Catullus Redux

Did I tell you I loved Catullus. Well, I love blogging on the internet also. I love serendipity too.

In my posting three days ago I mentioned that I had been reading a review regarding a new translation of the poems of Catullus by Josephine Balmer in the Times Literary Supplement. I had hoped to include a translation by her but couldn’t find any in my google-ing so included one by Charles Martin instead. I had also wanted to include a snippet from the review, but without the poem had decided against it. This one:

Her translation will prove very useful, partly because it offers a wide-ranging introduction, explanatory notes and bibliography. But it is more important that reading this often brutal material, with its phallic obsession and torture imagery, becomes far more enjoyable in a translation by a middle-aged woman. The effect of inserting a female subjectivity between Catullus and the reader is to take the seediness out of a world dominated by notions of sexual degradation.

But today I received an email from Josephine Balmer herself, telling me a friend had told her of my comments, and informing me further that a few of her translations are featured on-line on the pages of Brindin Press (an unbelievably great site by the way worth investigating and worth a posting of its own in the future.) Here’s one of Balmer’s translations:

LESBIA'S KISSES
Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus)
tr. Josephine Balmer

Time to live and let love, Lesbia,
count old men's cant, their carping chatter,
cheap talk, not worth one last penny piece.
You see, suns can set, can rise again
but when our brief light begins to wane
night brings on one long unending sleep.
So let me have a thousand kisses,
then a hundred, a thousand gratis,
a hundred, a thousand, on increase.
Then, when we've made our first million,
we can cook the books, just smudge the sums
so no evil eye can spy, sully,
by reckoning up our final tally.

Not being fluent in Latin, I can’t really say if it’s a wonderful translation, but despite being middle-aged (which I believe is neither pertinent to the writing or appreciation of this work,) I will say it’s a wonderful poem. The language is alive with rhymes, wit, and alliteration. I love it.

Did I tell you I loved Catullus. Well, I love blogging on the internet also. I love serendipity too.

Note: edited Greek out of there, what the %^&# was I thinking. Sorry. Thanks to a commenter at Doctor J's.