Carmina

Gaius Valerius Catullus, Len Krisak

• Publisher: Fyfield Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781847772596
• eBook ISBN: 9781847774934
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient Poetry
• Index: Literature

Catullus is a companion of lovers and of those whom love has disappointed. He is also a satirical and epigrammatic writer who savagely consoles with laughter. Carmina captures in English both the mordant, scathing wit and also the concise tenderness, the famous love for reluctant Lesbia who is made present in these new versions. A range of English metres and rhymes evokes the many modes and moods of this most engaging, erotic and influential of Latin poets. Of Len Krisak's translations of Horace, Frederic Raphael writes, '[He] enables us both to enjoy a fresh voice and to hear (and see), very distinctly, what lies behind and within his unintimidated rescripts'. Again in Carmina Krisak works his precise magic.

Carmina

I

This slender scroll of verse my pumice stone

Has polished off just now, I send to none

But you, Cornelius, for you’re the one

Who thought my nothings somethings way back when,

5 When only you, in all of Italy,

Had dared to write three hard-won, learnèd tomes

Teaching – by Jupiter! – our history, Rome’s.

So take this chapbook; take it for your own.

For what it’s worth – or is – Muse, let it then

10 Outlive more than one life through all its poems.

I.3, Cornelius: Cornelius Nepos (110–24 BC), Roman historian and friend of Cicero.

II

Sparrow, my beloved girl’s delight;

The one she holds and plays with in her lap;

The hungry pet she gives her fingertip

(And often teases so it takes a nip

5 When it might please her glowing heart’s desire

To make some small, inconsequential jape

That eases sadness by your little bite,

I think, and tamp a bit her passion’s fire):

I only wish that I, like her, could play

10 With you, and drive my heart-deep cares away.

II.1, Sparrow: a possible pun on penis.

IIb

This pleases me the way the stories say

The golden apple pleased that sprinting girl,

Slackening her long-tied belt, which fell away.

IIb.2, that sprinting girl: Atalanta, who offered to marry any prospective suitor who could best her in a footrace. By dropping golden apples in her path, Milanion (sometimes Hippomedon) succeeded.

III

O Venuses and Cupids, weep your sorrow.

And anyone in love with beauty, weep.

The sparrow of my dearest girl lies dead:

The darling of my darling girl; her sparrow.

5 She always loved it more than her own eyes,

Since it was sweet, and it would recognise

Her like a girl who knows her very mother.

He wasn’t apt to leave her lap or keep

Away, but hopping here and there, would cheep

10 Away to please his mistress – and no other.

Now he goes that umbrous road of dread

No one returns from; where there’s no tomorrow.

I curse you, Orcus, every cursèd shade,

Devouring all the beauty ever made

15 And stealing from me such a lovely sparrow.

Oh, evil deed! O wretched passerine!

The wrong you’ve done this darling girl of mine

Has left her dear, dear eyes all swollen red.

III.13, Orcus: god of the underworld, sometimes Hades or Dis.

IV

That’s my last yacht you see there, friends. And she would tell

You, if she were alive, she was the fastest ship

Afloat; that nothing timber-crafted could outstrip

Her then. Oh, she could fly when she was under sail,

5 Or outrun anything relying on its oars –

A truth the worst of all the Adriatic shores

Couldn’t deny. No island in the Cyclades,

Not famous Rhodes, or Thrace with its Propontic seas.

Nor could the Pontic’s dismal gulf, where she – a yacht-

10 In-waiting – once was just a clutch of verdant trees.

(For on Cytorus’ heights, there in that sylvan spot,

She whispered with the sibilance of silken leaves.)

Pontic Amastris and you, boxwood-clad Cytorus:

She says you knew this then and know it now as well.

15 She says that long before her birth – this is her tale –

She masted there atop your highest peak, then dipped

The blades that came from those tall slopes, deep in your waves.

From there, she brought her master through seas like no others,

Whether the port or starboard winds called, or, together

20 All at once, fair Jupiter, with favouring weather,

Was blowing on the stern-sheets. For that vessel’s sake,

We never prayed to any gods ashore back then,

When she came sailing from far water...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Carmina
• About the Author
• Copyright