On Translation | Passage on Horace

Charles E Passage: The Complete Works of Horace / Translated in the Meters of the Originals (1983)
An illustration for: Nine Maxims On Translation
E Bruce Brooks / University of Massachusetts / 5 Dec 2002

Translator's Statement: "This volume offers, for the first time, the works of the poet Horace translated by a single hand, unrhymed, and in the meters of the originals, unbowdlerized, and with sufficient notes for a reasonably deep appreciation of the texts."

04

08

Give up trying to learn -
Plan for me or for you,
Babylonian charts.
Whether Jupiter means
Or makes this one the last
Of Tyrrhenian shores.
Lengthy hope to the short
Even now as we talk.

- knowing is wrong! -
Leuconoë;
Simply accept
we are to know
now dashing waves
Show yourself wise;
space of our lives.
Harvest this day,

what span of life the gods
draw up no more of these
all that the future brings,
many a winter more
over the porous rocks
strain the wine clear, and trim,
Envious time escapes
discount tomorrow's gains.

Passage was evidently unaware of Gest's earlier metrical translations. In this poem, he shows himself syllabically her equal, and excels her in smoothness. A few places are disappointing. "All that the future brings" (line 3) conveys a sense of expected abundance that is not in the more sardonic original quicquid "whatever." Rendering oppositis as "dashing" (line 5) leave no room for the original verb debilitat, with its useful suggestion of things wearing steadily away. Time is not so much envious of humans (line 7) as jealous in the sense of chary: concerned to deny humans any great amount of room in the world. The translator's sole note cites Porphyrio for carpere in the sense of "plucking fruit," but his equivalent "harvest" (line 8) will wrongly suggest the scythe to most readers. The present reader also finds the last phrase jarring. Horace's point isn't to recommend lessened expectations of profit (agricultural or other) from the future, but to reduce to the minimum one's hope that the future will even be there.