Lee Butterman
In translating any piece, there are always the issues of cultural context of the original and translation. Being blind to the nuances of each language makes a translation lose its relevance. Here, I hope to explain a few of my choices in bringing the first eighteen lines of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales into Latin.
What has become of Canterbury, and of St. Thomas à Becket? The latter would not be meaningful to the Golden Age reader, and the former had no religious significance. In Chaucer's time, though, Canterbury was an active site for pilgrimage, and the fabliaux that Chaucer relates show that people took the trip with varying degrees of piety. The closest parallel in antiquity seems to be Apollo's temple at Delphi, a place fairly relevant culturally, widely known, which allowed visitors to have their bodies healed and their questions answered.
Chaucer establishes a high tone with talk of astrology and Roman winds before telling us he is getting drunk at a tavern the day before the trip. My Latin vocabulary and diction thus takes an elevated style, to contrast with whatever might follow. I also wrote in dactylic hexameter, the traditional meter of epic poetry.
But, as necessary it is to abandon Chaucer's places and culture, I must acknowledge the origin of the story, and this inspires the title. For the Romans in Britain, Canterbury was Durovernum, so the Canterbury Tales have become Durovernalia.
Chaucer’s first eighteen lines, in the original Middle English, follow the Durovernalia and my English translation of the piece.
Aprilis pluviis imbrosus mollibus aevo
Martis tellurum cum infixerit ariditatem
Imbueritque omnem ramum talique liquore
Vernales quali gignatur semine flores,
Et Zephyrus dulci suspiritante secundo
Omnibus in nemore atque arvo cum progenerarit
Solicolos juvenes solque ortibus aetherisedes
Ariete sidereo fines sit lapsus utrosque
Alavolatilulique canantia pipilitarint
Ambobus stans luminibus fulcimina nocte, —
Sic urgens animis alte natura spirantum —
Tum voluere homines penetrare strata piata
Vatipetentes mage proculque haud litora sueta
Aedesque externos notos telluribus aliis.
Praecipuissimaque ex omnium termine pagum
Italiae veniunt adyton Paeanis ad usque
Supplicarint unde sacerdosque aegroiuvantis
Qui iungens iaciens procul arcus plectraque tendit.
In the age when rainy April with sweet showers
Impaled the drought of the soils of March
And bathed every branch in such liquid
As by what seed the spring flowers grow,
And Zephyr, with his long-blowing sweet winds,
When it begot in every grove and field
Young ground-inhabiting crops, and the sky-seated sun, in its beginnings
With the Ram up high, when it sank down to both horizons,
And when little birds that soar on wings have been chirping songs
With their two eyes propped open in the night —
Base animal nature urging them so, deep in their souls —
Then, the seekers of the oracle would rather enter upon
Holy roads and distant unfamiliar shores
And foreign halls known in other lands.
And first and foremost, from the city limits of every town
Of Italy, they came all the way to Paean Apollo's sanctuary
To sacrifice by the priest of he who heals the sick,
He who by joining and hurling forth bends the far-shooting bow and lyre.
Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages):
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blissful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.