The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation

84 The Translator’s Invisibility
simplicity of his manner, and his graceful turns of thought and
happinesses of expression. Some of his pieces, which breathe the
higher enthusiasm of the art, and are coloured with a singular
picturesqueness of imagery, increase our regret at the manifest
mutilation of his works.
(ibid.:ll:31)
In 1818, Blackwood’s published an essay that remarked on the fluency of
Catullus’s verse, finding it a mirror of the poet: “This language is
uniformly unlaboured. […] His versification is careless, but graceful.
His feeling is weak, but always true. The poet has no inclination to
appear any thing but what he is” (Blackwood’s 1818:487). The essayist
then ventured to connect Catullus to a canonical English figure,
suggesting that the “obscenity is seldom introduced altogether for its
own sake. Like that of Swift, it is only the weapon of satire” (ibid.:488).
The final verdict, however, was
that it is quite impossible to read his verses without regretting that
he happened to be an idler, a man of fashion, and a debauchee. […]
he might have bequeathed to posterity works fitted to inspire
sentiments of virtue and morality, instead of a book, the greater part
of which must for ever remain sealed to all those who have any
principle of human delicacy in their composition.
(ibid.:489)
The translators of the first book-length versions of Catullus, Nott and
Lamb, shared the prevailing assessment of the Latin poet, but it shaped
their work very differently. Nott too thought that “strength and
simplicity, elegance and perspicuity mark the stile of Catullus” (Nott
1795:I, xxiii), while Lamb wrote of “the poet’s natural felicity of
expression,” “the same natural tone which Catullus rarely or rather
never lost” (Lamb 1821:I, xl, xlii). The most remarkable difference
between the translators occurred on the question of morality: Nott
sought to reproduce the pagan sexuality and physically coarse
language of the Latin text, whereas Lamb minimized or just omitted
them.
Nott was aware that “Those indecencies occurring so frequently in
our poet, which I have constantly preserved in the original, and
ventured in some way to translate, may be thought to require apology”
(Nott 1795:I, x). His initial reason—to satisfy “the inquisitive scholar
[who] might wish to be acquainted with the ribaldry, and gross