Remarks

Some Remarks on Translation

and Translators

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THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION

Pamphlet No. 42

Some Eemarks on Translation

and Translators

By

J. S. Phillimore

January, 1919

Oxford

Printed by Frederick Hall, at the University Press

SOME REMARKS ON TRANSLATION

AND TRANSLATORS

[This paper, originally written for the Glasgow Branch of the

English Association, has been recast ; but the author still feels it

necessary to ask indulgence for the casual and unstitched form of

it. This is not fit prose for publication ; and yet such papers do not

fail of their pvu'pose, although more hares be started than caught.

We were hunting for exercise. If anything can be gained for the

potj so much the better; but the run was the thing.

—

Dec. 1918.]

I

Illiterate men have been known to say, as an argument in their

attack on classical studies, that all the Classics have been translated,

and therefore there is no need to continue reading the originals.

Sometimes they have the grace and intelligence to add a reservation,

' Except the poets '. So they do perceive a difference between the cases

of Homer and Euclid. Euclid may be said to lose nothing in being

decanted into another language ; Aristotle (as we have him) very

little ; but ascend the scale to Plato, and—what a difference ! How

falsified is Plato in Jowett's much-belauded version ! How inadequate

was Jowett to apprehend, much more to reproduce, even with

Swinburne's prompting, the finesse, the slyness, the deftness of his

author ! But when you come to poetry, why is it any more reasonable

to say that the translation supersedes the original, than to say that

an engraving or a copy supersedes the original picture ?

Since material progress exists and the capital of science rolls

forward accumulating, much of the contents of ordinary prose may

be passed on and the former vehicle become obsolete. Let us freely

concede that, if some new Caliph were to collect and destroy the last

copies of Euclid's Greek, civilization would not be substantially

the poorer. But in Art progress either does not exist, or at least

exists only in discontinuous series: poetry is much more wholly

a work of art than healthy prose is ; and my concern will be more

largely with poetry. It was Samuel Johnson who said that the poets

are the best presei-vers of a language, because people must go to the

original to relish them (April 11, 1776, quoted by Fitzgerald, ii. 61).

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4 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

II

Just us it takes two to speak the truth, one to hear straight as well

as one to speak straight, a frank correspondence between question

and answer—so, I take it, perfect translation requires a sort of mutual

action set up in both languages, both that from which and that

into which it is to i)e performed. Exchange on the level must

be possible if there is to i)e (|uite honest dealing. And that is to say

each party must not oidy come furnished with an equal sum but

equal resource in small change.

Or, to drop metaphor, the two languages must be equivalent in

point of expressiveness. Excuse me if I somewhat labour this

matter. The foible of criticism is that so much of it may be resolved

into fancy. It lacks what the Anglo-German jargon calls ' Objectivity'.

But by taking expressiveness Me have (|uite a positive and

real standard of comparison between any two languages as well as

a measure of development within any one language, from time to

time. Expressiveness no more needs (or, for that matter, comports)

definition than health or maturity of body. Its absence is remarked ;

when present, it is taken for granted. To block out the notion

roughly, let us say that it implies both a competent wealth of vocabulary,

and that wealth economized by good taste, i.e. sense: new

Mords brought in only to mean new things or new ideas.

^

If Brunetiere taught us that tlie life of a language is pretty

accurately measurable in the forms it invents, modifies, and finally

exhausts and discards, he gave us also a real criterion for establishing

relations between one literature and another. Mastery of

any given form, or mastery in general, is a quite real and solid

thing ; and the classical standard, in the true sense of the word,

is irreducible : the full expressive power, comporting finesse no less

than force, subtlety in distinction no less than grandeur in comprehension

; to record, with economy of means, fundamental truth

and general experience. When a language attains to this it is mature.

The summit is reached. The solstice has begun. And though that

saying of Velleius is terribly true of the single forms, Brevis in

perfecto mora, yet by the law of the de\elopment of kinds,

* Stupid iieoloffisnis such as Forruord for I'rijdcc, wliich some (Ierinaiiiziiif>-

fool found himself sayiiif?, and tlien a liundred Jiglit-liearted parrots rciteated

it— all round the Press— add nothinjj^ to tlie power or })eauty of a laujiiiafj^e.

Preface is neitliei- ohsolete nor inexact. Such a neoloj2;isni is merely wanton,

prompted by weariness of well-doiiifj. AVliereas tlie split infinitive (nuich as we

may dislike it) may be defended as a new instrument of exact expression.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 5

a richness and flexibility of adjustment may allow the language as

a Avhole—'Witness Greek, par excellence—to persist many centuries

in full daylight. Probably as a rule maturity lasts longer in prose

than in poetry. For prose is an institution. Latin poetry, for instance,

is at full power fi*om Virgil to Lucan ; Lucan is an inventor, enriching

his verse out of the losses of prose oratory. But after Lucan nothing

of prime greatness is produced in poetry until Prudentius—whose

case would take us altogether too long to analyse ; but, at any rate,

he represents not continuity but a violent adaptation of literary forces

into a new form. In Latin prose, on the other hand, it is simply true

to say that Jerome and Augustine could drive their ship under all the

sail that ever Cicero carried. To call them a decadence is a foolish prejudice

only possible to those who never read them. The inspiration

is new, but no new expressive power is needed. They inherited that.

