Translations Of The Odes Of Horace

David Ferry, the acclaimed poet and translator of Gilgamesh, has made an inspired translation of the complete Odes of Horace, one that conveys the wit, ardor and sublimity of the original with a music of all its own. The Latin poet Horace is, along with his friend Virgil, the most celebrated of the poets of the reign of the Emperor Augustus, and, with Virgil, the most influential. These marvelously constructed poems with their unswerving clarity of vision and their extraordinary range of tone and emotion have deeply affected the poetry of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Herbert, Dryden, Marvell, Pope, Samuel Johnson, Wordsworth, Frost, Larkin, Auden, and many others, in English and in other languages. This ebook edition includes only the English language translation of the Odes. As Rosanna Warren noted about Ferry's work in The Threepenny Review, "We finally have an English Horace whose rhythmical subtlety and variety do justice to the Latin poet's own inventiveness, in which emotion rises from the motion of the verse . . . To sense the achievement, one has to read the collection as a whole . . . and they can take one's breath away even as they continue breathing."

Horace in English seeks to reach through translation to Roman Horace, the friend of Virgil and Maecenas, while at the same time presenting a many faceted portrait of English Horace, moralist, love poet, patriot, ironist, wit, convivial companion, everyman's poet for all occasions.

Horace has long been revered as the supreme lyric poet of the Augustan Age. In his perceptive introduction to this translation of Horace's Odes and Satires, Sidney Alexander engagingly spells out how the poet expresses values and traditions that remain unchanged in the deepest strata of Italian character two thousand years later. Horace shares with Italians of today a distinctive delight in the senses, a fundamental irony, a passion for seizing the moment, and a view of religion as aesthetic experience rather than mystical exaltation--in many ways, as Alexander puts it, Horace is the quintessential Italian. The voice we hear in this graceful and carefully annotated translation is thus one that emerges with clarity and dignity from the heart of an unchanging Latin culture. Alexander is an accomplished poet, novelist, biographer, and translator who has lived in Italy for more than thirty years. Translating a poet of such variety and vitality as Horace calls on all his literary abilities. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 bce), was born the son of a freed slave in southern rural Italy and rose to become one of the most celebrated poets in Rome and a confidante of the most powerful figures of the age, including Augustus Caesar. His poetry ranges over politics, the arts, religion, nature, philosophy, and love, reflecting both his intimacy with the high affairs of the Roman Empire and his love of a simple life in the Italian countryside. Alexander translates the diverse poems of the youthful Satires and the more mature Odes with freshness, accuracy, and charm, avoiding affectations of archaism or modernism. He responds to the challenge of rendering the complexities of Latin verse in English with literary sensitivity and a fine ear for the subtleties of poetic rhythm in both languages. This is a major translation of one of the greatest of classical poets by an acknowledged master of his craft.

The first substantial commentary for a generation on this book of Horace's Odes, a great masterpiece of classical Latin literature.

2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice This groundbreaking new translation of Horace’s most widely read collection of poetry is rendered in modern, metrical English verse rather than the more common free verse found in many other translations. Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz adapts the Roman poet's rich and metrically varied poetry to English formal verse, reproducing the works in a way that maintains fidelity to the tone, timbre, and style of the originals while conforming to the rules of English prosody. Each poem is true to the sense and aesthetic pleasure of the Latin and carries with it the dignity, concision, and movement characteristic of Horace’s writing. Kaimowitz presents each translation with annotations, providing the context necessary for understanding and enjoying Horace's work. He also comments on textual instability and explains how he constructed his verse renditions to mirror Horatian Latin. Horace and The Odes are introduced in lively fashion by noted classicist Ronnie Ancona.

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