[David Rosenthal]

I like the strangeness of this. Well strangeness to me, anyway -- I don't know much about Latin or old accentual-alliterative verse. Not all the alliterations popped for me, especially some crucial ones toward the end. Also, a few phrases -- "guzzle from golden goblets" comes to mind -- come close to comical cloying, to me. But overal I think the experiment is effective. The host form definitely moves the oration of the piece forward and gives it a quiet but urgent sense. Interesting.

David R.

[Susan McLean]

I feel that this translation falls into a middle ground between a close translation (which would require considerable boiling down of wordiness added by the need to fit the alliterative form) and the requirements of the Anglo-Saxon form (which would call for more attention to number of stresses per line and getting the stresses to align with the alliteration). As an adaptation, I would prefer it to pay more attention to the form it is using, and as a translation I would prefer it to be more accurate. Obviously, one could try to get it to do both, but that would be a major challenge. On the good side, it does read relatively smoothly and clearly, even if I think some word choices ("feverish," for example) don't quite convey the meaning of the Latin words.

Susan

[Skip Dewahl]

Ya know, I also once thought of translating a Latin poem into Old English meters, and even took the first few steps, but achieved nothing near the polish of this. It was probably a wise decision not to be hidebound by the Latin meter and overly attempt to fit it into the Anglo-Saxon stress pattern, but to pay it homage nonetheless; especially when the payoff is that you have managed to place sophisticated Roman semantics into a form that was thought to be for recitation of war-deeds round a campfire or a bench-encircled central hearth, not a marble-covered dining room for Rome's nobility. And for those who can't do without rhyme, well, the seamless alliteration should cure them of their habit until they go on to something else. You're probably in the running.

[Kevin Corbett]

(I posted this on the voting thread, but everyone seems to be putting these sort of things on the threads themselves, so I'll follow suit)

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who voted for my poem. I especially, I want to say thanks to Mr. Brock. I will probably be pointing out to people when I tell them about how he liked my poem that he is kind of a big deal, which is all the more reason to thank him for judging this Bake-Off.

It was a bit of an experiment and I knew I took a few liberties, but I really was trying to make a translation rather than an literary adaptation. The latter reminds me this article I read in the New Criterion, which shows the sort of thing that usually passes for the later, as in Robert Creely turning:

Vixi puellis nuper idoneus
et militavi non sine gloria

into:

No problems with life,
at least from those I’ve loved, who testify
I’ve done all right
till now.

I really don't know how that's even connected to Horace's line, but that's the sort of thing I think of as "adaptation". But at the same time, Horace has been getting translated into English so many times that it's really hard to do anything that hasn't already been done. So I thought I would try this.

I also thought of the alliterative line as a bit of a formal compromise, since I don't think that it's possible to use quantitative verse to any effect in English, while at the same time blank pentameter is insufficiently musical. You can use rhyme, since that's what English uses to express musicality (which is why songs will always use rhyme, even if poetry forsakes it), but there is some validity that this puts an undue emphasis on the end of the line that isn't there in the original. So I thought, maybe alliteration would express that musical quality that runs through the whole line in some ways. If you think about it, it's really no stranger to use an alliterative line than to use a rhymed iambic line: both are equally different in from Horace's Alcaics.

EDIT:

I just wanted to respond to a few of Catherine's objections.

"spill from the saucer": My dictionary had "patera" as "a low bowl, flattened dish, saucer, libation-saucer", so I don't think I was being too outrageous in calling it a saucer. "Fundens" is technically "pour, pour out, shed", but I think the jussive "let spill" is fairly close. I also thought "spill" conveyed the feeling of sprinkling a libation on a sacrifice a little better than "pour", since for me at least, "pour" has more of a connotation of transferring liquid from one container to another like a pitcher to a cup.

"eye-pleasing plow cattle": The "eye" part of eye pleasing is the only thing I think might not be justified here. I think someone mention earlier, and Lewis and Short back me up that "armenta" specifically means, "cattle for ploughing". "Grata" is "beloved, dear, acceptable, pleasing, or agreeable" so I think I was within my limits.

"look on the leagues": the diction has "revidere" as "to look back, look back to see, come back to inquire". I delayed the "back" part for a line, since I think it's meant to emphasize the repetition of the merchants trips. I admit that "aeqour" as "leagues" is a stretch, but here is my reasoning---literally, "aequor" can refer to any level surface, and as such is often used of the sea. A league is a square mile, which is a level surface. I felt using "league" might convey idea of a flat plain better than "sea" would, particularly considering he used "aequor" instead of "mare".

"not for a whole pile": Here I admit that I made it all up for the sake of the form. It basically just expands the image a little bit, and yes, does so for the sake of the form. However, I think this is the only case in the translation where I went so far in changing the meaning of the original. So I hope it can be overlooked.