Category Archives: Translating Metamorphoses

Art and Culture, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Lycaon

December 16, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Winter Moon

Work on Ovid continues. Here is a link to a Google Art Project gallery of works inspired by Ovid. It is far from complete, but it does represent a beginning on an additional project related to the Metamorphoses. I would like to find as many works as I can that relate directly to the Metamorphoses. This is an art history project I’ve assigned to myself.

Below is the somewhat polished text that lays out the tale of Lycaon from Book I of the Metamorphoses, v.163-239.

The work is mine, the good and the flawed. I’m still learning.

163 Saturn’s son looked out from the highest citadel of heaven,

164 Lamenting deeds not yet made known,

165 He recalls the foul banquets at Lycaon’s tables,

166 And in his divine heart burns a vast, fitting wrath.

167 He summons a council and the gods gathered quickly when called.

168 The way is lofty, clear in cloudless heaven,

169 The Milky Way, extraordinary in its brilliance.

170 On the Milky Way is the path to those above, the temple of Thundering Jupiter,

171 His royal home. Through folding doors

172 On the right and left, the forecourt of the noble God’s home swelled with visitors,

173 (the lesser gods live in lesser dwellings): here the mighty

174 and glorious Gods sat down their own Penates.

175 This place is, if boldness might be permitted in my expression,

176 Something I have no fear to declare the Palatine hill of great heaven.

177 When the gods above sat in that marble hall,

178 Mighty Jupiter leaned upon his ivory staff

179 And shook his terrible hair over and over again,

180 Moving the earth, the sea and the stars.

181 His face, angry, then displayed a look horrible beyond measure.

182 Alas, distressed, I was not then in control

183 Over the world. While everyone was making ready,

184 The many armed giants sought to capture heaven.

185 Although the enemy was savage, yet that war had its origin

186 only within one tribe, from within one race.

187 Now for me, Nereus surrounds the whole word with sound.

188 The mortal race must be destroyed: I swear by the river

189 Below, sinking beneath the earth into a Stygian grove!

190 Altogether better testing: but,

191 The incurable body is cut away by the sword and no part must be left intact.

192 Nymphs, fauns, satyrs dwelling in mountains and woods,

193 these are demi-gods, country divinities.

194 Because we do not yet deem them worthy of the honor of heaven,

195 We dedicated a certain place for them to dwell, we granted them the earth.

(Nymph and Fauns – Julius Kronberg)

196 Or perhaps sufficient, o high gods, they will be looked upon with trust, those demigods.

197 For me, who has the thunderbolt and who has you and who rules over you,

198 The infamous Lycaon conceived a savage ambush.

199 All the gods cried out and with burning zeal

200 Demanded extreme measures. {Thus, with impious hand he rages

201 To eliminate Caesar’s name from Roman posterity.

202 Stunned, the human race has been plunged

203 Into a great dread of ruin.

204 For you, Augustus, your pleasing devotion

205 Was not smaller than that of Jupiter’s,} who after that,

206 With voice and hand restrained the grumbling, the silence of all held.

207 The shouts subsided as the weight of Jupiter’s seriousness pressed down upon them,

208 Jupiter broke the silence by speaking again to this gathering.

209 “Certainly that one suffered punishment, you no longer need worry.

210 However, I will tell you about that crime which must be punished.

211 The infamy of this time has reached our hearing.

212 I intend to fly down from high Olympus to the earth,

213 And as a god hidden in human likeness, a wanderer.

214 It would take too long to recount crimes so great as have been reported anywhere,

215 the bad report itself bore little truth.

216 I had to cross the terrible Maneala’s, refuges of wild beasts,

217 with icy-cold Cyllene and the pine-groves of Lycaeus:

218 Hence, I enter the state of Arcadia and the inhospitable home

219 Of the tyrant, the late hour pulling forth the night.

220 I furnished signs that a god had come, and the people had begun to

221 Pray: at first Lycaon laughs at the devout prayers,

222 Soon he says “This god must be measured, a test will reveal him,

223 or he must be a mortal. The truth will not be in doubt.”