Expressiveness in prose was maintained for nearly five centuries by

the Latins : from Cicero to Augustine is a table -land on the high level.

It is interesting to observe the arrival of the moment in various

literatures. One might have expected Latin to reach maturity of

expressiveness earlier than it did. Neither oligarchy nor demagogy is

unfavourable to the florison of language, and of these two elements

was Roman polity tempered. It is surprising when you recollect that

more than a century passed between Terence's death and Cicero's.

Terence was already so accomplished. The hall-mark of maturity

—

a close approach between prose and verse, when educated people talk

well and write easily, writers use no pretension or solemnity because

readers meet them half-way, with unobsequious intelligence: literature

need be no more than recorded talk, because talk is not slovenly and

inarticulate—is stamped on Terence as it is on Swift. So it was said of

Vanbrugh by his biographer that ^ his most entertaining scenes seem to

be no more than his common conversation committed to paper'. Why

then was Latin at a standstill for all that time ? I believe the answer is

:

Civil War. Just when the moment was come for a step upstairs, in

the decade of the Gracchi, began that horrible era of faction which

devastated Rome and Italy for more than forty years. The Muses

were silenced before they had finished their education—of which

Translation is the great means. Massacre and proscription destroy

Literature as effectively as the crushing engine of State Socialism.

Rome after the Antonines exemplifies this latter. The former is

exemplified in the literary stagnation of Rome during the period

130-80 B.C. But we need not look so far afield. We can see it

exemplified at home. The influence of the Humanist Renascence,

where it ran a normal course, worked on the European vernaculars

A 3

6 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

through transhitions. You may say all the Classics were translated

into Italian before 1500; and consequently Italian is fully matured in

faculty and resource at the close of the Quattrocento. In England

and France the Reformation broke in with disastrous effect : France

lias not attained maturity in prose until about 1570, England hardly

before the advent of Dryden. Yet if things had followed their natural

course, and the translators had been there to take up their allotted

part in the development, English prose would not have marked time

as it does from More till Bacon. The celebrated Tudor translations

were long overdue. That stage should have been past by 1550, but

it was suppressed in the general destruction of learning by Henry VIII

and his hopeful son.

So far as a foreigner can judge, French and Italian seem to be ade-

([uate in expressiveness to Greek at its best, as fine-spun as Plato's

thread, as rich in vocabulary, as sharp in precision and distinction ;

natural and unconstrained in the temperamental or gesticulatory part of

language, as the equipment of particles and the disciplined economies

of syntax make Attic Greek of the fourth century B.C. I do not

think one could roundly deny a claim that modern Englisji is the

equal of Attic Greek in potential expressiveness ; and yet—an

adequate Plato remains to be done. When you read some one who

writes good modern English, do not you say, ' This is the kind of man

who ought to translate Plato ^? But, alas, one has to admit some

impediment every time. Matthew Arnold was a prig ; Shaw and

Wells are buffoons, and know no Greek ; Pater knew too much

Greek, and perhaps wrote English too much like a foreign language.

The requirements have never yet been found co-existing. Mr. Compton

Mackenzie is my present favourite for the appointment.

Language, then, is measurable and comparable in terms of expressiveness.

Now if two languages are «<wequal in expressiveness, several

consequences may be expected. The translator, complaining as

Lucretius complained, of the patrii sermonis egestas, ' the beggarj' of

our national language,' enriches and improves it by this discipline of

translation. Needs must when the devil drives. Such and such a

term, or a phrase, has perfect neatness and unambiguity in Greek :

Mhcre can I find it in English, or how can I get it made? The

slo\\ness of invention is stimulated. The junior tongue, confronted

with the problem, or piqued by the challenge, of keeping pace with its

ciders and betters, must develop missing organs, borrow for its

deficiencies, strain itself to unsuspected capacities and attainments.

' To change is to live, and to be perfect is to have changed often.'

We change in response to a challenge. One might add : to improvise

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 7

is to live at a very high rate of existence. To improvise without

])kindering is the great test of Qmnt'ilinn^ s firma /acilltas, the mark of

mastery. By translation a language both learns what it is lacking in

—-the beginnings of change are in the imagination : till it be awakened,

a language like a mind may remain sunk in self-unconsciousness and

(juiet hereditary fatuity ; and again, by translation it learns how to

make good. Since Latin improved itself, patiently and humbly, up

to the model of Greek^ by translations, the Greek map of life has been

preserved in tradition ; and, even where it had got blurred in detail,

nevertheless this charter of civilization was easily recoverable at the

Renascence. And when next a shrinkage of human intellect takes

place (as seems very probable before long) the Greek model is still

there to limit and correct the shrinkage. Only a self-enclosed language

is damned to decline. Translation is the very symbol of human tradition

and continuity. The great translators are ^pivotal' people in the

history of literature.

Sometimes it is a rich personality like Ennius, who knew that

possessing three languages his mind was triply engined ; sometimes a

great artist with just the impelling touch of mania added to raise the

doggedness of ambition to the point of fury. You will recognize

Lucretius : docti furor arcluus Lucreti. One pictures him as a man

digging, hewing, blasting through rugged natural obstacles, an inlet for

the irrigating stream to be derived from an abundant reservoir that

he has struck in the next valley. Greater than these is Cicero : perhaps

the man who of all others has served in opening the main channel

by which past and present communicate and European civilization

maintains identity in development.

