how I translate Latin poetry with intention
Late last year, I tasked myself with translating another small excerpt from the Roman poet Propertius, which proved to be an interesting and necessary challenge. He is a poet of complexity, both in emotion and structure, and I went back and forth on how best to represent his style in English, when I could not highlight ideas through word order in the same way he does.
I am not entirely impressed with my work here. I think the aesthetics of it all could always be improved. But I am proud of what I achieved, and the fact I followed through with my intentions as much as possible.
non sum ego qui fueram: mutat via longa puellas.
quantus in exiguo tempore fugit amor!
nunc primum longas solus cognoscere noctes
cogor et ipse meis auribus esse gravis.
felix, qui potuit praesenti flere puellae;
non nihil aspersis gaudet amor lacrimis:
aut si despectus potuit mutare calores,
sunt quoque translato gaudia servitio.
mi neque amare aliam neque ab hac desistere fas est:
Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis erit.
(Propertius, Elegies 1.12)
I am not the one who I had been: a long vacation alters girls.
How much love slips away in such a short time!
Now I am compelled to undergo long nights alone
for the first time and to be burdensome to my own ears.
Fortunate is he who can lament to a present girl,
To some degree love rejoices in scattered tears.
Or if the despised is able to alter his passions,
There are also joys in a transferred servitude.
But it is not my fate to love another nor desist from her:
Cynthia has been the first, Cynthia will be the end.
The main intentions here were to preserve the sound of the original Latin vocabulary and the syllabic length of each line as well as I was able, because that felt like the only way I could reasonably bring Propertius' style into English. It was not my intention to stick so closely to the original grammar and word order, but because syllables in English are much harder to come by, I had to be wordy to make up for the rhythm. I was not perfectly successful overall, but I pride myself on maintaining the syllabic length of the last two lines.
~nan