The Elegies of Propertius with Notes, literally translated by the Rev.
P.J.F. Gantillon, with metrical versions by Nott and Elton, appeared in
1884, {7} and was a pleasing work that is still listed in academic
bibliographies. The diction of the prose translation was much of its
time:
he taught me, desperate power! to despise
chaste maidens and to live recklessly. (1.1.5-6)
But the phrasal rhythms preserved the standard diction from bathos and
generally steered the elegy to a successful conclusion:
Witnesses, rise and weep for me, while the grateful earth is paying
tribute to my worth when alive. To some virtues heaven has been opened:
may I earn, from my merits, the privilege of being one whose bones are
conveyed into Elysium in triumph. (4.11.99-102)
A little stodgy, but an accurate rendering, and perhaps preferable to
overworked verse renderings of the period, for example this by E.D.A.
Morshead, which accompanied George Ramsay's student edition of
Selections from Tibullus and Propertius in 1895: {8}
Lo, I have said! Rise, ye who weep; I stand
In high desert, worthy the Spirit Land.
Worth hath stormed heaven ere now; this, this I claim —
To rise, in death, upon the waves of Fame. (4.11.99-102)
Here the rhyme needs have caused too many departures from the sense, and the grandiloquence is out of keeping with the quiet pathos of the piece, one of the finest of Latin elegies. The metrical versions by Nott and Elton accompanying Gantillon's prose translated only a few of the elegies, and were in the late Augustan manner:
rhyming couplets or
quatrains with a good deal of phrase inversion and antithesis. The
renderings could be mechanical, as is Propertius at times, but few were
without well-turned lines:
He taught me, then, to loathe the virtuous fair,
And shameless waste my wild and driftless hours. (1.1.5-6. Elton)
At length the tyrant taught me to detest
Chaste nymphs, and banished reason from my mind:
Nor one whole year has the dire frenzy ceas'd;
Still Fate forbids my mistress to be kind! (1.1.5-8. Nott)
And some achieved a good deal more:
Though now on reedy Styx the oar he ply,
Ev'n now, the murky sail of Hell survey;
Let her he loves recall him with a sigh,
He shall retrace the unpermitted way. (2.27.12-15. Elton).
Ezra Pound's important but idiosyncratic 1919 rendering is given a detailed examination on a separate webpage: pound-homage-to-sextus-propertius-translation.html.
Robert Lowell 1974
Robert Lowell allowed himself only one translation of Propertius, {13}
that of Elegy 4.7, which he paraphrased with typical vigour and
brilliance:
A ghost is someone: death has left a hole
For the lead-coloured soul to beat the fire:
Cynthia leaves her dirty pyre
And seems to coil herself and roll
Under my canopy,
Love's stale and public playground, where I lie
And fill the run-down empire of my bed.
I See the street, her potter's field, is red
And lively with the ashes of the dead. (4.7.1-6)
In tone, stanza arrangement and literal sense, the rendering was far
more Lowell than Propertius, but much could be forgiven for lines like:
A black nail dangles from a finger tip
And Lethe oozes from her nether lip. (4.7.7-8)
And
Would it have strained your purse
To scatter ten cheap roses on my hearse? (4.7.33)
Unfortunately, the verse was rather too magnificent, not allowing
emotional shading, and the rigid ode structure was unable to capture
the concluding two lines. In fact, though Lowell used traditional
rather than free verse, his approach was that of Pound's, employing the
stand-alone image instead of narrative. But in place of Pound's
evocative vignettes, Lowell used a thickened expression, building up
scenes with a vividness and power that are not found in the Latin.
Franklin Adams 1960
Franklin P. Adams' translations {14} were a throwback to an earlier
age: to a racy light verse:
Cynthia first and the wonderful eyes of her
Taught me the meaning of Love and Romance;
Now I have sung to the stars and the skies of her —
Love has diluted the pride of my glance.
Ah! 'tis a year, yet the madness diminishes
Never a fraction, a tittle, or jot,
Though I anticipate well what the finish is,
Though I bewail my unfortunate lot. (1.1.1-8)
Good fun, and charming, but wildly unlike the Latin. Passages — indeed
whole renderings — were immensely readable, but there was no hint of
the real Propertius and his troubles:
Could cure me of my lover's itch —
As I admitted truthfully
Wrecked on a sad and troublous sea.
