A TRANSLATION OF THE FOURTH VOLUME OF PERROT AND CHIPIEZ.*
IN this immense scheme of MM. Perrot and Chipiez, not yet carried to completion, the history of art in the ancient world is dealt with, from Egypt down to Rome. In the first two volumes, the two great original fountain-heads of our arts, the Empires of Assyria and Egypt, were explored. Then followed, in the third volume, the Phoenician race, that race of middle-men in commerce and in art that did so much to adapt and diffuse. The fourth volume, of which an English transla- tion lies before us, traces out the results of this diffusion among the tribes of Sardinia and Judtea, and introduces us to the remains of another copyist race, the Hittites. Few things in recent archwological history are more interesting than the recovery and identification of the language and remains of this last people, a work in which English enterprise and scholarship have played a large part. This section of the History has been before the world for three years, and is in the hands of all students of archaaology as an indispensable summary of the latest results of excava- tion and interpretation on the field it covers. So familiar and authoritative a work need not at this date be recommended to the expert. But for the unprofessional English reader this part of the History has a peculiar interest, because it brings the light of archmological science to bear on the text of the Bible. Much of the new knowledge is the fruit of English labour and money, for it is notorious among archa3ologists that a field so meagre in artistic interest as that of Palestine will have money lavished on it because of Biblical associations, when all the treasures of Greece may lie undisturbed for want of a spade.
The labour and love expended on Jerusalem have induced the authors of the History to give to Judtea what, but for that religious interest, would be a disproportionate
• History of Art in Sardinia, Tudza, Syria, and Asia Minor. From the French of Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez. Trans'ated and edited by L Gonino. London : Chapman and Hall. attention. The Jews, when they admitted the architec- to himself all the peoples of the earth" (I., p. 136). Again, tural arts to their city, borrowed from Tyre, and little. on p. 141 of Volume I. "All our efforts will tend to have our method accepted as legitimate; to this end we shall have to adopt a course that may appear long and deviating, albeit each step will bring us to the end in view." Literally : "It will be, then, to this attempt" [the restoration of the Temple] "that our chief effort here will be directed. To prove it a legitimate attempt, we shall have to follow a course parts of which will appear winding and wearisome, but every step of which will bring us nearer to the end." In "when after minute analysis the various elements have been designed," for " designed " read " disengaged " (I., 117) ; in "Jerusalem and Athens are the real capitals of the ancient world in its highest communings," read "in its higher unity" (I., 113) ; in "the temples seemingly so far apart," read "each on its rock ;" for "it is the reverse that takes place," read "it takes place in another way" (I., 121) ; for "parallel," read " contrast " (I., 130). Or, to take an example from the second volume, on p.149: "From certain indications a critical authority believes he discovers here ternary series ; triads vaguely outlined ; the twin visible manifestations of which always remain more or less in shadow,—i.e., fall in the background." This should run,—" From certain indications, criticism believes it discovers in them" [i.e., in the Syrian religions] "sets of three of the kind we suspect here" [i.e., in the relief under discus- sion], "like vaguely sketched trinities, where one person-, that of which the two others are the sensible manifestations, remains always more or less in shadow." Take, again, an instance (I., 145), from a topographical passage, where accuracy and clearness being everything, " north " is care- lessly substituted for "south," and the whole is compressed as follows—a fair example of the translator's treatment of the text :—" To the north-west, between the Tyropceon and Hinnom valleys, is the steep hill of Zion, whose culminating point supports the so-called Tower of David, which is decidedly Herodian in character." Literally, "To the south-west, between the Tyropceon and Hinnom valleys, rises the high bill that now is called Mount Zion, and whose highest point bears the building that tradition points to us as the Tower of David, although it has no right to that name, and the oldest parts of the fortress do not go back beyond the times of Herod." On p. 266 of Vol. I., a passage runs :—" The reader has now before him our restoration of the temple and its most important pieces; the impression produced by their image, aided
remains of the inconsiderable buildings that resulted. But the passion of the exile for the Temple, as he remembered it, and his dream of it restored more glorious, have built it, second-band as it was, obliterated as it is, unique and im- perishable into literature. It is this temple, the Temple of Ezekiel, that M. Chipiez, with an architect's technical know- ledge, attempts to reconstruct for us,—this vision of a prophet founded on the memory of an exile ; and such an attempt is a notable landmark in the progress of archwological science. The archwologist of the seventeenth century was free, with a fine irresponsibility, to represent the Temple of Solomon, or its dream amplification by Ezekiel, as a building hl the taste of the Italian Renaissance. Modern science goes to work otherwise. The prophet dreamed in curious detail the ground-plan of his visionary building, but he dreamed little of the particulars of its elevation. And it is here that patience and science come in to fill out the points of the description from all the available fragments of Phcenician and Jewish architecture. Such reconstructions are always in the end somewhat lifeless, and a good deal inconclusive, but for those who find the children's game of puzzle-fitting still the best of toys, or who have transformed that sport into scientific interest, nothing can be more fasci- nating than to watch a problem like this worked out.
There was clearly, then, a certain popular justification for an English translation of the book,—the student, one would think, would always prefer the actual words of the writers in their simple and lucid French. We wish it were possible to say that the translation before us is well done. To do it well, four elementary qualifications are demanded,—a knowledge of English, a knowledge of French, some acquaintance with the technicalities of archEeology, and the fidelity that renders an original as directly and closely as possible. This translation cannot be absolutely relied upon in any one of these particulars.
