Ovid: Unhappy Fame

[monk222]

~
And now my work is done: no wrath of Jove
nor fire nor sword nor time, which would erode
all things, has power to blot out this poem.
Now, when it wills, the fatal day (which has
only the body in its grasp) can end
my years, however long or short their span.
But, with the better part of me, I'll gain
a place that's higher than the stars: my name,
indelible, eternal, will remain.
And everywhere that Roman power has sway,
in all domains the Latins gain, my lines
will be on people's lips; and through all time -
if poets' prophecies are ever right -
my name and fame are sure: I shall have life.

-- The Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum

And so Ovid ends his work full of triumph. Poignantly, the victory may have rung somewhat hollow for him, having failed to win Augustus's reversal of his exile from his beloved Rome. One should not mess with the emperor's granddaughter!

Aside from being an especially slow day even for Monk's personal world, one appreciates the writer's bid for immortality through his creation, as this was even one of Monk's own pleasant illusions in his youth somehow.

As for Ovid, he may not have been able to return to Rome, but his fame has transcended even the sway of Roman power!

Comments

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the original (latin?) scanned like, but it is interesting to see the translated version scanning as blank verse - and 14 lines of it, too. Congratulations to the translator; one only has to look at other translated poetry to see he has done a good job of translating a poem, rather than just the words that are in it; to produce a work in an effective rhyme scheme.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I first looked hard for an Ovid translation when I learned that he was a favorite resource of Shakespeares. But I couldn't find a translation that sung at all to me, and I almost gave up until I happened to see Mandelbaum's on the shelf before I left, and it was love at first sight.

Though, the last stanza quoted above doesn't really sing as well as other parts. He tries to get some of the song of rhyme, settling for a lot of off-rhymes. This is an instance where I wonder whether Ovid may be translated more effectively in one of the Romance languages rather than in English, still thinking that it's easier to rhyme in, say, French, Italian, or Spanish.

And, who knows, Dave, so long as you keep writing, it is at least possible that you might achieve transcendence - in the secular world, that is, for your efforts.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

There definitely seem to be some translations around that I would walk far to avoid, and again your taste is evident in finding one that sounds worth reading.

Have you any interest in early Anglo-Saxon poetry such as 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' ? Arthurian = good, Tolkien = good, result = ugh. The more I write, the harder I find it to tolerate anything less than beauty in poetry, because it becomes so much easier to think what a poem could have been, and so much harder to accept it as it is.

Alliterative verse threatens to entertain me and then fails. I like alliteration, but I want rhythm as well, and preferably rhyme too; and above alliteration, assonance. Thus Tolkien's 'Earendil' poem is about as wonderful a thing as I have read.

As for Ovid, did the original rhyme? Did it use iambic pentameters? Translation must be fascinating, but Thursday_Next can have the job, I will never be remotely as good.