The present translation was jointly undertaken by the late Sir Richard
Burton and myself in 1890, some months before his sudden and lamented
death. We had previously put into English, and privately printed, a body of
verse from the Latin, and our aim was to follow it with literal and
unexpurgated renderings of Catullus, Juvenal, and Ausonius, from the same
tongue. Sir Richard laid great stress on the necessity of thoroughly
annotating each translation from an erotic (and especially a paederastic)
point of view, but subsequent circumstances caused me to abandon that
intention.
The Latin text of Catullus printed in this volume is that of Mueller (A.D.
1885), which Sir Richard Burton chose as the basis for our translation, and
to that text I have mainly adhered. On some few occasions, however, I have
slightly deviated from it, and, although I have consulted Owen and
Postgate, in such cases I have usually followed Robinson Ellis.
Bearing in mind my duty to the reader as well as to the author, I have
aimed at producing a readable translation, and yet as literal a version
(castrating no passages) as the dissimilarity in idiom of the two
languages, Latin and English, permit; and I claim for this volume that it
is the first literal and complete English translation as yet issued of
Catullus. The translations into English verse which I have consulted are
_The Adventures of Catullus, and the History of his Amours with Lesbia_
(done from the French, 1707), Nott, Lamb, Fleay, (privately printed, 1864),
Hart-Davies, Shaw, Cranstoun, Martin, Grant Allen, and Ellis. Of these,
none has been helpful to me save Professor Robinson Ellis's _Poems and
Fragments of Catullus translated in the metres of the original_,--a most
excellent and scholarly version, to which I owe great indebtedness for many
a felicitous expression. I have also used Dr. Nott freely in my
annotations. The only English prose translation of which I have any
knowledge is the one in Bohn's edition of Catullus, and this, in addition
to being bowdlerized, is in a host of passages more a paraphrase than a
literal translation.
I have not thought it needful in any case to point out my deviations from
Mueller's text, and I have cleared the volume of all the load of
mythological and historical notes which are usually appended to a
translation of a classic, contenting myself with referring the
non-classical reader to Bohn's edition of the poet.
Of the boldness of Sir Richard Burton's experiment of a metrical and linear
translation there can be no question; and on the whole he has succeeded in
proving his contention as to its possibility, though it must be confessed
that it is at times at the cost of obscurity, or of inversions of sentences
which certainly are compelled to lay claim to a poet's license. It must,
however, be borne in mind that in a letter to me just before his death, he
expressed his intention of going entirely through the work afresh, on
receiving my prose, adding that it needed "a power of polishing."
To me has fallen the task of editing Sir Richard's share in this volume
from a type-written copy literally swarming with copyist's errors. With
respect to the occasional lacunae which appear, I can merely state that
Lady Burton has repeatedly assured me that she has furnished me with a
faithful copy of her husband's translation, and that the words omitted
(which are here indicated by full points, not asterisks) were _not_ filled
in by him, because he was first awaiting my translation with the view of
our not using similar expressions. However, Lady Burton has without any
reason consistently refused me even a glance at his MS.; and in our
previous work from the Latin I did not find Sir Richard trouble himself in
the least concerning our using like expressions.
The frontispiece to this volume is reproduced from the statue which stands
over the Palazzo di Consiglio, the Council House at Verona, which is the
only representation of Catullus extant.