NPM: Catullus, Carmina 101

[starlady]

One of Catullus' most famous poems, and one of my personal favorites. This translation is my own.

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
   advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
   et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
   heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
   tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
   atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.


Transported through many peoples and many seas,
   I have come, O my brother, for these wretched offerings,
So that I might honor the dead with final gifts
   and speak pointlessly to your silent ashes,
Because Fate stole you yourself away from me,
   Oh, my wretched brother, taken from me undeservedly.
Yet now in these circumstances, these offerings
   handed down from our ancestors, ancient custom and sad duty--
Accept them dripping with tears from your brother,
   and for eternity, O my brother: "hail and farewell."

(for A, and for her brother)

Comments

[lnhammer]

Not a bad translation at all. It captures some of the bitterness as well as the elegiac air.

---L.

[starlady]

Thank you. I haven't done this in forever, and there's a lot of effects in the Latin that would take a lot more effort to reproduce, if at all possible--but I do like this translation, I think I got across to an acceptable extent what both of us wanted to say.