Review: No Tidbit Love You Outdoors Far as a Bier: Zukofsky's CatullusAuthor(s): Burton RaffelSource: Arion, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 435-445Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163214Accessed: 21/08/2009 08:17

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NO TIDBIT LOVE YOU OUTDOORS FAR AS A BIER: ZUKOFSKY'S CATULLUS

Burton Raffel

In general, the work of art in antiquity was an act

of service to the community and one that sought

consciously the community's approval. The poetae novi thrust the educated community at large aside. . . . Less concerned with his public audience, the

poet became concerned first with an intimate clique, and ultimately with himself.

?Kenneth Quinn, The Catullan Revolution

(1959) p.87

My title, like my text, is Zukofsky (Catullus 32:6, which in

the Latin is neu tibi lubeat foras abire). Title and text are

both "translation," and both they and it need some prelim

inary comment.

I can believe in theories of translation, but not in a theory. That is, different translators can

approach different texts, at

different times, with different ideas as to how best to proceed. But no one theory will account for all translators of all poems,

certainly not in all times and places. Pope and his Homer,

Fitzgerald and his Homer, Lattimore and his Homer, Logue and his Homer: what we have on our hands, if we try to

reduce diversity to order, is an inherently meaningless quar

rel. It is the same in all the arts?which is why they are

arts and not sciences: is Stravinsky's idea of Le Sacre du

Printemps better in 1912, when he completed the score, or

in 1921 or again in 1943, when he partly revised it? Is Stra

vinsky the best conductor of Le Sacre, though he is rather a

poor conductor and has said more than once that "the chef d'orchestre is hardly more than a mechanical agent, a time

beater who fires a pistol at the beginning of each section but

Catullus trans. Celia and Louis Zukofsky (Cape Golliard Press, in

association with Grossman Publishers 1969). Paper covers, unpagi nated. $4.50.

436 NO TIDBIT LOVE YOU OUTDOORS FAR AS A BIER

lets the music run by itsek"? He has also said that virtuaky all other conductors mangle his music ( though his own idea

about that music have changed over the years), and he has

said flatly that as a conductor he could, by 1928, "obtain

exactly what I wanted as I wanted it." By firing a pistol?

Art is performance. Musicologists are rarely composers,

grammarians are rarely poets. I do not prefer Fitzgerald to

Lattimore because of either man's theory, or any man's

theory; I prefer Ansermet, say, to Stravinsky, as a

performer of Le Sacre du Printemps, entirely without regard to theory of any kind. No mere idea about authenticity, or accuracy, no desire to articulate a

particular view of musical composi

tion, can either produce or negate art. Ansermet is a better

conductor of Stravinsky than is Stravinsky because, simply, he conducts better, he makes the music be music in more

exciting and interesting and musically real ways. Fitzgerald makes Homer live; Lattimore tends to choke him to death, in a vast concoction of archaisms and pointlessly inventive

syntactic aberrations. (I have had to divide passages in a

Lattimore translation into sections, and then number the

sections, in order to be able to hold onto a hard-fought-for

understanding of bare lexical and syntactical meaning. ) Louis Zukofsky's theory of translation, accordingly, is to

my mind of primary interest to Louis Zukofsky. (I take it

that Mrs. Zukofsky's role, as collaborator, was similarly es

sential to the poet, in making this translation, but that Zukof

sky himsek is ultimately responsible for the poetry. ) He has

said, in the brief "Translators' Preface," that "this translation

of Catullus follows the sound, rhythm, and syntax of his

Latin. . . ." That, to my mind, is Zukofsky's business. If I

want to "follow the sound, rhythm, and syntax" of a poet

writing in a language which I know, I read him in that

language, not in a translation. Nor do I expect his sounds,

rhythms, and syntax to be more than a faint echo, by and

large?if even that?in a translation. I operate, that is, on the

pretty fundamental assumption that a translation is not its

original. (I should add that for me a translation is an

attempt to communicate across linguistic borders. Different

translation theories, different translation practices, may achieve different levels of communication, but without com

munication I think that no translation occurs. This is of

Burton Raffel 437

course both a matter of definition and of theory?I am not

so naive as to believe that I do not mysek have theories of

translation, too! )

And for this I am grateful,

as rumor had

it the quick girl was to the golden apple that swktly lowered her girdle long tied.

Neither my assumptions, nor Zukofsky's, matter anything like

as much as Zukofsky's performance. And since, as I say, I

read this as a translation, not as CatuUus, I read it as against other translations (different) of the original (forever the

same).

Here is my rehef at last, not unlike the pleasure that came to the swift-footed

girl they call Atalanta, seizing the golden apple that released her tiresome gkdle.

