Clara Lazzoni Lazzoni (Edinburgh University)
The Constantinian poet Optatian is the first author known to have written versus intexti (“interwoven verses”), a special form of picture poems. Arranged in a squared shape like a crossword, each composition is broken down into single letters, some of them being rubricated to create a pattern or a figure; thence, these coloured letters expand the main text with a second (or even third) autonomous poem, sometimes using the Latin characters to form Greek verses. In this paper I show how the interaction of the three categories identified by Jakobson [2013] (namely for Optatian, the apparatus of scholia and the versus intexti for the intralingual translation, the mix of Latin and Greek verses for the interlingual process, and the presence of depicted images for intersemiotic) and the active role played by the visual elements within the text contribute to make a satisfactory rendering of these poems almost unachievable.
At the present time, the only available translations in a modern language of Optatian’s Panegyricus are the Italian book of Polara [2004] and the Frech PhD dissertation of Bruhat [1999], even if some individual poems have been translated in chapters or articles [Pelttari, 2014; Squire, 2016]. The problem of graphically arranging the Latin text on the page has been easily overcome by typesetting the highlighted letters with a distinct colour, and by adding the scholia and the versus intexti just next to (or below) the main text, which is the current layout of Optatian’s corpus [Polara, 1973]. Moreover, if in some poems the presence of geometric patterns (Carm. 2-3-6-7-9-10-12-18-20-21-22-23-26) has a simple ornamental (and parergonal) function, in others (Carm. 5-8-14-19-24) the use of rubricated letters to form words and numbers doubles and sometimes even triples the possible meanings of the text itself. Furthermore, in some cases (Carm. 6-9-19) the depicted images engage actively with the meaning of the poetic message, by reproducing its content in pictures (poem 6 has the form of a quincux whereby the text describes a battle; poem 9 is a palm in a victory context; and poem 19 recalls the ship whose sailor is the protagonist of the poet's vow).
Within his poems Optatian puts into question the semantic distinction between the verbal and the visual, by playing with the visuality of the written language to display pictorial effects and to create new meanings. In order to read the written text(s), no less then to see the depicted images, the very act of reading should be re-shaped within the parameters of a new visual-verbal framework [Platt and Squire 2017]. In this celebration of the materiality of the page [Squire and Wienand, 2016], readers are called to constantly shift between the inner frame of the written words and the outer space of the depicted images. To conclude, by offering a “paratextual commentary” to the poem in which they are inscribed, the versus intexti question the boundaries between figurative and ornamental forms, thus making a satisfactory translation of Optatian’s corpus problematic.