Ovid's Amores
Below is my translation of Ovid's very sensual Elegy V from Book I, followed by Elegy IV from Book 2 which describes Ovid's attitude toward himself and women:
This I admit: I'm very far from perfect.
I can't defend myself
with obvious lies--
if pleading guilty helps me, I'll confess,
say I've gone mad--then here's my list of crimes.
I hate myself
--Amores Book 2, Elegy IV, translated by Horace Gregory
I have included comments on how Ovid viewed his own era and on his bad-boy persona after the poems. -- Maryke Cramerus
Amores Elegy V, Book 1,
It was hot, and the hour was past noon:
my limbs sank down, eased upon the bed.
Part of the window was open, part was shut,
shading the light the way in woods it often does,
glowing softly as when Phoebus* escapes at dusk
or as night leaves, wth day not yet begun--
the kind of light sought out by shamefaced girls,
whose shyness hopes for such a shady place to hide.
Look, Corinna comes, flesh veiled by her undone chemise,
straying hair mantling her pure white throat,
just so was Semiramis in her wedding chamber,
they say, or Lais, loved by many men.
I pulled at her chemise --its sheerness barely hindered me
yet she still fought to keep its scant protection.
She battled, though, as if she did not wish to win--
vanquished without much struggle, self-betrayed--
and stood uncovered: naked before my eyes.
There was no flaw, none, in her whole body.
What shoulders, what arms I saw and touched!
The shape of her nipples--so ready to be kissed!
Impossible to criticize the flat belly below her waist!
What long and lovely flanks! What youthful thighs!
Why recount all that I saw--I saw nothing lacking praise!
I pressed her naked body against mine.
Who doesn’t know what followed? Wearied, we both rested.
O give me many afternoons like this!
*Apollo, the Sun, leaving, i.e. sunset
--translation by Maryke Cramerus
Elegy IV, Book 2
This I admit: I'm very far from perfect.
I can't defend myself
with obvious lies--
if pleading guilty helps me, I'll confess,
say I've gone mad--then here's my list of crimes.
I hate myself:
although I long to be what I am not--
if anyone got rid of all his sins,
he'd throw the greater part
of his weight away. I'm much too weak
to practice self-control: in storms mid-sea
I'm like a boat that's rocked between the waves.
No single type of beauty is enough
to hold me fixed forever in her arms,
rather a hundred!
If the girl's modest
and, like a virgin, keeps her eyes downcast,
I turn to flames, her innocence my ruin.
Yet if she makes advances,
I love a girl who's not a bashful kitten--
she gives me hopes at once
of half a dozen pretty tricks in bed!
Or if she stands aloof,
as cold and rigid as a Sabine matron,
then I suspect she wants an invitation,
eager to strip
and drop her strange disguise.
(Ladies, if you love study,
join me tonight
in adult education.)
Or if you're unrefined,
I'm sure to praise refreshed simplicities.
And if some beauty
calls Callimachus' songs "provincial rubbish"
compared to mine,
and proves it while she's naked in my arms--
I love the girl, and like myself the better.
Or if she plays the critic,
says I'm no poet, scolds my little verses,
I love to lure
such critics between the sheets
and as I mount them, hear them moan and cry.
One girl--
her feet as light as air--I love her footfall,
another walks as though her feet were lead
yet she's the kind that turns
to melting softness
the moment that she feels the touch of love.
Because one beauty
sings a pretty song
and charms me with her sweet facility,
I'd love to try those lips at deep-drawn kisses.
And what of her
whose fingers stroke the harp
to wheedle music from the querulous string?
Who would not love such gifted, clever hands?
And still another
enraptures me with curves and turns in dancing--
herself is music when she holds the floor:
look at the quivering
of her hips and shoulders!
Since I'm susceptible to female rhythms
I stand erect with all my blood on fire--
cold Hippolytis
if he were in my skin would be Priapus!
(And O the blonde beauty,
tall as the daughters of our ancient heroes,
you fill the bed with love from head to foot--
yet I believe
a short girl, cute and naked, does as well--
for both destroy me--
I take them as they are, great or small.)
If a girl's dowdy,
I dream of how she looks in décolleté,
and if she's smart,
she knows the art of showing off her beauty.
A girl with fair white skin and golden hair
turns to another
Venus in my arms--
she's my destruction--if her skin is dark,
I love a sun-tanned look--she's warm and easy,
yet if she's white as snow
with raven hair,
I'll not forget that Leda's hair was black--
or if it's auburn,
think of Aurora with her flaming curls!
My love would fit for all heroines of history--
yet girls of ten or twelve
always attract me,
so does a matron who is ripe and eager:
one has experience--
and yet the others
charm me with promises of fresh delight.
Look, ladies, I am ready:
wherever girls are praised in this great city,
I am there to hold them in my waiting arms.
--translation by Horace Gregory
Some Comments on the Amores
For me, Ovid is a fascinating contrast to the Romantics. He loved his own times--the same era Juvenal and other Roman moralists loathed. Ovid pitied former ages as rustic rather than pining for their simplicity. He praised the sophistication and wordliness that the satirists pilloried. Ovid was completely the urbanite, reveling in the city's noise, crowds, gossip, elegance, avid pleasure-seeking, and sexual license. No yearning for solitude, no soul trembling at the edge of the abyss.
Ovid's fickleness and deceptiveness in love are deplorable--and he is the first to deplore them even as he makes excuses and pleads for our indulgence. Yet he is not shallow--there is a sidelong, ironic acknowledgment of sadness, self-disdain, disappointments, and the brevity of the frivolous things he cherishes and pursues so hungrily.
Most of his poems acknowledge his own immaturity, impulsiveness, and frivolity. He confesses his enormous neediness, his craving for attention and being fussed over, his little-boyness. His poetic persona is akin to Frank O'Hara's. Ovid, too, had tremendous confidence in himself as a poet. People who read him in the Latin comment on his smoothness and musicality--his "sweet cadences" (GM Hopkins).
Above are only three of the Amores. The ones not included provide so many more wonderful experiences and so much enjoyment: you will attend a Roman dinner party, go to the race course with the one you are pursuing (arranging her cushions, cheering for the chariot she has her money on, touching her "accidentally," etc.), take a sea voyage, mourn the death of her parrot, bribe the eunuch who guards her door, argue with Dawn that she should delay her flight across the sky so that you can prolong your pleasures in bed, consult a soothsayer after you have had a terrifying nightmare--each of these elegies is terrific and so alive and vivid.. Reading them, you are there in ancient Rome, surrounded by the tradesmen, servants, sports, shops, amusements, theater, fashion, gossip, politics, and military campaigns.
I believe that Ovid's ability to intertwine psychological perceptiveness, emotional expressiveness, descriptions of the Roman milieu, and insights into its dynamics provide a valuable model for contemporary poetry. We can learn from his use of drama, contrast, dialog, and highly charged conflict, to make our poems more alive and expressive. Ovid shows us how to approach the poem's material from inside, rather than distancing ourselves from it so as to mute its emotion and impact.
I make this argument at greater length, using a translation of Ovid's elegy to Aurora at
http://www.poetryrevolt.com/aurora.html
A. S. Kline has translations online which hew close to the literal meaning of the originals. His translations of all of the Amores can be found at
http://www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/Latin/Amoreshome.htm
http://www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/Latin/Amoreshome.htm
The Latin originals of Ovid's works, including the Amores:
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid.html
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