PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. [MATTHEW ARNOLD: English poet, essayist, and critic; born at Laleham, December 24, 1822; died at Liverpool, April 15, 1888. He was professor of poetry at Oxford, 1857-1867. He was government inspector of schools for nearly forty years. His earliest published works were his prize poems, "Alaric at Rome," written at Rugby, and "Cromwell," written at Oxford. His poetical works include "The Strayed Reveler, and Other Poems" (1848); Empedocles on Etna" (1853); "Merope," a tragedy (1857); "New Poems" (1868). His prose essays include "Lectures on Celtic Literature," and "Lectures on Translating Homer," "Culture and Anarchy," "Literature and Dogma," and "Discourses on America."] I. POPE'S TRANSLATION. HOMER'S verses were some of the first words which a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his mother or his nurse before he went to school; and at school, when he went there, he was constantly occupied with them. So much did he hear of them that Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, to have selections from Homer made, and placed in the hands of mothers and nurses, in his model republic; in order that, of an author with whom they were sure to be so perpetually conversant, the young might learn only those parts which might do them good. His language was as familiar to Sophocles, we may be quite sure, as the language of the Bible is to us. Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of course, in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written language of ordinary life, any more than the language of the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, is with us: but for one great species of composition epic poetry-it was still the current language; it was the language in which every one who made that sort of poetry composed. Every one at Athens who dabbled in epic poetry, not only understood Homer's language, — he possessed it. He possessed it as every one who dabbles in poetry with us possesses what may be called the poetical vocabulary, as distinguished from the vocabulary of common speech and of modern prose I mean, such expressions as perchance for perhaps, spake for spoke, aye for ever, don for put on, charmed for charmed, and thousands of others. Robert Wood, whose "Essay on the Genius of Homer" is mentioned by Goethe as one of the books which fell into his hands when his powers were first developing themselves, and strongly interested him, relates a striking story. He says that in 1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, being then UnderSecretary of State, he was directed to wait upon the President of the Council, Lord Granville, a few days before he died, with the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris. "I found him," he continues, "so languid, that I proposed postponing my business for another time; but he insisted that I should stay, saying, it could not prolong his life to neglect his duty; and repeating the following passage out of Sarpedon's speech, he dwelled with particular emphasis on the third line, which recalled to his mind the distinguishing part he had taken in public affairs. “ ὦ πέπον, εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε, αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ ̓ ἀθανάτω τε ἔσσεσθ', οὔτε κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην, οὔτε κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν· νῦν δ ̓ — ἔμπης γὰρ Κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο His lordship repeated the last words several times with a calm and determinate resignation; and after a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the Treaty read, to which he listened with great attention, and recovered spirits enough to declare the approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own words) 'on the most glorious war, and most honorable peace, this nation ever saw.' 999 I quote this story, first, because it is interesting as exhibiting the English aristocracy at its very height of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness, towards the middle of the last century. I quote it, secondly, because it seems to me to illustrate Goethe's saying, that our life, in Homer's view of it, represents a conflict and a hell; and it brings out, too, what there is tonic and fortifying in this doctrine. I quote it, lastly, because it shows that the passage is just one of those in translating which Pope will be at his best, a passage of strong emotion and oratorical movement, not of simple narrative or description. Pope translates the passage thus: — Could all our care elude the gloomy grave Which claims no less the fearful than the brave, For lust of fame I should not vainly dare Nothing could better exhibit Pope's prodigious talent, and nothing, too, could be better in its own way. But, as Bentley said, "You must not call it Homer." One feels that Homer's thought has passed through a literary and rhetorical crucible, and come out highly intellectualized; come out in a form which strongly impresses us, indeed, but which no longer impresses us in the same way as when it was uttered by Homer. The antithesis of the last two lines The life which others pay, let us bestow, is excellent, and is just suited to Pope's heroic couplet; but neither the antithesis itself, nor the couplet which conveys it, is suited to the feeling or to the movement of Homer. Every one knows the passage at the end of the