[Glenn Wright]

My last attempt with Ovid was less than successful, but I learned something valuable. The nuances of Latin poetics do not easily or gracefully translate into modern English verse. This got me thinking about Latin prose, which often carries oratorical flourishes that do not translate easily into English prose, but might actually be better served by English poetry. As an experiment I decided to translate the opening chapter of St Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions. Although written in Late Latin prose, the subject matter is passionately prayerful, a fact often lost in English prose translations, which sound dry and philosophical rather than intensely self-searching and devotional. Furthermore, Augustine had a magnificent education in forensic oration. Even in a casual study, you will note his rhetorical use of repetition, chiasmus, anaphora, personification, periods, and all the doodads and doohickeys that you had to learn when you studied Cicero. Here, then, is my rendering of Augustine’s prose into blank verse.
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St. Augustine, Confessions, Book I, Chapter 1

You are great, Lord, and deserve great praise,
Your goodness, infinite; your wisdom, boundless.
Humans, part of your plan, desire to praise you.
Humans, chained to their own mortality,
carrying the proof of their own sin,
the proof that you stand strong against the prideful—
still, we humans, details in your plan,
desire to praise you. You wake us to delight
in praising you, who made us for yourself.
Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
Give me, Lord, to know and understand
whether, first, to call you or to praise you,
and whether, first, to know you or to call you.
But who could call on you, not knowing you?
Not knowing you, one might call something else.
Or are you called so that you may be known?
How will they call on something not believed in?
And how will they believe without a preacher?
Those who seek him out will praise the Lord.
Whoever seeks will find, who finds will praise.
I will seek you, Lord, calling to you.
I will call to you, believing in you.
You must be preached to us, and my poor faith,
which you have granted me, calls out to you.
Through the humanity of your only Son,
through the ministry of your blessed preacher,
you inspire the faith which seeks its end in you.

Crib:
You are great, Lord, and greatly praiseworthy:
your virtue/goodness/manliness is great and there is no number/limit to your wisdom.
and man desires to praise you,
some portion of your creation,
and man, carrying his own mortality around with him,
carrying around with him the evidence/testimony of his own sin,
and the evidence that you resist/stand against the prideful.
Nevertheless, man desires to praise you,
some portion of your creation.
You rouse us up/awaken us so that it is delightful to praise you
because you made us for yourself
and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Give me, Lord, to know and understand
whether it is first to call upon you or to praise you,
and to know you first or to call upon you.
But who may call upon you, not knowing you?
for someone not knowing you can call on you as something else,
or, rather, are you called upon so that you are known?
But how will they call upon something they have not believed in?
And how will they believe without a preacher?
And those who seek him will praise the Lord.
For those who seek find, and those who find will praise.
I will seek you, Lord, calling upon you,
and I will call upon you, believing in you:
for you are [intended] to be preached to us.
My faith, Lord, which you have given to me, calls upon you,
by which [faith] you have inspired me through the humanity of your Son
through the ministry of your preacher.

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Original (from Loeb Classical Library, Caroline Hammond, ed). I have arranged the Latin prose text roughly into chunks which I worked into lines of verse.

Confessiones, Liber I, Caput 1
Aureli Augustini Hipponis


Magnus es, domine, et laudabilis valde:
magna virtus tua, et sapientiae tuae non est numerus.
et laudare te vult homo,
aliqua portio creaturae tuae,
et homo circumferens mortalitatem suam,
circumferens testimonium peccati sui
et testimonium, quia superbis resistis:
et tamen laudare te vult homo,
aliqua portio creaturae tuae.
tu excitas, tu laudare te delectet
quia fecisti nos ad te
et inquietum es cor nostrum,
donec requiescat in te.
da mihi, domine, scire et intellegere,
utrum sit prius invocare te an laudare te,
et scire te prius sit an invocare te.
sed quis te invocat nesciens te?
aliud enim pro alio potest invocare nesciens.
an potius invocaris, tu sciaris?
quomodo autem invocabunt, in quem non crederunt?
aut quomodo credent sine praedicante?
et laudabunt dominum qui requirunt eum.
quaerentes enim inveniunt eum et invenientes laudabunt eum.
quaeram te, domine, invocans te,
invocem te credens in te:
praedicatus enim es nobis.
invocat te, domine, fides mea, quam dedisti mihi,
quam inspirasti mihi per humanitatem filii tui,
per ministerium praedicatoris tui.

