Saturday, September 12, 2009

Clement Lawrence Smith et Prudentia

In my last post, I railed about the errors in the books I was using. Later that day, I acquired some wisdom.  My on-line purchase—for just a few dollars–of a 1903 copy of Clement Lawrence Smith's The Odes and Epodes of Horace arrived in the mail. Its green cloth cover was dark with age and a bit frayed at the edges. It smelled either of must or tobacco. I leafed through its pages.

Someone had drawn a map of fine pencil lines showing the area around Licenza, Italy, and clearly indicating Horace's villa and a nearby spring. 
"How interesting!" I said to myself.  It is always fun to find stuff tucked away in an old book.




(The map, oddly enough, is almost identical in its detail to the one I found on-line @ http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/horaces-villa/study/regionalMap.html ). 

But there was more. A slip of paper fluttered to the ground. It was in pencil, too—a list of corrections and errors in the book.  A few pages away, neatly folded was a handwritten letter dated October 3, 1903:

128 Anawan Avenue.
West Roxbury, Mass.,

To/ Prof Clement Lawrence Smith—

My dear Sir—

I enclose a list of the words in the text of the Horace of the Boston Bibliophile Society, and some of which seem to be errors, while others may represent a different reading.

This edition has been edited with such care that doubtless some of these instances are only supposed errors, although I well know how almost impossible it is for readers of proof to 'catch' every error.

If there are any errors in this list I should like to make the correction in my copy.

Yours very sincerely,

Henry A. Metcalf.

The enclosed list of words was still there, some ten in all.

So what, by some odd set of circumstances, had come in the mail? A copy owned by the author himself?  Had he drawn the map?  Had he made a list of errors he had found in his book so that I might have the only corrected copy in the world? 

What I do know is that Clement Lawrence Smith was a classics scholar and dean of Harvard College.  He was born in 1844 and died a hundred years ago this summer. As for Henry A. Metcalf, he was a respected editor in Boston, and perhaps, for this reason, the letter was saved.

But, I think, what really came in the mail was some perspective on errors in books dealing with Horace and the problems in publishing a book on a poet who died two thousand years ago and for whom no original manuscripts of his work exists. 

The earliest manuscripts date back to the seventh or eighth century and may have been written by Scotch or Irish monks in one of those monasteries that produced the Book of Kells. These early manuscripts contain scribal errors. Some might even have been edited by well-intentioned monks who thought they could improve on Horace's words! Add to this modern scholars who, also well-intentioned, made a few changes for the good of us all.

So, I, the learner, will have to be more wary.  Typographical errors happen. Scholars make mistakes. When something doesn't sound right, maybe it isn't.  Surely, one of these versions from poem Vixi Puellis Nuper (III:26) is the correct one: 

ponite lucida funalia et vectes securesque oppositis foribus minaces [Loeb Classical Library, McClatchy, 2002]

ponite lucida funalia et vectis et arcus oppositis foribus minacis [Smith, 1903, also found in many on-line versions]

ponite lucida funalia et vectes et arcus oppositis foribus minacis [Porphyrionis Commentarium, 3rd century A.D., Garrison, 1991]


But which one is correct?  Vectes minaces? Vectis minacis? Vectes minacis? I choose vectes minaces. To me, at my present level of understanding, this makes the most sense. Vectes 'crowbars' is the object of ponite 'put' and minaces 'threatening' modifies it. 

When I do find out more, I'll return to this line in Horace. Maybe all three are correct and supported by reliable documents and manuscripts. I just don't know.

:: Latin books by James Rumford ::



















For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at 

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here: 

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015; 
for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.



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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Vixi Puellis Nuper III:26

