Part 7

are as follows. In the second line I leave out the epithet of the Trojan women ἑλκεσιπέπλους, altogether. In the sixth line I put in five words ‘in spite of the future’, which are in the original by implication only, and are not there actually expressed. This I do, because Homer, as I have before said, is so remote from one who reads him in English, that the English translator must be even plainer, if possible, and more unambiguous than Homer himself; the connection of meaning must be even more distinctly marked in the translation than in the original. For in the Greek language itself there is something which brings one nearer to Homer, which gives one a clue to his thought, which makes a hint enough; but in the English language this sense of nearness, this clue, is gone; hints are insufficient, everything must be stated with full distinctness. In the ninth line Homer’s epithet for Priam is ἐυμμελίω,—‘armed with good ashen spear’, say the dictionaries; ‘ashen-speared’, translates Mr Newman, following his own rule to ‘retain every peculiarity of his original’,—I say, on the other hand, that ἐυμμελίω has not the effect of a ‘peculiarity’ in the original, while ‘ashen-speared’ has the effect of a ‘peculiarity’ in English; and ‘warlike’ is as marking an equivalent as I dare give for ἐυμμελίω, for fear of disturbing the balance of expression in Homer’s sentence. In the fourteenth line, again, I translate χαλκοχιτώνων by ‘brazen-coated’. Mr Newman, meaning to be perfectly literal, translates it by ‘brazen-cloaked’, an expression which comes to the reader oddly and unnaturally, while Homer’s word comes to him quite naturally; but I venture to go as near to a literal rendering as ‘brazen-coated’, because a ‘coat of brass’ is familiar to us all from the Bible, and familiar, too, as distinctly specified in connection with the wearer. Finally, let me further illustrate from the twentieth line the value which I attach, in a question of diction, to the authority of the Bible. The word ‘pre-eminent’ occurs in that line; I was a little in doubt whether that was not too bookish an expression to be used in rendering Homer, as I can imagine Mr Newman to have been a little in doubt whether his ‘responsively accosted’ for ἀμειβόμενος προσέφη, was not too bookish an expression. Let us both, I say, consult our Bibles: Mr Newman will nowhere find it in his Bible that David, for instance, ‘_responsively accosted_ Goliath’; but I do find in mine that ‘the right hand of the Lord hath the _pre-eminence_’; and forthwith I use ‘pre-eminent’, without scruple. My Bibliolatry is perhaps excessive; and no doubt a true poetic feeling is the Homeric translator’s best guide in the use of words; but where this feeling does not exist, or is at fault, I think he cannot do better than take for a mechanical guide Cruden’s _Concordance_. To be sure, here as elsewhere, the consulter must know how to consult,—must know how very slight a variation of word or circumstance makes the difference between an authority in his favour, and an authority which gives him no countenance at all; for instance, the ‘Great simpleton!’ (for μέγα νήπιος) of Mr Newman, and the ‘Thou fool!’ of the Bible, are something alike; but ‘Thou fool!’ is very grand, and ‘Great simpleton!’ is an atrocity. So, too, Chapman’s ‘Poor wretched beasts’ is pitched many degrees too low; but Shakspeare’s ‘Poor venomous fool, Be angry and despatch!’ is in the grand style.

One more piece of translation and I have done. I will take the passage in which both Chapman and Mr Newman have already so much excited our astonishment, the passage at the end of the nineteenth book of the _Iliad_, the dialogue between Achilles and his horse Xanthus, after the death of Patroclus. Achilles begins:

