Ovid Translations

[Rores28]

"I think the best version on the market in Verse is Allen Mandelbaum's, and the best Prose translation being the incredible version by Mary Innes"

I read this on a random review on amazon. Anyone care to agree/disagree.... I'm more interested in a good prose translation.

[dfloyd]

is uncalled for. Many here are young people, primarily college students, and Europeans who don't like anything to begin with. Has my time been wasted over the past 40 years by reading tranlations which are now deemed to be outdated or incorrect? I don't think so. My Metamorphoses is translated into English verse by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, William Congreve, and others. In my opinion, Ovid should be read in verse; and it is best read from one of the classic translators. I am not interested in reading modern translations, or out of a paperback purchased at a college bookstore.

[Alexander III]

Actually Dfloyd I would agree with you if it were not for one thing, all the poets you mention, when translating Ovid's poems use rhyming couplets, which from an artistic and personal point of view is blasphemy. Its like translating paradise lost in to french with Rhyme...ridiculous.

[dfloyd]

I don't think so. Most people who are lucky enough to own a fienely printed edition of the classics will have an edition tranlated by an 18th century poet. Maybe in some later year, one will be able to purchase a finely printed, bound, and illustrated copy of the Roman and Greek poets in a modern translation. But I have spent a lifetime collecting classics so I have gotten many hours of pleasure out of this hobby. I, and most collectors, have no interest in reading a paperback Penguin. I will stick with my books which I have gotten as much out of as you probably have. When you buy Greek and Roman classics at $400 and up, you are going to get a translation from a 17th or 18th century poet.

[Rores28]

so there is no confusion... in buying a particular translation I am not concerned with the style of book... a penguin classic will do me fine... merely looking for opinions on the actual translation as I know relatively little about Ovid and the Metamorphoses

Did you have a recommendations Alexander?

[stlukesguild]

I agree that the Metamorphoses should be read in verse if at all possible. I've read parts of several translations and would agree that Mandelbaum's is probably the best choice. Not that Dryden's translation is bad... it is anything but... but as dated as it is it reads more like 17th century English poetry than may be ideal.

[kiki1982]

I don't think so. Most people who are lucky enough to own a fienely printed edition of the classics will have an edition tranlated by an 18th century poet. Maybe in some later year, one will be able to purchase a finely printed, bound, and illustrated copy of the Roman and Greek poets in a modern translation. But I have spent a lifetime collecting classics so I have gotten many hours of pleasure out of this hobby. I, and most collectors, have no interest in reading a paperback Penguin. I will stick with my books which I have gotten as much out of as you probably have. When you buy Greek and Roman classics at $400 and up, you are going to get a translation from a 17th or 18th century poet.

Sorry for the slightly off-topic question here, as I don't know any Latin, I cannot comment. But, what is the most important in a book? The text or in what it is bound and how much it costs or will cost?

Those things you own can well be worth something, as they were translated by notable people, but do not confuse the value of the edition in question because it is in good condition, maybe signed by one of those poeple or whatever, with the fact of the translation.

As far as I can comment, I would opt for something that was in verse to be translated into verse, although it might become difficult as Latin is such a concise language...

[mortalterror]

I've mentioned my preference here before:

For the Metamorphoses I'd definitely go with Rolfe Humphries over Mandelbaum. He's a little too clunky for such a smooth poet, and as someone above me has already noted, the rhyme jars on the ear.

Here's Mandelbaum:

Before the sea and lands began to be,
before the sky had manteled every thing,
then all of natures face was featureless-
what men call chaos: undigested mass
of crude, confused, and scumbled elements,
a heap of seeds that clashed, of things mismatched.
There was no Titan Sun to light the world,
no crescent Moon- no Phoebe- to renew,
her slender horns; in the surrounding air,
earth's weight had yet to find it's balanced state;
and Amphitrites arms had not yet stretched
along the farthest margins of the land.
For though the sea and land and air were there,
the land could not be walked upon, the sea
could not be swum, the air was without splendor:
no thing maintained it's shape; all were at war;
in one same body cold and hot would battle;
the damp contended with the dry, things hard
with soft, and weighty things with weightless parts.

That just seems so passionless and dry to me. Ovid ought to be translated with the sensual luxuriance one would give to the writings of a French decadent (Baudelaire),

You too Silenus, are on fire, insatiable lecher:
Wickedness alone prevents you growing old.
-Ovid, Fasti, Book I

and the sort of exactness of phrase and poise which we find in scholars like Petrarch, Eliot, and Leopardi. It completely lacks the rhythm of Roman rhetoric which was as much a part of poetry then as it would be in the Renaissance. You don't get the feeling of how intensely conscious he is of poetic tradition. The phrases here don't even sound like they come from the right period. They should sound at least a little bit like Tibullus or Propertius, the way that Eliot sounds a little like Pound and Yeats.

