LITERAL TRANSLATION. * THE simultaneous appearance of all these volumes
sets the mind running once more on the much-discussed question of the art and function of the translator. To attempt a solution by analysing the translating animal into genera and species is
• (1) The Apostolic Fathers. 2 Vols. Vol. 1. Translated by Professor rarsopp Lake. (2) The Confessions of St. Augustine. 2 Vols. Translated by W. Watts (1631). (3) Euripides. 4 Vole. Vols. 1 and 2. Translated by A. S. Way. (4) Phi/astral/a' Life of Apolionius of Trout. 2 Vols. Translated by F. C. Conybeare. (5) Propertius. Translated by Professor H. E. Butler.
(6) Terence. 2 Vols. Translated by J. Sergeaunt. Being the first 10 Vols. of the "Loeb Classical Library." London: W. Heinemann. [5s. net per Vol..]— (7) Tacitue Histories. 2 Vols. Translated by W. H. Pyle. (8) Philostratus' Apollonias of Tyane. Translated by Professor J. S. Phillimore. Oxford At the Clarendon Press.[3s. 6d. net per Vol.]—(9) Poems of Catulitts. Translated by C. Stuttaford. London : (I. Bell and Sons. [6a. net.]— (10) Sappho and the Island of Lesbos. By Mary Mills Patrick. London : Methuen and Co. [Se. 6d. net.] of course futile. Matthew Arnold, at the beginning of his lectures on Homer, suggests such an analysis, but he suggests it only in order to abolish with a stroke of the pen the fictitious classes he creates. The attempt to use the original "as a basis on which to rear a poem that shall affect the reader as the original may be conceived to have affected its natural hearers" is of course preposterous, for no one can conceive accurately what that effect was. At least equally preposterous is the scheme which Arnold defines in antithesis —the attempt " to retain every peculiarity of the original—. with the greater care the more foreign it may happen to be." It is certain, at least, that none of the scholars with whose work we have to deal here has attempted either of these objects. The first of Arnold's definitions, however, does suggest an ideal which translators have followed with success, and in a few cases even with genius. Many writers have set themselves to reproduce the emotional effect which they them- selves receive from their original, without adhering strictly to details of method. This was to some extent the aim of the eighteenth-century translators. But for them it was impossible not to interpose the cloak of a style, which had become con- ventional, between the reader and the original. As a result, Dryden strays as far from Virgil as did Pope from Homer, and the shade of Milton hovers between Cowper and Agamemnon.
"Me vero primum dukes ante omnia Musae Quarum sacra Fero ingenti percussus amore."
"Ye sacred Muses, with whose beauty fired, My soul is ravished and my brain inspired."
It is brass to silver, the trumpet and the pipe. But other writers have dealt more faithfully with their models, and have succeeded (as perhaps no others have succeeded) in making a living thing of their version. Among these must, of course, be reckoned Mr. Gilbert Murray, and it is instructive for our present purpose to compare his version of the Electra with that included in Mr. A. S. Way's two volumes. Mr. Way is a practised and skilful translator (these volumes are revised from an earlier publication), and has attempted with remark- able success to reproduce every feature of his original. As a result one can use his translation, although it is in verse, as a literal guide to the original text. Another and less fortunate result is that the version, by reason of the natural difference between the two languages becomes burdened and laborious. Greek expresses naturally in ten words as much as English can do gracefully in twelve, and the blank-verse line is two feet shorter than the iambic. It follows that one is per- petually conscious of congestion, and the verse flows on at too even a pitch without that occasional emphasis which cannot exist without the antithesis of habitual ease. Mr Murray's method is very different. He instinctively picks out the features in the text which have an emotional influence on him, and these he reproduces by imitation or, more commonly, in equivalent. The rest he leaves in low tones, following the original only just enough to ensure the repro- duction of its general sequence and purport. The result of this is that all Mr. Murray's work has an emotional quality, and one moreover of a strongly personal flavour. The question which the reader has to solve is not whether he admires Euripides. but whether he admires Mr. Murray. And the result is that in comparison with the full fluency of the original there is a certain tenuity about the translation, a tenuity which is partly stylistic and due to