"When you wish to instruct be brief, that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of the brimming mind."
— T.H.L.L.
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
John Murray
Date
1904
Metaphor
"When you wish to instruct be brief, that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of the brimming mind."
Metaphor in Context
Further, in Ode v. "cui flavum relegas comam simplex munditiis," is rendered "For whose eyes dost thou braid those flaxen locks, so trim, so simple?' And yet in the commentary the Dean is far more "exact" by referring flavum to the golden colour of Pyrrha's hair in harmony with her name, instead of "flaxen," which is utterly out of place, and what is worse he seems here to apply the terms, "so trim, so simple" (simplex munditiis) to the locks and not to Pyrrha. "Plain in thy neatness" is Milton's beautiful rendering, quoted by the Dean. Again, at the close of Ode xi. the words "fugerit invida celas, carpe diem" are strangely rendered "Time the churl will have been running, snatch the sleeve of to-day." Here most commentators and translators take the metaphor in "carpe" as that of a flower--as one of our own poets has it: "Gather ye rose-buds, while ye may" -- and "invida" they take as "envious" or " grudging," not as churlish. These are only a few out of many instances of the translator's failure in the odes of giving the "exact" meaning of the words of Horace. It is with real pleasure that one turns to the Epistles and Satires and Ars Poetica, rendered as they are almost everywhere with fidelity to the original. Take, for example, the rendering of the lines 335-340 in Ars Poetica, beginning, "Quidquid praecipies, &c.": "When you wish to instruct be brief, that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of the brimming mind. Fiction intended to please must keep as near as may be to real life." It is also only just to the translator to notice and commend the useful footnotes in his translation, which explain all real difficulties and allusions in the text.
(p. 199)
(p. 199)
Categories
Provenance
Searching in Google Books; quote drawn from E.C. Wickham's Horace for English Readers
Citation
Review of "Recent Classical Translations" in School: A Monthly Record of Educational Thought and Progress, ed. Laurie Magnus, vol. I (London: John Murray, 1904). <Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
07/08/2015
