The most famous poem of Catullus is one of his shortest, Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. Here is Ezra Pound‘s translation: I hate and love. Why? You may ask but It beats me. I feel it done to me, and ache. [Read more…]
What happens when Butler’s 1912 Loeb translation of the second elegy of the third book of Propertius, the one that Pound managed to mangle with a Marcian vintage, is declaimed in an approximation of the Poundian delivery? Meanwhile let us return to our wonted round of song; let the heart [Read more…]
When Ezra Pound’s Homage To Sextus Propertius was published in Poetry in March 1919 it was badly received by several leading classical scholars of the day for its infelicities and errors of translation. The most notorious response came in the form of a letter written by William Gardner Hale to [Read more…]
In the fourth Canto of The Liberation of Jerusalem, the seductive Syrian sorceress Armida is sent to charm the Christians and succeeds in leading a number of frail knights astray. ne nos inducas in tentationem sed libera nos a malo But where is the Christian knight of our company who [Read more…]
I am reading my way through Max Wickert‘s powerful modern verse translation of Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, a translation that is faithful to the original and at the same time immensely readable. The dynamic opening stanza of the The Liberation of Jerusalem, its fidelity to the original combined with its [Read more…]
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