Murgatroyd, 'Propertius: The Poems', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9501
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9501-murgatroyd-propertius
Guy Lee, Propertius: The Poems. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994. Pp. 205, xvi. $42.00. ISBN
0-19-814497-0.
Reviewed by Paul Murgatroyd -- McMaster University
Lee's translation of Propertius is not bold or sparkling or
avant-garde. It is something much more difficult and desirable than
that--an honest attempt at a quietly accurate and reliable version made by
a highly sensitive scholar. Lee states in his Prefatory note: "the
translation, though in verse, is meant to be faithful and unadorned, an
attempt at a version which would enable Propertius to be read and studied
in English as the Bible has been read and studied for centuries." So
earlier, on p. xxv of his introduction to The Poems of Catullus
(Oxford, 1990), he had remarked: "perhaps what is most needed in a world
of hype is a little honesty."
The translation is based chiefly on Camps' sober and conservative
text. There is little in the way of lacunae, obeli, square brackets etc.
to mar it, but readers are made aware that there are textual problems in
an appendix (of variants from the OCT) and in the notes. The sixty-nine
pages of notes (on text, meaning, references, major points of
interpretation, sources and so on) economically facilitate understanding
and enhance appreciation, without swamping users with minutiae and
scholarly polemics. Also helpful in many cases are the titles provided for
the elegies and the use of Paragraphing in the translations to mark off
sections and clarify lines of thought.
The actual rendering is admirably self-effacing and very close to the
Latin, but it is not strictly literal. For example, there is some slight
ellipse (e.g. at 1.3.34, 36, 2.26A.18, 4.4.30); and there is some
judicious exegetical addition and substitution (like "Maenad" for
Edonis at 1.3.5, but with scrupulous explanation in the notes),
although Lee is careful to do justice to the 'otherness' of Propertius and
does not smooth out or gloss over too much ambiguities, obscurities and
difficulties (see, for instance, 1.18.11, 1.20.1, 5, 15, 1.22.6,
3.1.9ff.). His (unrhymed) English couplets achieve always a distich for
distich and almost always a line for line correspondence in sense. Lee's
flexible and varied diction, alert to nuances and differences of tone and
register in the original, catches well the range in Propertius. The
ordinary language of everyday speech prevails, but there is a judicious
admixture of rare, archaic, grand, foreign and modern expressions (anon,
snood, mail-clad steed, what time, cantillations, orrery, asperge, vail,
palmaceous, taverna, bedside tables, toyboy). Some readers may find
themselves brought up short at times by terms which seem to them odd or
old fashioned, but then Propertius is not exactly an easy, flowing read in
Latin either.
Felicities abound. The tricky vacuo meditabar vivere lecto in
2.2.1 is neatly rendered "planning to live and sleep single". Lee
perceptively brings out the two meanings in compositos ... ocellos
(1.3.33) with "those calm closed eyes". He produces aptly sonorous
versions of 4.3.33 noctibus hibernis castrensia pensa laboro ("On
winter nights I work away at wartime stints"), 4.7.60 mulcet ubi
Elysias aura beata rosas ("To where blest airs caress Elysian roses")
and many other lines. He captures points of style as well as sound, at
2.26A.16 candida Nesaee, caerula Cymothoe (Nesaea fair, blue-eyed
Cymothoe""), 4.8.30 sobria grata parum: cum bibit, omne decet
("when sober, rather dull; when drinking, quite delightful") etc.
Sustained performance up to these standards means that often the impact of
whole poems (like the humour of 2.29A and 4.8, and the sombreness of 1.19)
comes across particularly well.
There are occasional infelicities. Lee's rendering of 1.3.39f.
("Villain, O how I wish you could endure such nights/ As you always
inflict on wretched me!") jarred on me, and his faithful reproduction of
Latin idioms (like the plural for singular at 3.1.25f.) can result in some
obscurity. At times I did not agree with his notes (e.g. in connection
with 1.20.2530 must the episode of Zetes and Calais attacking Hylas
derive from a painting, rather than lost literature or the poet's own
imagination?). I observed several misprints too: "ecstacy" on the jacket
blurb; on line 9 of page xvi "iii.37" (instead of i.37); on line 13 of
page xxii "off" (for of); on page 62 no full stop at the end of 2.29A.20;
on page 111 in 4.3.72 'A girl's thanks for her husband's safety' should be
italicized; on page 122 there should be a comma in place of the full stop
at the end of 4.8.18; and on page 140 the prefatory note on 1.22 refers
the reader to the Introduction p. 000.
In addition, R.O.A.M. Lyne's introduction is rather disappointing. In
fourteen and a half pages he covers the poet's birth, background and links
with Maecenas; irony, ambiguity and cheek in political references in the
poetry; the nature and social status of Cynthia; the way in which the love
elegies try to cap and supersede Catullus; the use of myth in them, and
their pathos. This introduction is readable and sensible, and all very
good as far as it goes, but it is curiously incomplete. I do not know what
kind of an audience it is aimed at, but certainly it would not provide
adequate preamble per se for North American undergraduate or even
graduate students. For instance, it does not discuss the dating of the
four books of poetry or even that of the poet's death; it has little to
say about the intensity, agony and morbidity in many of the elegies, or
their difficulty; other than Catullus and (briefly) Callimachus, the
models of this highly literary writer are ignored; and a paragraph or so
on the historical background and some remarks on Augustan poetry in
general (and the other elegists in particular) would also have helped to
sharpen the picture for such readers.
Apart from these reservations about the introduction, I would judge
this to be a suitable translation for Classical Civilization students to
use (when it comes out in paperback, at a reduced price). This opinion was
corroborated by the revealing response to the book of a graduate student
of mine (Sarah Parker), whose main interest is in Latin literature and who
had already read some Propertius in the original. For her Lee's version of
Ovid's Amores (London, 1968) had a more immediate appeal, and she
found the rendering of Propertius a bit 'unnatural' at times; but overall
she felt that there is an appropriately 'literary' feel to the diction,
and that the translation is trustworthy and (with the help of the notes)
clear and intelligible, so that a genuine impression of Propertius' poetry
is conveyed.
In short, this is a worthy successor to Lee's versions of Ovid's
Amores, Tibullus, Virgil's Eclogues, Catullus and Persius,
and it will add substantially to Lee's already considerable stature as one
of the leading translators of Latin verse alive today.
Paul Murgatroyd, Classics 905-525-9140
McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West
classics@mcmaster.ca
Hamilton Ontario L8S 4M2 fax: 905-577-6930