Reading. New York.

______. 1990 (first published in 1926). Personae: The Shorter Poems. Revised edition prepared by L. Baechler and A. W. Litz. New York.

Putnam, M. C. J., ed., trans. 1973. Tibullus. A Commentary. Norman, OK.

______. 1982. Essays On Latin Lyric, Elegy, And Epic. Princeton.

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Richardson, Jr., L., ed., trans. 2006. Propertius Elegies I-IV. Reprint of 1977 edition with

minor corrections. Norman, OK.

Russell, D.A. and M. Winterbottom, eds. 1988. Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal

Texts in New Translations. Oxford.

Shepherd, W. G., trans. 1985. Propertius: The Poems. With an introduction by B. Radice

and notes by W. G. Shepherd. Harmondsworth (Penguin).

Slavitt, D. R., trans. 2002. Propertius In Love: The Elegies. With a foreword by M. S.

Santirocco. Berkeley.

Warden, J., trans. 1972. The Poems Of Propertius. Indianapolis and New York.

Watts, A. E., trans. 1961. The Poems Of Sextus Propertius. Chichester.