A NEW TRANSLATION OF LUCRETIUS.*
DaYnEx in the preface to his translation of Virgil says that, in giving it to the world, " he feels like a malefactor making a speech upon the gallows " and calls his offence " sacrilege." But if to translate Virgil be indeed "sacrilege," it is the poet himself who holds out the tempta- tion. Like Horace, who in this respect is irresistible, there is some- thing about him which continually allures. He is so visibly an artist in the use of words that his skill in the manipulation of them almost provokes, although it eludes, rivalry, and each finely wrought phrase bears such clear marks of the craftsman's hand that it seems to suggest imitation. But about Lucretius there is something, as it were, solitary and inaccessible. Art indeed he has, for there can be no poetry without it ; but his conspicuous characteristic is native elemental power. No one ever wrote verses which convey a like impression of solid strength, and which, like his own atoms, may be justly described as ae!erna poi- lentia gimplicitate. His style is monumental, and his words seem to be " graven on the rock for ever " as something incapable of change. The lines, for instance, in which ho tells how his great master was subject to the common law of death-
" Ipse Epicures obit decurso 'mine vitae - Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnea Praestinxit, stellas exortus ut aetherius sol "- or those in which he describes the sublimity of his genius- " Ergo vivida via mind pervicit, et extra Processit lunge flammantia mocnia mundi "- seem to repel the idle devices of imitative ingenuity. Nor are they wholly exceptional lines, but hundreds like them are to be found every-
• where ; and not only do they abound in those " purple passages " which have their place in all anthologies, but the marvel is that Lucretius exhibits the same power in the whole treatment of his theme. And this power belongs not only to his imagination—on which we cannot here dwell—but also to his style. Though it is common to say that half of him is not poetry at all but mere versified philosophy, the reverse is, we think, the truth. Indeed the very fact that his subject-matter is so intractable affords the best proof of his power. For could anything seem less poetical than the Epicurean atoms ? Yet in Lucretius they have found their Homer. More minute than the motes in a sunbeam, in his verse they have greatness and even majesty. All other things change and pass away, but in them alone is the unchangeable and the everlasting; they alone have an "immortal body" and "eternal single. ness " ; without them the foundations of the universe will fail—funditus emnig Principle fundanienli nature rarebit—while without their clashings and impinge apart there would be neither life nor movement, just as
without their variety of shape there could be none of that variety in
• T. Lucretius Cants. A 3fetrical Translation by W. E. Leonard, Professor of binsUsh.in the University of Wisconsin. London: J. M. Dent and Sous. [4s. Gd. net.] things visible which results only from the infinite combinations into which they are continually being grouped afresh. And although to modern science a theory which even Newton half accepted may seem absurd, yet the manner in which Lucretius sets it forth is none the less wonderful. To him it is the greatest of themes, and he handles it greatly. lie never speaks of his atoms otherwise than heroically ; his language is always imposing, and yet he never loses that simplicity which is the hall-mark of genius. Take for instance these lines in which ho is illustrating the speed at which atoms move through void by a comparison with the speed at which light is diffused at sunrise e--
" Debent nimirum praecellere mobilitate, Et multo citius ferri quam lumina soils, Multiplexque loci spatium transcurrere eodem Temporc, quo sobs pervolgant fulgura caelum."
Nothing could be clearer, simpler, or more dignified. And it is for exactly that reason that the translator's task is of the hardest. For there is nothing harder than so to use plain words that they shall be no longer commonplace; and to compare these lines with this rendering- " They must, beyond a doubt, Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne Than light of sun, and over regions rush, Of space much vaster, in the self-same time The sun's effulgence widens round the sky "-
is to illustrate at once the difference between poetry and verse, and between the mastery of speech and its manipulation.
None the less the present translator has faced a very difficult task with much real success, as this purely didactic passage will, perhaps, show :- " Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught, Solid, without a void, they must be then Eternal ; and, if matter ne'er had been Eternal, long ere now had all things gone Back into nothing utterly, and all We see around from nothing had been born— But since I taught above that naught can be From naught created, nor the once begotten . To naught be summoned back, then primal germs Must have an immortality of frame ; And into these must each thing be resolved, When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be At hand the stuff for pleuishing the world."
And it is to Professor Leonard's credit that he has not published mere volume of extracts. That is the fashionable and easy way to deal with Lucretius. But those who only know Lucretius in extracts can never understand his greatness. No poet ever had a better right, and none certainly ever himself made a more insistent claim, to be read, as he can be read here, in his entirety. But there is one point on which we can agree neither with Lucretius nor with his translator. The poet is never weary of asserting that he alone reveals the true path of life, and his translator closes his preface with the words : " Lucretius is indeed a Voice for these supreme times." Yet, assuredly, nothing could be more false. As a poet Lucretius has hardly a peer ; as a teacher he is the very prophet of despair. Faith he has none ; his gods, if gods he has, are more rep client than devils in their " everlasting carelessness," and the most godiike thing in men is to be like unto them. For consider these lines :— " Sed nil suavius est bone quam munita tenere Edita doctrine sapientum terniala serene, Despicere made queas tales, passimque viclero Errare atque viam palantos quaerere vitae, Certare ingenio, contendere Debilitate, Noctcs atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri."
No one has ever translated them fitly, and no one ever will, for they outrango all imitation. But think how we should stand to-day if our sons held it the " sweetest " thing there is to " look down " from " sunlit temples well built and high reared by the learning of the wise" upon all the sorrows and the struggles of this troubled world.
Previous page
