Welcome
Who is Catullus?  Links
Catullus Forum   Search Translations
 

  Available Esperanto translations:  
 
1 2 2b 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 14b 15 16 17 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41
42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51
52 53 54 55 56 57 58 58b 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 78b 79
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89
90 91 92 93 94 95 95b 96 97 98
99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108
109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116
 

  Available languages:  
 
Latin
Afrikaans   Albanian   Arabic
Brazilian Port.   Bulgarian   Castellano
Catalan   Chinese   Croatian
Czech   Danish   Dutch
English   Esperanto   Estonian
Finnish   French   Frisian
German   Greek   Gronings
Hebrew   Hindi   Hungarian
Interlingua   Irish   Italian
Japanese   Korean   Limburgs
Norwegian   Persian   Polish
Portuguese   Rioplatense   Romanian
Russian   Scanned   Serbian
Spanish   Swedish   Telugu
Turkish   Ukrainian   Vercellese
Welsh  
 

  Gaius Valerius Catullus     
About Me
Send a Reaction
Read Reactions
 

 
Catullus Forum

Main  ::  Translations - all  ::  Mistake in the translation of Carmen 66 (Carmen 66)

<<  •  >>

AuthorMessage
Guest
Posted on Sun Nov 23, 2008 22:45:26  
I think that the translation of lines 77-78

… of my mistress,
the one with whom I drank many thousands of unguents, while
she was a young girl formerly devoid of all perfumes.

of

quicum ego, dum uirgo quondam fuit omnibus expers
unguentis, una milia multa bibi.

is wrong.

The sequence of words in Latin is arbitrary (as in Russian poetry). I think that the “traditional” sequence of words in the Latin text would be as follows:

quicum ego, omnibus expers unguentis, dum uirgo quondam fuit una milia multa bibi.
(“Now I am devoid of all unguents, but when I was a virgin, I drank thousands of them).

Otherwise the poem would have no poetical sense. The Berenice’s hair asks young ladies to pour some perfumes in her honor, because at present she is missing such perfumes and she is accustomed to them. If she were not accustomed to them, she would not miss them. And her mistress has cut her hair immediately after her marriage. It means that the hair could be accustomed to thousands of perfumes only during the period of virginity of her mistress.

Olga (Russia)


zbrg
Posted at Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:44:51  Quote
Well thank the gods for a useful translation of 66. I was relying on a Penguin book of translations by Peter Wigham but his translation is hopeless. The literal translation here is helpful.  However it confirms my suspicion that 66 stinks. It could be a good translation of Callimachus. But it's a bad poem.
 


  � copyright 1995-2010 by Rudy Negenborn
   Nedstat