{1}
THE poet who publishes an original work, or the painter who exhibits the
product of his own brush, does well, in the general case, to spare
himself the trouble of any sort of introductory exposition or
explanation; for the public are apt to look upon all such preambles as a
sort of forestalling of their own critical rights: besides that a good
work of art contains within itself all that is necessary to unfold its
own story to an intelligent spectator. A translator, however, is
differently situated. In interposing himself between the original author
and the public, he occupies the position of an optical artist, who, when
he presents to the infirm human eye the instrument that is to enable it
to scan the path of the stars, is bound, not merely to guarantee the
beauty, but to explain to the intelligent spectator the principle, and
to make intelligible the reality of the spectacle. Or, as all similes
limp, we may say that a translator stands to the public in the position
of the old Colchian sorceress, who having cut a live body in pieces, and
submitted it to a new fermentation in a magic pot, engaged to produce it
again re-invigorated in all its completeness. The spectators of such a
process have a right to know, not only that something--it may be a very
beautiful and a very attractive thing--has come out of the cauldron, but
also that the identical thing put in has come out without transmutation
or transformation. And if there has been transmutation or transformation
to any extent, they are entitled to know how far.
Now, with regard to poetical translation, I honestly confess that I
consider the reproduction, according to the German idea of a FACSIMILE
in all respects corresponding to the original, an impossible problem. In
the alembic of the translator's mind it is not merely that the original
elements of the organic whole, being disintegrated, are to be restored,
but the elements out of which the restoration is to be made, are
altogether different; as if a man should be required to make a
counterpart to a silk vesture with cotton twist, or to copy a glowing
Venus of Titian in chalk. The reproduction, in such a case, can never be
perfect; the copy may be something like--very like--the original, but it
is not the same; it may be better in some points, and in some points
worse. Just so in language. It is impossible sometimes to translate from
one language into another. {2} Greek, for instance, is a language so
redundant with rich efflorescence, so tumid with luxuriant growth and
overgrowth of all kinds, that our temperate language, unless it allow
itself to run into sheer madness, must often refuse to follow it. Like a
practised posture-maker or expert ballet-dancer, the old Hellenic
dialect can caper gracefully through movements that, if attempted, would
twist our English tongue into distortion or dislocation. Æschylus, in
particular, was famous, even amongst the Greeks, for the fearless,
masculine licence with which he handled the most flexible of all
languages. This licence I profess to follow only where I can do so
intelligibly and gracefully. The reader must not expect to find, in the
guise of the English language, an image of Æschylus in every minute
verbal feature, such as its gigantic outline has been sketched by
Aristophanes.
Some men of literary note, in the present day, observing the great
difficulties with which poetical translators have to contend, especially
when using a language of inferior compass, have been of opinion that the
task ought not to be attempted at all--that all poetical translations,
from Greek at least into English, should be done in prose; and, in
confirmation of this opinion, they point to the English translation of
the Hebrew Bible as a model. But if, as Southey says, "a translation is
good precisely as it faithfully represents the matter, manner, and
spirit of the original,"[f1] it is difficult to see how this
doctrine can be entertained. Poetry is distinguished from prose more by
the manner than by the matter; and rhythmical regularity or verse is
precisely that quality which distinguishes the manner of poetry from
that of prose. In one sense, and in the best sense, Plato and Richter
and Jeremy Taylor are poets; in another sense, and in the best sense,
Æschylus and Dante and Shakespere are philosophers; but that which a
poet as a poet has, and a philosopher as a philosopher has not, is
verse; and this element the advocates of a prose translation of poetical
works are content to miss out! That the argument from the English
translation of the Bible is not applicable to every case, will appear
plain to any one who will figure to himself Robert Burns or Horace or
Beranger in a prose dress. In the Bible we seek for the simplicity of
religious inculcation or devout meditation, and would consider the
finest rhythmical decorations out of place. Besides, the style of the
Hebrew poetry is eminently simple; and the rhythmical element of
language, so far as I can learn, was never highly cultivated by the
Jews, whose mission on earth was of a different kind. The Greeks, on the
other hand, were eminently a poetical people; the poetry of their drama,
though not without its {3} own simplicity, is, in respect of mere
linguistic organism, of a highly decorated order; and by nothing is that
decoration so marked as by a systematic attention to rhythm. I consider,
therefore, that prose translations of the Greek dramatists will never
satisfy the just demands of a cultivated taste, for the plain reason
that they omit that element which is most characteristic of the manner
of the original.