[Horace Gregory]

These to me are tidings Such as the golden apple

Brought to the swift maiden,

Loosing her girdle which too long Had guarded her celibacy.

[W. K. Newton]

I like it as much as they say that gkl quick-footed liked

the little old golden apple that untied the sash

she'd kept fastened so long [Frank O. Copley]

Gregory is a bore, here; Newton is a horror; and Copley,

though by no means as higgly-jiggly

as at his worst, ruins

a basicaky viable rendering with the coyness of "the kttle

old golden apple." Zukofsky's rendering is easy, graceful; it

has an air of confidence, and it warms to the touch as you read it over and over. ( This is Catullus 2a, and Peter Whig ham translates it as part of Catullus 2, so that no fak com

parison can be made with his version.) This is, then, the

best translation I know of; I would cheerfully include it in

43$ NO TIDBIT LOVE YOU OUTDOORS FAR AS A BIER

any collected many-hands Catullus in translation. I do not

see, in the Latin, how Zukofsky's theory applies?nor do

I care.

Tarn gratum est mihi quam ferunt puellae

pernici aureolum fuisse malum,

quod zonam soluit diu ligatum.

I think Zukofsky's version of Catullus 8 is less decisively the best available, but still the best. The problem is, which

Zukofsky version? Here is the version printed by L. R. Lind

in 1957 ( and, according to the copyright notice, until then

unprinted), in his Latin Poetry in Verse Translation:

Miserable Catullus, stop being foolish

And admit it's over, The sun shone on you those days

When your gkl had you When you gave it to her

like nobody else ever will.

Everywhere together then, always at it

And you liked it and she can't say she didn't...

This is, I think, the tone Copley wanted, in his version, but

could not achieve; the opening is more than enough:

CatuUus, it's too bad, but don't be silly you see it's gone; well, gone is gone, that's aU .. .

Though I think Copley does some of the poems better than

anyone else has done them, and though I think his book as a

whole rates higher marks than Tim Reynolds thinks it does, he is after all a

professor of Latin, not a poet. Theory or no

theory, Zukofsky is very definitely a poet. And since Copley, when he fails, fails flat out, even Kenneth Quinn's plain

rendering is preferable:

Don't be a fool, my poor CatuUus. You must stop it

and count as lost what you see is lost...

Peter Whigham is too bare, too bent on his particular arti

fices, here:

Break off

Burton Raffel 439

fallen Catullus

time to cut losses ...

Horace Gregory's Catullus 8 is too fanciful, too wordy,

though for perhaps the first hak of the poem his vision is

next best, to my taste, to Zukofsky's :

Poor damned Catullus, here's no time for nonsense,

open your eyes, O idiot, innocent boy, look at what has

happened. . .

But I repeat: the problem is, which Zukofsky version? Here

is Catullus 8 as it begins in the complete translation under

review:

Miss her, Catullus? don't be so inept to rail

at what you see perish when perished is the case...

This has an odd ring, in Enghsh. It's not quite unidiomatic, but it comes close. And the rhythm, which is confessedly of

vital importance to Zukofsky, is even less certainly English.

Why should he have wanted so to alter his earlier rendering?

( He had republished it, unaltered, in All, 1965. ) The answer,

unfortunately, is theoretical rather than practical?that is, in

my terms, the answer is extra-artistic. Here is the Latin

on which these two lines are based, and I do mean based:

Miser Catulle, desinas ineptke, et quod vides p?risse perditum ducas.

"Miss her, Catullus?" is a quite ingenious transformation of

"miser Catulle." It does not translate lexically, but since

"missing her" is what the whole poem is about, it translates

very well. "Ineptke" similarly has no lexical connection with

either "inept" or "rail," though I suppose you can get "inept,"

by a quick sleight of hand, from "foolish." As Zukofsky notes

in his preface, it is the sound of the Latin which has come to

interest him?not however as Latin sound, but as a challenge, a kind of dare. He has done what he said he would do,

namely construct Latin sounds in English. It works, in

CatuUus 8; though the effect is somehow strange, it is more

than acceptable. But this:

Caelius Aufilenus' mate, Quintius Aufilena's am

44? nO TIDBIT LOVE YOU OUTDOORS FAR AS A BIER

flow'rs Verona's 'n sum they pair and hunt ( you venom ) "he" '1 frat him, he'll lace her or hum. 'Who quest,' quoth

thick with ore, 'a lewd

frater new way re th'whole cuss't sodality mm.'

Who we favor?whom?put to us? Caeli, tibby: now to your

(know bees?) perspective egregious "best" unique ah me kitty ah,

come wasting on my eyes t'her reared at flame my medulla's.

Seize fay hcks, Caeli, see as in and more potence.