Yesterday I quoted two lines from Hafiz. They are not easy to translate. I wrote:
Let go of pride and airs. The days have seen
The Chinese robe of Caesar, the jaunty cap of shahs
While I may have translated the poet's intent, I did not translate the words. My friend Brandon Stone reminded me of a more literal meaning. He wrote:
Leave off pride and coquetry because the times have seen the folds of the cloak of Caesar and the corner of the crown of Kai . . . .
It turns out that "the folds of the cloak of Caesar" چین قبای قیصر and "the corner of the crown of Kai" طرف کلاه کی are not easy to translate. They both mean stylishly dressed.  "Fold" in Persian also means "China." What is more, "folds of the cloak" could also refer to the collar.   The "corner of the crown" was a fashionable bit of cloth that hung down at an angle. This made me think of the word "jaunty."  It is easy to see how tangled things can get very quickly.
To add to this confusion is the fact that Persians cannot agree on the meaning of these lines. Perhaps two much time has passed since Hafiz penned these words in the fourteenth century. Now no one really knows what he meant.
Certainly this is the case with today's poem form Horace, who lived thirteen centuries before Hafiz.  His ode, vixi puellis nuper, is short but one of its lines has troubled commentators for centuries.  Horace is talking about giving up love, probably because his "geisha" Chloe has ignored or scorned him. Horace declares he has had his triumphs, but now, it is time to lay his tools (the waxed rope-torches for lighting his way to his lover's house and the crowbars and axes he might use to break into the house of some reluctant prostitute) in the temple of Venus, just as a tradesman at the end of his life might offer his tools to his protective god.
The problem comes with the word "axes" secures. Some texts have "bows" arcus. How would Horace have used a bow? Was it a special tool? Was it Cupid's bow?  No one knows. Perhaps these words were like kaona, a wonderful Hawaiian literary term to describe words with double meanings, secret meanings, lewd meanings even.  It is not difficult to give Horace's funalia, vectis, and arcus other meanings just as we might understand "Horace's tool" in a different way.
Confusion, differing points of view are part and parcel of working with ancient poetry. The ensuing battles quicken the minds of scholars and drive them on and on and on. This is fine by me because sometimes you can get caught up in the finest of points.  What is not fine is the sloppiness I have discovered in the few weeks I have turned my attention to Horace. One book, Horace; Epodes and Odes, A New Annotated Latin Edition by Daniel H. Garrison (U. of Oklahoma Press) has been my rock. But I have found errors in the Latin text, errors which have made it difficult for me to understand what Horace was saying. The wrong ending to a word can change the grammar and the meaning. In the poem below is it minacis or minaces? Both mean "threatening", but minaces describes the tools Horace lays down in the temple, minacis describes the doors. The Loeb Classical Library out of Harvard has minaces. Other books have minacis. Who is right? What's a learner to do, especially if the editor doesn't alert the reader to these variations?  Or are they variations?  They could well be errors.
Latin is getting deader and deader, if you will permit me this Yogi-Berra-ism. Proofreaders of Latin are about as useful as those Iranian proofreaders who check over English sentences in Persian books or Japanese entrepreneurs who decorate their products with incomprehensible—and ridiculous—phrases in English.  To them, English is incomprehensible. To modern proofreaders so is Latin. Monumentum aere perennius?  Too bad, Horace, you were born way before Shelly and his little poem about Ozymandius.
Todays poem in prose:


Nuper, [ego] puellis idoneus vixi et non sine gloria militavi. 
Nunc hic paries, qui latus laevum Veneris marinae custodit, arma barbitonque, bello defunctum, habibit. 
Hic, hic, funalia lurida ponite et vectes securesque foribus oppositis minaces. 

O diva quae Cyprum beatam et Memphin nive Sithonia carentem tenes! [O] Regina, Chloen arrogantem flagello sublimi semel tange!  
[revised March 31, 2015] 
nuper: recens
idoneus: robustus, validus
barbiton: lyram
foribus: portis
funalia: candeles
vectes: crowbars
secures: axes
oppositis: clausis
carentem: sine
Vixī puellīs nūper idōneus
et mīlitāvī nōn sine glōriā;
   nunc arma dēfunctumque bellō
        barbiton hīc pariēs habēbit,
laevum marīnae quī Veneris latus
custōdit. hīc, hīc pōnite lūrida [lūcida]
   fūnālia et vectēs secūrēsque [et arcūs]
        oppositīs fōribus minācēs.
ō quae beātum dīva tenēs Cyprum et
Memphin carentem Sīthoniā nive
   rēgīna, sublīmī flāgellō
        tangě Chloēn semel arrogantem.
English translation: http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_horace_odes3.htm 



:: Latin books by James Rumford ::



















For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at 

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here: 

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015; 
for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.


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Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Persicos Odi Puer I:38

Horace today gives us a snapshot. He's in a tavern, I suppose, saying to all who will listen that he prefers a wreath of myrtle to any Persian finery.  "Good enough for you, servant boy," he seems to be saying, "and good enough for me drinking here under the grape arbor."

