[Geoff Brock]

Martial – 12.61

You fear I’ll write a brief and lively poem
attacking you, Ligurra, and you yearn
to be considered worthy of such fear.
Your wish is vain and so is your concern.
Lions of Libya roar at bulls; they leave
butterflies unmolested. If you’re keen
to have men read of you, find some drunk bard
of the dark arch, who scrawls on a latrine,
in clumsy charcoal or in crumbling chalk,
verses that people read while they are shitting.
To mark your brow with my brand isn’t fitting.


[original]

Versus et breve vividumque carmen
in te ne faciam times, Ligurra,
et dignus cupis hoc metu videri.
sed frustra metuis cupisque frustra.
in tauros Libyci fremunt leones,
non sunt papilionibus molesti.
quaeras censeo, si legi laboras,
nigri fornicis ebrium poetam,
qui carbone rudi putrique creta
scribit carmina quae legunt cacantes.
frons haec stigmate non meo notanda est.


[trot]

You fear, Ligurra, that I should write
a brief and lively poem about you,
and you want to seem worthy of such a fear.
But you fear in vain and you yearn in vain.
Libyan lions roar at bulls,
they do not bother butterflies.
I advise you, if you are anxious to be read about,
seek out a drunk poet of a dark archway,
who with rough charcoal or crumbling chalk
writes poems which people read while shitting.
This brow is not for marking with my brand.

[Geoff Brock]

The first two translations I posted about had in common an author and an interest in time; today’s have in common a satirical bent. In Martial’s epigram, the poet asserts that Ligurra, the subject of his poem, in not worthy of being the subject of his poem; he writes that only a bad poet, never Martial himself, would write about her. There must be a good rhetorical term for what he is doing here (occupatio? paralipsis? apophasis? somebody help me!), but the translator doesn’t need to know it. The translator needs only to convey the biting wit and sarcasm.

Humor is always a challenge for the translator, and on the whole this translator meets the challenge well. This version is formally deft and pleasantly colloquial, and the humor generally comes through intact. The first few lines are the weakest, it seems to me. As a reader I felt I had to untangle the fear and yearning, which diminished the lines' quickness of impact (a quality commonly known as “zing”). In line 4, “wish” refers back to “yearn” from line 2, and “concern” refers back to “fear” from line 1; but “wish” is just far enough semantically from “yearn,” as “concern” is from “fear,” that it took me a second to re-pair them. Notice that, in the original, Martial uses forms of the same word in both cases (metuis/metu and cupisque/cupis) and that, furthermore, the two pairs are much closer together; these two factors help him generate zing.

The next few lines, though, and the final couplet have zing aplenty. The enjambment at the end of line 5 and that spitting trochee at the start of line 6 are withering. And those three strong monosyllables that follow drip nicely with disdain. I have some trouble with “of the dark arch,” in part because of the preposition, which seems faintly awkward, and in part because I’m not clear what “dark arch” is really supposed to mean or what the relationship is between the arch and the latrine. (Are the latrines under the dark arch? Or do you just find the poet there and get him to go scrawl on the latrine walls?) This isn’t what you want your reader thinking. If “nigri fornicis” is meant simply to evoke a dark, sleazy place, I wonder if the translation might be better served by replacing the arch with something that resonates more clearly for the modern reader, e.g. “dive bar” or “whorehouse.” Perhaps a reader with more Latin than I have could offer better suggestions here.

I suppose this suggestion brings us back to the old question of “fidelity,” which is anything but a simple concept. Fidelity to the letter of the poem? Or to the intent of the author that preceded the letter? Or to the effect on its original readers that followed the letter? The letter is important in itself, of course, but it is also important as a guide to understanding what may have preceded and followed it. The letter and its past and future: that’s my trinity. Sticking too close to the literal meaning of words sometimes results in betraying their spirit. And an epigram don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that zing.

[Maryann Corbett]

Hmm. I was going to attribute this to someone we know well here who has translated a lot of Martial and who favors tightly metrical IP and exact rhymes. What I wonder about is the change of diction--as I see it, at least--from the first to the second half of the poem; it seems to switch from high to low very abruptly. I wish I were Latinist enough to know whether that's a feature of the original, and so I hope the Latinists will appear among us. Until then, I'll defer my guess about the translator's identity.