I am persuaded that the demand for prose translations of poets had
arisen, in this country, more from a sort of desperate reaction against
certain vicious principles of the old English school of translation,
than from a serious consideration either of the nature of the thing, or
of the capacity of our noble language. In Germany, I do not find that
this notion has ever been entertained; plainly because the German
poetical translations did not err, like our English ones, in conspiring,
by every sort of fine flourishing and delicate furbishment, to obscure
or to blot out what was most characteristic in their originals. The
proper problem of an English translator is not _how to say a thing as
the author would have said it, had he been an Englishman_; but _how,
through the medium of the English language, to make the English reader
feel both what he said and how he said it, being a Greek_. Now, any one
who is familiar with the general run of English rhythmical translations,
of which Pope's Iliad is the pattern, must be aware that they have too
often been executed under the influence of the former of these
principles rather than the latter. In Pope's Homer, and in Sotheby's
also, I must add, we find many, perhaps all the finest passages very
finely done; but so as Pope or Sotheby might have done themselves in an
original poem written at the present day, while that which is most
peculiarly Homeric, a certain blunt naturalness and a talkative
simplicity, we do not find in these translators at all. The very things
which most strike the eye of the accomplished connoisseur, and feed the
meditations of the student of human nature, are omitted.
Now, I at once admit that a good prose translation--that is to say, a
prose translation done by a poet or a man of poetical culture--of such
an author as Homer, is preferable, for many purposes, to a poetical
translation so elegantly defaced as that of Pope. A prose translation,
also, of any poet, done accurately in a prosaic style by a proser,
however much of a parody or a caricature in point of taste, may not be
without its use, if in no other way, as a ready check on the free
licence of omission or inoculation which rhythmical translators are so
fond to usurp. But it is a mistake to suppose, because Pope, under the
influence of Louis XIV. and Queen Anne, could not {4} write a good
poetical translation of Homer, that therefore such a work is beyond the
compass of the English language.[f2] I believe that, if Alfred
Tennyson were to give the world a translation of the Iliad in the
measure of _Locksley Hall_, he would cut Pope out of the market of the
million, even at this eleventh hour. We are, in the present epoch of our
literary history, arrived at a very favourable moment for producing good
translations. A band of highly-original and richly-furnished minds has
just left the stage, leaving us the legacy of a poetical language which,
under their hand, received a degree of rhythmical culture, of which it
had been before considered incapable. The example of the Germans, also,
now no longer confined to the knowledge of a few, stands forth to show
us how excellent poetical translations may be made, free, at least, from
those faults from which we have suffered. There is no reason why we
should despair of producing poetical versions of the Classics which
shall be at once graceful as English compositions, and characteristic as
productions of the Greek or Roman mind. I, for one, have already passed
this judgment on my own attempt, that if I have failed in these pages to
bring out what is Greek and what is Æschylean prominently, in
combination with force, grace, and clearness of English expression, it
is for lack of skill in the workman, not for want of edge in the tool.
The next question that calls for answer is: it being admitted that a
rhythmical translation of a Greek poem is preferable to a prose one,
should we content ourselves with a blank rhythm (such as Shelley has
used in Queen Mab, and Southey in Thalaba), or should we adopt also the
sonorous ornament of rhyme. On this subject, when I first commenced this
translation, about twelve years ago, I confess my feelings were strongly
against the use of rhyme in translations from the antique; but
experience and reflection have taught me considerably to modify, and, in
some points of view, altogether to abandon this opinion. With regard to
this matter, SOUTHEY has expressed himself thus:--"Rhyme is to
passages of no inherent merit what rouge and candle-light are to
ordinary faces. Merely ornamental passages, also, are aided by it, as
foil sets off paste. But when there is either passion or power, the
plainer and more straightforward the language can be made, the
better."[f3] This is the lowest ground on which the plea for rhyme
can be put; but even thus, it will be impossible for a discriminating
translator to ward off its application to the Greek tragedy. In all
poetry written for music, there will {5} occur, even from the best
poets, not a few passages on which the mere reader will pronounce, in
the language of Horace, that they are comparatively
"Inopes rerum nugaeque canorae."
