See West’s Notes at: West, D. Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1995), pp.86-91

In the first stanza West’s version refers to the ‘holy vine’[1].  ‘Wine is a consolation and a delight given by the gods (1-6) and there are ample warnings not to misuse it (7-11)[2]
‘… The poem ends with an unflattering account of the participants.  They are led by the blind, by Self-love.’[3]

Horace makes it clear ‘that he wanted nothing to do with self-love and pride and could be trusted to keep silence.  He would drink with the great but he would not retail their conversation.  Such qualities were much appreciated by the Romans… and much appreciated by Augustus.  The proof is the surviving letter in which Augustus asked him to become his private secretary.  This poem is not just a literary game, nor is it simply a piece of flattery from client to patron.  We saw when Horace borrowed his first line from Alcaeus, that he added to it the concept of holiness.  Religious terms abound in the poem.  It is god that makes life hard for teetotallers in line 3… The villains of the piece are not the gods, but their drunken followers.  This is not just literary furniture.  In his cups and his lovemaking, Horace sensed the presence of something more than human.’[4]

In stanza one I use ‘Amber nectar’.  It is a homely term but with hint at sacredness via nectar, drink of the gods and ‘gods’ picks up the sacred vine too.

For the location in the opening of the original, I have an English equivalent; one associated with a literary festival. In stanza two ‘beer, and ‘lover’ pick up Bacchus and Venus in the original. The equivalent in proper names of the Centaurs and Lapiths (archetypal battling boozers) is picked up by using Gazza (Gasgoine the footballer) to add north east colour.

Horace’s dislike for self-love is picked up in my final stanza by the advice, ‘Let others praise your work don’t praise your own. / You’d better keep a tight tongue in your head.’   And the final warning of the original, ‘Keep in check your wild drums and Berecyntian horn with their retinue / of blind Self-love, Vainglory raising her empty head absurdly high / and Trust betrayed, squandering secrets, more transparent than glass.’ [5] picked up as a warning not to view everything through the bottom of a glass: here the intention being to convert the idea of transparency of glass in the original into a warning to the person who abuses alcohol not to see things through the bottom of a beer glass – such a view would be distorted.

Weight of Horace’s original I think is:

Enjoy a drink – praise wine, but don’t abuse it.
Avoid self-love and self-praise
Acceptance that life is hard and perhaps even harder if sober!
’In his cups and in his lovemaking, Horace sensed the presence of something more than human.’[6]

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[1] D. West, Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford:  Clarendon Press,
   1995,  87

[2] Ibid 86

[3] Ibid 87-8

[4] Ibid 91

[5] D. West,. Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford:  Clarendon Press,
   1995,   87

[6] Ibid 91

See West’s Notes at: West, D. Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary: Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1995), pp.92-95

In a way this ode reminds me a bit of Epode XIV, ‘Mollis inertia’, where the narrator is so overtaken by thoughts of love as to make him ineffective altogether in relation to his writing.  Here though, what is happening is that he is being prevented from writing about anything but love, ‘Love is forbidding him to write poems [about them or] about anything which is not relevant to his love.’[1]

West points out Horace’s love for the oxymoron, ‘Oxymoron is a favourite Horatian figure.  This poem begins with a savage mother, continues with Licence giving orders and in the second stanza has pleasing naughtiness.  All this demonstrates Horace’s taste for the paradoxical and surreal.  He likes surprises.’[2]

‘The poem starts with a sophisticated and perhaps gently self-mocking reference to gods.  The second stanza is a sensuous and beautifully organised description of the attractions of the beloved.  The third conveys the irresistible force of love’s onset and Horace’s total submission to it as the cost of all other interests.  But now in the fourth stanza we see him praying to be saved from the violent effects of love…We leave the theology of Hellenistic Greece, the ravishment of the senses, the world of politics to be with the poet on his Sabine farm telling his young slaves to set up a simple turf altar, bring the statutory greenery for a sacrifice… He hopes that if he sacrifices an animal, the love goddess will come upon him not like a flash of lightning, but in a gentler mood.’[3]

My version of this ode is written in the voice of a middle-aged woman speaker who in a middle-class, Women’s Institute kind of way, is rather surprised by her own rekindled passionate feelings. But whereas in the original it is Venus who ‘rushes upon me with all her force’[4], the narrator in my version is overpowered by Cupid – but he too appears in the original in any case.  

