This is a free adaptation of book one, elegy two, by the Roman poet Tibullus (55 to 19 BC). It’s based on the translation by A.M Juster in the Oxford University Press edition of Tibullus’s elegies. Juster’s version appears to give a pretty close translation of the Latin, in meaning and metre; mine is intended as a very free adaptation.
By this, I mean I’ve followed the logic and sense of Juster’s translation pretty closely but rephrased everything. Why? To try to make it roll and flow more smoothly, to give it more zing, to make it more fun to read.
In my opinion Juster’s attempt to replicate the precise metre of the original – elegiac couplets with the first line a hexameter and the second a pentameter – although a worthy aim, results in his translation feeling crabbed and constipated. From everything I’ve read, Tibullus’s elegiacs were thought by contemporaries to be stylish and attractive. So I’ve largely ignored the elegiac format – more accurately, left it as a buried foundation – and let every line do its own thing.
My adaptation doesn’t try to be elegant, exactly. I simply aim to make it fun and attractive and immediately understandable. (Also because doing an exercise like this really helps you climb inside a poem and understand how it is made.)
Elegy 2.1 by Tibullus
Pour me unwatered wine and let it drench
my grief, let sleep control my eyes
and when my brain is blurred by Bacchus let no one
wake me, let pointless passion sleep.
For my love’s held hostage by a grouchy guard
and shut up tight behind a bolted door.
O may the pelting rain attack that door
and Jupiter send jagged lightning to destroy it.
O please door, open just a pinch for me,
O hinge swing open, slyly, silently.
I’m sorry I was rude to you before,
I was mad with frustration, I admit it, my bad,
but remember I’ve also been respectful to you and kind,
promised you rewards, hung flowers on your frame.
Come lovely Delia, come out, deceive your guard,
remember Venus’s motto: who dares wins!
It’s Venus helps a boy sneak into his lover’s house,
It’s Venus helps a girl pick doorlocks with a hairpin,
It’s Venus shows how to tiptoe from the marital bed,
how to step silently across the bedroom floor,
how, even though she’s sitting next to her husband at dinner,
a woman can give secret signs to her breathless lover.
Venus doesn’t venture these gifts to just anybody,
only to those with life in them, willing to take risks.
For when I’m roaming through the darkened streets
Venus is there to make my passage safe,
making sure I don’t meet some midnight mugger,
keen to stab me, or steal my stuff at knifepoint.
After all, someone in love should travel safely,
protected by the gods, unafraid of attack.
These freezing winter nights don’t bother me,
nor do the heavy showers saturate me.
Nothing can harm me if sweet Delia
opens her door, smiles, and snaps her fingers.
Hey! Whoever that is, walking up towards me,
stop staring, Venus likes her business to be kept secret.
Stop scaring everyone with your clumsy feet, don’t ask
our names, stop waving that bloody torch about!
If anybody happens to see us whispering at the door,
keep schtum, tell the cops you don’t remember nowt.
And if anybody wants to tell tales, they’ll soon find out
why Venus is the child of savage seas and blood!
Mind you, even if people tattle, Delia’s ‘husband’ won’t believe it –
A sorceress assures me he’s been put under a spell.
This witch, I’ve seen her call down the stars from heaven,
divert a raging river with her magic.
Her incantations split the earth, her charms
raise up the dead and bring burned bones back whole from the pyre.
She can drum up demons with her mystic moaning,
then rein them in with the help of sprinkled milk.
Whenever she likes she can chase clouds out of the skies
or summon up snow in summer, if she wants.
Only she has the poisonous herbs which belonged to Medea,
only she tamed the baying hounds of Hecate.
She made a spell to help Delia deceive her husband.
You chant it three times, then three times spit on the floor
and her husband won’t believe anything bad he hears about us,
not even if he found us at it in their bed.
Should I trust this witch? Well, she told me
she could rid me of my love with spells and herbs,
and cleanse me with a pine torch. Late one night
she sacrificed a black beast to the gods of hell.
I wasn’t asking for my love to end, just for it
to become fair between us; I could never leave you, Delia.
O your husband is cold as iron! When he could have had you,
he preferred to go off to war, pursuing plunder.
Well, let him go slaughter the soldiers of Cilicia
and pitch his camp on captured ground.
Let him pose magnificently astride his horse,
strong arms sheathed in stolen gold and silver.
But Delia, just to be with you I would
be happy to yoke oxen and feed sheep on windswept hillsides.
If I could only hold you in my enfolding arms
I’d gladly kip out nights on the stony ground.
What good is lying in a silky Tyrian bed
if I’m without you, loveless, lost in tears?
Not the softest feathers nor the cleanest sheets,
nor the sound of tinkling fountains, nothing could console me.
If I have offended Venus with some of my ranting,
then let my guilty mouth forfeit the price.
People saying I defiled the temples
and stole garlands from altars to decorate your door.
If I’m guilty, I’ll willingly fall full-length before those altars
and kiss their thresholds with my penitent lips,
and crawl on my knees through dirt, as holy penance,
and beat my head against their holy pillars.
But you, passerby, standing there and laughing at me,
while I go through all these turmoils – you beware!
The gods won’t punish me forever, it’ll be your turn soon.
I’ve seen a mature man who mocked a lovestruck youth
himself fall victim to the chains of Venus,
attempt seductive speeches with a shaking voice,
try to comb over his grey hair with his hand,
reduced to hovering by his beloved’s door
and pestering her servants in the market.
I saw young men surrounding him and laughing,
spitting on their chests to ward off the old man’s curses.
Oh spare me, Venus! I will serve you loyally.
I am a rich harvest of devotion, don’t let your anger ruin me.
Books & Boots 