The most famous love poem ever written, with the possible exception of the Song of Solomon, is a poem entitled ‘Ad Pyrrham’ by the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace.
Sir Ronald Storrs, the near-eastern expert and governor of empire, made a collection of different translations of this poem. The collection eventually totalled 451 versions in 26 languages.
The irony is that the poem is completely untranslatable. Reading a poem in translation is like experiencing a kiss through a handkerchief. The point about poetry is that it is untranslatable. But sometimes a version of a poem can attain to poetry in its own right. It is generally agreed that this particular poem is so perfectly phrased and economical in the original that all versions of it turn out to be merely pale repetitions of a moon reflected in agitated water. Perhaps the very impossibility of translating it has attracted scholars, and other poets, through the ages to the challenge.
It is not even a very passionate poem. It is a low key, cynical, bittersweet goodbye to all that love stuff by an unromantic middle-aged man. It is a very short poem. In the first verse the poem asks, in effect, “I wonder who is kissing her now? In the middle verse he says “Poor fool, he can’t suspect what storms are waiting round the corner.” In the last verse he says “Ah well, I’ve given up that sort of thing.”
The poem was written more than 20 centuries ago. It is Ode V in Horace’s first book of Odes written about 30 B.C and published 23 B.C. Pyrrha, Redhead, or Ginger, is the name or rather nom de guerre of the girl in the poem.
A literal translation kills the poem dead. Latin is far more concise than English. Because it is a fully inflected language each word signals the part it plays, whereas in an uninflected language such as English you have to convey your meaning by the order of the words. Latin, much more than English, is made for the highly polished rhetoric, echoes, and connections at which Horace was the great master.
Also, social customs have changed over 20 centuries. We do not hang up dripping cloaks in temples or churches to thank the Gods for surviving a shipwreck, and men don’t drench themselves in scent, except it may be aftershave.
But spend a moment away from the daily news out of the scorpion pits. Take a look at a literal translation of Horace’s imperishable love poem, Ode V:
‘AD PYRRHAM’
Who’s your boyfriend, perfumed with liquid scents,
These days, Pyrrha? Who’s courting you
On your rosy patio cave? For whom
Have you done up your golden hair?
You always were so neat and elegant.
Poor fellow, he has lots of tears coming his way
From your bitchiness. He is in for a shock at the rough seas
And black gales that are bearing down on him, poor beginner,
Who now thinks you are pure gold, always available, always loving.
He hasn’t a notion that there is deceit in the air.
I am sorry for the innocent chaps you dazzle.
But don’t be sorry for me. I’ve hung up my dripping clothes
In the temple to the mighty god of shipwrecks
To show, that, for me, the game is over.
There it is, the most celebrated love poem in Western literature. Better you go and learn Latin and read the poem in the original. And never say it is too late. The American journalist, I.F. Stone taught himself Greek at the age of 70 so he could do research for a book on Socrates.
