Poetry

[Benny Bunter]

Golding's version of the Caledonian Boar hunt is great, so brutal and vivid, never a dull moment

 

[Corpsey]

I sympathise, but in this case I don't really care about that, I was interested in Hughes's use of language, Hughes's retelling of those stories.

Obviously if I wanted a (more) accurate translation I would read someone like Golding (although I've no idea how accurate he is, either).

"In his introduction to Tales from Ovid, Hughes described the author ofMetamorphoses as being “of little use” as a guide to the historic, original forms of the myths. Ovid is an “adaptor” who only takes up the stories which “catch his fancy” and who engages with each story only to the extent that it “liberates his own creative zest” [4]. In Tales from Ovid Hughes too is an adaptor and, as we will see, his late interest in the adaptation of myth relates to the poetic he employs in Birthday Letters. "

Tales from Ovid — The Ted Hughes Society

thetedhughessociety.org

It's an interesting one, because I think for a translator to accurately translate poetry they would often have to take the literalist route of Nabokov translating Pushkin, rendering the results bad poetry in English. The other route is to write good poetry in English, which as you say involves taking liberties.

 

[Corpsey]

But like I said don't want to give off the impression that i don't care at all about that and if I had the time and self discipline I would read Golding's translation (and then learn Latin and read Ovid himself!)

 

[Benny Bunter]

Yeh I don't really care about the accuracy of the translation either tbh, but Golding's is really gripping, not hard to read at all, really exciting and brutal, like the best Elizabethan stuff of the time. Hard to imagine it being bettered though I might be wrong.

 

[Benny Bunter]

From hence the Bore was rowzed out, and fiersly forth he flies

Among the thickest of his foes like thunder from the Skies,

When Clouds in meeting force the fire to burst by violence out.

He beares the trees before him downe, and all the wood about

Doth sound of crashing. All the youth with hideous noyse and shout

Against him bend their Boarspeare points with hand and courage stout.

He rushes forth among the Dogs that held him at a bay,

And now on this side now on that, as any come in way,

He rippes their skinnes and splitteth them, and chaseth them away...


And streyning out himselfe upon his tiptoes streight he takes

His Pollax up with both his hands. But as this bragger ment

To fetch his blow, the cruell beast his malice did prevent:

And in his coddes (the speeding place of death) his tusshes puts,

And rippeth up his paunche. Downe falles Ancaeus and his guts

Come tumbling out besmearde with bloud, and foyled all the plot.

 

[Benny Bunter]

You don't need "self discipline" to read that, it's straight fire!

 

[Corpsey]

Interesting reading Golding's "Acteaon" here https://sourcetext.com/arthur-goldings-ovids-metamorphoses/

Golding's romps along in heroic couplets, which has the effect (for me) of rendering even tragic things quite sunny and cheery. Hughes's version is very sparse, sober, solemn.

Obviously I'm not going to type out Hughes's version in full but here's a quick comparison of the openings

Golding

Thine eldest Nephew was a cause of care and sore distresse.
Whose head was armde with palmed hornes, whose own hounds in y wood
Did pull their master to the ground and fill them with his bloud.
But if you sift the matter well, ye shall not finde desart
But cruell fortune to have bene the cause of this his smart.
For who could doe with oversight? Great slaughter had bene made
Of sundrie sortes of savage beastes one morning, and the shade
Of things was waxed verie short. It was the time of day
That mid betweene the East and West the Sunne doth seeme to stay;
When as the Thebane stripling thus bespake his companie, … [III.170]
Still raunging in the waylesse woods some further game to spie.
Our weapons and our toyles are moist and staind with bloud of Deere:
This day hath done inough as by our quarrie may appeare.
Assoone as with hir scarlet wheeles next morning bringeth light,
We will about our worke againe. But now Hiperion bright
Is in the middes of Heaven, and seares the fieldes with firie rayes.
Take up your toyles, and ceasse your worke, and let us go our wayes.

Hughes

Destiny, not guilt, was enough
For Actaeon. It is no crime
To lose your way in a dark wood.

It happened on a mountain where hunters
Had slaughtered so many animals
The slopes were patched red with the butchering places.

When shadows were shortest and the sun's heat hardest
Young Actaeon called a halt:
'We have killed more than enough for the day.

'Our nets are stiff with blood,
Our spears are caked, and our knives
Are clogged in their sheaths with the blood of a glorious hunt.