‘Xanthus and Balius both, ye far-famed seed of Podarga! See that ye bring your master home to the host of the Argives In some other sort than your last, when the battle is ended; And not leave him behind, a corpse on the plain, like Patroclus’. Then, from beneath the yoke, the fleet horse Xanthus addressed him: Sudden he bowed his head, and all his mane, as he bowed it, Streamed to the ground by the yoke, escaping from under the collar; And he was given a voice by the white-armed Goddess Hera. ‘Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles! But thy day of death is at hand; nor shall _we_ be the reason— No, but the will of heaven, and Fate’s invincible power. For by no slow pace or want of swiftness of ours Did the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus; But that prince among Gods, the son of the lovely-haired Leto, Slew him fighting in front of the fray, and glorified Hector. But, for us, we vie in speed with the breath of the West-Wind, Which, men say, is the fleetest of winds; ’tis thou who art fated To lie low in death, by the hand of a God and a Mortal’. Thus far he; and here his voice was stopped by the Furies. Then, with a troubled heart, the swift Achilles addressed him: ‘Why dost thou prophesy so my death to me, Xanthus? It needs not. I of myself know well, that here I am destined to perish, Far from my father and mother dear: for all that I will not Stay this hand from fight, till the Trojans are utterly routed

So he spake, and drove with a cry his steeds into battle.

Here the only particular remark which I will make is, that in the fourth and eighth line the grammar is what I call a loose and idiomatic grammar. In writing a regular and literary style, one would in the fourth line have to repeat before ‘leave’ the words ‘that ye’ from the second line, and to insert the word ‘do’; and in the eighth line one would not use such an expression as ‘he was given a voice’. But I will make one general remark on the character of my own translations, as I have made so many on that of the translations of others. It is, that over the graver passages there is shed an air somewhat too strenuous and severe, by comparison with that lovely ease and sweetness which Homer, for all his noble and masculine way of thinking, never loses.

Here I stop. I have said so much, because I think that the task of translating Homer into English verse both will be reattempted, and may be reattempted successfully. There are great works composed of parts so disparate that one translator is not likely to have the requisite gifts for poetically rendering all of them. Such are the works of Shakspeare, and Goethe’s _Faust_; and these it is best to attempt to render in prose only. People praise Tieck and Schlegel’s version of Shakspeare. I, for my part, would sooner read Shakspeare in the French prose translation, and that is saying a great deal; but in the German poets’ hands Shakspeare so often gets, especially where he is humorous, an air of what the French call _niaiserie_! and can anything be more un-Shakspearian than that? Again; Mr Hayward’s prose translation of the first part of _Faust_—so good that it makes one regret Mr Hayward should have abandoned the line of translation for a kind of literature which is, to say the least, somewhat slight—is not likely to be surpassed by any translation in verse. But poems like the _Iliad_, which, in the main, are in one manner, may hope to find a poetical translator so gifted and so trained as to be able to learn that one manner, and to reproduce it. Only, the poet who would reproduce this must cultivate in himself a Greek virtue by no means common among the moderns in general, and the English in particular,—_moderation_. For Homer has not only the English vigour, he has the Greek grace; and when one observes the bolstering, rollicking way in which his English admirers—even men of genius like the late Professor Wilson—love to talk of Homer and his poetry, one cannot help feeling that there is no very deep community of nature between them and the object of their enthusiasm. ‘It is very well, my good friends’, I always imagine Homer saying to them: if he could hear them: ‘you do me a great deal of honour, but somehow or other you praise me too like barbarians’. For Homer’s grandeur is not the mixed and turbid grandeur of the great poets of the north, of the authors of _Othello_ and _Faust_; it is a perfect, a lovely grandeur. Certainly his poetry has all the energy and power of the poetry of our ruder climates; but it has, besides, the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky.

Footnote 25:

_The Faery Queen_, Canto ii. stanza I.

Footnote 26:

_Odes_, IV. vii. 13.

Footnote 27:

_Odyssey_ iv. 563.

Footnote 28:

_Odes_, III. ii. 31.

Footnote 29:

So short, that I quote it entire:

Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia; Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember; Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders, Castor fleet in the car,—Polydeukes brave with the cestus,— Own dear brethren of mine,—one parent loved us as infants. Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedæmon, Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters, Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of Heroes, All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened? So said she;—they long since in Earth’s soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their Fatherland, Lacedæmon.