224 He had planned to destroy me

225 weighted with sleep and not expecting dark death.

226 Therefore he is not yet measured against my strength: one of the race of Molossa

227 Was put to death for an ambush, his throat opened by a sword.

228 A portion of him softens, half-dead joints in

229 Boiling water, another portion roasted by placing under the fire.

230 At the same time he put that down on the table, {with avenging fire

231 I overturned the house upon the ruler’s worthy penates.}

232 Terrified, he fled, and having reached the quiet countryside,

233 He howled and in vain he was trying to talk.

234 He was transformed into a beast by lust

235 Accustomed to slaughter, and he now rejoices in blood.

(Lycaon Melissa Burns, 1978 The wolf-metamorphosis his glaring look remains.)

236 His clothes have changed to shaggy hair, his arms into legs:

237 He is made into a wolf but retains the human shape of his foot.

238 His gray hair is the same, as is the fierceness of his face,

239 the same glitter is in his eyes, the same shape of wildness.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Joint Softens in Boiling Water

December 12, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Winter Moon

Started using Dramatica this morning, entering characters, thinking about plot progression and story points. It forced me into a new way of considering the task of writing a novel, something I want. If you’re not pushing, you’re going backwards.

It also intimidates me. My confidence level is never at its highest with writing, but I decided a while back to stick with it, keep on typing. With Missing I focused on revision.

With Loki’s Children I plan to focus on the craft, creating interesting characters who do things you want to follow and taking the story to a satisfying conclusion. I’ve considered those things before, of course, they’re basic, but I’ve never given them attention before writing. I always dove right in.

The new novel feeling for me is like standing on a path that leads into a distant land, a place mostly invisible, over the horizon and writing moves me along the path, opening up new vistas, new experiences as I go. It’s a lot like travel, maybe exactly like it. I leave home, familiar territory, behind and go off to see how they do things far away. And I report back about what I find.

Spent more time with Lycaon this morning, too. Here’s a snippet, still requires some work, but it shows the heart of Lycaon’s crime. It’s Jupiter who is speaking:

He had planned to destroy me,

225 weighted with sleep and not expecting dark death.

226 He is not yet measured against my strength: one of the race of Molossa

227 Was put to death for an ambush, his throat opened by a sword.

228 A portion of him softens, half-dead joints in

229 Boiling water, another portion roasted by placing under the fire.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Polishing

December 12, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Winter Moon

By tomorrow I’ll have a first pass at a polished translation of Lycaon to post here. I say first pass because it will represent my best translation from the Latin, trying to use English to communicate the sense and sensibility of Ovid’s poetry. Meter, at this point anyhow, is beyond me, so it will be more prose than poetry though I’m going to keep it in stanzas and verses.

A second pass will involve going over the translation again with a thesaurus and other translations, looking for ideas and phrasing that might change my mind about how to approach a particular verse. Then, I’ll produce another translation. That one I plan to discuss in some depth with Greg. When I’ve finished with him, I might send it to a Latin scholar or two for an outside reaction.

Once I feel comfortable with my approach, I’ll tuck into the same process for as much of the whole work as I decide to tackle. At some point, soon, I want to return to De Rerum Natura because it seemed pretty interesting and Lucretius’ Latin is different from Ovid’s.

First off today though is back into the research for Loki’s Children.

Art and Culture, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Lycaon

December 3, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain New (Winter) Moon

Today I finished translating the story of Lycaon in Ovid. Most of it anyhow. Some still awaits consultation with Greg. I plan to go back and forth through this story until I have a clean, idiomatic and interesting text. That’s the next couple of days, maybe more. Probably more. Lycaon’s tale is the origin of the word Lycanthrope, a coined word for werewolf. Lycanthropy is the study of werewolves.

