the metamorphoses is the carmen not the ars

experimental blog for translations of ovid's poetry. current project: tristia 1.1 main: @cy4zur3

[erroretcarmen]

CURRENT PROGRESS

tristia 1.1 (in progress) (rough translation)

met 1 (in-progress) (actual translation)

met 2 (in-progress) (actual translation)

met 3 (in-progress) (rough translation)

PROCESS

my process is to spend time creating a "rough" translation, kind of like a rough draft, in order to understand the words ovid has written, grammar and such. this doubles as latin revision. once i've finished that, i can move onto the fun bit!! which is where i get to loving comb over the poem i now understand and try and communicate it in english

i hope in this translation to convey ovid's rhetorical tricks as best i can, but frankly my goal is to make it sound nice to me when i read it to myself. so whilst i will often be scrupulous about the little details, there may be points of more major divergence where i've decided i know better. and ovid can't complain because. well. he's dead.

METRE

the metre i'm using for elegiac couplets is a line of iambic pentameter followed by a line of alexandrine.

the metre i'm using for dactyllic hexameter is still undecided - currently not there yet. probably iambic pentameter for the sake of simplicity, but i am considering alexandrines also.

HEADER + ICON

header: métamorphe #09, frédéric fontenoy

icon: ovid banished from rome, j. m. w. turner

TAGS

#fert animus dicere - exerpts of translation

#dico - random chatter

#this too is metamorphosis - reblogs

#tristia + #metamorphoses - self-explanatory

[irate-iguana]

Goes up to a gay couple and asks, “So, which of you is carmen and which of you is error?”

[catilinas]

the thing about alexandrines is that they are literally kitkats. like they snap pleasingly in half down the middle the same way

[catilinas]

the thing about alexandrines is that they are literally kitkats. like they snap pleasingly in half down the middle the same way

[erroretcarmen]

here's a fun fact about the passage of time in the metamorphoses; ovid often uses the conceit of the moon to mark the months. and he presents that, too, as a metamorphosis, of the "horns" of the crescent moon metamorphing together into an orb!

[henk-heijmans]

Reflection, Tyre, Lebanon, 2020 - by Jad G Ghorayeb, Lebanese

[erroretcarmen]

update on translation: i am now 50 lines from finishing the rough translation of book 1! i will use this as scaffolding for my understanding of the grammar (i have been learning latin for two years but it is still very poor 😭) and then i get to move onto the fun creative stuff, which is figuring out what metre i want to use. i might explore a range of metres before i fix on one.

[spirallium]

[erroretcarmen]

i realised i never posted it so here is sulpicia 1 ! she's our only extant female roman poet and she was preserved by getting mixed up in the works of a separate male poet, tibullus. i think she's neat

[erroretcarmen]

first excerpt! tristia 1.39-44!! i told myself i wouldn't start the refining process until i had the whole poem worked out, but this bit really stood out.

i have two versions:

soft song will prosper with a mind at ease:

and yet with sudden ill my heart is overcast.

the song wants solace, peace it begs the scribe:

savage winter batters me, too the winds, the sea.

and every fear assails the song; and lost

I fear today the blade is coming for my throat.

and:

song finely spun will prosper in the calm:

and yet with sudden ill my heart is overcast.

song asks the scribe for peacefulness, quiet:

savage winter batters me, too the winds, the sea.

and every fear assails the song; and lost

I fear today the blade is coming for my throat.

the first sticks more strongly to the metre, but at the cost of having "song" come as the second word in lines 1 + 3 (unlike ovid, who has lines 1 + 3 + 5 starting with a version of carmen, poem or song).

the second i have spondees at the start of the ip lines to preserve that feature, and a trochee at the end of line 3 on quiet. i wanted every ip line to finish with a word that reflected the poet's mindset (calm/quiet/lost). but each of these words is stressed, and the trochee especially makes quiet stand out. i want to try and communicate a tension between what the poet is saying with the words, and expressing through the metre, a sort of anger at this exile. but it also risks coming across as too jarring, so i'm torn.

latin under cut

carmina proueniunt animo deducta sereno:

nubila sunt subitis pectora nostra malis.

carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt:

me mare, me uenti, me fera iactat hiems.

carminibus metus omnis obest: ego perditus ensem

haesurum iugulo iam puto iamque meo.

[nevver]

Bust a move, Ronit Porat (because)