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A review by versmonesprit
The Poems of Catullus by Catullus
funny
fast-paced
1.0
Translation is especially unsatisfactory with poetry. Dunn explains how she did not try to adhere to the original metre of the poems so as to be able to provide a good translation, but with both the word plays and the rhythm gone, the poems give nothing at all.
The easiest solution to this unenjoyable experience is to provide the originals along with the translated text. Unfortunately, that wasn’t done in this edition. Reading Catullus is fun, but the translation leaves a lot to be desired.
I suppose the main issue people have with Catullus is that they have a false, glorified image of Rome, and such lewd poems break their fantasy. With their “roasting” contents, and their open sexuality, these poems are truly timeless: they could’ve easily been written today! However, I found Catullus’s pen to be at its best with short poems; the longer ones do not have that “flavour” for lack of a better word.
Daisy Dunn’s translations might be good, but I still find them problematic in certain ways. For example, at one point she uses an English idiom for something that was not a Latin idiom. That is literally changing the nature of the original text, and such liberties always disturb me. A translator has no right to alter the text. This is done also by including phrases in French at some parts. In her badly crafted introduction, Dunn explains she’s done this because Catullus uses Celtic-originated words at times, as a lien to the Gaul (to which his native city of Verona belonged at the time). The issue is that the words were still Latin; not a different language. Therefore, interjecting a completely different language is once again taking too many liberties. This issue could be rectified by including the Latin originals with several footnotes.
The lack of footnotes was another issue I had with this book. As I mentioned before, the introduction by Dunn wasn’t well-written: it’s both scattered too much for someone to refer back to it, and very much sparse in context. Some of the poems are hard to understand without the sociocultural context. It’s a shame, really.
The way the introduction was a whole mess solidified for me that I’ll never read anything written by Daisy Dunn, and this too is a shame.
Overall, I would not actually recommend this edition. I have no idea if better translations and better works with context exist, but it’s worth to give others a chance over this.
The easiest solution to this unenjoyable experience is to provide the originals along with the translated text. Unfortunately, that wasn’t done in this edition. Reading Catullus is fun, but the translation leaves a lot to be desired.
I suppose the main issue people have with Catullus is that they have a false, glorified image of Rome, and such lewd poems break their fantasy. With their “roasting” contents, and their open sexuality, these poems are truly timeless: they could’ve easily been written today! However, I found Catullus’s pen to be at its best with short poems; the longer ones do not have that “flavour” for lack of a better word.
Daisy Dunn’s translations might be good, but I still find them problematic in certain ways. For example, at one point she uses an English idiom for something that was not a Latin idiom. That is literally changing the nature of the original text, and such liberties always disturb me. A translator has no right to alter the text. This is done also by including phrases in French at some parts. In her badly crafted introduction, Dunn explains she’s done this because Catullus uses Celtic-originated words at times, as a lien to the Gaul (to which his native city of Verona belonged at the time). The issue is that the words were still Latin; not a different language. Therefore, interjecting a completely different language is once again taking too many liberties. This issue could be rectified by including the Latin originals with several footnotes.
The lack of footnotes was another issue I had with this book. As I mentioned before, the introduction by Dunn wasn’t well-written: it’s both scattered too much for someone to refer back to it, and very much sparse in context. Some of the poems are hard to understand without the sociocultural context. It’s a shame, really.
The way the introduction was a whole mess solidified for me that I’ll never read anything written by Daisy Dunn, and this too is a shame.
Overall, I would not actually recommend this edition. I have no idea if better translations and better works with context exist, but it’s worth to give others a chance over this.