Review by Choice Review
As a translator of Horace into English, Kaimowitz (librarian, Trinity College, Hartford, CT) joins a line beginning with Aphra Behn, Abraham Cowley, and John Conington and continued by James Mitchie, Gordon Williams, David West, David Ferry, et al. As Ronnie Ancona notes in her introduction, Kaimowitz, like Mitchie, eschews syllable count for sentence flow, cropping (too much, at times, in this reviewer's estimation) classical references to gain rhetorical crescendos, thematic accuracy, and dramatic power. The result is not a word-for-word translation but a "reminiscence" of the sort one would experience listening to a digitally refreshed Bruno Walter Bach chorale. Some phrasings sound flat until the mythic allusions appear. For example, Ode IV.7, which opens with "Snows have fled away, now grass is returning to the fields and leaves to the trees," seems like prose until counterpointed by the ode's stunning end, which opens with this: "When you at last have died and Minos rendered brilliant judgment on your life / No, Torquatus, not birth, not eloquence, not your / devotion will bring you back...." Crescendo, diminuendo. A translation for the present age, the volume includes footnotes and a brief discussion of how Kaimowitz selected phrases, syllable counts, line length, and references to create brilliant "reminiscences." Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. R. H. Solomon formerly, University of Alberta
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