The poem is simple, and I suppose this simplicity hides some deep truth. Many have sought it, but it lies hidden—perhaps because this is the talk of a fifty-year-old man annoyed at ostentatious living and yearning for simple pleasures. How drunk Horace was, we'll never know.  All we hear, after two thousand years, is the voice of a curmudgeon and the curmudgeon's favorite word: odi, "I hate." 

Now listen to Hafiz—not a curmudgeon but a drunken beggar—who says:

بگذر ز کبر و ناز که دیده است روزگار
چــین قــبای قــیصـر و طرف کلاه کی

Let go of pride and airs. The days have seen
The Chinese robe of Caesar, the jaunty cap of shahs

While both poets are extolling the virtues of a simple life—Hafiz picking on the Romans, Horace disgusted with the Persians—Hafiz goes one step farther. He points out the futility of seeking power and finery.  A waste of time, for time will lay waste to all. 

I cannot help but take a leap and see a similar strain in Horace's voice: "Come, drink simply with me, for now is now and all else is vanity."

But then, even though Horace seeks the simple, there is nothing simple about the structure of his poem and the words he uses. Mozart-like, he has fashioned something that is so complex that it has taken me several days to understand what he has done.

For instance:

mitte sectari rosa quo locorum sera moretur
simplici myrto nihil adlabores sedulus curo

Literally:

Let go of eagerly seeking the rose where places late might linger
From simple myrtle nothing you labor over diligent I care for

"The only way to deal with this," I said to myself after several frustrating hours, "is to try to think like a Roman and let the words come into my head as they would have heard them."
I loosened my English mind and let it accept the convoluted sentences. Miracuously, or so it seemed, I heard:

Let go of madly seeking the rose where in places late it lingers.
Apart from myrtle, nothing you labor over, diligent one, do I care for.

This is not great English, but I can see how the order of Horace's words is not as strange as I had thought. Sure, I'm fooling myself.  In Horace's poem, 'rose' is not the object of 'seeking' but the subject of the verb 'lingers.' But, hey, if this sleight of grammar gets me closer to understanding Horace, I'm all for it.

Slowly, I feel, I am making progress.

Today's prose rendition ::

[O] Puer, apparatus persicos odi. Coronae philyra nexae displicent. Mitte sectari [in] quo locorum rosa sera moretur. [Ego] sedulus curo nihil myrto simplici allabores. Myrtus neque ‹te ministrum› neque ‹me bibentem sub vite arta› dedecet.

[revised March 27, 2015]

adparatus / apparatus:  splendores
philyra: linden
sera: tardiora
sedulus: studiosus
ministrum: servum, puerum
vite arta: cancellis plantarum 


Original ode :: 

Persicōs ōdī, puer, apparātūs,
displicent nexae philyrā corōnae,
mitte sectārī, rosa quō locōrum
   sera morētur.
simplicī myrtō nihil allabōrēs
sēdulus cūrō: neque tē ministrum
dēdecet myrtus neque mē sub artā

   vīte bibentem.


English translation & discussion: http://jacketmagazine.com/34/beck-horace.shtml 

Traduction en français: http://agoraclass.fltr.ucl.ac.be/concordances/Horace_odesI/ligne05.cfm?numligne=202&mot=te#debut

:: Latin books by James Rumford ::



















For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at 

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here: 

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015; 
for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.




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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Musis Amicus I:26—Are you my friend?

Musis amicus—to the Muses a friend.  Who wouldn't want to be a friend of the muses? American Idol and Britain's Got Talent would be a cinch. NY Times best seller list? A snap.  Selling more records than Michael Jackson, having one's paintings in the Louvre.....all of this if only you were beloved by the muses.

In this short poem, Horace realizes that he can throw all cares to the winds. The muses are on his side. Without them he is nothing. Without them he wouldn't have been able to take the complicated meters of Greek poetry and make them work for Roman ears. Without them he could not have built a monumentum aere perennius—a monument [of poetry] more lasting than bronze.

Horace's accomplishment—successfully introducing Greek meter into Latin—is not easy for me to understand. I cannot say that I really appreciate what he was able to do. This is because Latin and Greek poetry don't work like English poetry. Our poetry is based on stress. Latin and Greek poetry were based on syllable length—like Persian and Arabic poetry, I might add. The Romans and the Greeks alternated long and short syllables in complicated ways to give a sense of rhythm. This alternation was like a Morse code of dots and dashes to their ears. 

