Is that the Latin version up front? Do you read it in Latin? I am jealous! I'm trying to remember which translation we read in school, it could have been Dryden, kill two literary birds with one stone :D
The front book is a prose translation. The pale blue ones at the back are the Latin versions. It took me about six months to get through Book ii in Latin and I have probably forgotten half the vocabulary now. But the book has stayed - I have two complete audiobooks on iPod, and last year got Seumas Heaney’s translation of book vi as a single download.
Was your Latin good enough that you could get a feel for the shape and rhythm of the poetry? Translating poetry from one language to another is so difficult; you can get the meaning, but seldom the real effect.
Occasionally the rhythm would slide into place but most times I was too preoccupied with the grammar. My finished version read like something written by a seven year old. But there is one glorious line when Aeneas is listening to the noise of the fighting and, basically, there is an r in every word in it, and with a Scottish accent it really comes over!!!
’Read’ is too smooth a word for my staggering through it. Even when I had the vocabulary I sallied away off course. Book ii is the good one, the fall of Troy, when the Greeks seemingly abandon their ten-year siege and sail off, casually leaving a wooden horse behind
( ... )
Even to "stagger" through is an accomplishment of which I am in awe. Plus look at all the extra enjoyment you've gained from being on the inside of the translation process. It is a fascinating sub-genre of creative writing.
Personally, I like your version of Achilles out there doing his morning limbering up. ;-)
I've seen translations by other people of the same verses of the Rubaiyat that Edward FitzGerald translated and they just don't measure up in my view. He did five editions of his own translations and I prefer some versions over others and some I like equally.
It was hard to let go of a tanned fit Achilles with his morning workout in the sun. I liked that image and I think Virgil should have included it.
I have the Fitzgerald versions - when i was 17 I could recite the whole of one of them - but somewhere I got the notion that there was no Omar Khayyam and that, rather than translating, Fitzgerald basically had written it all himself
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I'm trying to remember which translation we read in school, it could have been Dryden, kill two literary birds with one stone :D
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But there is one glorious line when Aeneas is listening to the noise of the fighting and, basically, there is an r in every word in it, and with a Scottish accent it really comes over!!!
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I, too, am envious of your having been able to read it in the original. What a great experience!
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Personally, I like your version of Achilles out there doing his morning limbering up. ;-)
I've seen translations by other people of the same verses of the Rubaiyat that Edward FitzGerald translated and they just don't measure up in my view. He did five editions of his own translations and I prefer some versions over others and some I like equally.
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I have the Fitzgerald versions - when i was 17 I could recite the whole of one of them - but somewhere I got the notion that there was no Omar Khayyam and that, rather than translating, Fitzgerald basically had written it all himself
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