"What if the former Love return and join with brazen yoke the parted
ones, if yellow-haired Chloë be shaken off, and the door stand open for
rejected Lydia?"
If my memory does not deceive me, it was this stanza, and especially one
word in its last verse, that determined the arrangement of rhymes in a
version I attempted years ago, "Consule Planco." This verse seemed to
run inevitably into
"And open stand for Lydia the _door_."
It needed but a moment to detect in the first verse of the stanza a
possible rhyme-word. The syllable _re_ of _redit_ furnished _more_, not
the most apt of rhymes with _door_, but still sufficient, as things go
with amateur translators, and with a perhaps pardonable tautology I
wrote
"What if the former Love once more
Return--"
Two other rhymes were found with little difficulty in the _di_ of
_diductos_ and in _excutitur_, which suggested _wide_ and _cast aside_,
and the whole stanza, omitting strictly metrical considerations,
appeared, or rather might have appeared, for I have changed it slightly,
as follows:--
"What if the former Love once more
Return and yoke the sweethearts parted wide,
If fair-haired Chloë be cast aside,
And open stand for Lydia the door?"
This stanza seemed to have the merit of almost complete literalness,
since it omitted only two epithets, and I thought it had no unpardonable
defects of rhythm and diction. So I took it as a model, and with little
difficulty translated the entire ode--with what success I should not say
and others need not inquire.
That rhymes and their position in the stanza are often determined for
the translator by his original or else by a prose rendering of that
original seems also to be shown by the following version of the closing
ode of the first book (Carm. xxxviii)--the graceful "Persicos odi":--
"I hate your Persian trappings, boy,
Your linden-woven crowns annoy,
Cease searching for the spot where blows
The lingering rose.
"To simple myrtle nothing add;
The myrtle misbecomes, my lad,
Nor thee nor me drinking my wine
'Neath close-grown vine."
Here "puer," boy, and "Displicent," displease or annoy, seem to
determine, not merely the first rhyme, but the rhyme arrangement (a, a),
and it needs but a glance at the close of the first stanza of the
original to show that another word rhyming with "boy" would be hard to
obtain. It follows that, if we are to have a quatrain, the third and
fourth verses should probably be made to rhyme (b, b), and it is not
difficult to comply with this requirement, or to cast the second stanza
in the mold of the first. It is, alas! too true that no equivalent to
"blows" will be found in Horace, that "Sedulus curo" has been
unceremoniously thrown aside, that the poet does not specifically
mention "wine" as the beverage he liked to drink in his rustic arbor.
But a "rose," which Horace does mention, certainly "blows" or blooms
very often in English verse; it is not too far-fetched to get "nothing
add" and "lad" out of "nihil allabores" and "ministrum"; and "vine"
("vite") has suggested "wine" to many generations of poets. But it is
rhyme suggestions and their influence upon the choice of stanzaic form
that have occasioned this mild protest against Professor Conington's
precepts of rigid stanzaic conformity. I am convinced, from the above
examples and from many more, not only that uniformity of stanza is not
to be strictly insisted upon when one is employing rhymes, but also that
translators should search more diligently than they appear to do for the
rhyme suggestions implicit in so many Horatian stanzas.
Upon other points it is easier to agree with Conington. For most of the
odes the iambic movement natural to English is preferable, as Milton may
be held to have perceived. He abandoned rhyme in his celebrated version
of the "Quis multa gracilis" (i., v.), and hence he had an excellent
opportunity to indulge in experiments in so-called logaœdic verse.
But he clung to the iambic movement, and the fact is significant,
although not to be pressed, since he gave us no other rendering of an
entire ode. Here too, however, I must plead for a careful study of each
ode by the would-be translator, for there seem to be cases in which it
would be almost disastrous to attempt a version in iambics. Such a case
is presented by the beautiful "Diffugere nives" (iv., vii.). The iambic
renderings of Professor Conington and Sir Theodore Martin seem to stray
far from the original movement--as far as the former's "'No 'scaping
death' proclaims the year" does from the diction of Horace or of any
other good poet. It is true that English dactyls are dangerous things,
especially in translations, where the padding or packing which is
natural to the measure when employed in English, is increased by the
padding inevitably introduced into a translation from a synthetic into
an analytic language. Yet the dactylic movement of the First
Archilochian, in which the "Diffugere nives" is written, is hardly
without great loss to be represented by any use of English iambics. It
presents more difficulty than the introduction of something resembling
the movement of dactylic hexameters proper into our blank verse.
When the translator makes up his mind to attempt a close approximation
to the Horatian meter, it would seem that he should eschew the use of
rhyme as likely to operate against that effect of likeness to the
original which he is striving to secure. But, since the use of rhyme in
lyric poetry appears, as Conington held, to be essential at present if
the English version is to be acceptable as poetry, this close
approximation can be desirable in a few special cases only. It will not
do to dogmatize on such matters, but it may be safely said that no poet,
not even Milton or Whitman, has yet accustomed the English or the
American ear to the use of rhymeless verse in lyrical poetry. Here and
there a successful rhymeless lyric, such as Collins's "Ode to Evening"
and Tennyson's "Alcaics" on Milton, shows us that rhymeless stanzas may
occasionally be used for lyric purposes with good effect; but thus far
those translators of Horace who have made a practice of eschewing rhyme
have failed, as a rule, like the first Lord Lytton,[10] to give us
versions that charm. Yet charm is what the translator of Horace should
chiefly endeavor to convey.
