Horace Issue || Horace

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HoraceAuthor(s): Ezra PoundSource: Arion, Vol. 9, No. 2/3, Horace Issue (Summer - Autumn, 1970), pp. 178-187Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163255 .

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HORACE

Ezra Pound

1 N EITHER SIMPLE NOR PASSIONATE, sensuous only in so far as he is a gourmet of food and of

language, aere perennius, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, bald

headed, pot-bellied, underbred, sycophantic, less poetic than any other great master of literature, occupies one com

plete volume of the British Museum Catalogue and about

half the bad poetry in English might seem to have been

written under his influence, but as almost no Englishman save Landor has ever written a line of real criticism this is

not perhaps very surprising. There are people called the

'English Critics' (sometimes the gt. E.G.) who have put down a few rules of thumb about finding rhymes, or about

the religious bearing of literature, or indulged in metaphy sical speculation, but Landor was almost unique in examin

ing specific passages of verse to see whether they were well or ill written or if they could be improved. Thus books on

Horace abound, but there has been very little attempt to

define the art of Maecenas' prot?g?. Horace is a liar of no mean pomposity when he claims to

have been the first to bring in the '^Eolic modes', for Catullus

preceded him, and Catullus wrote better Sapphics. Catullus

frankly translated one poem and frequently improves on

Greek style. Horace lifts passages; incorporates lines; I doubt if he improves on Alcaeus.

Both Catullus and Ovid add something to world poetry,

something which is not in the Greek poetry that has come

Copyright ? 1972 by ARioN/The Department of Classics. AU Rights Reserved. Copyright ? 1930; ? 1972 by Ezra Pound. All Rights Reserved. Published by permission of Dorothy Pound for the Committee for Ezra Pound, New Directions Publishing Corporation, agent.

This essay was first published in The Criterion IX ( 1929-1930).



Ezra Pound 179

down to us. Horace at his best is sometimes more, sometimes

less than a translation, but there is a definitely Horatian art.

Apart from Catullus he was the most skillful metrist among the Latins, Propertius excelling him in but one habitual

metre.

Against the granite acridity of Catullus' passion, against Ovid's magic, and Ovid's sense of mystery, Horace has but

the clubman's poise and no stronger emotion than might move one toward a

particularly luscious oyster. His jibes at

old women are like petty personal fusses lacking the charm

of Palladas' impartial pessimism or the artistic aloofness, the

Epicurean and really godlike impersonality of Catullus'

poem containing the phrase, 'habet dent?s', which is the first

Wyndham Lewis drawing, perhaps the only Wyndham Lewis drawing, in literature.

Yet Horace remains untranslated. There are charming ap

proximations. For four centuries, French and English poets have written pleasing poems on Horatian themes, but he has

given rise to nothing comparable with Gavin Douglas' Virgil,

Golding's Metamorphoses or Marlowe's translations of the

Ovidian Elegies. On brief reflection it becomes apparent that the Eliza

bethans could not have translated him. He does not the least

fit their period, although the Great Eliza herself made one

version of the Ars Po?tica and Ben Jonson a second and

divers others attempted it. Pleasing versions of individual

poems do not dispose of the question. The eighteenth century 'founded on the ars po?tica' is equally unsatisfactory in rendering Horace's Latin, and the results are unreadable.

As most writers live and die under the dominion of a few

catchwords, one could scarcely expect an analysis of Hor

ace's art as he actually practiced it, to precede an attempt

to translate him.

This art, in so far as it is poetic consists in his being able to insert such lines as

Inter ludere virgines Et stellis nebulam spargere candidis

in the middle of a poem whose general tone is that of a



l8o HORACE

smoking-room snicker, without breaking the homogeneity of his medium.

He is often rendered purely facetiously. His joking has

made him popular, for anyone can see Horace's jokes. Still

they would not have made him immortal.