Cicero taught Philosophy to speak Latin ; and through Latin she

learned to express herself in the modern languages. He was moved

by no fanatical enthusiasm for a creed ; nor even by the venturesome

curiosity of a facile artist trying his hand in a new medium. His

philosophical works were the pastimes and distractions of an enforced

abstention from politics. His industry and energy must find employment

; he must speak or burst. And so he spoke, to no small

purpose ; for it is largely owing to him that our minds are articulate.

So much then for the regular case of translation serving as a food

and discipline for the development of a young language. There would

be materials for another chapter in studying the profitable effects on

the translator himself. To instance Dryden : one might suppose that

his exercises in translation helped him to the easy abundance and

simplicity which are at his command both in prose and verse. I cannot

imagine any one who has made a translation of any pretty large amount

A 4

8 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

of a foreign author and not had for a reward of his labours at any rate

an improved fluency of his pen.

Ill

And now that we have considered the normal phenomenon when

a language of inferior power and accomplishment borrows by translation

for its own improvement, shall we stop to inquire whether

the opposite be also possible ? At any rate few will be found to

subscribe to Perrault's paradox that ancient authors can better be

judged in translations than in the originals. And yet, like most

paradoxes, it represents a minority truth which could hardlj'^ be safeguarded

save under the form of paradox. Or shall we dismiss this

as another unwritten chapter, with the heading O71 Translators icho

have bettered their oriyinal ? I will only remark in passing that good

scholars, Persian born^ iiave declared that Fitzgerald is finer than

Omar ; M'hether thanks to old Fitz's talent or to tlie superiority of the

instrument that was at his disposal. One has also heard it said that

Gilbert Murray is better than Euripides ; but this not so much by good

judges of Greek as by inveterate Romanticists to whom both Rhetoric

and Cynicism are unpermissible in verse, and who find just these

disturbing Euripidean qualities painlessly eliminated in Murray.

We will pass to a much more interesting point : let it next be a

(juestion whether, as each modern language develops, it comes up,

stage by stage—as the traveller arrives at one landmark after another

on his road—with the ancient masterpieces ; ^ and thus, each of them by

the series of their development, from time to time, reaches the proper

and perfect moment for translating each in turn of the law-giving monuments

of Greece and Rome ? I had formulated this question to myself,

roughly, but with considerable zest in the prospect, for it lies in the

domain of that great and, in the true sense, epoch-making piece

of criticism, Brunetiere's Developpement des Genres^ when I found, in

an appendix to the Poet Laureate's volume,- a (juotation from Prof.

Egger (who taught him Greek at the Sorbonne fifty years ago)

which expresses very clearly and well an affirmative solution of my

(|uery

:

' Talent is not everything in successful translation : works of this

kind usually have their appropriate season, wliich, once past, seldom

returns. At a certain age in their respective development two

> Whose esseiire, ami tlie very meaniiifr of wlio^e Classicipm is that they abide

a«; norms or staiidanls— for wliat is classical ])ut qnod uhifiuf, quod setiiper}

'-^ Ibant Ohscuri, p. 148.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 9

languages (I mean those of civilized peoples) correspond by analogous

characteristics; and this resemblance of idiom is the first condition of

success in any attempt to translate a really original writer. Genius

itself cannot make good the want of this. If this be so, we shall be

asked at what epoch of its history (which already goes far back into

the past) our (French) language was worthy to reproduce Homer.

We answer without hesitation and without any affectation of paradox:

//' the knowledge of Greek had been more extensive in the West during

the Middle Age ; and had there been found in France in the thirteenth

or fourteenth century, a poet capable of understanding the ancient

rhapsode's Songs and spirited enough to translate them ; v)e should

now be possessed ofIliad and Odyssey in a copy ivhich would be the most

agreeable to the genius of antiquity. The heroism of Chivalry, which

resembles that of Homeric heroes in so many features, had then made

a language after its own image, a language already rich, harmonious,

eminently descriptive ; only that it lacked the stamp of a bold and

powerful imagination. The fact is easily seen nowadays, thanks to

the numerous Chansons de Geste which are emerging f'om the dust of

our libraries : the same tone of candour in Narrative, the same faith

in an element of marvellous without artificiality, the same curiosity in

picturesque detail ; strange adventures, great feats of arms related at

length ; little or no serious tactics, but a great power of personal

courage; a sort of brotherly affection for the vjarrior's comrade, his

horse; atasteforfine accoutrement ; thepassionfor conquest, thepassion

{a less noble one) for looting and pillage ; a generous practice of

hospitality; respect for ivomen moderating the roughness of barbaric

manners.

' Such was a state of manners, which may truly be called epic

:

nothing urns to seek but a Homer's brush to paint the picture.'

Thus Egger : his doctrine was approved and adopted by Littre,

who put it to the test in an experiment on the first book of the Iliad,

which seems to me highly successful. Dr. Bridges reserves his opinion.