_English Hexameter Translations_, London, 1847, p. 242.

I have changed Dr Hawtrey’s ‘Kastor’, ‘Lakedaimon’, back to the familiar ‘Castor’, ‘Lacedæmon’, in obedience to my own rule that everything _odd_ is to be avoided in rendering Homer, the most natural and least odd of poets. I see Mr Newman’s critic in the _National Review_ urges our generation to bear with the unnatural effect of these rewritten Greek names, in the hope that by this means the effect of them may have to the next generation become natural. For my part, I feel no disposition to pass all my own life in the wilderness of pedantry, in order that a posterity which I shall never see may one day enter an orthographical Canaan; and, after all, the real question is this: whether our living apprehension of the Greek world is more checked by meeting in an English book about the Greeks, names not spelt letter for letter as in the original Greek, or by meeting names which make us rub our eyes and call out, ‘How exceedingly odd!’

The Latin names of the Greek deities raise in most cases the idea of quite distinct personages from the personages whose idea is raised by the Greek names. Hera and Juno are actually, to every scholar’s imagination, two different people. So in all these cases the Latin names must, at any inconvenience, be abandoned when we are dealing with the Greek world. But I think it can be in the sensitive imagination of Mr Grote only, that ‘Thucydides’ raises the idea of a different man from =Θουκυδίδης=.

Footnote 30:

For instance; in a version (I believe, by the late Mr Lockhart) of Homer’s description of the parting of Hector and Andromache, there occurs, in the first five lines, but one spondee besides the necessary spondees in the sixth place; in the corresponding five lines of Homer there occur ten. See _English Hexameter Translations_, 244.

Footnote 31:

See for instance, in the _Iliad_, the loose construction of =ὅστε=, xvii. 658; that of =ἴδοιτο=, xvii. 681; that of =οἵτε=, xviii. 209; and the elliptical construction at xix. 42, 43; also the idiomatic construction of =ἐγὼν ὅδε παρασχεῖν=, xix. 140. These instances are all taken within a range of a thousand lines; anyone may easily multiply them for himself.

Footnote 32:

Our knowledge of Homer’s Greek is hardly such as to enable us to pronounce quite confidently what is idiomatic in his diction, and what is not, any more than in his grammar; but I seem to myself clearly to recognise an idiomatic stamp in such expressions as =τολυπεύειν πολέμους=, xiv. 86; =φάος ἐν νήεσσιν θήῃς=, xvi. 94; =τιν’ οἴω ἀσπασίως αὐτῶν γόνυ κάμψειν=, xix. 71; =κλοτοπεύειν=, xix. 149; and many others. The first-quoted expression, =τολυπεύειν ἀργαλέους πολέμους=, seems to me to have just about the same degree of freedom as the ‘_jump_ the life to come’, or the ‘_shuffle off_ this mortal coil’, of Shakspeare.

Footnote 33:

It must be remembered, however, that, if we disregard quantity too much in constructing English hexameters, we also disregard accent too much in reading Greek hexameters. We read every Greek dactyl so as to make a pure dactyl of it; but, to a Greek, the accent must have hindered many dactyls from sounding as pure dactyls. When we read =αἰόλος= ἵππος, for instance, or =αἰγιόχοιο=, the dactyl in each of these cases is made by us as pure a dactyl as ‘Tityre’, or ‘dignity’; but to a Greek it was not so. To him αἰόλος must have been nearly as impure a dactyl as ‘death-destined’ is to us; and αἰγιόχ nearly as impure as the ‘dressed his own’ of my text. Nor, I think, does this right mode of pronouncing the two words at all spoil the run of the line as a hexameter. The effect of =αἰόλλος= ἵππος (or something like that), though not _our_ effect, is not a disagreeable one. On the other hand, κορυθαιόλος as a paroxytonon, although it has the respectable authority of Liddell and Scott’s _Lexicon_ (following Heyne), is certainly wrong; for then the word cannot be pronounced without throwing an accent on the first syllable as well as the third, and μέγας =κοῤῥυθαιόλλος= Ἕκτωρ would have been to a Greek as intolerable an ending for a hexameter line as ‘accurst _orphanhood-destined_ houses’ would be to us. The best authorities, accordingly, accent κορυθαίολος as a proparoxytonon.

