Louis Dudek

Improved Epigrams

Reading through the Anchor Book of Latin Quotations, with English translations, compiled by Norbert Guterman (1966, reprinted 1990), I noticed that some of the translations done by undistinguished authors, like J.W. Basore, and even distinguished ones like Richard Crashaw, were somewhat inadequate. Naturally, I improved upon them on the spot, and wrote my own versions in the margins.

Here are some of the quotations from Seneca the Philosopher which I have touched up. (There is no point in quoting the unimproved original translations - they were simply a bit lame.) However, I recommend the entire book of Latin quotations to the curious reader.

 No one is laughed at who first
 laughs at himself.

 The most ungrateful one is he
 who forgets.

 I appropriate, by right, 
 whatever I find well-expressed.

 One who is your friend loves you,
 but one who loves you is not
 necessarily your friend.

 Leisure without literary study is
 like death, a tomb for the living.

 Some famous recent celebrities can
 reckon their age by the number of
 U.S. presidents or by the number of
 husbands they have known. 
 (Of course, Seneca said "the number
 of consuls" - but that too must be
 "translated".)

And this is the translation by Richard Crashaw, English poet of the seventeenth century, of som e famous lines by Catullus:

 Come and let us live, my dear,
 Let us love and never fear
 What the sourest fathers say.
 Brightest Sol that dies today
 Lives again as blithe tomorrow;
 Set, O then, how long a night
 Shuts the eyes of our short light!

These lines I also translated more than thirty years ago, in what I thought then was an improved modern version. I leave the reader to judge. "Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus...":

 Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love!
 And all the mutterings of crabbed
 old men weight as dust, against this
 one reflection: Suns can set, and
 they can return, but we, once our
 short light has ended, one long
 perpetual night must sleep.

  "Nox est perpetua una dormienda."

Translation must aim for naturalness, in the language that receives, and above all a successful effect, of the same kind: that is, a good poem, or a good epigram, in the new language. It is a kind of rebirth for past literature, to be translated, and the babe should cry out loud in the new tongue.

There is also the Anchor Book of French Quotations done by the same author, but I have only a few "improvements" to offer. One from La Bruyère:

 It takes as much skill to make a book as to
 make a clock; there's something more than
 mere intelligence necessary to qualify as
 an author.

 And from Montesquieu:

 You have to study a lot to know a little
 of anything.
 
 And, finally, from Vauvenargues:

 Perfect clarity is the shine of the master.
 (He said "varnish, 
 but in English it doesn't shine.)

I should add that most of the translations offered by Norbert Guterman in these two books are adequate, even admirable, as far as I can judge. I have improved only the few that needed something more, or that could be sharpened, for their effect.

The real goods is in the original Latin and French. Both books (in paperback) are highly worth buying, and reading - I hope this was clear from the outset.

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