What do you say to the Eggerian doctrine ? At any rate it opens

pleasant vistas of speculation. Confining ourselves for the moment

to Greek authors, has there existed a perfect natural moment when

Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Thucydides, Plato, could each pass level

through open doors into English and find an unembarrassed lodging

in our literature ? And when did the climacteric opportunity come to

them respectively ? We are playing with ifs and ayis ; for as in

other human affairs, so here it seems to be a case of ' Never the time

and the place and the loved one all together '. In the fifteenth century

English (witness Malory) was adequate for Epic,—if not already in

Chaucer's time ; but after Chaucer no poet arose who was sufficient for

such things. And nobody knew Greek until a later and a disparate

phase of manners had succeeded. It may be set down to the backwardness

in learning which the arrest of the Renascence caused in

10 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATOKS

England, that out of that hotbed of poetical talent under Elizabeth

and James there proceeded no i^^reat naturalization of the Attic

tragedians in our language.^ Milton could unquestionably have done

it. And Greek Lyric ? When was that due ? Was the outburst of

Romanticism the ideal moment when it should have been translated ?

Perhaps had Fate spared us more Sappho and less Pindar, Shelley

miglit have had the mind, as he had the hand, to do it ; and Byron

might have helloed with Alcaeus. Or was it those Caroline gallants

who let the moment pass ? Deal only Avith forms in the abstract and

it is easy to rig up correspondences ; but as soon as ever you begin

to consider real works and real writers, instead of abstractions, the

personal equation is seen to be of overwhelming importance. To the

producing of the original classic itself, as Brunetiere so well remarks,

there go a peculiar happy alliance of conditions which are rarely united,

and the personal begetting talent of the poet must supervene. Your

altar and your fat burnt-offering will not avail unless the tire come

down from heaven. And if, in order that the perfect translation may

come about, genius must again be manifested, is it not like asking

that a miracle be repeated in aftertime, with the addition of one

uncommon factor into the bargain ?—I mean learning, for without

that the translator has no credentials to negotiate the foreign

potentate's visit. In poetry especially the comet-like intrusions of

personality so baffle calculation, that one is often likely to be left repeating

the formula, '^If the man had been forthcoming, the time was ripe,'

and leave it at that. But poets are a flying corps; prose-writers are

infantry, or at least a terra firnia force. In prose the ' stunting

'

genius is less indispensable. Writers of prose borrow more from the

mind of their period than do poets. There is more chance for Egger

iiere. For instance : surely we may say that our seventeenth century

was the moment when Thucydides should have been made English

once for all : the stiff gorgeousness of Milton's prose, and the narrative

gait of Clarendon, somewhat encumbered and yet not incapable of a

martial and dramatic agility, denote such a state of language as best

would answer to the intricate elo(juence of that first great pupil of the

Rhetoric school. These were promising auguries, and it turns out in

fact that Hobbes's version does not belie the conjecture. Bating his

inaccuracy of detail (his Greek was not perfect, and the text was still

in bad case) it is a masterpiece. Read him in the famous speeches

(never, since first they were penned, have they been so full of actuality

as diu-ing these last years), and Jowett seems a nerveless paraphrase.

And Plato migiit have taken on a very graceful and well-fitting (h-ess

' I find tliiv i<iea in Fitzgerald.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 11

in the English of Dryden's and Temple's period, when the written

and the spoken word were in happy adjustment. This Plato exemplified

; and deserved of us nothing less than this. This is the we

plus ultra of pi'ose ; but to talk well and yet not be stilted, to write

with easy frankness and yet escape triviality, these are consummations

which no one man may command. They happen in the halcyon days.

They are bred out of a certain natural homogeneity—almost a covenant

of culture and manners—which is perhaps only possible in a small

society free from anarchic liberty of prophesying and from competitive

wilfulness. For a time our language had this ; but it failed in that

time to give us our Plato truly Englished.

Therefore I doubt if, in ultimate residue, Egger's doctrine leaves us

niore than this : that there are moments when in power and aptitude

two languages are most nearly matched for the production of a certain

sort of literature—be it Epic poem or prose dialogue, or what

you will.

IV

Those are the happiest ages when a man '^ writes the language of his

time% having no necessity or temptation to do otherwise. Under

these conditions even second-rate talent has a career open to attain

distinguished success. For frugality is so much a note of true

classicism—and these conditions are those of classicism—that not

merely the individual but also the community economizes. Its inheritance

is improved. For the great men's use of language leaves it

more efficacious for smaller men coming after them, to employ well

:

whereas your Dervish Contortionists, the Strong men or Supermen of

literature—I will instance Carlyle—leave a trail of destruction behind

them. Our language is an instrument which their wilfulness has

abused and left less fit for the next workman. Their successors are

sacrificed to their egotistical perversity. Every one will write better

for taking a course of Swift, Hazlitt, or Newman, or other writers of

^ central ' prose ; but a course of Carlyle will merely betray itself in

certain nervous tricks and outlandish grimaces.

Thanks to this law then, any language at its classical period is

more foolproof, and more able to comfort and supplement a modest

talent, enabling it to render useful service; especially in translation.