He gives pleasure to the members of the Isthmian Club

by his obviousness; to the connoisseur by his verbal arrange ment. Here the pleasure is sensuous, a dilettantism, a spe

ciality that can affect only the connoisseur of good writing.

Augustan Rome had presumably begun to be interested in

the actual language of poets, the interest was very different

from the Elizabethan interest in magnificent and grandilo quent phrases. Ovid shows the effect of legal training. The

whole question of Roman style in verse as in prose has prob ably intimate connection with the actual conditions and

circumstances of Roman trials and jurisprudence. Modern pleasure in Horace's irony can only be discussed

comfortably with people who read Laforgue and the literary

pleasure derivable from him will be perhaps more apparent to readers of Ren? Ghil and his most up-to-date imitators.

This literary pleasure is not due to the passion of Horace, but to his order of words, and their cadence in a line measured

by the duration of syllables. The public pleasure in him is from the elements used in the following broadside imitation:

THE LORD G.... TO THE E. OF S.

(Imitated from Horace, Ode IV, Lib. II, 'Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori', etc. )

i

Do not most fragrant Earl; disclaim

Thy bright, thy reputable Flame To B.... le, the Brown, But publickly espouse the Dame And say G_D_the Town.

n

Full many Heroes, fierce and keen, With Drabbs have deeply smitten been; Altho' right good Commanders,



Ezra Pound 181

Some, who with you have Hounslow seen, And some who've been in Flanders.

ra

Did not base Greber's Pegg inflame, etc.

The sober E. of N.... etc.

IV

Tho' thy Dear's Father kept an Inn;... For Carriers at Northampton She may have come of Gentler kin

Than e'er that Father dremt on. and so forth

There is a strict and exiguous limit to the number of

people who can get any pleasure from the cadence and

verbal arrangement of:

Do not be ashamed of falling in love with your cook, It is, after all, my dear Phoceus,

Only the old story of

Bris?is and Achilles.

Which may be given with equal correctness :

Blush not to love thy maid.

The ineffective translations of this poem are without num

ber. Landor has taken the playful tone, and rightly in so far

as the original indubitably preserves a topical teasing, yet

neither playful nor facetious manner will give a satisfactory

complete Horace.

The single line:

Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni

has a week's work in it for any self-respecting translator, and needs inspiration on at least one day of the seven, yet

people have had a mania for translating the whole of Horace.



l82 HORACE

Only a few of the best transmitters have been content to

try a few poems as a beginning.

John Smith ( 1649) is as good as any:

Thou seest White Soract's head

With deep snows overspread, The ore-charge woods to bow, And greatest flouds run flow:

Now shut could out of door

By burning wood good store....

Velaunois (1579) begins the series of translations:

Venus ayant par si longtemps suyvie Tu me livr?s l'assaut

Accoustum?, fais cesser, je te prie Ce feu d'amour si chaut.

Je ne suis tel, contraint, je le confesse

Qu' autrefois j'ay v?s eu.

Ores le dos j'ay courb? de vieillesse De

cinquante ans vaincu_

or

Voicy venir la beaut? printani?re Et les neiges s'en vont

L'arbre prenant sa perruque premi?re S'en ombrage le front.

In Certain Selected Odes, 1621, printed by H. L. for Richard

Moore to be solde at his shop in Saint Dunstan's Church

Yard in Fleet Street. I find:

What pretty Youth, weltering in roses

With liquid odours overspread, O Pirrha thee ins armes encloses,

When thou love's lecture hath him read Ith' inner bower? Neglecting curious dresses

For whom plaitst thou the gold-wire of thy tresses?

but the terminal couplet of his fourth strophe is not such as

to stifle competition.



Ezra Pound 183

Nor does Smith very far outstrip him in complete result, he gets a beautiful line or so:

To whom dost thou bind up thy yellow haire In outside simple.

still leaves the original almost untouched.

