Translations: Three Poems by Stephen Crane

Lately, I’ve been taking a self-directed refresher course in Latin, a language I studied for six years back in middle and high school (yes, I went to one of THOSE schools). A fun little exercise I’ll sometimes do to check my understanding of the grammar is translate a short English text into as idiomatic Latin as I can muster. One great corpus for this that I’ve recently been mining is the poetry of Stephen Crane, an American writer of the late nineteenth century. Crane’s poems—tiny free-verse parables set in a grim universe of foolish humans and angry gods—are highly unorthodox by the standards of his time. However, the direct, simple language of these “lines” (as Crane called them) makes them ideal for translation. Here are three examples I’ve recently worked on; the first two are from the collection The Black Riders, and the third is from War is Kind.

The Black Riders 3: “In the desert”

in deserto
vidi animal, nudum, bestiale,
quod humi subsessum
suum cordem in manibus tenebat,
et eo vescebatur.
dixi, “estne bonum, amice?”
respondit, “est acerbum—acerbum,
“sed eo fruor,
“quod est acerbum,
“et quod cor meum est.”

Maybe Crane’s most famous poem, a striking portrait of our capacity for self-immiseration. I wasn’t thinking about this while writing the translation, but there’s something strangely appropriate that the most important verbs in the Latin version (“vescebatur” = “he was feeding (on)” and “fruor” = “I enjoy”) are both deponent, that is, active in meaning but passive in form; it’s as though our “animal” was not the true agent of his own actions.

The Black Riders 15: “‘Tell brave deeds of war’”

“de factis fortibus belli narrate.”
deinde fabulas commemorabant—
“erant defensiones durantes
“et cursus acri ad gloriam.”
—ah! sed puto facta fortiora fuisse.

Nothing much special here, only a lot of serendipitous alliteration. Rendering the original’s “stern stands” as “defensiones durantes” (lasting defenses) took a little bit of creativity, but the repetitions of the “d”, “f”, and “b” sounds in the first two lines were completely automatic—to say nothing of the wonderful final line. (“puto,” meaning “I suspect” or “I consider,” has no etymological relation to the Spanish swearword, but given the implied contempt the poem’s speaker has toward these tales of martial bravery, it’s not an unhappy coincidence.)

from War is Kind: “Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind”

noli plorare, virgo, quia bonum est bellum.
postquam ad caelum manus feras amans tuus iecit
et abscurrit solus territus equus,
noli plorare.
bonum est bellum.

rauca sonantia legionis tympana,
animi parvi qui pugnam concupiscunt,
hi viri sunt facti exercere et mori.
supra eos nullo intellegente volat gloria;
magnus est Mars, maximus, et suum regnum—
est campus ubi iacent mille cadaveres.

noli plorare, puella, quia bonum est bellum.
postquam flava in fossa pater tuus concidit,
ad pectum scidit, anhelavit, et expiravit,
noli plorare.
bonum est bellum.

celere vexillum flammeum legionis,
rubra cum cresta argentaque aquila,
hi viri sunt facti exercere et mori.
caedis virtutem eis propone,
eis exhibe internecionis dignitatem
et campi ubi iacent mille cadaveres.

o mater cuius cor humile quam fibula pependit
de brandeo candido tui luculento filii,
noli plorare.
bonum est bellum.

Another one of Crane’s better-known poems, “War is kind” is the longest of his works I’ve translated so far. I’m not entirely satisfied with it in its current state. In the last stanza in particular I had trouble trying to find an appropriate translation for “shroud” (the closest I could find was “brandeum,” a word used by some post-classical authors) and figuring out what the gender of the adjective “humile” should be: should it agree with “cor” (neuter) or “fibula” (feminine, in which case it would be “humilis”)? I invite corrections from any classicists in the audience.