Output details

Carmen LXIV

Research for these translations of Poems 61-68 from Catullus’s ‘second book’, covering marriage and associated themes, entailed reflecting upon the level of complexity and sophistication to be found in the original. These poems are notoriously alien to contemporary English readers because of their extended metaphors, complex syntax, and ornate rhetoric, as well as their seeming determination to exclude the reader and remain inaccessible. 'Poem 64', the longest and most ambitious, is rendered in a line-by-line translation, tracking the movement of the line, in an attempt to remain as faithful to the Latin as possible. Nearly a quarter of the lines are three and four word lines, employing a hexameter. Maintaining this feature of the poem has not been a serious consideration for translations before, because of its foreignness to English verse, but Smith’s line-by-line rendering does reflect this key feature of the poem, distinguishing this version from other attempts at translation of this most difficult of poems. Including this key feature also means that the translation registers the difference of the Latin from English, so that the poem sounds other -- as in not an English to be found in contemporary usage. This version seeks to respect not only linguistic difference but also cultural difference in the way Lawrence Venuti proposes in 'The Translator’s Invisibility', in the interests of not enacting forms of cultural imperialism and appropriation. In this way this translation can be seen to be in dialogue with recent translation theory, in addition to dialoguing with other translations of Catullus’s 'Poem 64', especially Peter Whigham’s Poundian version: both can be seen as Poundian in tone, offering 'Poem 64' as a kind of Roman Canto.