eighth book of the Iliad, where the fires of the Trojan encampment are likened to the stars. It is very far from my wish to hold Pope up to ridicule, so I shall not quote the commencement of the passage, which in the original is of great and celebrated beauty, and in translating which Pope has been singularly and notoriously unfortunate. But the latter part of the passage, where Homer leaves the stars, and comes to the Trojan fires, treats of the plainest, most matter-of-fact subject possible, and deals with this, as Homer always deals with every subject, in the plainest and most straightforward style. "So many in number, between the ships and the streams of Xanthus, shone forth in front of Troy the fires kindled by the Trojans. There were kindled a thousand fires in the plain; and by each one there sat fifty men in the light of the blazing fire. And the horses, munching white barley and rye, and standing by the chariots, waited for the bright-throned Morning." In Pope's translation, this plain story becomes the following: So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays; The long reflections of the distant fires It is for passages of this sort, which, after all, form the bulk of a narrative poem, that Pope's style is so bad. In elevated passages he is powerful, as Homer is powerful, though not in the same way; but in plain narrative, where Homer is still powerful and delightful, Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is ineffective and out of taste. Wordsworth says somewhere, that wherever Virgil seems to have composed "with his eye on the object," Dryden fails to render him. Homer invariably composes "with his eye on the object," whether the object be a moral or a material one: Pope composes with his eye on his style, into which he translates his object, whatever it is. That, therefore, which Homer conveys to us immediately, Pope conveys to us through a medium. He aims at turning Homer's sentiments pointedly and rhetorically; at investing Homer's description with ornament and dignity. A sentiment may be changed by being put into a pointed and oratorical form, yet may still be very effective in that form; but a description, the moment it takes its eyes off that which it is to describe, and begins to think of ornamenting itself, is worthless. Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and directness of Homer's style; of the simplicity with which Homer's thought is evolved and expressed. He has Pope's fate before his eyes, to show him what a divorce may be created even between the most gifted translator and Homer by an artificial evolution of thought and a literary cast of style. II. CHAPMAN'S VERSION. Chapman's style is not artificial and literary like Pope's, nor his movement elaborate and self-retarding like the Miltonic movement of Cowper. He is plain-spoken, fresh, vigorous, and to a certain degree rapid; and all these are Homeric qualities. I cannot say that I think the movement of his fourteen-syllable line, which has been so much commended, Homeric: but it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like the movement of Milton's blank verse; and it has a rapidity of its own. Chapman's diction, too, is generally good, that is, appropriate to Homer; above all, the syntactical character of his style is appropriate. With these merits, what prevents his translation from being a satisfactory version of Homer? Is it merely the want of literal faithfulness to his original, imposed upon him, it is said, by the exigences of rhyme? Has this celebrated version, which has so many advantages, no other and deeper defect than that? Its author is a poet, and a poet, too, of the Elizabethan age: the golden age of English literature, as it is called - and on the whole truly called; for whatever be the defects of Elizabethan literature (and they are great), we have no development of our literature to compare with it for vigor and richness. This age, too, showed what it could do in translating, by producing a masterpiece, its version of the Bible. Chapman's translation has often been praised as eminently Homeric. Keats' fine sonnet in its honor every one knows ; but Keats could not read the original, and therefore could not really judge the translation. Coleridge, in praising Chapman's version, says at the same time, "It will give you small idea of Homer." But the grave authority of Mr. Hallam pronounces this translation to be "often exceedingly Homeric "; and its latest editor boldly declares that by what, with a deplorable style, he calls "his own innative Homeric genius," Chapman "has thoroughly identified himself with Homer"; and that "we pardon him even for his digressions, for they are such as we feel Homer himself would have written." I confess that I can never read twenty lines of Chapman's version without recurring to Bentley's cry, "This is not Homer!" and that from a deeper cause than any unfaithfulness occasioned by the fetters of rhyme. I said that there were four things which eminently distinguished Homer, and with a sense of which Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully as possible. One of these four things was the plainness and directness of Homer's ideas. I have just been speaking of the plainness and directness of his style; but the plainness and directness of the contents of his style, of his ideas themselves, is not less remarkable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, and Chapman in particular, fanciful. |