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Poem 101

by Catullus (circa 84-54 BC)
translated by Bruce Phenix

Conveyed through many countries, over many seas,
to these poor funerary offerings I come
to give you, brother, that last present for the dead
and speak, to no avail, to ashes which are dumb.
Poor brother, so unfairly snatched away from me,
because I’ve now been robbed of you yourself by fate,
this sad gift passed on in the old ancestral way,
these funerary offerings, at any rate
accept, all dripping with the tears that brothers cry,
and, brother, for the whole of time, farewell, goodbye.

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Poem 51

by Catullus
translated by Bruce Phenix

The equal of a god, that’s how that man appears
to me—the gods’ superior, if this can be—
the one who, sitting opposite, repeatedly
both looks at you and hears

you sweetly laugh, which takes away by force, by theft,
all senses from poor me: as soon as I’ve caught sight
of you, my Lesbia, to me no voice at all,
my Lesbia, is left;

instead, my tongue is numb; deep down inside my limbs
a thin flame trickles; echoing with their own sound,
my ears start ringing; and the lights that are my eyes
a double night-time dims.

Catullus, harmful idleness you should avoid:
in idleness you glory and delight too much:
that idleness left wealthy cities and their kings,
in former times, destroyed.

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Original Latin

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.

Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
spectat et audit

dulce ridentem, misero quod omnis
eripit sensus mihi : nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
[Lesbia, vocis,]

lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures, gemina teguntur
lumina nocte.

otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:
otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes.

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Bruce Phenix worked as a civil servant in England from 1983 until his retirement in 2021, in various administrative roles in transport and environment. He has a longstanding interest in foreign languages and other cultures and his translations have been published in numerous, including in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. He also has extensive experience, over a period of 35 years, in giving English language support to students from Far Eastern backgrounds. He won the Yeats Club’s 1989 Catullus Award for the best translation from an ancient language.

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12 Responses

  1. Margaret Coats

    The farewell to his brother is one of the very finest funeral lyrics, in Latin and in your English, Bruce. You’ve given the spoken syntax its original solemnity, and the added rhyme helps the reader of traditional English elegy to acknowledge this poem as well within his own purview. The love lyric, too, is carefully composed in accord with the original form.

    Reply
    • Bruce Phenix

      Margaret, I really appreciate your kind and thoughtful comments on these. Best wishes, Bruce

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Both translations are very well done, and completely in tone with the Latin of Catullus.

    It should be noted that Poem 51 is Catullus’s translation of a Greek poem by Sappho (the one that begins “Phainetai moi…”, and one of the few complete poems of Sappho that we have). The last quatrain is not in Sappho’s original, and is believed by many scholars to be a later addition to Catullus’s Latin translation, added by a moralizing copyist.

    Reply
    • Bruce Phenix

      Joseph, Thank you so much for your positive comments on the translations and also for kindly setting Poem 51 in context. I felt I should include the last quatrain in my translation in spite of its disputed status! Best wishes, Bruce

      Reply
  5. BDW

    as per Aedile Cwerbus

    What is so interesting about good poems of the past is the thinking patterns they contain. They offer perspectives not frequently, or ever observed, in one’s home language, occasionally offering superior insights. That is what Mr. Phenix’ rendition of “Catullus 51” offered. His translation inspired a dodeca on “Catullus 51”. [Perhaps Mr. Phenix will note which parts were drawn from his translation.]

    The Equal of a God
    by Aedile Cwerbus

    He seems to be the equal of a god, at least to me.
    He seems superior to gods as well, if this can be.
    This single man who’s sitting here—What’s his identity?
    He seems both auditor and spēctātōr. He hears, and sees.

    You laugh. That rips him off of feeling f-l-utter misery.
    His senses roll and r-o-i-l in simultaneity.
    The moment that he looks upon your aspect, Isabel,
    he has naught, and his voice is now his disability.

    His voice is in his mouth, his tongue is numb, inside, deep down.
    A thin flame runs beneath his limbs, and echoes its own sounds.
    His ears are ringing; his two eyes are covered by the night,
    that dims the light he once could see, but now has left this sight.

    Reply
    • Bruce Phenix

      Dear BDW, Thank you so much for your generous comments on my translation, your perceptive general remarks and your delightful dodeca, which is playful in places but also seriously expressive. I can’t tell you how flattered I am to be in the line of inspiration stretching from Sappho through Catullus to BDW! Best wishes, Bruce

      Reply
  6. BDW

    as per Aedile Cwerbus:

    Latin 101

    You’re very brave to dare attempt translating 101,
    it’s so well known; and yet, what you have done is take it on.
    And not without some power of your own to deal with it,
    its misery, and its extr’ordinarily deep pith.
    You feel the anguish in hexameter iambic lines,
    and simultaneously use a scheme of heartfelt rhymes,
    to handle the emotive elegiac couplet’s flow;
    like Jason, in to roiling waters, you have dared to go.
    I hope you do not mind it if I ask this question nigh.
    What was the reason you took on this task? I wonder why.

    Reply
    • Bruce Phenix

      Dear BDW, Thank you for another verse delight and for your generous reflections on my translation of Catullus 101! I first read this powerful and moving poem many years ago at school and have returned to Catullus more than once since then, making a rough translation of all the poems and translating 31 and 5 into rhyming verse; I also made a more careful translation, without rhyme, of the remarkable 63. After attempting rhyming verse translations of Sappho Poem 1 and two of Pindar’s odes last year, I was attracted to Catullus’s own version of Sappho in his Poem 51 – and I enjoyed attempting this so much that I looked for a second Catullus poem I particularly liked and hadn’t tried before! Like so many people, I can sympathise with the pain of bereavement, although I tend towards a less bleak and more hopeful outlook than the one Catullus seems to express in 101. Thank you so much again for your responses to my translations. Best wishes, Bruce

      Reply

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