Footnote 34:

Dr Hawtrey also has translated this passage; but here, he has not, I think, been so successful as in his ‘Helen on the walls of Troy’.

Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice A Reply to Matthew Arnold By Francis W. Newman

It is so difficult, amid the press of literature, for a mere versifier and translator to gain notice at all, that an assailant may even do one a service, if he so conduct his assault as to enable the reader to sit in intelligent judgment on the merits of the book assailed. But when the critic deals out to the readers only so much knowledge as may propagate his own contempt of the book, he has undoubtedly immense power to dissuade them from wishing to open it. Mr Arnold writes as openly aiming at this end. He begins by complimenting me, as ‘a man of great ability and genuine learning’; but on questions of learning, as well as of taste, he puts me down as bluntly, as if he had meant, ‘a man totally void both of learning and of sagacity’. He again and again takes for granted that he has ‘the scholar’ on his side, ‘the living scholar’, the man who has learning and taste without pedantry. He bids me please ‘the scholars’, and go to ‘the scholars’ tribunal’; and does not know that I did this, to the extent of my opportunity, before committing myself to a laborious, expensive and perhaps thankless task. Of course he cannot guess, what is the fact, that scholars of fastidious refinement, but of a judgment which I think far more masculine than Mr Arnold’s, have passed a most encouraging sentence on large specimens of my translations. I at this moment count eight such names, though of course I must not here adduce them: nor will I further allude to it, than to say, that I have no such sense either of pride or of despondency, as those are liable to, who are consciously isolated in their taste.

Scholars are the tribunal of Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public is the only rightful judge; and to it I wish to appeal. Even scholars collectively have no right, and much less have single scholars, to pronounce a final sentence on questions of taste in their court. Where I differ in Taste from Mr Arnold, it is very difficult to find ‘the scholars’ tribunal even if I acknowledged its absolute jurisdiction: but as regards Erudition, this difficulty does not occur, and I shall fully reply to the numerous dogmatisms by which he settles the case against me.

But I must first avow to the reader my own moderate pretensions. Mr Arnold begins by instilling two errors which he does not commit himself to assert. He says that my work will _not_ take rank as _the_ standard translation of Homer, but _other translations will be made_: as if I thought otherwise! If I have set the example of the right direction in which translators ought to aim, of course those who follow me will improve upon me and supersede me. A man would be rash indeed to withhold his version of a poem of fifteen thousand lines, until he had, to his best ability, imparted to them all their final perfection. He might spend the leisure of his life upon it. He would possibly be in his grave before it could see the light. If it then were published, and it was founded on any new principle, there would be no one to defend it from the attacks of ignorance and prejudice. In the nature of the case, his wisdom is to elaborate in the first instance all the high and noble parts _carefully_, and get through the inferior parts _somehow_; leaving of necessity very much to be done in successive editions, if possibly it please general taste sufficiently to reach them. A generous and intelligent critic will test such a work mainly or solely by the most noble parts, and as to the rest, will consider whether the metre and style adapts itself naturally to them also.

Next, Mr Arnold asks, ‘Who is to assure Mr Newman, that when he has tried to retain every peculiarity of his original, he has done that for which Mr Newman enjoins this to be done—adhered closely to Homer’s manner and habit of thought? Evidently the translator needs more practical directions than these’. The tendency of this is, to suggest to the reader that I am not aware of the difficulty of rightly applying good principles; whereas I have in this very connection said expressly, that even when a translator has got right principles, he is liable to go wrong in the detail of their application. This is as true of all the principles which Mr Arnold can possibly give, as of those which I have given; nor do I for a moment assume, that in writing fifteen thousand lines of verse I have not made hundreds of blots.