This is CatuUus 100?but is it Enghsh? (I do not mean:

is it poetry? If it is not English, then it is not a translation

into Enghsh. Period. ) This clearly bears a massive relation

ship to the sound of the Latin. How else but as a kind of

imitation of the sound of "Quintius Aufilenam" could Zukof

sky get to "Quintius Aufilena's am"? And?as a kind of des

perately bad joke?get "flow'rs Verona's 'n sum they pak and

hunt (you venom)" except by mis-ingeniously aping "flos

Veronensum depereunt iuvenum"? I'm told, reliably, that

English schoolboys do this sort of thing all the time. Zukofsky does it, here, almost aU the time: Catullus keeps sounding like this, for page after page:

Furius, "Little V?la" has no nod for Auster, flaw to oppose a taste naked to Favonius, nor sighs with Boreas, out Apheliotes, worms eat and miU it fifteen thousand two hundred.

O vent them horrible, Im out quite, pestilent mm.

To whom is this "translation" of Catullus 26 of any use? The

Latinist can read CatuUus in Latin; he does not need, nor

presumably is he interested to read, that "o ventum horri

bilem atque pestilentem" can be aped (but not translated,

no ) as "o vent them horrible, I'm out quite, pestilent mm."

The non-Latinist wants to know, as well as he can, what

Catullus said and how he said it. Can he get anything?

anything??from this? He'd do better, and in fact he will, to

turn to, say, Peter Whigham, who translates Catullus 26

this way:

Your cottage, Furius, sheltered

from the dry Sckocco,

Burton Raffel 441

from Zephyrus, from Apeliota,

from the bitter North-East draughts is exposed to an overdraft of a different sort?

? 1,250:

ghastly... ruinous

This is not Catullus? I repeat: only Catullus is Catullus; a

translation is not its original?but it is something, it is Eng lish to start with, and in addition to being f akly good poetry it is recognizably kke what Catullus might have said, had he

been ahve and well in London.

Or this rather better version, done in 1957 by Ezra Pound

(and first printed in the Lind anthology, Latin Poetry in

Verse Translation):

This v?la is raked of winds from fore and aft, All Boreas' sons in bluster and yet more

Against it is this Two hundred thousand sesterces, All out against it, oh my God:

some draft.

Pound's approach to translation is as unlike Zukofsky's as

is his CatuUus:

We have . . . fallen under the blight of the Miltonic or noise tradition, to a stilted dialect in translating the classics, a dialect which imitates the idiom of the

ancients rather than seeking

thek meaning.

. . .

[Milton] tried to turn English into Latin; to use an

uninflected language as if it were an inflected one,

neglecting the genius of Enghsh, distorting its fibrous

manner, making schoolboy translations of Latin

phrases. . . .

Copies of Greek and Latin clause struc

ture and phrase structure . . . have removed the

classics from us. . . . The quality of translations [has] declined in measure as the translators ceased to be

absorbed in the subject matter of thek original. ["Notes on Elizabethan Classicists,"

Literary Essays of Ezra Pound 1954]

Or, as Pound wrote to Harriet Monroe, in February 1916:

"Even Landor turned back from an attempt to translate

442 NO TIDBIT LOVE YOU OUTDOORS FAR AS A BIER

CatuUus. I have failed forty times mysek so I do know the

matter. But there are decent and dignified ways of failing

Piso's own comates, his, corps an inane as

opt sad sarks?kin no less?'at's expedited! Veranius hoped, my?he took my Fabullus, what rare rheum's to greet us? Sneezing come as tho

that vapid prig's cue to famine's to last you?... [28]

Whose hoax to put up with, outstare, protest patience, no?see impudicity, voracity, a low, Mamurra may bare what Comata Gallia

habited and top off with ultimate Britain?...

[29] I'm a bow, my dual kiss, IpsithiUa,

my daily key, eye, my eye's little leap-horse, you bid me to "when," I'm your meridian. That: so

you see as sure as that adjuvant,

no case, limb, menace obscure your tableland, no tidbit love you outdoors far as a bier.

Stay home, my man he asks we pak us?no bis?

nine continuous gasps,

no refutations.

Very, so he could, yes start if you bid to:

he's primed now a joke-stuffed satyr, so pin us!

pert under the tunic, pulling up the quilt. [32, the entke poem]

Page after page of this large, handsomely printed book runs on in this never-never world of phonetic aping. In the

middle of some of the gibberish one sometimes comes across

a line, or several lines, of briUiant translation: Catullus 101, after beginning "Mulled hosts their countries yet mulled

there by a core of wake tossed . . . ," for "Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus . . . ," and after continuing for

most of the poem in this same sterile vein, suddenly coal

esces in two oddly beautiful lines: "Now do mind inter here

our how precious gkt more our parent home / traditional

trysts tears, my renewed death offerings ..." I don't care

that this too apes the Latin sound ("mine tarnen interea

haec") ; it is English, and it is poetry, and I like it. Sometimes,

Burton Raffel 443

but not often, a whole poem coalesces in this way, and the

page sings:

Diana, sum us in faith a

like pure girls and boys we greet you,

Diana, pure boys and girls, as we

sing to you as you count us.

