Translator's Note

Any student of Latin will tell you that translating the Aeneid, especially the fourth book, is not a groundbreaking undertaking—most of us have been asked to perform classroom translation exercises on this or that passage—but as my first foray into the world of literary translation, it was a personally groundbreaking experience. I produced “Fated” as an assignment for a Latin poetry course taught by Angelica Wisenbarger at the University of Cincinnati. I had to select a section of lines and translate them in a creative way in order to produce a poem of my own, not just a direct translation of the original text. The assignment was unlike anything I had ever been tasked to complete before. Most of my previous translation assignments in the classroom were geared more toward comprehension and did not leave room for expression, creativity, or play. This assignment, however, pushed me to view the original text for what it was: art. I pored over Virgil’s poem, searching for a section that made me think and feel deeply; I interacted with the text as literature, not just as a puzzle to translate. I was drawn to the fourth book, which features a romantic relationship between Dido and Aeneas that ends very, very poorly. Failed, damaging relationships are familiar experiences for many people—and perhaps even a relationship that makes them feel pained and unhinged—so I wanted to use words that would convey Dido’s emotional intensity in the original passage.

Although this exercise allowed me to take artistic liberties with the original verses, I still wanted to explore the technical aspects of poetry through translation. I chose to translate lines 56-73 into fourteen lines of rhyming iambic pentameter, a meter that English-language readers associate with a Petrarchan sonnet. The Aeneid’s meter shapes the reading and listening experience of the poem, so I wanted to retain a sense of meter in my translation in order to preserve a level of formality and structure. I chose a Petrarchan sonnet so that the volta—or the shift in thought, tone, or argument—would occur at line 9, allowing me to end on the extended simile comparing Dido to a doe.

For lines 151-168 and 246-255, I chose to write a series of six haiku. The form commonly associated with haiku in English is a three-lined poem that consists of seventeen syllables—five, seven, five—and traditionally focuses on the natural world. The final line typically includes a twist or comparison that prompts the reader to consider the contrast between two concepts. This format appealed to me because of its structural constraints, but also because that structure is very different from the Aeneid’s. The haiku format forces the writer to be concise and thoughtful when deciding how to convey a message, and translating the long, syntactically complex lines of the Aeneid into miniature poems was a challenging yet rewarding experiment. To condense the original passage into brief haiku, I paid close attention to tiny details about plant and animal life. Since such details are scattered throughout the entire epic, I selected a small excerpt that contains a high frequency of plants and animals, where they mostly serve as background details or figurative language. For example, the reference to snow-capped mountains and the bird searching for fish are not events that actually take place in the epic, but a metaphor to describe a character’s actions. To focus on these images of nature, I chose to translate the natural image directly rather than retaining the structure of the metaphor.  

I chose to write in this format because I wanted to examine the use of natural imagery in the Aeneid. The epic includes several sections that focus on wildlife, which provide a welcome break from the constant drama of the humans and deities. These slow-paced, descriptive sections can be easy to skim if a reader wants to return to the plot quickly, but I wanted to explore the imagery and descriptions of the natural world. However, almost every passage that includes a description of nature is interrupted by either personification or the arrival of human characters—very few passages show nature existing as nature alone. Because of this, most of my haiku end on a moment of human (or divine) interference in the natural world.

Although the poems do not preserve the plot of the sections from the Aeneid they are drawn from, they elucidate small details that may otherwise go ignored. Each of the haiku can be read as a standalone poem, or they can work together to portray the scenic backdrop of the Aeneid. Without the context of the original text, these haiku may not even be recognizable as translations of the Aeneid. Removing identifying characters, plotlines, and references encouraged me to consider how far a writer can push the original text until the translation no longer appears to be a translation at all.

Lily Stewart

In the Classroom