62<4
DAVID KALSTONE
version. Now, again, it has been given a raciness and particularity (quite
foreign to Johnson's aim or taste) very close to J uvenal's own voice.
Lowell's translation makes us uneasily aware of how many of our own
abuses and Byzantine vanities recall those of Imperial Rome. With the
exception of some supercharged verbs, Lowell remains faithful to both
the letter and spirit of Juvenal. He has even found a way of admitting
important enjambments, alliterations and internal rhymes from the ori–
ginal: "for tombs too have their downfall and their doom." But most
striking of all, he has taken on Juvenal's tone of easy authority, preach–
ing, bantering, always close to the crowd: mocking them ("Throw Han–
nibal on the scales, how many pounds / does the great captain come
to?"); taking up their voices, suggesting hypotheses about life and
crushing each hope as it is raised ("Let's say you keep your mind ... ,"
"Let's say your son survives ... ," "But beauty never hurts the good!
Go ask / Bellerophon, go ask Hippolytus./ Chastity couldn't save their
lives ..."). The cases are unrelenting and horrifying.
Of
old age, for
example:
Now only fevers warm the thinning blood,
diseases of all kinds lock hands and dance,
even their names escape you.
...
The poem ends on a sober Roman note, with its dash of heroic scorn
and heroic example:
Still, if you ask for something, if you must
buy holy sausages and dedicate
the tripe of bulls at every altar, pray for
a healthy body and a healthy soul,
a soul that is not terrified by death,
that thinks long life the least of nature's gifts,
courage that takes whatever comes
-
this hero
like Hercules, all pain and labor, loathes
the lecherous gut of Sardanapalus.
Success is worshipped as a god; it's we
who set up shrines and temples in her name.
I give you simply what you have already.
There is, in these final lines, a remnant of community that can be
appealed to, even if the appeal is very bleak. "I give you simply what
you have already" is very different from the closing prayer of "Waking
Early Sunday Morning": "Pity the planet. ..." One wonders how much
of Juvenal's easy command is desired by the more troubled poet of
"Waking
~arly."
How important the Roman poems will be as part of