John Hanway (1730), often intolerable, had possibly an

inkling of what ailed the earlier translators. I take it that

they were trying to write poetry. He opens III, 9:

While I with freedom cou'd alone

Rove o'er your snowy breast

Not he that fills the Persian throne

E'er thought himself so blest.

I am being dishonest with the reader to this extent, in

carefully dating these excerpts both French and English there is an undercurrent or innuendo. Not only

are these

people 'translating' or, having intended to translate, been

deflected, but they are also moulding styles in their respec tive tongues or at least anticipating what later happens.

In reading Velaunois, one is not the least interested in

Horace, Velaunois is perhaps the most readable of the trans

lators, but one finds that one is reading solely for the quaint ness of his sixteenth-century French regardless of whether he

writes well or in any way corresponds with the original (either pleasure would be legitimate, as is for that matter

one's nibbling at quaintness ) :

Permetz d'estaindre en moy ceste flam?che

N'uses de cruaut?, D?esse ailleurs vat-en faire ta br?che

Exerceant ta fiert?.

Au beau printemps la puceline bande

Veut ton fils pour son Roy Maintes pri?res enflam?es te demandent

Fait luy sentir ta loy.

I am inclined to think that the eighteenth century looked

rather more carefully at the text and tried to distinguish Hor ace more clearly from Homer and from the poetic poets.

Lachabeaussi?re ( 1803 ) seems to show the effect of the



184 HORACE

century's scholarship or kultur or whatever we are to call it.

Nagu?re encore avec honneur

Je servais l'amour et les belles, Et de mon service aupr?s d'elles,

Je recevais le prix flatteur.

Mon temps est fait, et ma vaillance

N'a plus, helas! les m?mes droits:

Faut-il, par mes propres exploits, Avoir h?t? ma v?t?rance!

There is no danger of mistaking the original author for a

contemporary of Ronsard; perhaps Horace and this trans

lator would have found each other more mutually compre hensible.

Leucono?! de l'avenir

N'envions pas la connaissance.

Pr?voir quand un bien doit finir C'est en troubler la jouissance.

is, however, as careless or heedless of the original as any Elizabethan could have been.

Lyc?! les Dieux m'ont exauc?, L'ennui de vieillir te d?vore;

L'?ge de nous plaire est pass?

Et le d?sir t'en reste encore.

L'Amour si soumis autrefois

Rit et s'enfuit quand tu l'appelles, Il ne reconna?t plus ta voix, Il vole a des beaut?s nouvelles.

En vain au ravage des ans

Tu crois opposer la parure; Tes fleurs, ton or, tes diaments Ne font qu'en ?clairer l'injure.

lift Lachabeaussi?re from the middle rank of the attempters. Out of a m?lange of such divers translations a reader igno rant of Latin might get some idea of the original quality. I am trying to set aside versions that have merely bored me



Ezra Pound 185

to death. Thos. Hawkins, 1638, might be translating Basselin

for half a line, and then I suppose we grin.

To broach old Caecube wines; whilst the mad Queene

Prepar'd the ruin, and disastrous fall

Both of the Empire and the Capitoll.

Barten Holyday (1652) seems to be somewhat in the line

of Cambyses:

I hate and from me do exclude

The most illiterate Multitude.

You knowing, etc_

To Boyes and spotlesse Virgins verse

Which none did ever yet rehearse.

It won't do. Any more than will the 1621 version of the in

tolerable poem to Maecenas.

Maecenas, of the race of Kings thy grandsires bred, O thou my chief support, and garland of my head.

