Translation for literary appreciation

Abstract

During the summer quarter of 1924 the students of the Peabody College course, Latin 12, were given certain exercises in translating Catullus, intended to produce literary appreciation. The processes were carried out at three levels, or stages, as follows: 1. The usual classroom exercises were mainly analytical, to get the meaning through the fundamental matters of vocabulary, syntax, and the details of metrical form. 2. The students were then required to write a careful translation, aiming not merely at accuracy, but also at discrimination in choice of words and at elegance in phrasing. Exercises in this stage were designed to result in poetic prose. 3. Finally, the students selected some well-known English form of poetry and turned a poem of Catullus into verse. It was pointed out that a desirable English form would correspond quite nearly to the Latin form, although to attain this ideal completely is well-nigh impossible. It is well known that English seems not natural or at home with trochaic and dactylic rhythm, but rather with iambic rhythm. Stanza, rime, and stichic arrangement also are different in the two languages. These matters were discussed with the students to show that in Latin poetry we must look to the broad and fundamental resemblances to English and must expect differences in exactness of thought and in poetic form, just as in syntax we find differences of idiom--for example, the equivalent in English for the Latin ablative absolute requires a very different idiom. Below are given the results of these exercises, illustrated by a few papers from the class on the third and eighty-second poems of Catullus. First is given the Latin poem and then, omitting the intermediate analytical details and the careful rendering into prose, the verse translation. Several versions of the same poem are presented to show how varied are the possibilities and how really creative the translation may be. It may, for instance, show condensation below the measure of the original or elaboration quite above the limits of space and number of words thought necessary or desirable by the Latin author.