Eavan Boland: O Fons Bandusiae

Length / Form Boland alludes to the formality and metrical structure of Horace's Ode 3.13 by mirroring his four stanzas/units and substituting an ABCABC rhyme scheme, though the metre lacks the fluidity of the source text.

Allusion to Classical place This version, like the original, evokes a pastoral scene of rustic sacrifice.

Relationship to Classical text Boland has published translations of three of the Odes, yet this early rendering is without parallel in her first seven collections of poetry (her translations of Odes 3.13, 3.17 and 2.11 feature in Bly and McClatchy's 2002 anthology, whilst the latter also appears in Boland's Code, 2001). Having studied Latin at school and at university, Boland has spoken of her affection for Horace, whom she pictures as a 'glittering, disaffected lyric poet' (Castro 1995:37).

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Horace's invocatory address is retained in the title, whilst this formality is dispensed with in the poem itself. In its imagery the translation remains close to the source text, its waters 'bold as crystal' and 'gossiping' (compare splendidior vitro and locuaces lymphae ), yet Boland's slight shifts in form and metre, consequently result in (or perhaps ‘allow') similar shifts in emphasis and expression.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Verse Translation: The centrality of Horace's Odes in Latin pedagogy has given rise to a proliferation of verse translations by poets such as Dryden, Cowper and Tennyson, whose example may have influenced Boland's decision to adopt a formal rhyme scheme and structure. Her understanding of Horace's poetry is certainly bound with memories of the classroom and, potentially, the discipline of metrical translation (as championed in Schlicher 1911. Martindale & Hopkins 1993 chart the reception of Horace in English Literature) Kavanagh: Interestingly, Boland has used the same word, 'disaffected', to describe both Horace and Patrick Kavanagh (Boland 1995:91). In Kavanagh's case she refers to the poet's inferred state of mind when he composed ‘O commemorate me where there is water', a poem which rejects the 'hero-courageous' adornments of nationalist literature, in favour of rustic mythologies (Collected Poems, 1995). In selecting this ode for translation it seems that Boland links the tensions, evident in the Horatian ode and Kavanagh's poem alike, between the public and private, the commemorative and the lyric.

Comment Whilst O'Connor senses an uneasy contrast between the mounting 'anger and impatience,' of other poems in The War Horse and the 'cool classicism' of ‘O Fons Bandusiae' the genre subversion involved makes the distinction less clear-cut (O'Connor 1999:53). In shifting the emphasis of the final stanza, Boland plays down the Horation boast of poetry's power to immortalise, whilst adopting his play on genre to re-establish the role of familiar, domestic and anti-heroic subjects in poetry. The later and more overtly politicised poem ‘How We Made a New Art on Old Ground' makes an oblique reference to Horace's ilex tree, signifying the continuing influence of the ancient poet (Code, 2001).