At the same time Mr Arnold has overlooked the point of my remark. Nearly every translator before me has _knowingly_, _purposely_, _habitually_ shrunk from Homer’s thoughts and Homer’s manner. The reader will afterwards see whether Mr Arnold does not justify them in their course. It is not for those who are purposely unfaithful to taunt me with the difficulty of being truly faithful.

I have alleged, and, against Mr Arnold’s flat denial, I deliberately repeat, that Homer rises and sinks with his subject, and is often homely or prosaic. I have professed as my principle, to follow my original in this matter. It is unfair to expect of me grandeur in trivial passages. If in any place where Homer is _confessedly_ grand and noble, I have marred and ruined his greatness, let me be reproved. But I shall have occasion to protest, that Stateliness is not Grandeur, Picturesqueness is not Stately, Wild Beauty is not to be confounded with Elegance: a Forest has its swamps and brushwood, as well as its tall trees.

The duty of one who _publishes_ his censures on me is, to select noble, greatly admired passages, and confront me both with a prose translation of the original (for the public cannot go to the Greek) and also with that which he judges to be a more successful version than mine. Translation being matter of compromise, and being certain to fall below the original, when this is of the highest type of grandeur; the question is not, What translator is perfect? but, Who is least imperfect? Hence the only fair test is by comparison, when comparison is possible. But Mr Arnold has not put me to this test. He has quoted two very short passages, and various single lines, half lines and single words, from me; and chooses to _tell_ his readers that I ruin Homer’s nobleness, when (if his censure is just) he might make them _feel_ it by quoting me upon the most admired pieces. Now with the warmest sincerity I say: If any English reader, after perusing my version of four or five eminently noble passages of sufficient length, side by side with those of other translators, and (better still) with a prose version also, finds in them high qualities which I have destroyed; I am foremost to advise him to shut my book, or to consult it only (as Mr Arnold suggests) as a schoolboy’s ‘help to construe’, if such it can be. My sole object is, to bring Homer before the unlearned public: I seek no self-glorification: the sooner I am superseded by a really better translation, the greater will be my pleasure.

It was not until I more closely read Mr Arnold’s own versions, that I understood how necessary is his repugnance to mine. I am unwilling to speak of his metrical efforts. I shall not say more than my argument strictly demands. It here suffices to state the simple fact, that for awhile I seriously doubted whether he meant his first specimen for metre at all. He seems distinctly to say, he is going to give us English Hexameters; but it was long before I could believe that he had written the following for that metre:

So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of Xanthus, Between that and the ships, the Trojans’ numerous fires. In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires: by each one There sate fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire. By their chariots stood the steeds, and champ’d the white barley, While their masters sate by the fire, and waited for Morning.

I sincerely thought, this was meant for prose; at length the two last lines opened my eyes. He _does_ mean them for Hexameters! ‘Fire’ ( = feuer) with him is a spondee or trochee. The first line, I now see, begins with three (quantitative) spondees, and is meant to be spondaic in the fifth foot. ‘Bed of, Between, In the’,—are meant for spondees! So are ‘There sate’, ‘_By_ their’; though ‘Troy _by_ the’ was a dactyl. ‘Champ’d the white’ is a dactyl. My ‘metrical exploits’ amaze Mr Arnold (p. 23); but my courage is timidity itself compared to his.

His second specimen stands thus:

And with pity the son of Saturn saw them bewailing, And he shook his head, and thus address’d his own bosom: Ah, unhappy pair! to Peleus why did we give you, To a mortal? but ye are without old age and immortal. Was it that ye with man, might have your thousands of sorrows? For than man indeed there breathes no wretcheder creature, Of all living things, that on earth are breathing and moving.