For when by Venus I was caught,
She bound my hands behind me taut.
But lo! my ships have found the bay:
Mine anchor's cast; I shout "Hooray!"
John Warden 1972
Like Pound, John Warden {15} replaced the elegiac couplet with lines
expanding to fit the content, from trimeter:
So death is not the end of it; ghosts
exist, pale wraiths flitting
from the inclusive pyre. (4.7.1-29
to heptameter:
There was nobody to cry my name as my eyes grew dim (4.7.23)
But whereas Pound used a stress verse with many phrasing devices to
give each line or line segment a coherent identity, Dr. Warden employed
a more contemporary language in iambic throughout. The result was
pleasing, a very readable version indeed, and one that could
accommodate the prose meaning entirely, but it also produced a certain
sameness in the lines, with limited emotional or dramatic impact.
Content did not fuse with form in the way necessary for poetry, and at
times the elegies became a miscellany of lyrics and narrative
stretches. There was certainly gain, here a beauty and delicacy not in
the original:
May your grave
be choked with thorns
May your shade
be choked with thirst
May your spirit
find no rest. (5.4.1-3)
But also loss: some lines became surprisingly pedestrian and
none-too-accurate renderings of what was beautiful in the Latin:
She was the first to enslave me, and she did it with her eyes
till then I'd never felt love's poisoned arrows.
(1.1.1-2)
Inversions could be used unnecessarily, without making proper sense:
Don't waste Apollo's time by keeping him under arms;
but let your verse go slim and pumiced fine. (3.1.7-8)
And whereas some passages came close to light verse:
I much admire the Spartan wrestling schools,
but most of all I like the women's rules:
for girls and men can wrestle in the nude
(the Spartans think such exercise is good) (3.14.1-4)
Others failed just where good verse skills were most required:
Garlands wither and die
and the fallen petals float in the wine bowls.
Today we ride on the crest of love
but the end may come tomorrow. (2.15.49-54)
W.G. Shepherd 1986
W.G. Shepherd's Propertius: The Poems, {16} first issued in the Penguin
Classics Series in 1986, and reissued by the University of Oklahoma
Press in 2004, employed a dignified prose set out as free verse. The
sense was transcribed closely, if at the cost of some stiffness, and
the rendering broadly respected the line divisions:
CYNTHIA was the first To capture with her eyes my pitiable self.
Till then I was free from desire's contagion.
Love Then forced me to lower my gaze of steady hauteur
And trampled my head with his feet. (1.1.1-4).
There was no Latin text, but the book did have an introduction (by
Betty Radice), a select bibliography, a translator's foreword, notes on
the poems, glossary of proper names and alphabetical index of Latin
first lines — an academic production, in short, though none the worst
for that. The prosier sections of the elegies were rendered with
admirable good sense:
The robber Cacus lived there, in a dreaded cavern,
And gave out separate sounds from a triple mouth. (4.9.9-10)
In places the prose approached blank verse, and could be refreshingly
succinct and literal:
As on the lonely beach the Cnossian lay
Fainting while Theseus's keel receded. (1.3.1-2)
In more eloquent sections, however, the limitations of what is
essentially prose become apparent:
In vain will you summon my dumb shade, Cynthia
For how can my crumbled bones achieve speech? (2.13.57-8).
Fainting while Theseus's keel receded. (1.3.1-2)
In more eloquent sections, however, the limitations of what is
essentially prose become apparent:
In vain will you summon my dumb shade, Cynthia
For how can my crumbled bones achieve speech? (2.13.57-8).
G.P. Goold 1990
Professor George Goold brought a lifetime's study of Propertius to his
1990 Loeb Edition of Propertius Elegies, {1} which incorporated many
suggestions of Dr. Stephen Heyworth, who was to later edit the Oxford
Classical Text of Propertius. Goold made radical transpositions of the
text, but the accompanying translation was not modern in style, being a
remodelled Edwardian prose, stout-hearted and sensible in diction but
sometimes heavy and over-periodic. It coped well with straight
narrative:
The crime of Tarpeia and her shameful grave will be my tale, and how
the dwelling of ancient Jove was captured. (4.4.1-2)
but was wholly at a loss with the celebrated passages:
Only, Cynthia, while there is light, do not disdain the rewards of
life! If you give me all your kisses, you will yet give all too few.