I am still more confident that Conington was right when he insisted that
the English rendering should be confined "within the same number of
lines as the Latin." He was surely right when he taxed Sir Theodore
Martin, who so frequently violated this rule, with an exuberance that is
totally at variance with the severity of the classics. Such exuberance
is almost certain to result if the translator abandon the strict number
of the lines into which the Roman poet compressed his thought. It
results, too, from the use of stanzas of over four verses each. There is
no other rule of translating that will so effectively insure a
successful retention of the diction of the original as this of the line
for line rendering, whenever such rendering is possible. And that the
diction and the thought of the poet should be more closely followed than
is usually the case, admits of no manner of doubt. We have already seen
that a close scrutiny of the Latin will often suggest an almost literal
rendering of the thought and diction. Such a rendering is more desired
by the reader who is familiar with Horace than by the reader who is not,
but it will be both pleasing and serviceable to the latter, if the
quality of literalness be not too slavishly obtained. Metrical
considerations and general smoothness ought, as a matter of course, to
weigh with every translator, but surely they ought not to outweigh
accurate rendering of diction and thought, especially the diction and
thought of a poet so felicitous as Horace in his phrasing, and so just
and happy in his observation of life.
In this connection I am not sure but that Conington went too far when
he recommended the Horatian translator to hold by the diction of our own
Augustan period. That the Age of Pope corresponds in many ways with that
of Horace is true enough, and the student of the poetry of the
eighteenth century who cares at all for the poets he studies is almost
sure to be an admirer of the "Roman bard" whom Pope imitated. But the
diction of Horace does not strike one as stilted, while that of Pope
often does; and for a translator of our own days to employ a diction
that seems in any way stilted is fatal not merely to the popularity and
hence to the present effectiveness of his work, but also, in all
probability, to its intrinsic value. There is a good deal of the
commonplace also in the poetry produced in the eighteenth century; but
commonplace the translator of Horace can least afford to be. Horace
himself may approach dangerously near the commonplace, yet he seems
always to miss it by a dexterous and graceful turn. The translator,
running after, will miss this turn sufficiently often, as it is; he
cannot, therefore, afford to steep himself in a literature that has a
tendency to the commonplace. But just as little can he afford to steep
himself in the Romantic Poets from Shelley to Swinburne. A translation,
whether from the Greek or the Latin, imbibing the luxuriance of
imagination and phrasing characteristic of these modern poets, may
satisfy a reader still in his intellectual teens, but the reader who
makes use of a translation of Horace is likely to have passed out of
that period of immaturity. It may be heretical, but I fancy that the
translator of Horace who steeps himself in Keats or Tennyson, will be
even less likely to give us the ideal rendering than the translator who
steeps himself in Pope. Luxuriance and elegance may at times be more
displeasing than excessive polish and point.
To mention the eighteenth century is to bring up the thought of
Horatian paraphrases. A successful paraphrase is sometimes better as
poetry than a good poetical translation, and it not infrequently conveys
a juster idea of the spirit of Horace. It is almost needless to praise
the work in this kind of Mr. Austin Dobson and of the late Eugene Field.
But a paraphrase, however good, can never be entirely satisfying either
to the reader that knows Horace or to the reader that desires to know
him. Nor can a prose version be thoroughly satisfactory. What is wanted
is not merely the drift of the poet's thought, but, as near as may be,
what he actually sang. The paraphrase may sing, and the prose version
may give us the thought in nearly equivalent words, which may carry
along with them not a little of the poet's feeling; but neither answers
all our requirements as well as a good rendering in verse may do--such a
rendering, for example, as that which the late Goldwin Smith gave of the
"Cœlo tonantem" (iii., v.)--yet there is surely room for all these
forms of approach to a poet who is, paradoxically enough, at one and the
same time, the most approachable and the most unapproachable of writers.
But one could write forever upon the topic of poetical translation in
general, and of the translation of Horace's odes in particular. It is a
subject about which people will differ to the end of time; a subject the
principles of which will never be thoroughly exemplified in practice.
Still, it always seems to fascinate those who discuss it, and they have
a way of hoping that what they have said about it will not be without
value to those who want to read about it. "Hope springs eternal in the
human breast," said the poet who also wrote of his great master lines
that have not been surpassed in their kind:--
"Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense,
Will like a friend familiarly convey,
The truest notions in the easiest way."
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
at the rate of half a milion=>at the rate of half a million
cruel discipine, and arbitrary power=>cruel discipline, and arbitrary
power
to to speak=>so to speak
which examples of the classic reportory=>which examples of the classic
repertory