The Odes of Horace: Bilingual Edition (Paperback)

by David Ferry (Translator, Introduction) "Maecenas atavis edite regibus, o et praesidium et dulce decus meum, sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum collegisse iuvat metaque fervidis evitata rotis palmaque nobilis terrarum..." (more)
Key Phrases: South Wind, Pallas Athena, Phoebus Apollo

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
David Ferry's The Odes of Horace represents the first truly distinguished translation of the complete odes into the American idiom. The translator has managed to retain the poet's moral tone while purging any taint of sententiousness. How? By recasting the structure of "Carpe Diem," for example, he gives this familiar poem a power one would have not thought possible. Ferry even manages a Latin-English rhyme at the end, by shifting the position of the addressee's name: "Leuconoe-- / Hold on to the day."

Ferry's Horace is always a specific personality, with his own identity, background, and attitude. Yet he is also a conduit of history. Turning to "Delicta maiorum immeritus lues..." (which Ferry straightforwardly calls "To the Romans"), we are plunged into a devastating meditation on the imperium. At this point, of course, it's commonplace to point out similarities between the American empire and that of ancient Rome. But this translation gives us a feeling for just how contemporary Horace really is. The best example would probably be "To Dellius":

Dellius, don't be
Too unrestrainedly joyful in good fortune.
You are going to die.

It doesn't matter at all whether you spend
Your days and nights in sorrow,
Or, on the other hand, in holiday pleasure.
Drinking Falernian wine

Of an excellent vintage year, on the river bank.

It helps to know that the historical Dellius was exiled in Egypt at the time, making those Italian vintages strictly off-limits to him. What's more, he was a double or perhaps triple agent, which gives him an additional Cold War coloration. In any case, the allusiveness of the odes--and the taut, bone-dry English of Ferry's translation--should gain Horace a legion or so of new readers. --Mark Rudman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
This is a delightful translation of the Odes by poet, scholar, and translator Ferry, who with apparent effortlessness manages to render Horace's Latin poems into fine, unsmeared American idiom. Horace, along with his friend Virgil, is the most celebrated and influential poet of Augustus's reign and is renowned for his ability to make the ordinary (the commonplace events and situations of life) extraordinary. There are few surprises or dramatic aberrations in Horace's odes, but the absence of unusual subject matter only serves to draw attention to the simple beauty of its rendering. This will be a superb addition to any library's collection.?Thomas F. Merrill, formerly with Univ. of Delaware
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374525722
• ISBN-13: 978-0374525729
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #485,915 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I wanted to like this but . . ., January 13, 2002

By	M. Lane (Ormond Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wanted to like this translation after all the nice things that D.S. Carne-Ross said about it in the useful and enjoyable "Horace in English." But this is a translation that is made more for image-by-image accuracy than for the ear. Often you read Ferry describing the right word rather than saying it. (Phrases like "too unrestrainedly joyful in good fortune" read like a dictionary entries.) In the difficult-to-render i.5 he ends up phrasing things like Yoda - "Hapless are they enamored of that beauty." Too academic are they who write as this one.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars There IS a better translation of Horace out there. . ., May 17, 2001

By A Customer

David Ferry's translation is simply undeservedly popular and is absolutely NOT the best Horace in English currently in print!

I defy anyone to find Ferry's Horace superior to the wonderfully readable translation done recently by Sidney Alexander and published in Princeton University Press's Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation. Richard Howard, translator extraordinaire himself, has written a short Preface for the volume, in which he compares a passage from Alexander's work to other versions of the same passage done by Pound, Michie, and Burton Raffel, and Howard justly judges that Alexander's is the "far superior text."

Ferry's language is too often simply muddled, the syntax unclear. Do yourself a great favor, buy the Sidney Alexander translation, and you'll be rewarded with a vastly more enjoyable reading experience!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Middle of the road translation, September 13, 2004

By	Kuru (Seattle) - See all my reviews

I bought this at the same time as Michie's translation and prefer the latter. Ferry does a decent job of capturing the simplest level of the poems readably and easily, but the subtlety and deeper levels of the originals seem to be missing.

For someone wanting the Latin texts, however, this book might be a good buy, since the poems are attractively presented, each starting on a fresh page, in a pleasant typeface.