In this story Jupiter, angered by an Arcadian king’s (Lycaon) human sacrifices, comes to earth to investigate. When Lycaon tries to serve him human flesh, a test to see if he is truly divine, Jupiter in a rage turns King Lycaon into a wolf, but a wolf with human feet, eyes, grayish hair and the former king’s wild and fierce countenance.

Translating it word by word, line by line, idea by idea and then going back to create a polished English version is the task I set myself so long ago, producing a translation of Metamorphoses so I can embed these stories in my own consciousness. Yes, there are over 15,000 verses in total, and I’m only at verse 235 (plus several hundred other verses I translated, stories I chose to keep me interested) but I’m now beginning to see myself as a translator and not only a student. That’s a big transition.

I will post the text when I finish.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Golden

November 29, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Watched movies and TV, ate lamb, lounged around with the dogs. That was Thanksgiving. Today found me back at the Latin and ready to go. The first hour was golden. I was on and it flowed.

I broke for about an hour to work in the garage, clearing the way for the biggest part of the project, dismantling the dog feeding and sleeping stations lovingly and well built by Jon now many years ago. We have stuff stacked on them and some in them, so spots have to be found for all of that. There is plenty of room. After all, we have a three car garage and only one vehicle.

When I came back, the Latin aqueduct that had opened earlier, closed. Weird. I couldn’t make the words dance. So, I put up my papers and my commentaries and my grammar. This kind of work, much like writing, will not be pressed.

Soon it will be time for lunch and our inter-species nap. My eyelids are already drooping.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Upset the Apple Tree

November 17, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

After the heavy snow a week or so ago, I looked out and saw that the bee hive had snow and some leaves on its top. Odd, I thought, but didn’t go out to investigate. Our orchard, where the bee hive is, is visible from our kitchen.

Today I went out to hitch up the cardboard sleeve which had slid down to the ground and attach it firmly for the winter. That snow and some leaves on the bee hive was one of of our apple trees. It had tipped over from the weight of the snow and landed on the bees.

(It was the tree beyond the bee hive in this picture.)

I cranked it back to vertical, tied it off to the fence with some plastic coated dog leads and realized it would require some more soil and some compacting before the snow flies, probably this week.

The bees now have their winter protection. The garage is on the way toward reorganization, too. I spent an hour and a half or so doing this and that, glad to get out of the chair, even though it is a Miller Aeron.

More Latin later. Translating Lycaon from the Latin while I push the story through different paces in Dramatica. That’s fun.

I also started reading Robert Silliman’s Alphabet. He’s a language poet and this is a series of riffs beginning with each of the letters of the alphabet. It’s a very big book.

(Zeus and Lycaon in Wedgewood)

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Latin, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Weather +Climate, Writing

Everything You Need

November 16, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
Cicero

I’m set. The library surrounds me as I write this and the garden is two weeks into its winter slumber. Cicero and I agree about life’s necessities, books and a place to grow food and flowers. Between them they service the body and the mind.

It’s a dull, grey November day. Rain dribbles out of the sky, unwilling to commit. The temperature remains in a warmer trend, 45 today, a trend our weather forecaster says will remain until early December. I hope so since we’re headed out across the plains a week from tomorrow, exposing ourselves to the wind driven weather coming down, with no topographical resistance, from the Arctic.

Finishing up ModPo and getting off the Latin plateau I had inhabited for many weeks has left me in a satisfied Holiseason state of mind. Before them Modern and Post Modern ended and the garden got put to bed, the Samhain bonfire held. So this is a time of endings, as Samhain celebrates, and festival season beginnings. The unusual confluence of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving means the whole last week of November will be celebratory. In December then we can focus on Yule, the Winter Solstice and the pagan side of Christmas.

In the coming weeks I look forward to finishing Missing’s 5th revision and getting it off to the copy editor, learning Dramatic Pro and using it as I develop Loki’s Children while I continue to work in the new “in” the Latin style that Greg pushed me towards. This will also be a time when I consolidate my understanding of the Modern and the Post Modern and do some more writing around that, especially as it changes and informs my Reimagining My Faith project.