This couplet is perhaps of untenable value as illustrating the

effects of reverence for the classics unjoined with critical

understanding or any attempt at computing literary values. One can't too rashly pull snoots at these versions for

Horace is the devil to translate. Secondly I may have given even in these few pages some clue to the tremendous fertil

ity or stimulus that has resulted from failing to translate him; I mean in the number of styles that seem to have resulted from the effort. He is not good enough; and not unified

enough to absorb the translator or to cause a masterwork in

the new language; comparable either to the work of Golding

or Gavin Douglas or Hughes Salel. He leaves a tangential

stimulus. In

Es ist unrecht und zu viel

Dass du wiliest dar?ber sorgen Ob heut ausseh oder morgen Mein und deines Lebens Ziel

Oder dass, Leuconoe, Du erforschen wollst und fragen

Was die Sternen Sucher sagen Wie und wo dein Glucke steh?



l86 HORACE

Andreas Kraut probably approximates as nearly as any one yet has, the force of the original; but that poem is far

from the whole of Horace. And Kraut is as far as anyone from defining the general Horatian quality. I am not sure

that by and large 1730 isn't a typical period and that, faults

and merits balanced, Hanway won't do as well as another

as illustrator:

The imperious Queen of love

Joyn'd with Sem'les son by Jove; And lewd freedom bid me fire All their pow'rs with young desire,

When I look on Glycera's skin, Streak'd with purple veins within,

And so smooth it far out-shines

Marble, brought from Parian mines;

Horace is so full of matter which is not direct presentation of objects, or even direct statement of anything, that no

method developed to meet the demands of such directness

will serve to translate him. Catullus' Tarn ver egelidos refer?

tepores' would go straight into the best sort of Chinese ideo

graph, the eleven lines are full of direct and definite state

ment, and the poem is very emotional. Catullus was a very

great poet, yet if Catullus had not lived Horace might be

counted the greatest lyrist in Lat?n. He was such a humbug that the early nineteenth century produced a preface to his

'moral odes', regretting that so few were in that category. The author says he has attempted to transmit the moral

point, but made no attempt to render the attendant graces, an attempt which in his opinion 'must ever be attended with

the sure effect of enfeebling and blunting their moral force'.

I suppose this also shows a marvelous and superjournalistic

adaptability in the text. Horace lived under that crapulous

presbyterian Caesar Augustus and carried his camouflage with all the unction of an adulterous Methodist deacon. But he had the art of writing, as much as can be learned, and the

knack of interpolating Greek treasure trove in pseudo Greek metres. He had an

unifying faculty; was myopic and unim

aginative in his attack on sculptured mermaids at the begin

ning of his ars po?tica. He can start in the tone



Ezra Pound 187

O wife of indigent Ibycus

Why will you play about with flappers

and introduce his stellis nebulam spargere without creating an incongruity. The translator not realizing that the unity is

the essential personal unity of Horace, but trying to render

both extremes without the middle is apt to fall into one of

two errors. He will either give only one phase of a poem; either the facetious or the poetic;

or else; and it is the rarer

error confined to the few translators who try to understand

the original; he will mix a Laforguian beginning with a Mil

tonic or Marlowe middle or a few Victorian or Swinburnian

tags. The eighteenth century got some sort of superficial ap

pearance of unity by reason of its uniform metric.

Platen's tomb in Siracusa calls him the German Horace.

Unless someone really were 'a Horace' I see no chance of a

real translation. It would be worth ten years of a man's life to translate Catullus; or Ovid or

perhaps Sulpicia. Marlowe,

Golding, Gavin Douglas were full of untempered admir

ation for their originals, only such untempered admiration can produce the energy necessary to surrender and fusion. It is difficult to imagine anyone wanting to feel like Horace

with sufficient force to produce the equivalent idiom. For the public the interest in the great mass of Horatian

translation stored in Museum Britannicum is almost nil. For the specialist and student of literature if offers very small di rect return, either as light on Horace, or as illustrative of the art of translating. It could, however, be put to two secondary uses. First, you could probably make a

fairly accurate graph of the development and the changes of fashion in English verse style without using anything save this mass of transla

tion. Secondly, the material would be useful for anyone

building up a thesis as to the relative effect of original writ

ing and translation of the classics in developing English writ

ten idiom.



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