Let's be up again in the grey dawn -
Back to the day afresh. This noon heat
Has baked the stones too hot for a human foot.'

Perhaps not the best bit to compare because for me Hughes's version is particularly good in evoking physicality and violence, e.g.

"... as the pack

Poured onto him like an avalanche.
Every hound filled its jaws
Till there was hardly a mouth not gagged and crammed

With hair and muscle. Then began the tugging and the ripping.
Actaeon's groan was neither human
Nor the natural sound of a stag.

Now the hills he had played on so happily
Toyed with the echoes of his death-noises.
His head and antlers reared from the heaving pile.

And swayed - like the signalling arm
Of somebody drowning in surf..."

He makes these mythical tales seem real, and authentically tragic.

Not sure what the original tone of Ovid is. Perhaps the originals were light and musical.

 

[Corpsey]

I was wrong about heroic couples it's written in iambic heptameter apparently

 

[Benny Bunter]

I'll give that some attention later corpse, cheers, I'm cleaning the house and listening to Bronx drill atm

 

[Corpsey]

The most useful thing that Pound says is the tip that he gives in his last sentence: ‘Again as in the case of Golding, the reader must read it as prose, pausing for the sense and not hammering the line-terminations.’ This Golding is Arthur Golding, who published in 1567 Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated into couplet-rhyming fourteeners. Earlier in ABC of Reading Pound had enthusiastically exhibited excerpts from this work, and had added: ‘The reader will be well advised to read according to sense and syntax, keep from thumping, observe the syntactical pause, and not stop for the line ends save where sense requires or a comma indicates.’

Donald Davie · Browning and Modernism

www.lrb.co.uk

 

[Benny Bunter]

That's where I've read Golding, in that Pound curated anthology Confucius to Cummings. He's right, you have to read it aloud and ignore the line endings to avoid 'jangling'. It fairly rips along that way, highly entertaining once you get a head of steam up

 

[Benny Bunter]

It's the same with most rhyming romantic poetry too isn't it, like Keats and that. If you read it and land down too hard on the line ends it becomes very corny. All depends on how you sound it out

 

[Benny Bunter]

Interesting reading Golding's "Acteaon" here https://sourcetext.com/arthur-goldings-ovids-metamorphoses/

Golding's romps along in heroic couplets, which has the effect (for me) of rendering even tragic things quite sunny and cheery. Hughes's version is very sparse, sober, solemn.

Obviously I'm not going to type out Hughes's version in full but here's a quick comparison of the openings

Golding



Hughes




Perhaps not the best bit to compare because for me Hughes's version is particularly good in evoking physicality and violence, e.g.


He makes these mythical tales seem real, and authentically tragic.

Not sure what the original tone of Ovid is. Perhaps the originals were light and musical.

From that little extract I'd say the Golding's much more energetic, you romp your way through it as you pick up the rhythm. Hughes is more sombre and serious, not to say it's bad but not as fun to read.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Great slaughter had bene made
Of sundrie sortes of savage beastes one morning, and the shade
Of things was waxed verie short.


Love this style of writing

 

[Benny Bunter]

This sounds quite dead in comparison imo

It happened on a mountain where hunters
Had slaughtered so many animals
The slopes were patched red with the butchering places.

 

[Benny Bunter]

"sundrie sortes of savage beasts" Vs "so many animals" I mean come on

 

[Corpsey]

I think Hughes is interested in making things more vivid, more real. Hence extrapolations like

"Our weapons and our toyles are moist and staind with bloud of Deere:" becomes "Our nets are stiff with blood, Our spears are caked, and our knives Are clogged in their sheaths with the blood of a glorious hunt."

It's interesting, too, that instead of putting the words "savage beasts" in Actaeon's mouth he describes from some more detached perspective "so many animals" – not sure if his intention is to portray hunting as prosaically brutal from the start vs. combat with "Savage beasts" as in Golding.

 

[Corpsey]

Not sure what scheme Hughes is following here – four strong stresses per line?

* * - *. _ _ * - *
Poured onto him like an avalanche.
* - * * - *
Every hound filled its jaws
- - - * - - * - * - *
Till there was hardly a mouth not gagged and crammed

 

[Corpsey]

Whole thing's on youtube

 

[Benny Bunter]

Hughes sounds much more stiff, like he has a rod up up his arse. He might put more details in but Golding's much more direct and it flows, a million times better