The Poems and Fragments of Catullus

The Poems and Fragments of Catullus - Translated in the Metres of the Original

The idea of translating Catullus in the original metres adopted by the poet himself was suggested to me many years ago by the admirable, though, in England, insufficiently known, version of Theodor Heyse (Berlin, 1855). My first attempts were modelled upon him, and were so unsuccessful that I dropt the idea for some time altogether. In 1868, the year following the publication of my larger critical edition[A] of Catullus, I again took up the experiment, and translated into English glyconics the first Hymenaeal, Collis o Heliconici. Tennyson's Alcaics and Hendecasyllables had appeared in the interval, and had suggested to me the new principle on which I was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was reproduced also. Almost all the modern writers of classical metre had contented themselves with making an accented syllable long, an unaccented short; the[Pg viii] most familiar specimens of hexameter, Longfellow's Evangeline and Clough's Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich and Amours de Voyage were written on this principle, and, as a rule, stopped there. They almost invariably disregarded position, perhaps the most important element of quantity. In the first line of Evangeline there are no less than five violations of position, to say nothing of the shortening of a syllable so distinctly long as the i in primeval. Mr. Swinburne, in his Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while writing on a manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in my judgment, proving their possibility for modern purposes by the superior rhythmical effect which a classically trained ear enabled him to make in handling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice sense of metre leads him at times to observe it, and uniformly rejects any approach to the harsh combinations indulged in by other writers. The nearest approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am acquainted in modern English writers is the Andromeda of Mr. Kingsley, a poem which has produced little effect, but is interesting as a step to what may fairly be called a new development of the metre. For the experiments of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip Sidney and others, by that strange perversity which[Pg ix] so often dominates literature, were as decidedly unsuccessful from an accentual, as the modern experiments from a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip Sidney has given in his Arcadia specimens of hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads, anacreontics, hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve as a sample. [Pg x]In these the classical laws of position are most carefully observed; every dactyl ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with a vowel or hafflctn holdeth, momnt f hs anguish, case f hs onely; affliction wasteth, moment of his dolour, cause of his dreary, would have been as impossible to Sir Philip Sidney as morr tnebat, momnt pr curae, cas vl sola in a Latin writer of hexameters. Similarly where the dactyl is incided after the second syllable, the third syllable beginning a new word, the utmost care is taken that that word shall begin not only with a syllable essentially short, but, when the second syllable ends in a consonant, with a vowel: f ths pistle, but not f ths dsaster, still less f ths drection. The other element of quantity is less rigidly defined; for (1) syllables strictly long, as I, thy, so, are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made long by the accent falling upon them are in some cases shortened, as rne, prshd, crl; (3) syllables which the absence of the accent only allows to be long in thesi, are, in virtue of the classical laws of position, permitted to rank as long elsewheremomnt of his, f this epistle. It needs little reflection to see that it is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres must be ascribed. Pentameters like ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 18867
Author: Catullus, Gaius Valerius
Release Date: Jul 19, 2006
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Ellis, Robinson, 1834-1913