It was no singular genius which enabled Amyot by his versions to

take so honourable a place in French literature. We must therefore

revise what is sometimes too hastily asserted : when we ask for a translation

of a masterpiece, we are not requiring a miraculous repetition

of a genius which was itself unique. The highest creative power of

12 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

genius is not requisite ; if the time be of the right tenor and suggestion,

and if the htnguage fully contribute its part, then curiosity,

ambition, personal fancy and partiality—modest everydaj- substitutes

for genius, but not at all to be despised—may move a writer to

produce ^vhat shall prove to be a true masterpiece in its kind.

It is not merely in homage to the great memory of Brunetiere

that I labour these points. His analyses go so deep ; and the

biological analogy for literature (discreetly pursued, of course) gives

a penetrating power to criticism, which is quite modern. Ancient

critics could not fail to remark—Latins especially, with their

perennial genius for self-depreciation—that though young they were

already corrupt; that language advanced from rudeness to civilization ;

and they had left the rude stage only a little behind : witness both

Cicero and Horace. Tacitus takes the point of view M'hich regards

Cicero and the Augustans as antiquated. But by the time when

that development A^as really stationary or already turning to decline

there were no critics to mark the transformation or to watch the

rudimentary beginnings of quite new kinds. Criticism as we understand

it now, criticism as a branch of history, is the nineteenth

century's creation ; and chiefly Brunetiere's.

But it is time to show how it bears upon the translator's task. In

this way. A beginner in a language sees each separate uork as

a detached creature, much too near the eye ; without horizon, and in

no relation to the rest of the literature, whether antecedent or contemporary.

He repeats parrot homages to its greatness ; but if you

ask him—say—with whom in English is Plato level ? Is it Bacon,

or Browne, or Lamb ? *^ What's your notion of Horace ? Is he like

a Tom Moore, or an Austin Dobson, or a Thomas Campbell r Could

Marvell produce the most Horatian ode in English, or Tennyson ? '

—

he will either not apprehend the question or at any rate be in no

position to answer it. And yet it is surely a great piece of presumpton

to set about bringing something out of Greek or Latin into our

own language witiiout realizing what it meant, how it stood, in the

judgement of Greeks and Latins.

Now to estimate the pitch or key of any given style is the greatest

of problems for translators. It is like discovering the family history

and antecedents of a stranger; nay more, trying to determine the

e.xpression of a face. It takes many years deep reading in the

ancient languages to acliie\e this. It is a mystery entirely unknown

as a rule to the editors of school texts. To give a crucial instance

from my own experience, it was not b} any aid from modern editors,

(iur little Pages and Sidgwicks, <S:c., nor even from Conington himself.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 13

that lifter many years I came to perceive that when Horace attributed

to Virgil the (jiialities

molle atquefacetum

lie meant something—something quite definite, and something

quite inconsistent with tlie prevailing conception of Virgil in terms

of the modern English Public Schoolboy. In Virgil you may learn

to discern the humour and the irony (which are so easily lost in the more

or less thick veil A\'hich separates us from anj' foreign language) by

studying the old commentators, Servius & Co. Virgil the sentimental

humorist ! What a revelation, when you have read some hundreds

of English schoolboy's essays on the fourth Book of the Aeneid—Was

Aeneas a perfect Boy Scout ? Did he say Noblesse oblige to himself

three times a day ? Did he always remember to be sorry for those

who were not like himself ? Alas, he did not ; and he was horrid to

Dido. He was no gentleman—what a revelation, to read that simple

sentence in which Servius characterizes the book

paene comicus est stilus.

'^Almost in the manner of comedy.' It is a touchstone thesis for

an essay ; one can hardly write upon it without betraying ignorance

either of Virgil or of comedy. Such a sentence is a key. Until you

have hit the pitch of an author, you risk an utter falsification in

rendering him. You may be able to construe every sentence in him,

and yet slander him in gross and your total result be a lie. What an

actor calls ' conception of the part ' is really much more important

than knowing words correctly.

It may seem a difficult—certainly it is an expert's achievement to

appraise the level of a classical author's writing. Above all things

the unlettered like poetry to be very poetical, and they are apt to resent

violently any pretension to familiarity in the rendering of those whom

they have known in English—only caparisoned in gorgeous tatters

of Authorised Bible diction, patched with Kipling in his Sunday

manner. I remember protests against allo\^'ing Tragedy persons

even to say ' You ' for Thou and Thee : yet why should Shakespeare's

practice come amiss in a rendering of Sophocles ? The objector's

answer, if he dared or cared to express it, Mould be that lie couldn't

bear his classics to be familiarized. He wishes them to appear remote

and of another world. Perhaps this is his way of feeling what

Dr. Bridges asserts (see below, p. 16). Illusion is, of course, essential

in Art ; but ought our illusion to be quite different from theirs who

enjoyed the original r This seems to be untrue and therefore bad art.

I want to discover and reconstruct an environment, not a master14

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

piece in vacuo; because contemporaries must have known it better

than we can do witliout their assistance. Difficult it is ; but not so

hopelessly difficult after all, if we set about it in the right way.

Style is not all airy and immeasurable, but a thing patient of comparative

estimate. Here are two simple rules. Do you want to

determine the pitch of, say, Sophocles ? Take a standpoint in the

central classical period when the Greek language is at its maturity

of expressiveness, and judge him by the prose writers. Does he use

a common vocabulary with them ? If so, his pitch is evidently more

familiar than that of Aeschylus, whom Aristophanes testifies to have

been, to the taste of the next generation, grandiloquent to the verge of

bombast.

