Many Transformations

[larryhammer]

Ovidius Naso (8):

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen.

Golding (1567):

Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge, I purpose to entreate,
Ye gods vouchsafe (for you are they ywrought this wondrous feate)
To further this mine enterprise. And from the world begunne,
Graunt that my verse may to my time, his course directly runne.

Dryden (1693):

Of bodies chang'd to various forms I sing:
Ye gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with celestial heat;
Till I my long laborious work complete,
And add perpetual tenor to my rhymes,
Deduc'd from nature's birth to Caesar's times.

Gregory (1958):

Now I shall tell of things that change, new being
Out of old: since you, O Gods, created
Mutable arts and gifts, give me the voice
To tell the shifting story of the world
From its beginning to the present hour.

Melville (1986):

Of bodies changed to other forms I tell;
You Gods, who have yourselves wrought every change,
Inspire my enterprise and lead my lay
In one continuous song from nature's first
Remote beginnings to our modern times.

Slavitt (1994):

Bodies, I have in mind, and how they can change to assume
new shapes—I ask the help of the gods, who know the trick:
inspire me now, change me, let me glimpse the secret
and sing, better than I know how, of the world's birthing,
the creation of all things from the first to the very latest.

Hughes (1994*):

Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed
Into different bodies.

I call upon the supernatural powers
Who first invented
These transmogrifications
In the stuff of life.
You did it for your own amusement.
Descend again, be pleased to reanimate
This revival of those marvels.
Reveal, now, exactly
How they were performed
From the beginning
Up to this very moment.

Raeburn (2004):

Changes of shape, new forms, are the theme which my spirit impels me
now to recite. Inspire me, O gods (it is you who have even
transformed my art), and spin me a thread from the world's beginning
down to my own lifetime, in one continuous poem.

Golding is starched-collar Elizabethan; these lines don't show him at his best. Dryden makes me headdesk -- the swift first couplet are two lines of Ovid, then four padded lines for Ovid's next two; also, his perpetual and deduced are Latin, not English. I'm not happy with Gregory's line breaks, but he flows well; Melville is more my style. Slavitt's translation is very explain-y: rather than footnote, he writes it out in the verse; don't trust him for literal meaning, but he's very readable. Hughes is, of course, a master of words, but hexameters ⇒ free verse makes me look askance, and the gods' amusement is as editorial as Slavitt's glipsed secret. As is Raeburn's spun thread -- an effective image, but not in the original [ETA2: see comment] -- and worse, his verse drives me buggy.

It is possible I have enough translations.

* ETA1: This is the date of first publication, in the anthology After Ovid, rather than the 1997 collection Tales from Ovid.

---L.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge

I like the beat this line, though. It's like the first line of a spell.

[larryhammer]

Yes -- Golding, when he doesn't trip over his own syntax, can sing.

---L.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

This is why this is my favorite LJ in the entire, entire world.

[larryhammer]

Why thankee.

---L.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

How lovely to read all the texts in a row like that. I think my favorite is the Golding, but I do tend to like English better before modernized spelling!

[larryhammer]

The contrasts are revealing, lined up. I prefer Melville, in this case, but Golding runs second for me.

---L.

[larryhammer]

BWT, I only just noticed your Hoccleve icon. Bwah!

---L.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

*grins* I don't use it often, because I don't know that many people who'd get the joke. But I love Hoccleve best when he's whiny.

[larryhammer]

I confess I don't read him much because of the whine. In fact, I'm not sure what he's written that isn't whiny.

---L.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

I like Hughes' free verse -- because Latin verse is so compressed with meaning that translating to English verse means you have to lose something or change the metaphors. Whereas, if you go to free verse, you can keep the meaning and image, if not the rhythms.

[larryhammer]

Hughes is good enough at it, that I'll follow him. But with hesitation.

It helps, in translations, that English has an extremely rich vocabulary. More freedom of choice, which gives you a chance of not changing the meaning.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Melville was the only one i really liked; Golding came in second, though.

The Slavitt was so PLAIN and the Hughes didn't seem like poetry at all.

[larryhammer]

Melville is my usual reading version. The verse is taut and brisk and respects the line breaks enough to enjamb mostly to purpose. And when I work out my own translation, I find he's is pretty close to Ovid's sense, best I can make out.

---L.

[larryhammer]

Oh, and the Hughes is definitely poetry. Read it aloud -- you'll find yourself almost chanting the lines. As a recitation piece, it's probably pretty effective.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'll give it another try--I'm sure you're right (I don't have any objections to free verse).

deducite

[(Anonymous)]

actually, "deduco" is a technical term in weaving for spinning out/drawing out yarn, used several times by Ovid (Lewis & Short list "Metamorphoses" 4.36, "Amores" 1.14.7, and "Heroides" 9.77). From there, the verb is metaphorically applied to "spinning out" a story (e.g., Horace, "Epistles" 2.1.225, "Satires" 2.1.4, Ovid "ex Ponto" 1.5.13, "Tristia" 1.1.39; Lewis & Short actually list "deducite" from the opening of the Metamophoses under this metaphorical use). Some people think that Ovid is alluding to the poet Greek Callimachus here, who hated big overblown epic poetry, and resolved to write "slender" (i.e., refined and erudite elegiac) verse instead (he writes in the opening of his "Aetia" that Apollo came to him and said "singer, raise your victims to be as fat as possible, but, my good man, keep your Muse slender"). "deductus" ("fine-spun") is one Latin translation of the Greek word "slender", "leptaleos" (see, e.g., Virgil's translation of Callimachus' line in his "Eclogues" 6.3-5: "Cynthius aurem / vellit et admonuit: 'pastorem, Tityre, pinguis / pascere oportet ovis, **deductum** dicere carmen'"), so when Ovid asks the gods to "spin out" a song for him, he is suggesting that his Metamorphoses won't be big and overblown like the Iliad or the Aeneid, but more graceful, with elegiac touches. The more you know!

Re: deducite

[larryhammer]

Huh. Okay, I hadn't realized that (though I'd heard about the Callimachus connection here). Thanks.

---L.