The Metamorphoses (Publius Ovidius Naso, 8 CE)

One of the things that always stands out as a potential sticking point when dealing with any work of literature is the question of the language on display.  I don't mean the quality of the language, though that's certainly an aspect; rather, I mean the language the work was written in.

Let's take as an example the book I finished today, a 2000-year-old poem written in Caesar's Latin and focused on tracing the theme of transformation through the entirety of the Greco-Roman mythology, from the creation narrative all the way through the deification of Gaius Julius Caesar.  It's a long piece, covering both well-known and less-known stories, and including shortened and focused-in versions of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.

There's basically two ways to go about reading this book.  Well, books; Ovid wrote it in 15 volumes, originally, but it's typically released as a single volume, now.  The option exists to read it in the original Latin, but one needs to be able to read Latin in order to do that.  There's plenty of words that look vaguely recognizable to an English-speaker, but if you're not fluent in the language, you'll be looking back and forth between The Metamorphoses, a Latin dictionary, and a guide to grammar, and all of the elegance that exists in the language is lost.

viribus absumptis expalluit illa citaeque
victa labore fugae spectans Peneidas undas
“fer, pater,” inquit “opem! sī flūmina nūmen habētis,
quā nimium placuī, mūtandō perde figūram!”
vix prece finitā torpor gravis occupat artūs,
mollia cinguntur tenui praecordia libro,
in frondem crinēs, in ramos bracchia crescunt,
pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret,
ora cacumen habet: remanet nitor unus in illa.

The alternative is to read it in translation.  This can be a bit of a touchy subject; there have been numerous translations of The Metamorphoses with different objectives in mind; Penguin Classics alone has three different ones that are maintained in print, with one being a prose translation by Mary Innes, another being a verse translation by David Raeburn, and the third being Arthur Golding's translation from 1567, the first translation of Ovid's work into English and certainly an influence on Shakespeare (this likely being where the Bard found the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, as depicted in A Midsummer Night's Dream and retold with a changed setting as Romeo and Juliet, and located in Ovid's Book IV).

When faced with a vast array of translations, it can be hard to choose one to read.  When I decided I wanted to read this (based on encountering it in The Longing), the version immediately on offer was the 1727 version published by Samuel Garth, and translated by... rather a team, including John Dryden, William Congreve, and Alexander Pope.  This particular translation struck me as somewhat flawed; while there is poetry to be found here, the forced rhyming schemes combined with the way that spelling in the eighteenth century was more of a set of guidelines than any kind of hard-and-fast rules made it rather difficult for me to enjoy the content while part of my brain wanted to just scribble all over it with a red pen:

The nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright,
Spent with the labour of so long a flight;
And now despairing, cast a mournful look
Upon the streams of her paternal brook;
Oh help, she cry'd, in this extreamest need!
If water Gods are deities indeed:
Gape Earth, and this unhappy wretch intomb;
Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come.
Scarce had she finish'd, when her feet she found
Benumb'd with cold, and fasten'd to the ground:
A filmy rind about her body grows;
Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs:
The nymph is all into a lawrel gone;
The smoothness of her skin remains alone.

The translation I was able to find on short notice, in a quick local search of the thrift stores and used book stores, was that of Horace Gregory, currently published by Signet Classics.  This translation came out in the 1950s, and was far more readable, perhaps less poetic but also not forcing itself to try and rhyme lines that don't rhyme in the original Latin:

The girl saw waves of a familiar river,
Her father's home, and in a trembling voice,
Called, "Father, if your waters still hold charms
To save your daughter, cover with green earth
This body I wear too well," and as she spoke
A soaring drowsiness possessed her; growing
In earth she stood, white thighs embraced by climbing
Bark, her white arms branches, her fair head swaying
In a cloud of leaves; all that was Daphne bowed
In the stirring of the wind, the glittering green
Leaf twined within her hair and she was laurel.

When I was almost completely through, a third translation became available to me, as a copy that I had requested from the public library arrived, the 1990s translation by Allen Mandelbaum.  I really wish that this had been the one I was reading all along; from what I've perused of it, it feels like the best of the bunch (though obviously I haven't had a chance to see what any of the ones offered by Penguin look like, yet):

Exhausted, wayworn, pale, and terrified,
she sees Peneus' stream nearby; she cries:
"Help me, dear father; if the river-gods
have any power, then transform, dissolve
my gracious shape, the form that pleased too well!"
As soon as she is finished with her prayer,
a heavy numbness grips her limbs; thin bark
begins to gird her tender frame, her hair
is changed to leaves, her arms to boughs; her feet—
so keen to race before—are now held fast
by sluggish roots; the girl's head vanishes,
becoming a treetop.  All that is left
of Daphne is her radiance. 

These are all interpreting the same Latin passage, and obviously the same core meaning is there, but with somewhat different voices showing through the lens of translation.  Speaking as someone who doesn't actually have any functional knowledge of Latin beyond knowing root words that are used in English, all I have that I can base my understanding of Ovid's writing on is the translations on offer; as such, I have to go by the translation that feels the best to me, to judge which one best shows what the ancient poet's craft was actually putting forth.

With so many different ways to render the passage into English, it really ends up coming down to a question of what one wants.  With these ancient works, not just Metamorphoses but also those of Homer, Virgil, and the other ancient poets, you have your choice of old or new, verse or prose, workmanlike accuracy or lyrical flow, and this isn't even a problem that's limited to finding dead-tree books; Wikisource has two complete translations, two additional partial ones, and two more that they appear to be planning on putting up at some point.  Many more recent novels that are translated between languages only have one translation on offer, so a reader doesn't have to worry about this dilemma. But with these ancient works that have been translated repeatedly, well...  we're rather spoiled for choice now, and deciding which version to read can have some rather significant consequences for your enjoyment.

Even works originally in English are affected by this; Penguin offers both Beowulf and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in prose, verse, and untranslated versions, the latter being the original unmodified text (in Beowulf's case, with a glossary and pronunciation notes provided on every page to help you with words you might not know).  I can handle Chaucer in the original, with a minimum of effort... but the last time I read Beowulf, it was an edition with side-by-side original and translated text, and...  English that far back has extra letters that we don't use anymore, and, well...

Hwæt! Wé Gárdena      in géardagum
þéodcyninga      þrym gefrúnon·
hú ðá æþelingas      ellen fremedon.

All that said, this is why I don't mind that my Penguin Classics collection has two different copies of The Epic of Gilgamesh.  But more on that on a later date.