Odes

by Horace

Other authorsJames Michie (Translator), Gregson Davis (Introduction)
Paperback, 2002

Publication

Modern Library (2002), Edition: 2001, 304 pages

Original publication date

0023 BCE
1963-10 (English: Michie)

Description

2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice This groundbreaking new translation of Horace's most widely read collection of poetry is rendered in modern, metrical English verse rather than the more common free verse found in many other translations. Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz adapts the Roman poet's rich and metrically varied poetry to English formal verse, reproducing the works in a way that maintains fidelity to the tone, timbre, and style of the originals while conforming to the rules of English prosody. Each poem is true to the sense and aesthetic pleasure of the Latin and carries with it the dignity, concision, and movement characteristic of Horace's writing. Kaimowitz presents each translation with annotations, providing the context necessary for understanding and enjoying Horace's work. He also comments on textual instability and explains how he constructed his verse renditions to mirror Horatian Latin. Horace and The Odes are introduced in lively fashion by noted classicist Ronnie Ancona.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member chichikov
I thought of Horace as booorrriiinngg. But this translation moves and shines. I then looked at some old translations and they seemed mired and weighed down in poetic conventions of the 18th century with most meaning and association hidden away. This translation conveys a urban world of trysts,
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broken hearts, people skillfully drawn with a few words or actions or references that make them as alive as the guy next door, and an endless array of relationships all against the magical background of Rome's bright nature full of gods and spirits and green beauty.
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LibraryThing member dirkjohnson
The odes get 5 stars, Charlton Griffin's reading 2 stars.
LibraryThing member agriffina
I bought this book as a guilty pleasure, to read contemporary poets referencing Diana and the Styx, and sometimes even writing in rhyme. I expected Robert Bly and W.S. Merwin's translations to be good and enjoyed them, but was pleasantly surprised by most of the others. Heather McHugh's
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translations were my favorite. Her version of 1.11 was worth the price of the whole book for me.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
Just to be clear, I give Horace all the stars in the internet. I give David Ferry two of them.

Horace's poems are masterpieces of concision, obliquity, delay, and obfuscation. David Ferry's version of Horace is, well, prolix, acute, direct, and transparent. In his introduction he more or less says
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that his unit of translation is the poem as a whole, which is a perfectly defenseable position. Literal translations are terrible, translations of poems should really themselves be poems. The problem here is that Ferry and I disagree so strongly on what a poem should actually be. His ideal seems to be something that is very slightly metrical, but mostly conversational in tone.

I read his translations of Virgil's Eclogues many years ago and liked it okay, and I suspect his style is much better suited to long poems of that kind: what matters in them is what is being said as much as how it is written. But for Horace's odes, what is being said is almost entirely banal, and it is being said in an extraordinary, beautiful, fascinating way. Ferry loses all of that.

Is there a good, modernist translation of Horace out there, akin to Fagles' Oresteia? I hope to read one before I die.
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Language

Original language

English

ISBN

0375759026 / 9780375759024

Physical description

304 p.; 5.5 inches

Pages

304

Rating

½ (69 ratings; 4)
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