To these, rhyme is indispensable. Without this, these "trifles" will
lose that which alone rendered them tolerable to the ancient ear; they
will cease to be "canorous." One must consider at what a disadvantage an
ancient composer of "a goat-song" is placed, when the studiously
modulated phrase which he adapted to the cheerful chirpings of the lyre,
or the tumultuous blasts of the flute, is torn away from that
music-watered soil which was its life, and placed dry and bloodless on
the desk of a modern reader, beside the thought-pregnant periods of a
Coleridge, and the curiously-elaborated stanzas of a Wordsworth. Are we
to make him even more blank and disconsolate, by refusing him those
tuneful closes of modern rhythmical language, which scarcely our
sternest masters of the lyre can afford to disdain? It appears to me
that rhyme is so essential an accomplishment of lyrical language,
according to English use, that a translator is not doing justice to his
author who habitually rejects it. I have accordingly adopted it more or
less in every play, except the PROMETHEUS, the calm statuesque
massiveness of which seemed to render the common decorations of lyric
poetry dispensable. In the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, I have, in the first
two choral chaunts, rhymed only in the closes; and in the opening chorus
of the Agamemnon, I have used irregular rhyme. In the FURIES, again,
I have allowed myself to be borne along in the most free and luxuriant
style of double rhyme of which I was capable, partly, I suppose, because
my admiration of that piece stimulated all my energies to their highest
pitch; partly, because, there being no question that the lyric metre of
the tragedians exhibits the full power of their language, the translator
is not doing justice to the work who does not endeavour, as far as may
be, to bring out the full power of his. The fact of the matter is, the
translator's art is always more or less of the nature of a compromise.
If the indulgence of a luxuriant freedom is apt to trench on accuracy,
the observance of a strict verbal accuracy is ill compatible with that
grace and elasticity of movement without which poetry has no existence.
In the present translation, I have been willing to try several styles,
if not to suit the humour of different readers, (which, however, were
anything but an illegitimate object), at least to satisfy myself what
could be done.
I shall now say a word on the principles which I have adopted with
regard to the representation of the various Greek metres by {6}
corresponding varieties of English verse. I say _corresponding_ or
_analogous_ emphatically; for, whatever apish tricks the Germans may
have taught their pliant tongue to play, the conservative English ear,
"peculiarly intolerant of metrical innovations,"[f4] will not allow
itself to be seduced--whether by the arguments of Southey, or the
example of Longfellow--from the familiar harmonies of our old Saxon
measures. Nor, indeed, is this stiffness of native metrical habit, a
circumstance at all to be regretted. Every language has its own
measures, which are natural and easy to it, as every man has his own way
of walking, which he cannot forego for another, without affectation. I
do not think Goethe's Reineke Fuchs a whit the better, but rather the
worse, for being written in the measure of the Odyssey; and the
artificial choral versification of Humboldt, Franz, Schoemann, and
Müller, in their translations from Æschylus, is, to my ear, mere
metrical monstrosity, which would read much better if it were broken
down into plain prose.[f5] I have, therefore, not attempted anything
of this kind in my translation, except accidentally; that is to say,
when the Greek measure happened to be at the same time an English
measure, as in the case of the Trochaic Tetrameter, of which the reader
will find examples in the conclusion of the AGAMEMNON, and in various
parts of the PERSIANS. This measure, as Aristotle informs us,[f6]
is a remnant of the old energetic triple time to which the sportive
Bacchic chorus originally danced; and, as it seems to be used by the
tragedians in passages where peculiar energy or elevation is
intended,[f7] I do not think the translator is at liberty to
confound it in his version with the common dialogue. With regard to the
Iambic dialogue itself, there can be no question that our heroic blank
verse of ten syllables, both in point of character and compass, is the
natural and adequate representative of the Greek trimeter of
twelve.[f8] The Anapæstic verse occasions more difficulty. The {7}
proper nature of this measure, as corresponding to our modern
_march-time_ in music, has been pointed out by Müller;[f9] and in
conformity with his views, I have, in my translation, accurately marked
the distinction, in the AGAMEMNON, the SUPPLIANTS, and the
PERSIANS, between the Anapæstic verses sung by the Chorus to
march-time, when entering the Orchestra, and the regular odes or hymns
sung after they were arrived at their proper destination round the
Thymele. But how are we to render this verse in English? Our own
Anapæstic verse, though the same when counted by the fingers, has, if I
mistake not, a light, ambling, unsteady air about it, which is quite the
reverse of the weighty character of the "equal rhythm," as the ancients
called both it and its counterpart the Dactylic.[f10] I have,
therefore, thought myself safer in using, for this measure, the Trochaic
verse of eight syllables, varied with occasional sevens and fives,
generally without rhyme, in the AGAMEMNON with a few rhymes
irregularly interspersed. In the Persians only I have made the
experiment, tried also by Connington in the Agamemnon, of rendering the
Greek by the common English Anapæsts; the delicate-treading
(ἁβροβάται) sons of Susa not seeming to require the same
weight and firmness of diction for their sad vaticinations, as the
stout-hearted Titan for his words of haughty defiance, and the Herald of
the Thunderer for his threats.