If I had
A hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice
Of iron, I could not tell of all the shapes
Their crimes had taken, or their punishments.
-lines 835-838, Book VI, Virgil's Aeneid

If I had a tireless voice, lungs stronger than brass, and many mouths with many tongues, not even so could I embrace them all in words for the theme surpasses my strength.-Tristia, Bk. I, v. ln. 43-74, Ovid

Also, what's with some of his diction choices, "scumbled?"

Here's the Humphries:

Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven,
Nature was all alike, a shapelessness,
Chaos, so-called, all rude and lumpy matter,
Nothing but bulk, inert, in whose confusion
Discordant atoms warred: there was no sun
To light the universe; there was no moon
With slender silver crescents filling slowly;
No earth hung balanced in surrounding air;
No sea reached far along the fringe of shore.
Land, to be sure, there was, and air, and ocean,
But land on which no man could stand, and water
No man could swim in, air no man could breathe,
Air without light, substance forever changing,
Forever at war: within a single body
Heat fought with cold, wet fought with dry, the hard
Fought with the soft, things having weight contended
With weightless things.

He should be as humorous as Chaucer, the way Marlowe makes him:

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:

Fun loving, but also moral:

I saw a man who laughed at shipwrecks, drowned
in the sea, and said: ‘The waves were never more just.’
-Ovid's Tristia, Book V

though not so severe as Horace, or pious as Virgil. One's a mercenary, the other a priest, but Ovid is a retiring man of letters. Raised to the purple, he's conscious of his aristocratic status and writes with a conscious stately nobility. Certain feelings, and people, are beneath him

One person alone (and this itself is a great wrong)
won’t grant me the title of an honest man.
Whoever it is (for I’ll be silent still as yet about his name)
-Ovid, Ibis tr. Kline

People tend to think of Roman society as chauvinistic, but like Euripides before him he shows a deep concern for the plight of women. He frequently heaps praise and tenderness upon his loving wife and in the Heroides draws many subtle portraits women who have been ill treated by their paramours.

Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep alone in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor widow at my tedious loom.
Imagining hazards more awful than real,
love has always been tempered by fear:
I was sure it was you the Trojans attacked
and the name of Hector made me pale;
if someone told the tale of Antilochus
I dreamed of you dead as he had died;
if they sang of the death of Menoetius' son,
slain in armour not his own, I wept,
because even clever tricks had failed
-Ovid, Heroids tr.Isbell

A monologue worthy of Browning.

I don't know any one translation that captures these various sides of him, but Humphries is the best I know of for the Metamorphoses. Mandelbaum seemed like an also ran in his translations of Dante, not even rising to the level of Ciardi or Longfellow. It's been some time since I've read Melville, but if his Ovid is half as good as his work on Statius' Thebaid it should be fine:

The strife of brothers and alternate reigns
Fought for in impious hatred and the guilt
Of tragic Thebes, these themes the Muses' fire
Has kindled in my heart.

Statius is the only writer who wears his learning on his sleeve more than Ovid. Each line of Melville's translation is lush, allusion laden, and delicious. But on the other hand, Humphries did put out a very readable Juvenal. If I recall correctly they had these beautiful long lines that show off Latin hexameter so well. I'm sure whichever you pick, it should turn out all right.

Now I have done my work. It will endure,
I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire and sword,
Beyond Time's hunger. The day will come, I know,
So let it come, that day which has no power
Save over my body, to end my span of life
Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
The better part, immortal, will be borne
Above the stars; my name will be remembered
Wherever Roman power rules conquered lands,
I shall be read, and through the centuries,
If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.

and again:

That Melville translation really sticks in my craw. It sounds like he's updated ancient Roman poetry to a sixteenth century English idiom. It doesn't have the feel of ancient Latin with the added draw back that it doesn't even sound like 16th century English. Here's how Marlowe translated Book one of Ovid's Amores.

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:
With Muse upreard I meant to sing of armes,
Choosing a subject fit for feirse alarmes:
Both verses were alike till Love (men say)
Began to smile and tooke one foote away.

That Melville translation above feels all wrong. It's like he's reaching for something. I like the idea of translating just about anything into blank verse, but we've had developments since Shakespeare's time, Milton and Wordsworth for example; so modern blank verse doesn't sound that way anymore. If Melville isn't going to give a modern translation in a modern style, then what's the point of updating at all? Why not just take an older translation.

The Dryden translation is dated and doesn't sound any more like Ovid but it's still better than Melville's if you want to go that route.

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.

The Humphries translation may not be perfect but it has the asset of at least sounding something like Ovid.

[stlukesguild]

Yes Humphries is excellent. I forgot all about him. Unfortunately I've had experiences with some really horrible translations of Ovid dating from the 1960's... rather like those atrocious translations of the Bible that turn the Song of Solomon into a vulgar porno poem without the least sensitivity. I don't have a complete Ovid by Humphries. Have you read the Arthur Golding Translation of 1567? I just came across this online.