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Edits:
L1: You are great, O Lord, and worthy of great praise, > You are great, Lord, and deserve great praise,
L2: Your goodness, infinite; your wisdom boundless. > Your goodness, infinite; your wisdom, boundless.
L4: Humans, wrapped in their own mortality, > Humans, chained to their own mortality,
L5: wrapped in the evidence of their own sin, > branded by the proof of their own sin, > carrying the proof of their own sin,
L6: the evidence that you stand against the prideful >the proof that you stand strong against the prideful
L7: even so, we humans, a detail in your plan, > still, we humans, details in your plan,
L11: Give me, O Lord, to know and understand > Give me, Lord, to know and understand
L16: Or are you to be called so that you are known? > Or are you called so that you may be known?
L23: For you are to be preached to us, and my faith > You must be preached to us, and my poor faith

[Carl Copeland]

Hi, Glenn. An intriguing experiment and largely successful, it seems to me (a non-Latinist who never studied Cicero). The biblical feel falls naturally out of the subject matter rather than sounding affected, and I like the prose-leaning metrical variation. Greater regularity (which I normally like) might be oppressive here.

A few odds and ends:

Your goodness, infinite; your wisdom boundless.

Add a comma after “wisdom” to parallel the preceding phrase.

Humans, wrapped in their own mortality,
wrapped in the evidence of their own sin,

“Wrapped in” seems too pretty for “carrying around” and a little misleading if the implication is “within them.” (A commentator says Augustine is referring to 2 Corinthians 4:10.)

Or are you to be called so that you are known?
…
For you are to be preached to us, and my faith,

Surely the “to be” construction in these lines could be replaced with something more natural, e.g., “Or are you called in order to be known?” (adapted from Sarah Ruden’s prose translation).

Glenn, you might want to slow up a bit—for my sake if nothing else. There’s no frequency limit for translations, but at this rate, I won’t be able to keep up. On the other hand, you’re drawing me into Latin literature. I’ve never gotten much beyond the Aeneid, though I’ve wanted to read the Confessions for some time. Thanks for that.

[Glenn Wright]

Thanks, Carl. As always, your comments help me to see things in my work that I would never have caught. You pull me up to a higher standard.
Regarding each point:
1. I added the missing comma in L2.
2. The Latin verb circumferō, as you noted, literally means “to carry around.” My thinking with “wrapped” was to suggest something sticking to you, like gum on the sole of your shoe. In 2 Corinthians, Paul is talking about how we carry the death of Christ (something precious) around with us in earthen vessels (our worthless bodies). He uses the Greek equivalent, περιφερω, from which the English word “peripheral” is derived. Augustine’s words suggest to me that he has in mind that we carry around our mortality as a mark, brand, or token of our sinfulness. I changed the “wrap,” which is a bit too festive, like gift-wrapping, for “chained.” This evokes the image of Marley’s ghost. Too much? I only used it once, using “branded” in the next line to suggest the brand that might have been put on a convicted criminal. I didn’t feel the need to specifically make the “testimonium” internal, because I had difficulty imagining how anything inside a person could be seen by anyone as evidence.
3. The passive voice in Latin is tricky. The first fix, courtesy of Sarah Ruden, is easy. The second one, “praedicatus . . .es,” was a bit harder. Latin has deponent verbs which are passive in form, but active in meaning. Sometimes, as with praedicare and praedicari, there are non-deponent/deponent pairs which may have the same or slightly different meanings. Long story short, it’s not easy to tell whether “praedicatus. . .es” is supposed to be active or passive. I went with passive.

Thanks, too, for the kindly admonition. I will pace myself.
Warmly—
Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

The changes sound fine to me, including “chained,” though you could also use “bearing” for both instances of circumferō—especially as you see the verb in a more positive light than I expected. Someone might ask why God would grant “poor faith,” but that would be reading too literally.

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Glenn!

Like Carl, I'm having trouble matching your pace.

For the most part, this reads well.

In LL4-5, I don't see any advantage to varying Augustine's emphatic repetition with two different images (being chained, being branded) that he did not include. The original, repeated "circumferens" — literally, "carrying around" — implies motion. In contrast, I see your "chained to" as a sort of Prometheus-like or Andromeda-like image of someone tethered in place, which is a very different image. (After looking at "circumferens," I can adjust my imaginings of "chained to" to people dragging a ball and chain behind them, but that's not my first thought on encountering "chained to".) Perhaps "Humans, burdened by their own mortality, / burdened by the proof of their own sin" would keep the possibility of motion, and the repetition.

Gotta scurry off now. I hope to be back.

[Glenn Wright]

Thanks, Julie. You convinced me that I had strayed a bit too far from the literal meaning of “circumferens.” I replaced “branded by” with “carrying” in line 5, depending on “chained” in the previous line to make clear that the evidence in question is not something that can be conveniently dumped in a river or hidden in a basement. It also establishes the point that mortality is a kind of punishment for pride—Adam and Eve’s, specifically, or Prometheus or Cassiopeia’s. I wanted to suggest something a bit more dire than “burdened,” even though that would probably be a more defensible and literal rendering.