Whilst a passion for poetry is at the forefront of this version, there is also present, a fantasy about having a particular literary figure in the life of the narrator.  It is left to the reader to decide whether at the end of the poem the poet she wants to embrace an actual man/partner, or just a collection of poetry.  She knows too, that her thoughts and aspirations in relation to her poetry are perhaps every bit as much of a fantasy (in terms of achievement), as are her thoughts for the literary figure of her desires, but nevertheless she finds she has to ‘toy with them, / swirl them around for flavour as you would / a delicious mouthful of red.’  This narrator is as much taken over by passions as is the narrator in Horace’s poem – every bit as much out of control.

Horace’s poem is elevated in tone, containing many proper names.  I have tried humourously to lower the tone.  Bacchus in mine is represented by a ‘nightly tipple’ and whereas in the original Glycera sets the narrator on fire, the narrator in my version is set on fire (for love of poetry) by having ‘rubbed shoulders with the T.S. Eliot list’

I maintain the idea of lightning in my version.  Likewise I turn the real slaves of the original into a metaphorical one, when I express a wish that Reason prevail in the acceptance that the narrator needs to act her age.
To bring out the Latin, lubricus, I use ‘slippery slope’ and I substitute the real physical animal sacrifice in the original with a metaphorical sacrifice at the end of the poem.

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[1] D. West, Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford:  Clarendon Press,
   (1995)  93-4

[2] Ibid  94

[3] Ibid  94-5

[4] Ibid p.93

See West’s Notes at:  West, D. Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1995), pp. 04-99

My version is also a poem in praise of a patron, a Professor of Classics who has supported and encouraged the narrator in her work and the narrator here also invites the patron to her home to enjoy not fine wine, but Newcastle brown ale from wooden crates, and Northern beer.

The narrator of this poem is, as the narrator in the original trying to express gratitude for the gift which has been given.  In Horace’s case it is the Sabine Farm, in the case of the narrator it is the gift of scholarly support and encouragement.

I use the opening ‘pore over’ to suggest close intent examination, but also it will serve as an echo of pour for the following lines when the narrator invites her patron, the professor to join her for drinks.

The home of the narrator, Denevale is an equivalent for Horace’s Sabine farm/valley and just as Maecenas was applauded when he went to the theatre, so too, the professor in my version is applauded by ranks of students.  Just As ‘Vatican’ in the original was an allusion to Rome, so to in my version Isis is an allusion to Oxford.

The narrator in my version is also intent on hanging onto her identity as a working-class northerner whilst at the same time being confident enough in the relationship with her patron that he would put her invitation to share Newcastle brown ale and friendship above his connoisseurship of fine wine and the Oxford way of life, so there is still the use of an alcohol code to demonstrate different social and intellectual status.  Here too, then, the narrator is defiant, grateful and appreciative yes – praising yes, but determined to offer her own inferior product and stick to her rough northern voice.

See West’s Notes at: West, D. Horace Odes I Carpe Diem: Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1995), pp.100-103

I found this one of the more tricky poems over which to place a contemporary version.  Basically these two choirs of girls and boys are being told to celebrate – and the occasion is the dedication of the temple to Apollo and to praise Augustus for having built it.  There is no real parallel I can think of in the contemporary world.  I don’t think there needs to be in this setting, but what I have tried to do is capture the traditional roles and expectations of the two sexes and how they might celebrate and then contemporize in order to more accurately reflect things as they are now.

I reverse this ode, making the girls more hard-nosed; Make them sing/write about erotic pursuit whereas the boys take on a more traditionally ‘female’ and ‘innocent’ role.  This is to try and reflect some of the changes in our society where women generally have become more the predator and men have become more willing to demonstrate their ‘feminine side’

‘Cold wait’ is meant to echo the coldness of Mount Algidus in the original and the ‘profile’ outside the door, the black shapes of the conifers on the top.  I use the successful contemporary poet Michael Longley to match the reference to Caesar in the last stanza of the original.

I have also tried to echo the idea of ‘aim’ and ‘conspicuous’ and the phrase ‘You, like your brothers’ is meant to reflect the idea that Apollo and Diana were siblings.

The extreme points of the globe, Persia and Briton in the original is represented by the phrase ‘universal’ in my version.

After telling the girls to be ‘conspicuous’ I tell them to reach for the stars, the point being that just as Apollo drove out war with its tears, and famine and pestilence with their misery – drove them far away from the people and from Caesar out towards Persia and Briton, so that way the ‘girls’ in my version can reach for the stars (as in heavenly stars and showbiz stars)  – this is what they should aim for, but my version also contains a kind of warning, namely that stars burn out/fade  I suspect, knowing Horace’s wisdom that he would have realized that the powers-that-be in Rome would also burn out. /fade.