And just as petals drop from a withered garland, petals you see strewn
in profusion and floating in the cup, so for us, who now love with
spirits raised high, perhaps tomorrow's day shall round our destinies.
(2.15.49-55)
Guy Lee 1992
Guy Lee was the author of much well-received translation when he
prepared Propertius: the Poems {4} {17} for publication in the Oxford
World's Classics series. There was no Latin text, but the renderings
were accompanied by a helpful introduction (by R.O.A.M. Lyne), an
extensive glossary, a bibliography and a list of departures from
Barber's Oxford Classical Text. Dr. Lee employed unrhymed couplets,
usually pentameters but expanding to the content:
Cynthia first, with her eyes, caught wretched me
Smitten before by no desires. (1.1.1-2)
Although you're leaving Rome against my wishes, Cynthia,
I'm glad you'll be in rural isolation (2.19.1-2)
May earth, Procuress, overgrow your grave with thorns
And (what you will not wish) your ghost feel thirst. (4.5.1-2)
The rendering was often line for line, and the verse had the neatness
of compressed meaning:
Whose threshold, wet with prisoner's suppliant tears,
Glided chariots celebrated. (1.16.2-4)
The diction, moreover, was generally that of ordinary speech, but
ranged from contemporary slang to the rare and archaic. Many couplets
were competently turned:
Whenever therefore death shall close my eyelids
Let this be the order of my funeral (2.13.17-18)
But as for me, in every place and all the time,
In sickness and in health, I'm with you still. (2.21.19-20)
In the celebrated passages, however, Dr. Lee was apt to paraphrase for
effects that did not come off:
For just as petals drop from fading garlands
To float haphazard in wine-bowls,
So for us lovers who now walk so tall
Tomorrow may bring the fated close. (2.15.49-54)
But the real difficulty was the verse itself: an uncadenced mixture of
traditional and free verse styles that exasperates the trained ear.
Perhaps in trying for an idiomatic and flexible line, Lee often broke
the metre, adding the odd word (here the unnecessary 'that', which
wrong-foots the whole line):
It's not that I'm scared to get to know the Adriatic
Or sail the salt Aegean, Tullus (1.6.1-2)
Or he used the stress verse of Pound without its exactness of cadence:
But, Cynthia, you will call back my dumb spirit in vain;
My bits of bone will have nothing to say. (2.13.57-8)
Or in shaping the emotional utterance, the phrasing lost rather than
built on its rhythmic base:
Let us sate our eyes with love while Fate allows.
The long night comes and the day of no return. (2.15.23-4)
A.S. Kline 2001
Tony Kline's translation appears on his popular Internet site, {18} one
of many free translations that have proved so useful to students. The
translation can be copied readily, and unfamiliar names are hyperlinked
to an extensive glossary. The rendering closely follows the text,
allowing itself no 'improvements' or embellishments.
Cynthia was the first, to my cost, to trap me with her eyes: I was
untouched by love before. (1.1.1-2)
That plain tone sometimes passes into the colloquial:
you can hardly find rest for a single month, poor thing, and now
there'll be another
disgraceful book about you. (2.3.3-4)
And occasionally into the crude and loutish:
slither about in a thin silk dress (1.2.2)
the cock-up at Cannae (3.3.10)
For the greater part, however, the rendering employs a sensible prose
that conveys the sense admirably, even if it generally lacks the
affective organization needed for poetry. As usual, the style serves
well for narrative:
the horseman was skilled with the bridle, equally with the plough: and
his helmet was wolf-skin, decorated with a shaggy crest: (4.10.19-20)
But fails in the more emotionally charged passages, resorting to
unconvincing exhortation:
You while the light lasts, then, don't leave off life's joys! Though
you give all your kisses, they'll prove all too few. As the leaves fall
from dried garlands: as you see them scatter in cups and float there:
so we, now, the lovers, who hope for great things, perhaps fate,
tomorrow, will end our day. (2.15.49-54)
Odd phrases have the genuine touch of poetry, but the lines by their
nature fall back into a language more suited to everyday use than
elegiac expression:
The stars are witnesses, girl, and the frost at dawn, and the doors
that opened secretly for unhappy me that nothing in my life was ever as
dear to me as you: and you will be, forever, too, though you're so
unkind to me. (2.9.41-2)
Vincent Kranz 2007
Vincent Kranz employed a contemporary diction and something neither
quite verse nor prose to make an unlovely but clear translation: {19}
{20}
Cynthia as the first. She caught me with her eyes, a fool
who had never before been touched by desires.