the method, and partly emotional and due to the personality, of the translator. But the translator who uses the medium of verse must make some such sacrifice if he is to secure the vitality which Mr. Murray achieves and of which Mr. Way falls short. The prose trans. lator is not so hampered, though the capabilities of his medium are infinitely fewer. Even here, however, there is room for a considerable variety of method, as the volumes before us show. In Propertius Professor Butler has a difficult subject. For Propertius is often dull, and where he excels he does so with an idiosyncrasy which defies reproduction. Mr. Butler's methods are straightforward. He follows his text faithfully, but his version sadly lacks vitality, In the first place, his vocabulary is full of those dreadful colourless words which have become the conventional language of the schools. Bark, strand, locks, beams, blasts, limbs, e'er. Here we have the whole emasculated troupe without even the exigence of metre to excuse their introduction. In dealing with a writer so subtle as Propertius the use of them is fatal. When Propertius says " litus " and "corpus," &a., he means, " shore" and body;" and
to use these milk-and-water substitutes is to take all the blood out of him. And Professor Butler shows the same laxity in other ways. The exquisite " Ionio lasses ducere rore mantis," becomes " Strike out with weary hands" in his version. " Formosis unguibus " reappears as "fair talons." "Digitos" is " hands " not "fingers," and so on. If one is to be literal one must retain the emphasis of the original just as carefully as one does the meaning of the individual words. Here emphasis is all forgotten. And Professor Butler too often misses the rhythm of the model, which it is essential fora prose translator of poetry to retain.
"Cynthia forma potens, Cynthia verba levis " differs both in rhythm and emphasis from " Cynthia, mighty is thy beauty ; Cynthia, light are thy words " ; and so does "Nos tibi longs vent, nec reditura dies" from " The long night hasteneth on thee that knows no dawning." The simple translations of the fragments of Sappho which Miss Patrick puts at the end of her useful little volume are more successful, and Mr. Stuttaford is more successful with his Catullus. His vocabulary is more real than Professor Butler's, and Catullus with his terseness of language and variety of rhythm is easier to deal with than Propertius. Where the Elegiac Odes merely begin and end, Catullus' lyrics have each a complete form of their own which the mind apprehends instinc- tively and 'almost instinctively reproduces. Mr. Stuttaford's chief fault is the tendency to add explanatory words which do not explain, but simply dilute. Thus " cui labella mordebis " becomes " whose lips will you bite in amorous frenzy. " Vivat valeatque moechia " is "She may live and thrive with her adulterous crew." " &rims" is rendered by " menial slave." Emphasis, too, sometimes goes astray. "Sirmio, gem of all peninsulas and islands," is nothing like " Paeninsularum, Sirmio, insularumque, °cella," and when " renidet " is trans- lated " grins " throughout No. 39 all the subtlety is taken out of the story of the man who is always smiling to show his teeth. When we come to translations of prose we are, of course, on easier ground. There is not, for example, much room for error in Professor Lake's volume of the Apostolic Fathers, and Professor Lake performs his task adequately. But even here the same pitfalls await the translator and the same mistakes are made. That there are degrees of excellence even in literal translation can be seen from a comparison between the two versions of Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana. It is singular that these two translations of a work which has only once before been rendered into English (in 1811) should have been published at the same moment. Their simultaneous appearance, however, invites comparison, and the comparison is decidedly favourable to Mr. Phillimore's version. Mr. Cony- beare's is the more literal of the two, but Philostratus' loose and ambling periods become a little diffuse and vague when exactly reproduced in English. Mr. Phillimore has pulled the sentences together, with great advantage to the English reader. And if he gives a less accurate representation of his author's style, the loss is no great matter. Equally pointed are Mr. Sergeaunt's two volumes of Terence. Terence is an easy author to translate. His style is so admirably pure and economical, so easy and exact in emphasis, so perfect a sublimation of common speech, that one has only to follow it with discretion and the stress seems to fall naturally at the right points as one goes. Mr. Sergeaunt