What this rhythm did was to help the listener understand complicated lines. Well known rhythms or meters helped divide the poem into sense groups.

In today's poem, the first line is: 

musis amicus tristitiam et metus

When you write it to show the pattern of short syllables and long syllables you get:

muuusiiis amiiicuuus | triiistitiaaam et metuuus

There is a break between amicus and tristitiam, just where we need it. This helps to understand the line as "[since I am] to the muses a friend, sadness and fear. . . ."

The meter Horace uses in this poem is called alcaic strophe. You can find out more about this in Wikipedia. The important thing is not swallowing this complicated stuff all at once, I tell myself. No, the important thing is to begin thinking about Horace's poetry in a new way: how it strikes my ear.

Poetry is different from anything else I know. It has a different energy. People liken poetry to song, but it is not song. Song follows a definite beat. It is a slave to tempo. It demands that one stay on key. Finally, it is over when the conductor says it is over. Poetry is none of that. Anyone can read it. Anyone can "perform" it. It is talking but using words so well chosen that they sound like music. 

I see one big problem with all of this:  Latin is dead. No one, as far as I can tell, really knows what the poetry sounded like.  Certainly not the English-speaking professors I hear on the internet, who turn Horace's long vowels into diphthongs.  There is a big difference between the Latin sound no and the English "know." The Latin no is crisp and clear. The English "know" is stretched out like chewing gum.  These stretched out English vowels don't belong in Latin.

It is sad to realize how dead Latin is. Persian, on the other hand, is alive and well. It is a pleasure to hear a Persian/Farsi speaker read a poem by Hafiz. The poem comes to life as the speaker goes into poetry mode.  His pitch changes. His face changes. His breathing changes. What constituted "poetry mode" for the Romans, I guess, died centuries and centuries ago. Horace's monumentum aere perennius has despite, his boasting, suffered the ravages of time.

My prose rendition of 1:26:
[Ego], amicus musis, tristitiam et metus ventis protervis tradam in mare Creticum portare. Unice securus [sum] quis rex orae gelidae sub Arcto metuatur, quid Teridaten terreat. 
O dulcis Piplei,quae fontibus integris gaudes, flores apricos [in] coronam Lamiae meo necte. Honores mei nil sine te prosunt. Teque tuasque sorores decet hunc fidibus novis, hunc plectro Lesbio sacrare.

[revised March 27, 2015]

unice securus: maxime neglegens
protervis: violentis
integris: puris
apricos: solem amantes
prosunt: boni sunt



Mūsīs amīcus tristitiam et metūs
trādam protervīs in mare Crēticum
   portāre ventīs, quis sub Arctō
        rex gelidae metuātur ōrae,
quid Tīridāten terreat, ūnicē
sēcūrus. ō quae fontibus integrīs
   gaudēs, aprīcōs necte flōrēs,
        necte meō Lamiae corōnam,
Piplēi dulcis. nīl sine tē meī
prōsunt honōrēs; hunc fidibus novīs,       
   hunc Lesbiō sācrāre plectrō

        tēque tuāsque decet sorōrēs.

Latin commentaries:



:: Latin books by James Rumford ::



















For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at 

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here: 

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015; 
for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.


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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Vitas Inuleo Me Similis I:23

What a different poem this is from the others I have read!  A doe of a girl named Chloe seems shy and skitterish when confronted by the poet who doesn't want her to think he is an animal. No, he just wants to tell her that she is ready—tempestiva—for a man.

What Horace's intentions are, I don't know. What I do know is that he has left us with this tantalizing vignette, a snapshot perhaps of a passing flirtation, a record of a momentary fantasy.

There are lots of technical problems with this poem grammar-wise—at least, that is what scholarly books tell me.  I won't go into the details except to say that no one seems to know how to deal with the advent of spring adventus veris, the moving leaves follii mobiles and the green lizards lacertae virides.  My take on the poem is that all of these things make the doe-like girl Chloe even more jumpy.

"Go away, you old man!" are the whispers I hear coming from between the lines.

But then, that is twenty centuries after the fact. Perhaps this Lolita of a Chloe is just that: having her own fun teasing fifty-year old Horace.

Here is my prose rendition of poem 23 in Book I:
Me vitas, Chloe, inuleo similis, matrem pavidam quaerenti, montibus aviis non sine metu vano aurarum et siluae. 
Nam seu adventus veris folliis mobilibus inhorruit. Seu lacertae virides rubum dimovere, et corde et genibus tremit. Atqui non ego, ut tigris aspera leove Gaetulus, persequor te frangere. 
Tandem, viro tempestiva, desine matrem sequi!