With regard to the proper choral odes--the most difficult, and, in my
view, the most important part of my task--I have allowed myself a
licence, which some may think too large, but which, if I were to do the
work over again, I scarcely think I should contract. In very few cases
have I given anything like a curious imitation of the original; and,
when I have done so--as in the Trochaic Chaunt of the FURIES,
p. 157, and in the Cretics mingled with Trochees, in the short ode of
the SUPPLIANTS, p. 232[f11]--it was more to humour the whim
of the moment than from any fixed principle. For, to speak truth,
rhyming men will have their whim; and I do not think it politic or
judicious to deprive the translator altogether of that rhythmical
freedom which is the great delight of the original composer. {8} But
another, and the principal reason with me for not attempting a
systematic imitation of the choral measures, was, that many of them
failed to produce, on my ear, an intelligible musical effect, which I
could set myself to reproduce; while, in other cases, though I clearly
saw the _rhythmical principle_ on which they were constructed (for I do
not speak of the blind jargon of inherited _metrical terminology_), I
saw with equal clearness _that in our English poetry written to be read,
systematic imitation of ancient metres written on musical principles,
and with a view to musical exhibition, is, in the majority of cases,
altogether absurd and impertinent_. I confined myself, therefore, to the
selection of such English metres as to my ear seemed most dramatically
to represent the feeling of the original, making a marked contrast
everywhere between the rhythmical movement of joy and sorrow, and always
distinguishing carefully between what was piled up with a stable
continuity of sublime emotion, and what was ejaculated in a hurried and
broken style, where the Dochmiac verse prevails.[f12]
So much for metres. With regard to the more strictly linguistic part of
my task, I have only to say that I thought it proper to assume
Wellauer's cautiously edited text as a safe general foundation, with the
liberty, of course, to deviate from it whenever I saw distinct and
clearly made out grounds. The other editions, old and new, which I have
used are enumerated in an Appendix at the end of this book.
There also will be found those Commentaries and Translations which I
have consulted on all the difficult passages; my obligations to which
are, of course, great, and are here gratefully acknowledged. I desire
specially to name, as having been of most service to me, LINWOOD,
PEILE, and PALEY among the English; WELLAUER, WELCKER, MÜLLER, and
SCHOEMANN among the German scholars. My manner of proceeding with
previous English translations was to borrow from them an occasional
phrase or hint, only after I had finished and carefully revised my
own. But my obligations in respect of poetical diction to my
fellow-labourers in the same field are very few, and are for the most
part specially acknowledged.
The introductory remarks to each play are intended to supply the English
reader with that particular mythological or historical knowledge, and to
inspire him with those Hellenic views and feelings, {9} which are
necessary to the enjoyment of the different dramas. The appended notes
proceed on the principle, generally understood in this country, though
apparently neglected in erudite Germany, that translations are made, not
for the learned mainly, but for the unlearned. I have, therefore, not
assumed even the most common points of mythological and antiquarian
lore. Some of the notes, especially those on moral and religious points,
have a higher view than mere explanation. They are intended to stir
those human feelings, and suggest those trains of moral reflection
without which the most profound scholarship issues only in a
multitudinous cracking of empty nut-shells, and a ghastly exhibition of
gilded bones. The few notes of a strictly hermeneutical character that
are mingled with these, are mere jottings to preserve for my own use,
and that of my fellow-students of the Greek text, the grounds of
decision which have moved me in some of the more difficult passages,
where I have either departed from Wellauer's text, or where something
appeared to lie in the various renderings fraught with a more than
common poetical significance. In the general case, however, the
translation must serve as its own commentary; and, though I do not
pretend to have read every thing that has been written on the disputed
passages of this most difficult, and, in many places, sadly corrupt
author, I hope there is evidence enough in every page of my work to show
that I have conscientiously grappled with all real difficulties in any
way affecting the meaning of the text, and not leapt to a conclusion
merely because it was the most obvious and most convenient one. If here
and there I have made a rapid dash, a headlong plunge, or a bold sweep,
beyond the rules of a strict philology, it was because these were the
only tactics that the desperation of the case allowed.[f13]
In conclusion, I am glad to take this opportunity of publicly returning
my thanks to two gentlemen of well-known literary taste and discernment,
who took the trouble to read my sheets as they went through the press,
and favour me with their valuable suggestions.