follows his original closely, and where he varies from it he does so because it is impossible to give the full weight to a point without a variation of idiom. Thus :— " Qui me hodie ex tranquilissima re conjecisti in nuptiaa " is excellently reproduced by " The fellow . . who has run me out of a holy calm on to the rocks of matrimony," and the same discretion enables the translator to employ such words as " piazza," " Don Magnifico," " avatar," " violinist," " assault and battery" without impropriety. Mr. Fyfe has in Tacitus' Histories a far more difficult subject. More than discretion is needed to give any accurate representation of the fierce compression of an author whose ellipses are as expressive as his written words. "Though not indifferent to fame he did not court it by advertisement" is ingenious, but gives only a faint idea of " Famae nec incuriosus nec ,veaditator." But who will suggest words to give a better P Mr. Fyfe's work is, on the whole, sound, readable, and pointed. Is there any translator of Tacitus of whom one can say more P
The last translation which we have to consider, the seven- teenth-century version of St. Augustine's Confessions, is perhaps the most interesting of all. It is probably (even as revised by so eminent a scholar as Mr. Rouse) the least correct of all the translations before us. It is plain, moreover, that Watts did not accomplish his task without a deal of irksome labour, for he says himself that, though he began it, for the exercise of his Lenten devotions, he quickly found it to exercise more than his devotions. " It exercised my skill (all I had) ; it exercised my patience ; it exercised my friends too, for it is incomparably the hardest task that ever I yet undertook." None the less, Watts's pages have the zest and literary instinct which marked the work of all the Renaissance translators. Some of their charm is no doubt due to the quaint distinction of that forcible language which died out in the formalism of the succeeding century. " Non autem . . . avolavit penna visibili, aut moto poplite iter egit," " Or fly away with visible wings, or take his journey by the motion of his hams" ; " lirnosa con- cupiscentia carnis," "that puddly concupiscence of my flesh." The charm is here rather the work of time than of original merit. But Watts's work has the merit of a true translation. It is extraordinary with what accuracy his version follows the rhythm of the unordered, discursive, torrential prose of the Confessions. The faults of St. Augustine's style, judged by conventional standards, are innumerable. Yet there is not one of them but expresses genuinely and exactly some process of thought or feeling in the author's mind. Watts follows every check, every swirl, every leap of the torrent with extraordinary fidelity. One example may be quoted to show his subtlety. " Tu es autem plenitudo et indeficiens copia incorruptibilis suavitatis," says Augustine, and Watts gives us, "Yet art thou the fulness and never-failing plenty of most incorruptible sweetness." The monosyllable weights the period to a nicety.
It is in such subtleties as this that one recognizes the true translator. If verbal fidelity be the sole aim, vitality is lost and with it all vestige of true significance. The purely equivalent method of Mr. Murray, on the other hand, substi- tutes a new personality, and a personality which is content to translate is not (saving all just exceptions) likely to be so interesting as the object of its interpretation. To secure true fidelity there must be use both of verbal exactitude and interpretative equivalent, and as the combination is rare, so, too, is good translation.
In conclusion, a word must be said as to the objects of Mr. Heinemann's excellent series. There has never before been published any comprehensive series of classical trans- lations with text and version printed in parallel pages. It is the design of the " Loeb Library " to supply this deficiency. The " library " is therefore primarily intended for the reader as opposed to the scholar. At the same time it will be seen from the list of works announced for publication that the editors have no intention of keeping to the ordinary classical routine. Among the next ten volumes we are promised two of Appian's History of Rome, a first instal- ment of a complete Lucian, and a collection of Julian's orations. The standard of the translations already issued is on the whole high, and the presence of Messrs. T. E. Page and W. H. D. Rouse on the committee is a guarantee of discreet selection and careful editing. The volumes are light and well got up, and the series should be sure of a wide welcome.
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