[revised March 27, 2015]

inuleo / hinnuleo:  cervo parvo
aviis: sine viis multis
aurarum: ventorum
pavidam: timidam
rubum: veprem, plantas spinosas

 Below what you see between brackets and in superscript are textual variants.


Vītās īnuleō mē similis, Chloē,
quaerentī pavidam montibus āviīs
   mātrem nōn sine vānō
        aurārum et siluae metū.
nam seu mōbilibus vēris [vepris] inhorruit
adventūs [ad ventum] folliīs, seu viridēs rubum
   dīmōvēre lacertae,
        et corde et genibus tremit.
atquī nōn ego tē, tīgris ut aspera
Gaetūlusve leō, frangere persequor:
   tandem dēsine mātrem
        tempestīva sequī virō.



Yesterday, I discovered three interesting blogs about Horace. A Portuguese blog offers translations.  One in Catalan is interested in using Horace's poetry to find out more about Roman life. A French blog breaks each poem up into sense groups that follow a simple translation in French. 




:: Latin books by James Rumford ::



















For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at 

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here: 

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015; 
for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.


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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Vile Potabis Modicis I:20

Some people do crossword puzzles. I read poetry in a foreign language—or, at least, puzzle over the words until I think I understand them. My friend Brandon Stone and I have been puzzling over Persian poetry for the last several years. We pick a poem or a passage and work at it until we have wrung out a bit of the meaning.  Once in a while, if we are lucky, we stop to consider the beauty of what we have read. 

Approaching poetry as though solving a puzzle is, I suppose, a sin—but a necessary one. Once we have understood the meaning, we can go back to enjoy the poem for its imagery, music, its intricacy. This is what has happened with the poems by Hafiz. We "burned our hearts" (as the Persian poets would say) over each line.  We turned our "livers into kebabs for roasting."  Now, we can take down a volume of Hafiz' poems and enjoy them. Hearts at ease, livers in tact, we can savor the words and drink in the music.

This is what I hope to do with these poems by Horace. Right now it is tough going. I spent hours trying to understand the poem for today.  It is a simple poem. Horace is thinking what it would be like to invite the glorious Maecenas to his house for a humble drink. He says there is only poor wine at his table, nothing like the wines Maecenas is used to.

The poem is nothing like we might encounter with Hafiz. Drinking had a different meaning.  Either Hafiz was totally wasted or totally enlightened, the reader is free to decide.  No, this poem has the lyric quality of a Tang Dynasty poem or a poem from the Sung Dynasty: please come to my house, the walk is swept, a jar of humble wine awaits, we will drink far into the night.

Horace mentions the names of two kinds of wine: Sabinum, Caecubum.  He talks of the grapes from Falernus and the hillsides of Formiae.  He mentions the wine press at Cales, modern Calvi.

Here is his poem in prose:
[O] care Maecenas eques, potabis cantharis modicis Sabinum vile quod conditum [est et quod] ego ipse testa Graeca levi, cum plausus in theatro tibi datus [esses] ut ripae fluminis paterni et simul imago iocosa montis Vaticani laudes tibi redderet. Tu Caecubum et uvam prelo Caleno domitam bibes. Nec vites Falernae neque colles Formiani pocula mea temperant. [revised March 27, 2015]


cantharis:  poculis magnis, calicibus magnis
imago:  echo
levi:  condivi
prelo:  presso
domitam:  pressam


Vīle pōtābis modicīs Sabīnum
cantharīs, Graecā quod ego ipse testā
conditum lēvī, datus in theātrō
   cum tibi plausus,
cāre Maecēnās eques, ut paternī
flūminis rīpae simul et iocōsa
redderet laudēs tibi Vāticānī
   montis imāgo.
Caecubum et prēlō domitam Calēnō
tū bibēs ūvam; mea nec Falernae
temperant vītēs neque Formiānī

   pōcula collēs.




:: Latin books by James Rumford ::



















For all 102 odes purchase Carpe Diem, Horace De-Poetized, for $11.50 at 

For a Latin translation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at $12, click here: 

To find out more about Carpe Diem go to the blog of March 26, 2015; 
for more about Pericla Thomae Sawyer, go to the blog of November 22, 2016.


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