[Lance Levens]

Martial's work includes the Postumus cycle, a group of of pieces treating M's ambivalent attitude toward an inferior poet named Postumus who seems to have enhanced his esteem in the reading public's eyes by his inclusion in M's poems. Given that background, the shadows around M's refusal to consider including Ligurra grow a bit more interesting.

Horace tells us brothels were sometimes found under an arch ( "fornix" is the Latin word for "arch") such as the Fornix Fabianus or Fabiorum, an honorary arch erected on or over the Sacra Via at the east end of the forum by Q. Fabius Allobrogicus in 121 B.C. to commemorate his victory over the Allobroges. Martial, in 12.61, is providing us a lesson in carnal etymology; but, as Geoff points out, most (including myself had I not seen it in Lewis and Short) will not pick up on this. "Brothel" might be more compelling.

The closing couplet's excellent. Too bad all the "k" and "g" gutturals of "scribit carmina quae legunt cacantes" in the original are lost. They link the carmina (the poems) of the bad poet Ligurra needs to seek out with the cacantes (the folks shitting) in a nice cackle.

Fine work.

Lance

[Stephen Collington]

Fun poem, well translated. Like Geoff, I find the first few lines a bit muddled--particularly L3, where "worthy of such fear" makes it sound like it's the poet who is assumed to be afraid, not Ligurra. Can you have a fear that you're liable to be satirized by someone . . . and then feel anxious to be "worthy" of that same--your own--fear? I guess so. But it's a bit of a riddle in context. (Also, a small point of diction: once "fear" has been used in the line above, "concern" comes off as anticlimax.)

Anyway, that's thinking about these things too carefully perhaps. The translation bounces along in a light, snappy way, with just the right tone of serene contempt.

In fact, I think it gets just about everything right . . . except (and here I disagree with others above) in the closing couplet. The shitting/fitting rhyme is fine, but the metre in the last line is ambiguous, and liable to cause stumbles. If it's going to scan, you have to put a rhetorical accent on "my." That makes sense enough, given the context--it's just that it's too easy to miss, and then you get "to MARK your BROW with my BRAND isn’t FITting." A beat short, a classic miss-the-last-step-of-the-stairs stumble, and right at the close, where you want everything to click into place. One possibility would be just to italicize "my" and hope for the best, but the demotion of "brand" then seems awkward with "ISn't" following. The word "verses" has already been put into play above, and can be assumed as an antecedent . . . maybe . . . "To brand your brow with mine would not be fitting." No doubt there are any number of ways to fix it--but I do think that the potential stumble is a potential detractor for the poem.

Otherwise, good stuff. I'm glad to make the acquaintance of this one, which I hadn't read before. I have a new motto for the bookplate now, too: carmina quae lego . . .

cachinnans (lol)

Steve C.

[Skip Dewahl]

I had no trouble with the first four lines. Admittedly, the remainder is superior, with the nit-picking exception of the closing line which seems to have a bit of inversion. The enjambment doesn't seem to get in the way of the rhyme. Whoever this is, has done this sort of thing before and hopefully will do it again in future. Good craftsmanship.

[Catherine Chandler]

This is very well done, though it would seem a tad less biting than the original in a few places. Though the Latin is "non sunt papilionibus molesti" I think the word "unmolested" could be improved upon (what about "alone", then a tweak in the meter of that line. I enjoyed this one.

[Petra Norr]

I'm going to echo Catherine: "unmolested" was something I reacted to -- it didn't really seem to fit -- and I think the poem is very well done.
As someone else said, it's a slight shame that the meter is rocky in the last line. That final rhyming couplet is great, but regular meter would give it even more snap & punch.
--
I should have been more precise: "molested" comes with a lot of baggage since it's often used today as a 'euphemism' for sexual abuse. So even "unmolested" has sexual undertones.
--
Just looked up the word "molest" and found that it's not even a euphemism for sexual abuse; that actually is one of its meanings. So the question is, is that what the original poem could be implying? I didn't get that sense from the crib, where the translation is "do not bother". That's much weaker than what the whole unmolested package conveys.

[Geoff Brock]

Sorry, all -- there actually are italics in that last line, which as Stephen and others have noted does clarify it, both metrically and otherwise. They were a casualty of the cut-and-paste operation, but have now been restored.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I think of the dark arch is brilliant. It seems broadly evocative of 'the wrong side of the tracks' without limiting itself to time and place by being too literal.

I also think that any change of diction from the opening to the close is a one of those master strokes of ageless vaudeville.

Nemo