Whicher on Horace: Carmina 1/11
George F Whicher: Selected Poems of Horace (1947)
An illustration for: Nine Maxims On Translation
E Bruce Brooks / University of Massachusetts / 5 Dec 2002
Background: As a codicil to Austin Dobson's villanelle version of Carmina 1/11 in the above anthology, George Whicher, both intrigued and (perhaps) irritated by it, appended this version, which is quite different from the one "published by his father and himself more than a quarter of a century ago."
[The elements of these translations corresponding to the Latin oppositis and pumicibus, which in the original are separated by the verb debilitat, are shown in red for easier technical comparison].
Carmina 1/11
Pry not in forbidden lore,
03
06
09
12
15
"Questing" is a neat attempt, though a failed attempt, for an etymologically sound equivalent to quaesieris ("seek, inquire"). On the whole, Whicher's trope on Dobson captures something of Dobson's forward motion, but gets more of Horace's detail in, along the way. This was surely his intention, and we can generously overlook such rhyme-induced intrusions as "send us / end us." Given the premises of a modern adaptation which will work without footnotes, he falters chiefly at the end (lines 14-16), when he shifts from his reasonably dignified tone into a suddenly jazzy finish. Horace's finish is abrupt too, but it is consistent in tone with what precedes. Literary readers will also pick up an echo, a distracting echo, of Fitzgerald's Omar: "Aye, take the cash, and let the credit go / Nor heed the rumbling of a distant drum." The "credit" in Whicher's version can be technically justified as a rendition of the original's "have faith in," but still. An anthology poem should not itself be an anthology.
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