This translation cannot be shared without an acknowledgement of both Stephen Blackwood and Joel C. Relihan. Blackwood’s book, The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy, argues that the musical quality of Boethius’ Consolation is too often ignored in the current scholarship. He seeks to draw out the aural effects of the text and favors performed, spoken readings to fully grasp its depth. Throughout his book, Blackwood uses (sometimes altered) lines from Relihan’s metered translation. Relihan mimics Boethius’ poetic Latin—a task that somehow seems even more daunting now that I have given it a try myself—to produce a truly unique translation for an equally unusual work.
If you wish to skip my brief introduction and directly go to the poem, click here.
For some quick background context: this poem is spoken by Lady Philosophy to the text’s Narrator.1 She has just chased away the muses (those “whores,” meretriculas)2 in the previous prose section, scolding them for their use of poetry. Interestingly here, she employs poetry herself, seemingly to match the text’s opening. The text begins with a poetry passage, where we get a lament given by the Narrator, who is imprisoned, awaiting his execution, and mourning his untimely demise. However, as Blackwood points out, Lady Philosophy’s poetry takes on a slightly different form than the Narrator’s.
In Book I. Metrum 2, Lady Philosophy gives her own lament. The poem is a stichic with each line composed in the same meter. Her meter appears to begin with the same beats as the earlier introductory poem given by the Narrator. His poem is in elegiac couplets with the first line of the pair in dactylic hexameter (five feet of — ∪∪, bum ba ba, and a final foot of — —, bum bum), and the second in pentameter (five metrical feet of either long or short syllables).3 However, the third foot of Lady Philosophy’s poem is interrupted by a diaeresis ( || ). The diaeresis serves as a pause in the poem where the meter turns to an adonic (two feet of — ∪ ∪ — —, bum ba ba bum bum). For all but three lines in the poem (lines 11, 16, and 17), the adonic is made up of the final two Latin words, giving greater emphasis to her calculated division. It is important to note that dactylic hexameters' most common ending is an adonic in the final two feet.4 Effectively, she has undercut the anticipated meter, giving a hemiepes5 rather than a dactylic hexameter to swiftly bring on its conclusion through an inversion of the Narrator’s own lament with masterful stability in each line of her repeated meter.
Thus, Lady Philosophy’s poem made up of one hemiepes and one adonic:
— ∪∪ — ∪∪ — || — ∪ ∪ — —
bum ba ba bum ba ba bum (pause) bum ba ba bum bum
The following poem is my attempt to maintain the meter while remaining as faithful as possible to the Latin. Without Blackwood’s detailed account of Boethius’ rhythm, I doubt that I would have been able to fully hear the musical aspect, let alone be willing to try replicating it.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Oh, poor soul! Sunk to the deep, drowning in dark void,
fading and dimming, his mind blows out its own light.
Gone off the course here to trek shadowed and strange black.
Often increased, when by storms earthly their winds blow,
rearing beyond measure that poisonous bad care!
Formerly, he had been free, heaven'd been laid bare;
it was his habit to take passages sky laid,
tracing the light of the sun—rosy the day’s dawn.
Up to the ice moon he looks, asking of its light.
Any such star, so returns route to unaimed spheres,
training the varied and curved orbits of planets.
Knowing—as victor—he holds melody's star roots.
Also, he too, wonders why boisterous winds breeze,
rousing with billow the calm blankets of sea waves;
what is the capable breath turning the fixed world,
why does the star evening sink under the west waves
when from the east's reddish glow rises each daybreak;
what is the cause that controls peaceful the springtime,
that it may dazzle the earth, blooming with rosebuds;
what may bestow autumn's fall harvests with ripe years,
teeming the vines that may flow rich with their plump grapes.
He was accustomed to probe questions of that type,
thus to reveal mysteries hiding in nature.
Lying down, he so despairs, weary his mind's flame.
And so his neck's been restrained, weighted by strong chains,
even his low downcast face wearing with great grief.
Oh, poor soul, forced to behold cruel and unkind earth.
Heu, quam praecipiti mersa profundo
mens hebet et propria luce relicta
tendit in externas ire tenebras
terrenis quotiens flatibus aucta
crescit in immensum noxia cura!
Hic quondam caelo liber aperto
suetus in aetherios ire meatus
cernebat rosei lumina solis,
visebat gelidae sidera lunae
et quaecumque vagos stella recursus
exercet varios flexa per orbes
comprensam numeris victor habebat;
quin etiam causas unde sonora
flamina sollicitent aequora ponti,
quis volvat stabilem spiritus orbem
vel cur hesperias sidus in undas
casurum rutilo surgat ab ortu,
quid veris placidas temperet horas
ut terram roseis floribus ornet,
quis dedit ut pleno fertilis anno
autumnus gravidis influat uvis
rimari solitus atque latentis
naturae varias reddere causas:
nunc iacet effeto lumine mentis
et pressus gravibus colla catenis
declivem que gerens pondere vultum
cogitur, heu, stolidam cernere terram.Scholars sometimes refer to the narrator as “Boethius.” The debate of bibliographic elements in the Consolation is not something I will explore here and, for simplicity, I will refer to the first-person voice as the “Narrator.” Likewise, Lady Philosophy is sometimes referred to as “Philosophy;” I think her womanhood is a notable point, and thus choose to go with scholars and the professors who introduced me to the text, calling her “Lady Philosophy;” Blackwood refers to the characters as the “prisoner” and “Philosophy” (sometimes giving the Latin “Philosophia”).
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 1.P1.8
Blackwood, Stephen. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy (Oxford Early Christian Studies). 1st ed., Oxford UP, 2015. p. 33-36
“Half-epic:” a metrical unit where a line is divided into two-and-a-half equal feet of dactylic hexameter, see Blackwood, p.34; for a publicly available introduction to Boethius’ meters as a whole, see O’Donnell’s “Metrical Introduction.”
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