The second test is more searching and demands perhaps more

scholarship to apply it. It depends on a great principle in the

ancient teaching of style—Rhetoric, as they called it : a most proper

subject for teachers of English nowadays to teach. The ancient

Professors of Literature saw that a language has for its backbone

a vocabidary of pure idiom, KvpLa propria, in which we regularly

express ourselves—the language of educated and businesslike people

whose code is common sense—in the old full meaning of that glorious

term. Dithyrambists, stockbrokers, sporting journalists, and other

votaries of Dionysus, do not think or speak in propria, but in a wild and

fanciful jargon of metaphors, allusions, &c. They write for the few,

(Po)vavTa avr^To'Laiv. The moment you depart from propria, you are

using Figured Language. Your nouns wear masks and dress up, your

sentences attitudinize.^ Take Horace and Virgil and assay them by

this test : their more or less of Figured or of Real, in vocabulary and

syntax—which the old commentators especially can help us to determine—

will give you a base for calculating their pitch of language.

Now English, since Wordsworth, affords us similar scales. If you

make highfalutin English of familiar Latin, you falsify ; just as, if

you suggest bathos, you fail. But for ninety-nine critics who will

exclaim at the latter fault, hardly one will be aware of the former.

As an instance we need go no further afield that Alrgil's Eclogues

once more. Since the Germans started belittling Virgil, as they

belittled all Latin, in order to glorify Greek—of which they fondly

suppose themselves to be the literary heirs in Europe-; our English

scJKjlars, with the degrading sequacity which was the prescribed

atiitu(h' of Oxford towards German scholarship untiMhe day before

' lliitlii'ifonl, A C/iiiptrr in (he Hislon/ oj Annotation.

^ I'li'^-i'^, ill liib I'lcfare to llit^tuin: tie Iti Poiiie intine, lias some good remarks

OJ) tlii>- matter.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 15

yesterday, also duly set to and glorified Theocritus at the expense of

Virgil. It was an easy task to call Virgil's adaptation mere imitation

: judged by the same criteria you might find Lyddas to be a very

unoriginal piece of -work. In the process, having no loving curiosity

to spend on A^irgil, and obeying almost unconsciously the Victorian

prepossession that classical writers are always very very serious

—

unless when they announce This is a Joke—we lost all perception for

the playfulness, the finesse, the irony, the humours of characterization,

which Horace saw in his friend. Indeed, you must go back to Dryden

to get any representation of these qualities. For Dryden—of wliom

the present Laureate disapproves, and whom Macaulay tiiought

horrid—has this great merit, a natural appreciation of the pitch of

style in Virgil ; which atones for some limitations in his scholarship

and in his metrical resource.

Die mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus ? An Meliboei ?

What is the tone of die mihi ? Polite or peremptory ? How did

euium for cuius strike a contemporary ear ?

What a producer does when he coaches an actor is what a teacher

ought to do for a pupil in these matters ; but the pupil often grows up

into a translator without ever asking such questions or beginning to

suspect the existence of problems M-hich are prerequisites to his

success.

V

In all this I have been supposing that the translator's duty is

to interpret, not to betray ; and that the original has its rights,

and is not to be treated merely as the prey of the translator. But if

any one shall object, * So long as the translator gives me a good poem

or a good prose book in English, what do I care ? Has he betrajed

his author ? Let him see to that '

: the objector must be answered

with a distinction. As long as you take no liberties Math an ancient

author's name, you are perfectly free to cut and carve, or swallow him

whole, if he suits your palate, and your digestion can make food

of him. That delightful sentence may be obsolete as a statement in

Natural History, but it still does pleasant service as a canon of

literary ethics in the matter of borrowing and translating.

Serpens nisi serpentem comederit noa fit draco.

Certainly the dragons of ancient poetry victualled themselves freely

and profitably on their brother serpents. So do the moderns, and

with the assurance that not many modern critics will be able to trace

their depredations. Perhaps the only perfect translations are the

scraps which poets bring in without acknowledgement : things got iji

a lusty stealth.

l(j TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

The u'orhPs yreut aye beyins aneiv, the golden years return.

Nothing so perfect Mas ever seen in a professed translation ; yet

Shelley does not trou])le to name Virgil. It is translation in excelsis,

transmutation you may call it, which only comes about in a rare

poetical heat, such as seldom kindles even in a great poet's brain

when he is sitting down ex professo to translate. You could collect

dozens of instances Mhere a single phrase or line of Greek or Latin

has been done into English with utterly satisfying equivalence b}'

Milton or Tennyson, or even Landor. No acknowledgement is necessary.

This is Spartan thieving. If you can steal and not be found

out, the conveyed booties are yours ^ith good enough title. ' It is

about as easy to steal a line from Homer', said Virgil, 'as to rob

Heracles of his club.'

