GREEK ANTHOLOGY.--No. III.
Bless thee, reader--Let us live and love, since brief is our time for
either. _Of course_, I wish to please thee. I might make a huge boast
of independence: but the boast would be as false as foolish. I might
feign contempt of thee, and of the public: but it would be a wicked
lie. So far as I am an author, _thy_ smiles, and _their_ favor, are my
life. I may read, think, act, to please myself; but it is clear that
_I write_ to please thee. This blows sky-high all scornful prefaces,
such as some modern authors paste on the foreheads of their little
bantlings, which they send forth to angle for favor in the muddy and
shifting stream of popular applause. How mortified are these scribbling
autocrats, when their very _cartels_ of defiance are unanswered, and
unread! Yet, on the other hand, is there something of courtesy,--nay,
of indulgence, due to him, who neither assumes, nor dictates, but
offers, in the words, and with the spirit of humility, what he hopes
may please, and possibly instruct. I steal not--I borrow not. Scanty
though be my cloak in breadth, and coarse in texture, yet I wove it in
mine own loom, and with mine own hands. Whatever I give is mine, or
rather, _was_--for it is _thine_ now. It is all I have--the widow’s
mite--and, as such, receive it. I would not bring a “vain oblation”
to the literary altar--that blood-stained shrine, on which so many a
helpless victim is dissected by unfeeling butchers. I have not time to
give thee much, (I fear me thou art not sorry,) nor can I ‘lick into
shape’ what I _do_ give.
I have thought of essaying a few remarks on the principles of
translation, and the practice of translators, that thou be not
inordinately surprised, if on comparing my version with the original,
thou dost not find in both _all_ the same words, and in the same
order--meeting, tooth to tooth. I do so to satisfy the scruples of the
well-disposed, and not to blunt the arrows of small-beer wit, or to
elude the aim of pop-gun ammunition. “Out! out! brief candle!” says the
immortal Shakspeare. “Get out! get out! you short candle!” says the
spruce Frenchman. The Frenchman was _literal_; but he had better have
understood the _spirit_ of his author, and given that, though it were
with a periphrasis. The truth is, you cannot render any passage in a
Greek or Latin poem _religiously_ into English--preserving the precise
form, attitude, expression and size--if you attempt the absurdity, you
present to the eyes of your readers, not a living body, but a lifeless
corpse. All, that can be done with works written among nations at so
wide a remove from our own in age, character, customs, and religion,
is to breathe the spirit and manner of the original into English as
elegant, yet close and strong as possible. Their works are full of
phrases and allusions, which, with us, are dry and barren, while to
them they were instinct with poetry, and eloquent with meaning. To the
heart of the Grecian the history of his country was sanctified, and
made dear by a long line of traditionary glories. Familiar to them,
though lost to us, were a thousand memories of mystic interest, and
patriotic pride--tales of the gods and heroes, who had lived and moved
in their land, amid the days of its splendor--histories woven from
facts, but tinged in the multitudinous colorings of fancy--fables, that
stretched far back through the haze of ages, from wonder to doubt,
and from doubt to darkness. Here had Jupiter been cradled in the
mountains--there gushed a fountain from the foot-print of Neptune’s
charger--here, from the sown teeth of the slaughtered dragon, sprang
to life and fell in battle a field of steel-clad warriors--and there
had Orpheus charmed the stones to life, and made the forests dance in
chorus to his lyre. These were so many chords of interest, which the
poet had but to touch, and the souls of his readers responded with a
thrill. Now all these springs of passion are sealed to us--for, in the
first place, the history of another and a buried nation excites but a
feeble sympathy, compared with that which ponders and glows above our
own--and, secondly, we rarely feel deeply what we do not thoroughly
believe, or fully comprehend. Deprived, then, of these advantages,
unaided by fancy, and unadorned by language, a translation would be
about as _touching_ as a table of _tangents_. And this is what has
made English translations so insipid compared with English originals,
and has induced in some the belief that even the master-pieces of
antiquity are poor and pointless--the fondled god-children of pedantic
book-worms. This deficiency the translator must labor to supply. It is
to be supplied--not by stripping the original of its _nationality_, and
making it apply as well to New England as to Greece--but by preserving
it bold, free, and spirited, as it is in its native language--by
clothing it in words sufficiently glowing and graceful to arouse
sympathy, yet exhibiting, through all, the body of the original, like
a lamp flame, shining through its glassy vase--in short, by having it
still Greek, but English-Greek.
This accords with the practice of all the best translators. No
translator ever gave, or intended to give every word, or even shade
of idea, that he found in the original. I appeal with confidence to
any page in Dryden, or Cowley, in Addison, or Pope. They have, I
acknowledge, generally carried their _liberality_ to a fault--still,
if _they_ do not translate correctly, who does? Open at any page of
Pope--say the last four lines of the Iliad. Read the simple original.
“And after having heaped up the (sepulchral) mound, they went back. And
then, happily assembled, they banqueted upon a very splendid banquet in
the dwelling of Priam, Jove-nourished king. Thus did they attend to the
burial of Hector, tamer-of-horses.”
“All Troy then moves to Priam’s court again,
A solemn, silent, melancholy train.
Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,
And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast.
Such honors Ilion to her hero paid,
And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.”
Too wide, I grant--yet it is Pope, the king of translators.
Addison, dear reader, was not a bad translator. Yet take his rendering
of that grand Horatian--the third of the third book. “Not the heat of
the citizens, commanding crooked things, not the countenance of an
urgent tyrant, shakes in his solid mind the man just and firm to his
purpose.”
“The _man_, resolved, and steady to his trust,
Inflexible to all and obstinately _just_,
May the rude _rabble’s_ insolence despise,
Their senseless clamors, and tumultuous cries:
The _tyrant’s_ fierceness he beguiles,
And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies,
And with superior greatness smiles.”
He has rendered literally but four words, and them I have italicised.
Is it, therefore, a bad translation? No. It is good--though, with all
due deference to thy shade, Oh! Joseph, I must think it a _little_
diffuse--still, it is good, because it expresses the spirit and manner
of the original in fine, forcible English. I give thee a literal
translation--not that one better and as close might not be made--but
to exemplify the difference between transfusing the _spirit_ and the
_words_ of an author from one language into another.
The upright man, _who_ to his purpose clings,
No rabble’s heat, commanding crooked things,
Nor urgent tyrant’s countenance can shake
In his firm mind----
Almost perfectly literal, and--sweet reader--how spirited! I might
_multiply_ my remarks, were I not loth to _divide_ thine attention.
I give thee two or three things--such as an aching head and sleepy eyes
made them.
_By Lucillius, to Nicylla._
Those, who affirm that thou dost dye
The ringlets of thy jetty hair,
Can easily be proved to lie--
Thou _bought’st_ them black as now they are.
_By the same, to a Miser._
Thou hast, indeed, the rich man’s pelf,
But dost possess the beggar’s soul,
Oh, thou, who starvest for thyself,
And for thine heirs in wealth dost roll.
_By the same. Envy._
When Flaccus on the gallows swung,
And chanced to see a brother-thief
Upon a loftier gibbet hung,
He grinned, and died in envious grief.
_A quodam, mihi ignoto._
A man, that once before has married,
And longs again the _noose to splice_,
Is one, that has at sea miscarried,
And wishes to be shipwrecked twice.
Be this a _caveat_ to all amorous widowers.
Hermeneutes.