While shopping for a copy of Catullus's Poems for a friend's birthday, I decided to spend a little extravagantly and pick up one for myself. I knew I wanted to buy a version with the facing Latin for the gift, so I picked up the Peter Green translation. Here's Catullus's poem 7:
You'd like to know how many of your kissesLacking the criteria to decide on the best English translation for myself, I settled on the Penguin Classics version, translated by Peter Whigman, because it was cheap and compact. Here is the same poem as it appears in this edition (formatted to match the text):
would be enough and over, Lesbia, for me?
Match them to every grain of Libyan sand in
silphium-rich Cyrene, from the shrine of
torrid oracular Jupiter to the sacred
sepulchre of old Battus; reckon their total
equal to all those stars that in the silent
night look down on the stolen loves of mortals.
That's the number of times I need to kiss you,
That's what would satisfy your mad Catullus—
far too many for the curious to figure,
or for an evil tongue to work you mischief!
Curious to learnThe Latin is, unfortunately, Greek to me, but I'll include it below the cut.
how many kiss-
es of your lips
might satisfy
my lust for you,
Lesbia, know
as many as
are grains of sand
between the oracle
of sweltering Jove
at Ammon &
the tomb of old
Battiades the First,
in Libya
where the silphium grows;
alternatively,
as many as
the sky has stars
at night shining
in quiet upon
the furtive loves
of mortal men,
as many kiss-
es of your lips
as these might slake
your own obsessed Catullus, dear,
so many that
no prying eye
can keep the count
nor spiteful tongue fix
their total in
a fatal formula.
Quaeris, quot mihi basiationesI'll of course appreciate your strong opinions about the relative merits of the translations, if you're inclined to offer them; the differences between most poems don't seem so stark. I'll only note that the italics at least seem superfluous in the Green, and the formatting irritating in the Penguin, before begging off on this subject of translations from languages I can't read. Having posed the burning classics question, I'm off to take in Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane, surely a seminal text of our times. Posted by Kriston at August 18, 2006 4:21 PM
tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.
quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae
lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis
oraclum Iovis inter aestuosi
et Batti veteris sacrum sepulcrum;
aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,
furtivos hominum vident amores:
tam te basia multa basiare
vesano satis et super Catullo est,
quae nec pernumerare curiosi
possint nec mala fascinare lingua.
i don't know latin either, but i do know that the penguin version is much sexier. but do we want faithful translations of stuff that would sound schlocky to us in this day and age, or entertaining interpretations that appeal to our current aesthetic? whether or not it's a good translation, i want the sexy one.
Posted by: JM at August 18, 2006 5:54 PMAs someone who knows Latin, I'd say that the Penguin translation is more literal (except for the annoying formatting), and Green's translation takes a bit of license in an attempt to reproduce the feeling of the original Latin. The italics correspond to the emphatic repetition of quot...quam...quam...tam ("how many"..."as many as"..."as many as"..."that's how many"). In my opinion, though, Green overdoes it. Personally, I think that no translation can capture the Latin of this poem pretty well, but that's exactly the kind of overeducated opinion a graduate education buys you. If I had to choose between these two, I think I'd take the Penguin.
You can find a literal (and pehaps unpoetic) translation of the poem here.
Posted by: Akhilleus at August 18, 2006 9:48 PMI beg to differ, I don't think the Penguin translation is faithful at all...
"might satisfy my lust for you", where does that come from? "sint satis superque" is literally "would be enough and over".
I'll concede "as many as are grains of sand" is a more direct translation than "Match them to every grain", but the rest of the sentence is both more precise and more interesting in Green.
"all those stars that in the silent night" is IMHO more precise (and better) for "sidera multa, cum tacet nox".
All in all, I like the Green version better, it also sounds to me more modern. All that said, I'm not an English native speaker, so I'm not to be taken too seriously on that; but I studied and loved the Latin version (also in its Italian translation).
Posted by: Andrea at August 19, 2006 3:50 AMI wrote out a long comment in which I explained how the Penguin version is not very literal at all, much longer than Andrea's, but then IE ate it, so you'll just have to trust me that Akhilleus is dead wrong.
Posted by: ben wolfson at August 19, 2006 3:52 PMLet me add my voice to the chorus: the Green translation is more literal, starting with the first word (a verb, not an adjective). (And Whigman's "furtive" for "furtivos," while fine, is not so much literal as slavish).
This leaves open the more important questions of which better represents the "feel" of Catullus, and of which is the better poem in English. Both are matters of taste and interpetation; Green is certainly more conventional, not just in format but in diction and meter. Some people prefer that; others don't.
But both translations strike me as quite lovely, and I thank you for sharing them.
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