But M'hen we come to borrowing an ancient's name as well as his

wares, Me must be cautious. There seems to me to be a real question

of loyavte, of intellectual honesty, involved. So much that looks

innocent in these days is at bottom tendencieux (what's the English

for tendencieux, by the way ? Is tendencions authorized yet ?) that Me

must bcMare lest a translation of a man's M'ork be not really a

questionable procuring, not to say a forging, of his signature to some

modern manifesto. Gilbert Murray's Euripides has many great

merits which have gained it deserved success ; but I cannot feel it

to be a disinterested work of beauty. And if Euripides is to be

enlisted in various modern polemics, then I must call a rendering

which contains so much that belongs to the translator's liberal fancy

a pious fraud. It may be a foolish scruple, but my feeling is that if

you say ' after ' Euripides, you are free : you have acknowledged

a source of inspiration or suggestion. You are sailing under your

own colours. But if \ou say the M-ord Translation, you adopt a

borroM-ed authority. This is no censure on the literary quality of the

M'ork : that lies open to criticism if Me allow one of the Laureate's

doctrines for sound, which at any rate is interesting to discuss next.

' It is in my opinion a mistake to think that the best translations

of Greek verse are those Mhich make it seem like M'ell-written

conventional English verse. If an English reader who is unable

to read Greek is to get a glimpse of M-liat Homer is like, he nmst read

something M'hich does not remind him of Milton, or Pope, or

Tennyson, or Swinburne.' The last word nuiy be taken for a hit at

Murray.

But this doctrine brings us suddenly face to face Mith a chasm : a

question in M'hich }ou must plump absolutely for one side or the

(jther. In tiie first place a distinction is necessary : it ma^• be a fault

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 17

in Murray's Euripides that it reminds us of Swinburne and Morris,

but is it therefore a fault in Pope's Homer that it reminds us of Pope ?

Is it not rather a dilettantist refinement this of requirinoj that,

because an author lived long ago, and in other conditions, and wrote

a language long since dead, our living language must put on weird

airs and outlandish fashions to represent it ? To take proper pleasure

is the function of taste ; but surely this is to be most nicely particular

in the idiosyncrasy of the proper pleasure to be derived. This puts

us quite at variance with Egger's canon (quoted above) ; for in Bridges'

view it is a sin if Homer reminds us of the Song of Roland. But if

we accept the theory of a natural fitness at a given epoch, this

is implied. What is the solution ? Once more the central theory

of Classicism provides one. Is Homer weird and outlandish ? No.

That which in Homer or any other ancient master is qualified to live

ubique et semper, i. e. of strictly classic quality, can be dressed in the

native resources of any civilized language, and need not go ostentatiously

badged and uniformed as an alien in our midst. Homer,

remote as he is, is immeasurably nearer to us in mind and manners

than the Arabian Nights. And again, if there is a natural personal

sympathy between Tibullus and Andre Chenier, why is it vicious for

a French rendering of Tibullus to remind the reader of his modern

analogue ? But Bridges' question is nothing like exhausted yet : it

is the fundamental question for translators. For in its largest terms

you may put it in this way : is the ancient to come in on his own

terms or ours ? His access by the gate, or by a breach in the wall ?

For a test case considerAeschylus's Agamemnon. YouknowBrowning's

theory as stated in the preface to his translation :

' If, because of the immense fame of the following Tragedy, I

wished to acquaint myself with it, and could only do so by the help

of a translator, I should require him to be literal at every cost save

that of absolute violence to our language. The use of certain allowable

constructions which, happening to be out of daily favour, are all the

more appropriate to archaic workmanship, is no violence : but I would

be tolerant for once—in the case of so immensely famous an original —of even a clumsy attempt to furnish me with the very turn of each

phrase in as Greek a fashion as English will bear: while, with respect

to amplifications and embellishments,—anything rather than, with the

good farmer, experience that most signal of mortifications, " to gape

for Aeschylus and get Theognis ".'

Now, on the other part, hear Fitzgerald in his Preface to Agamemnon :

' I suppose that a literal version of this play, if possible, would

scarcely be intelligible. Even Avere the dialogue always clear, the

lyric Choruses, which make up so large a part, are so dark and abrupt

1 Collected Works, vol, vi.

18 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

in themselves, and therefore so much the more mangled and tormented

by copyist and commentator, that the mostconscientioustranslator must

not only jump at a meanin<r, ])ut must bridge o\er a chasm, especially

if lie determine to complete tlie antiphony of Strophe and Antistrophe

in English verse.

' Thus encumbered with forms which sometimes, I think, hang

heavy on Aeschylus himself: struggling with indistinct meanings,

obscure allusions, and even with puns which some have tried to reproduce

in English ; tliis grand play, which to the scholar and poet,

lives, breathes and moves in the dead language, has hitherto seemed to

me to drag and strifle under conscientious translation into the living;

that is to say, to have lost that which I think the drama can least

afford to lose all the world over. And so it was that, hopeless of succeeding

where as good versifiers, and better scholars, seemed to me to

have failed, I came first to break the bounds of Greek Tragedy ; then

to su'erve from the Master's footsteps ; and so, one licence drawing

on another to make all of a piece, arrived at the present anomalous

conclusion. If it has succeeded in shaping itself into a distinct, consistent

and animated Whole, through which the reader can follow

without halting, and not without accelerating interest from beginning

to end, he will perhaps excuse my acknowledged transgressions, and

will not disdain the Jade that has carried him so far so well till he

find himself mounted on a Thoroughbred whose thunderclothed neck

and long-resounding pace shall better keep up with the Original.