I really hung my head in shame
when Love pressed down on it with his feet.
He taught me to hate chaste girls!
He was cruel when he told me to live without plan.
It's already been a whole year that the frenzy hasn't stopped.
Even now, the gods are against me. (1.1.1-8)
The rendering was generally faithful to the original, and the line
divisions were respected, but the diction had a coarseness foreign to
Propertius, and the dialogue was clumsy even by everyday or popular
novel use. Equally something a colleague should have queried was the
jarring mix of tones (here plebeian, academic and literary):
"If only you could experience the nights you always
force me to endure, you asshole!
At first I evaded sleep with the purple thread,
and again, exhausted, with song of the Orphic lyre.
Left all alone, I was singing lightly to myself
the frequent long delays when your lover is about.
Then drowsiness pulled me, slipping in its soft wings.
She at last cured my crying." (1.3.39-46)
Kranz's translation received the usual academic commendations, {19} but
also an unflinching review by J.L. Butrica, {20} who pointed out the
difficulties in making Propertius a streetwise kid.
S.J. Heyworth 2007
Dr Stephen Heyworth's work was largely an attempt to explain and
justify the text of Propertius published in the Oxford Classical Texts
{22} series. His book examined the textual problems of Propertius,
taking the corrupt passages in turn and evaluating the suggestions
scholarship has made towards resolving the difficulties. Stylistic
excellence was not the aim of the added translation, but more a plain
rendering of the prose sense as far as the remaining difficulties
allowed.
Cynthia was the first; she caught me with her eyes and made me
miserable-I had never been infected with desire before. (1.1.1-2)
Hey lucky me! Hey, night fair to me! Hey you, little bed made happy by
my darling. (2.15.1-2)
Just as the petals have abandoned garlands as they wither and you see
them floating scattered in bowls, so for us who now as lovers breathe
deep, perhaps tomorrow will enclose our fate. (2.15.51-55)
No one reads such things for literary pleasure, but the examples do
show that even prose needs careful word choice and sentence patterning
if it is to convey what Propertius is prized for.
Patrick Worsnip 2018.
In the latest rendering of the Odes — by Patrick Worsnip and with an
extended introduction by Peter Heslin — today's tendency to replace
elevated language with the everyday has produced something that is
witty and reasonably accurate but (as to be expected) somewhat limited
in the aesthetic dimension. Little trace of the elegance of Propertius
remains, of the elegiac nature of his lines, or their poetry: {23}
Cynthia was first, her eyes
made me a prisoner of war.
I had until then been untouched by Amor
who now pulled down the vanity of my glance(1.1. 1-4)
It wasn't their dress sense that caused Leucippus' daughters
to give Castor and Pollus the hots,
or set lustful Apollo and Idas
at odds over Marpessa. (1.2. 18-22)
It should be clear, at least until our
understanding of Propertius changes, or further manuscripts are found
(which seems unlikely), that translations of a literal or academic
nature are now fully catered for. Anyone wanting the prose sense of
Propertius's Elegies need only borrow the Loeb edition {1} from their
local library or visit Tony Kline's website {18}, perhaps consulting
books by Lynne {5}, Richardson {2} and/or Heyworth {22} to understand
the original better. For a literary translation there is now the free Ocaso Press publication.
The Latin text can be loaded down from Internet sites {24-5} and
those unable to read the language can run the text through QuickLatin
{10} or online sites {11-2} to obtain a word-for-word translation and
explanatory grammar.
Sound recordings of Propertius and other Latin poets are also available {7}, and to read the Latin for themselves —
which helps enormously to bring their authors to life — students can
practise with Clive Brooks's volume, {6} which comes with two CDs of
audio files (though not including Propertius).
References can now be found in a free pdf compilation of Ocaso Press's Latin pages.