Catullus XCIII, or 93...

[fajrdrako]

Catullus (84 to 54 BC) is my favourite Latin poet. Julius Caesar is my favourite Roman of all time. Catullus, who knew Caesar, wrote about him:

Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere,
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.

My favourite translation of this - and I'm sorry, I have forgotten the translator's name -

Julius Caesar, you’re a snot,
I don’t care if you like it or not.
Maybe you’re good luck, maybe you’re bad,
I don’t care, now go on, and be mad.

This translation can be found online, but it seems nobody has included the translator's name. Drat. Here's the James Michie translation:

Caesar, I have no great desire
To stand in your good graves,
Nor can I bother to inquire
How fair or dark your face is.

And Guy Lee:

I am none too keen to wish to please you, Caesar,
Nor to know if you're a white man or a black.

Or Charles Martin's version:

I am not too terribly anxious to please you, Caesar,
Nor even to learn the very first thing about you.

And so it goes, into increasingly boring versions of the same thing.

Later on, Caesar charmed Catullus and Catullus got over his snit, so they became friends and poet-cronies. I love seeing one of two contemporaries who fascinate me, describing the other through his own eyes.

Comments

[janne-d.livejournal.com]

Oh, the first version is brilliant!

Reminds me of another great insulting poem from Rome (I think) that I saw a while back by Martial:
The golden hair that Gala wears is hers
Who would have thought it?
She swears it's hers, and true she swears
For I know where she bought it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, the first version is brilliant!

It is, isn't it? My memory is telling me that the translator's surname is Alexander. I'd like to find the source again. The other translators all make the poem an understatement; but Catullus didn't understate. He was a man for bold statements.

And that Martial poem is delightful!

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

Have you read Thornton Wilder's "The Ides of March?" It's an oldie but goodie and goes into the friendship between Casear and Catullus along with a good portrayal of Rome of the time.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I love that novel. It always makes me think "Noel Coward meets Suetonius", but that's a good thing. I always look for any novels about Caesar that I can find. Catullus, too, but there aren't so many.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Translator is a task similar to photographer. You can make it simply a mirror, or you can be inventive and creative in how you portray what is already there where other people can also already perceive it.

I like the first version.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Translation is a tricky kind of creativity. Do you reflect the meaning of a poem, or the quality of it? I'm struggling with that, because there are some other non-English poems I want to feature here. And if I don't really like any of the translations I know, does that mean I have to translate them myself? Ouch.

That first translation is brilliant; the others are pale and anaemic.