O Latonia, most to my

great lord Jove his own child, o his, for whom your proper mother lay

beside Delian olive...

These are the first lines of a beautkul Catullus 34, a poet's

translation. Peter Whigham can't match it:

Moving in her radiant care

chaste men and girls moving

whoUy in Diana's care

hymn her in this.

Latonia's daughter, greatest of the Olympian race, dropped at birth beneath the olive trees

on Dekan h?ls ...

Copley is on the whole dignified and effective, in his 34:

hail Diana* we are thy loyal ch?dren

maids are we* and boys untouched of love

hail Diana* boys untouched of love

and maids* let our song rise to thee

thou art the daughter of Leto* and Jove the Al

mighty was thy Sire

thou art their mighty child* which thy Mother near

the olive

tree of Delos did lay down...

Copley is in general so much better at brash poems that this

version seems almost surprisingly good. But, again, he is no

poet; no poet could have shaken that last line so loose and

flop-eared. Sir Richard Jebb, whose version of 34 is printed by Lind, is a great deal worse, is in fact ludicrously awful:

Diana guardeth our estate, Girls and boys immaculate;

444 NO TIDBIT LOVE YOU OUTDOORS FAR AS A BIER

Boys and maidens pure of stain, Be Diana our refrain_

One has to concede that this is English; it is by no one's

standard poetry. Nor is Gregory much better:

Boys and girls, we pledge aUegiance

to the moon, virgin Diana,

chastity and innocence,

boys and gkls aU sing Diana_

What an inept, insensitive hodge-podge! Several facts must be faced. CatuUus (Pound is quite

right) is terribly difficult to translate. No one has done the

whole job terribly well; in the nature of things, no one is

likely to (though it is not impossible, given [a] a poet, and

[b] an ability to identify with, to almost be Catullus over a

protracted period, and [c] great good luck). The best that one can do is to translate beautkuUy what one can, and leave

the rest. Certainly, to try to translate CatuUus, of aU poets, into some rigid framework like heroic couplets, or the sonnet

form, is madness, procrustean, doomed. To abandon English for pages at a time, in an even madder attempt to turn Eng lish into Latin, is stiU worse, and this, alas, is what Zukofsky has mostly done. Most of this book is unreadable; most of this

book was not meant to be read, in any realistic sense of the

word. It is much more the kind of musical game being played

by John Cage, in music, and by many many practitioners of

concrete poetry. As musical game, it has a kind of organized charm?but Zukofsky does not offer it as musical game, he

claims much more for it. Nor is he entkely sure, aU the time, whether he wants to translate or to play sound-games. I have

quoted some of his few successes; let me now quote, finally, the first thirteen lines of his CatuUus 10. Up to the dash, in

line 9, this is inspked translation; read aloud, it has the swing of, say, Eliot's Waste Land, and it has a great deal of Catul

lus' music. And then suddenly, after the dash in line 9, Zu

kofsky stops translating and begins to play the sound-game:

Varus old crony had me visit his love?

something else from relaxing in the Forum? a little tart, so she seemed pent up as I was, not so much without grace as not to show any.

Burton Raffel 445

We'd just come in and her talk came down on us

insurmountably varied, cute: what is it

like in Bithynia now, how are things managed?

anyway had I come home with some money. I told her how things were, nil?why how could the

public along with praetors and their cohorts

all cap it off with an unctuous haircut, when the top queer (of a) praetor there wouldn't

piUage a hair of his rump for a cohort...

And when one compares this to the Latin, it is doubly plain what has happened. To the dash in line 9, the sound-game is

given over?or, just as plausibly, perhaps the sound-game had not begun, perhaps this first portion is left over from an

earlier translation or attempt at translation. What follows the

dash in line 9 is done to a different method, to a different

theory; it is, as most of this book, a non-English construct

which tracks the Latin sound. I can only wonder at Zukof

sky's having so carelessly, so untypically, combined two anti

thetical procedures under the same roof. It not only does not

work, but it makes hash of either approach to so ram them

against each other. Theories of translation are not the same as translation;

translation cannot be accomplished under the aegis of a

theory, but only under the protection of the Muse, who will

tolerate theory, who can make use of madness, but who

cannot excuse failure to perform, No one could, I think, have

done this book better than Zukofsky has done it, but no one

should have done this book: it does not perform, and it is

neither translation nor Catullus.