Reading poetry more regularly will also be part of the next few weeks, too. I want to continue my immersion in poetry. One of the ModPo teaching assistants, Amaris Cuchanski, said poetry is the leading edge of consciousness and I believe she’s right.

Dogs, Latin, MOOCS, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Thank God It’s Frida

November 15, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Latin with Greg this morning. I felt like I’d made good progress with my work, but in doing the translating with him, I hit a snag. There was a long sentence, six verses in length, with a complicated structure, hinging on a definition of a verb that was, Greg said, esoteric. Getting that one out of whack made the entire six verses difficult, entangled. Just when I began to feel incompetent (not a feeling I enjoy), Greg pushed us further into the translation.

Once we got out of that briar patch my work improved. “Perfect. You’ve got it!” “It was just that complex sentence and ferunt (the verb in question) that messed you up. You kept at it. That’s the key.”

“Oh, tenacity I have. I’ve got too much time in this to give up now.”

Kate’s away at a continuing medical education event on pain. After Greg and I finished I fed the dogs, made lunch and took a nap. Gertie, who rehurt her leg, came in and snuggled up next to me. This afternoon she’s moving much better. Good to see since she’s been down for a few days.

Finished up ModPo with assessments of four other student’s essays and watched a beginning video on Dramatica Pro, the new writing software I purchased. I plan to use it to build Loki’s Children, but before that I have to learn how to use it.

With Latin on a steady course and ModPo finished, I’ve just got Missing and Ovid to occupy my days. And they’re plenty. With, of course, learning how to use Dramatica.

Friends, Latin, MOOCS, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Education for Everyone

November 14, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Back from sheepshead. The goddess let up and gave me some good cards tonight, one very good hand in particular. A roll of the dice for Fortuna.

Finished the last ModPo poet today, the last video of Al Filreis and the gang doing close readings. I still have my assignments to write, but I’ll finish those tomorrow. I chose not to get a certificate in the Modern/Post Modern class, but I’ve earned one in ModPo. There are 35,000 people in the class. 35,000. That would be a crowded lecture hall.

The revolutionary impulse of the MOOCs is just beginning to be felt. The university will have to have a rethink in not too many years with this technology working on the disaggregation of education in the same way the net has disaggregated so many things before it. This will work to the benefit of many constituencies: the poor, the geographically isolated, the third phasers, adult learners of all ages, even the traditional college student for whom the cost of four years has become a leaden albatross hung around their neck at graduation, a weight rather than a celebration.

Missing’s fifth revision has begun to open up very exciting possibilities, ones I didn’t see before. I’ve reentered the story with the same enthusiasm I had when I first wrote it.

Four more verses of Ovid done. Greg and I talk tomorrow, the first session where I’ll be using the new technique of staying “in” the Latin. I’m looking forward to gaining more facility with it.

GeekWorld, Latin, MOOCS, Poetry, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Still Plugging Along

November 13, 2013 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Working through the revisions in Missing, having fun, surprising myself. About a third of the way into the manuscript, though the later chapters have more work than what I’ve done so far. Ways of knitting themes and character development with the narrative come more easily at this stage.

Got a new piece of software today, Dramatica Pro. I’m hoping it will help me deepen my work while making it more exciting. I’ll let you know how it goes. It’s supposed to take a long time to learn.

Five more verses of Ovid. These verses had a textual problem that had me digging around in the Oxford Classical Text’s version. It’s supposed to be the best manuscript available now. The Metamorphoses presents certain problems since it’s oldest manuscript dates from the 9th century, seven to eight hundred years after it was written. The Aeneid, for example, has some fourth century manuscripts, still within the time of the Roman Empire.

And finished up the next to last poet of ModPo. I’ll finish tomorrow and start on my assessments on Friday. Yeah.