' For to recreate the Tragedy, body and soul, into English, and

make the Poet free of the language which reigns over that half of the

^\•orld never dreamt of in his philosophy, must be reserved—especially

the Lyric part—for some poet, worthy of that name, and of congenial

Genius with the Greek. Would that every one such Mould devote

himself to one such work !—whether by Translation, Paraphrase, or

Metaphrase, to use Dryden's definition, whose Alexander's Feast, and

some fragments of whose plays, indicate that he, perhaps, might have

rendered such a service to Aeschylus and to us, or to go further back

in our own drama, one thinks what Marlowe might have done.'

' Well, I have not turned over Johnson's Dictionary for the last

month, having got hold of Aeschylus. I think I want to turn his

Trilogy into what shall be readable English verse ; a thing I have

always thought of, but was frightened at the Chorus. So I am now

;

I can't think them so fine as People talk of; they are terribly nutimed;

and all such Lyrics require a better Poet than I am to set forth in English.

But the better Poets won't do it ; and I cannot find one readable

translation. I shall (if I make one) make a very free one; not for

Scholars, l)ut for those who are ignorant of Greek, and who (so far as

I have seen) have never been induced to learn it by any Translations

yet made of these Plays. I think I shall become a bore, of theBowring

order, by all this Translation ; ])ut it amuses me without any labour,

and I really think I have the faculty of making some things readable

which others have hitherto left unreadable.' ^

' Idem, Letttrs, Coll. Worhs, vol. ii, p. 72, to C'owell, 1857.

TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS 19

^I suppose very few People have ever taken such pains with

Translation as I have, thouj^h certainly not to be literal. But at all

Cost, a Thing must live, Mdth a transfusion of one's own worse life

if one can't retain the Original's better. Better a live sparrow than

a stuffed eagle.' ^

That is the challenge and this is the replique. The issue is quite

squarely drawn for decision. What is your verdict ?

Let us first remark that Browning's position is distinctively modern ;

such a claim would be inconceivable earlier than the nineteenth

century. Call it, if you like, one of many significant symptoms of

the anarchy of thought and art M'hich marked that century. But

at least you Mill admit that so long as recognized standards of form

were there to correct eccentricity and assimilate barbarisms (in the

Greek sense—shall we say Extei'isms ?), a clear difference was drawn

between a translation which claims literary rank and a translation

which is only useful or agreeable to those who are learning the

original language. For instance, here are words taken from George

Colman the younger's Preface to his rendering of Terence (1766) :

' Those who have (i. e. since Echard) since employed themselves on

this author, seem to have confined their labours to the humble

endeavour of assisting learners of Latin in the construction of the

original text.'

Cribs, in fact, to use our brutal modern term. Of cribs and

the queer jargon which crawled into being when cribs began to set up

literary pretensions, the criblingo, which is current only in the limbo

where books attempted to be carried from one language into another

and dropped half-way have a pale unhonoured existence, no treatment

could be attempted in less space than a whole lecture ; I must thei-efore

deny myself any excursion into this interesting field.

You will recognize something that they all take for granted

—

Colma« and Fitzgerald and Browning,—which can be resolved into

this : a necessary and invincible residual inequalitj^ between the

original and the translation, and a consequent question—which is

to be master ? Is it an absolute position to say, ' Good English is good

English, and nothing shall enter here which cannot or ivill not assume

national colours ' ? Or is Aeschylus allowed an indefeasible right to

have the English language cut into rags and patched together to

fit him ? To fit him with what ? A coat of motley ! For fear lest

the cut of his clothes be too English. Authority, which some call

Tyranny, and Freedom, which some say is Anarchy, have to fight

1 Idem, ib. p. 100, 1859.

20 TRANSLATION AND TRANSLATORS

it out, here ;is elsewhere. Of course there are great Victorian voices,

Carlvle Mith his German soul and Browning with his German-Jewish

intellect, instinctively in rehellion against the sacred and vital

institution of national language. But although (as we have seen) one

of the proper functions of translation, and just that which makes

it a natural diet for languages in their adolescence, is to expand

the capacities, force a growth even of new organs in the translators,

to satisfy the needs and perform the feats to which the ancients

challenge it ; does it follow that the needs for expansion and

adaptation which were present in the language 500 years ago, still

exist unsatisfied ? Has English not yet realized what it means to be,

or found its true genius ? For that is the renunciation implied in

Browning's claim and practice. Or is it merely a fickleness of

fashion and a restlessness of personal ambition in men who are

in 'the sulks ^ or '^on the make', which indulges these eccentricities?

AYe must dig rather deeper within the site indicated b)^ Brunetiere.

Try here. What do we mean Avhen we say (one often hears it) that

the Classics need retranslating for the taste of a new age ? Chapman,

Hohbes, Pope, none of them but thinks scorn of his predecessors ;

and then the nineteenth century disowns them all, allowing a preference

though for the earliest. No one reads Chapman ; but he is

good enough to beat Pope Avith. He owes most of his remembrance

to the chance word that Keats threw to him.

If we admit that the language had hardly reached its classical

maturity when any of Pope's predecessors made their essays (which,