The English is very bad. Curious mistakes, like using the word " similar " constantly instead of "such," run through the book, and suggest that English is a foreign tongue to the writer, and the pages teem with strange and outlandish words, such as cedicula, hierodules, gracility, rupesgue, necropole, poliote ; right and left become " dexter " and " sinister " and birds are called " volatiles " for short. On the other hand, "tastes which had laid dormant," and "indications as to where it might lay," point rather to a native but unchastened use of the language. There are few pages on which the reader is not brought up short by slipshod phrases, of which the following are a few examples :—" Had refrained to occupy," "will necessitate to be minutely described," "confine ourselves to notice," "from the standpoint the prophet regarded it him- self," "the terminology are met with here mostly for the first time ;" "The Phcenicians soon rose to compete, albeit not to excel their models" (the writer has a passion for "albeit ") ; "Herod was prevented to extend ;" "with Judah matters took a very different course, the very smallness of its territory precluded multitudinous places being enshrined by old traditions. Had there been, however, their distance " At times the words are worthy of Mrs. Malaprop. "Adventitious career" (I., p. 130, note) perhaps means' adven- turous" (the French gives no clue); but "interpenetrating suggestive article" (II., p. 175, note) is baffling. (There is no adjective in the French, but there is a whole omitted sentence.)
A style like this would be annoying and uncomfortable, and yet, with the strangest slips in English, might leave the trans- lation fairly intelligible and faithful. But the rendering is often vague and obscure, or even downright wrong. It is im- possible to say, without practically retranslating the book, exactly to what extent there is mistranslation ; but a few random references where the sentence looks suspicious, reveal enough to destroy the reader's confidence. What can be made of a sentence like this :—" The boldness and spirituality of similar ideas once attained could not be arrested in their course; translated at first by a dim perception of the narrow concept of a national God, it ere long saw, albeit imperfectly, one whose arms were long enough to enfold all the nations of the earth." The sense of the original is "In its spiritual boldness this thought does not stop there ; it seems at times to be aware of what there is of narrow- ness in the conception of a purely national god ; it aspires to a god who should have wider arms, who should call
attention. The Jews, when they admitted the architec- to himself all the peoples of the earth" (I., p. 136). Again, tural arts to their city, borrowed from Tyre, and little. on p. 141 of Volume I. "All our efforts will tend to have our method accepted as legitimate; to this end we shall have to adopt a course that may appear long and deviating, albeit each step will bring us to the end in view." Literally : "It will be, then, to this attempt" [the restoration of the Temple] "that our chief effort here will be directed. To prove it a legitimate attempt, we shall have to follow a course parts of which will appear winding and wearisome, but every step of which will bring us nearer to the end." In "when after minute analysis the various elements have been designed," for " designed " read " disengaged " (I., 117) ; in "Jerusalem and Athens are the real capitals of the ancient world in its highest communings," read "in its higher unity" (I., 113) ; in "the temples seemingly so far apart," read "each on its rock ;" for "it is the reverse that takes place," read "it takes place in another way" (I., 121) ; for "parallel," read " contrast " (I., 130). Or, to take an example from the second volume, on p.149: "From certain indications a critical authority believes he discovers here ternary series ; triads vaguely outlined ; the twin visible manifestations of which always remain more or less in shadow,—i.e., fall in the background." This should run,—" From certain indications, criticism believes it discovers in them" [i.e., in the Syrian religions] "sets of three of the kind we suspect here" [i.e., in the relief under discus- sion], "like vaguely sketched trinities, where one person-, that of which the two others are the sensible manifestations, remains always more or less in shadow." Take, again, an instance (I., 145), from a topographical passage, where accuracy and clearness being everything, " north " is care- lessly substituted for "south," and the whole is compressed as follows—a fair example of the translator's treatment of the text :—" To the north-west, between the Tyropceon and Hinnom valleys, is the steep hill of Zion, whose culminating point supports the so-called Tower of David, which is decidedly Herodian in character." Literally, "To the south-west, between the Tyropceon and Hinnom valleys, rises the high bill that now is called Mount Zion, and whose highest point bears the building that tradition points to us as the Tower of David, although it has no right to that name, and the oldest parts of the fortress do not go back beyond the times of Herod." On p. 266 of Vol. I., a passage runs :—" The reader has now before him our restoration of the temple and its most important pieces; the impression produced by their image, aided throughout by transliteration of the text " This stands for " traduction graphique des textes," i.e., translation of the written description into plans and drawings. The paragraph of which this sentence is part represents a bare third of the paragraph in the original. In an immediately preceding passage a surmise in the original is stated as a fact in the translation, and " Olympus " stands for "Olympia." Shortly before this, again, we hear of "fragments of bronze unearthed at Altis and Olympia," which should, of course, be "within the Altis at Olympia."
Blunders like these point to a want of archwological equip- ment, and the same thing comes out in technical description. For instance (II., 148) :—" In the Parthenon, the first chapter of the grandiose work written upon the frieze of the main face was protracted and completed in the entablature and frontels. But, on the façade, that it might be read by all, was repre- sented the traditional solemn and most brilliant festival con- nected with the city ; whilst metopes and spandrels received, carved in high relief, the myths dearest to the fancy of the Athenians." This should be :—" In the Parthenon, in the high parts of the building, metopes and pediments, the sculptor continues and completes the large work of which be had written the first chapter on the frieze of the portico. In that, near the eye, he had represented the traditional rites of the city, her most solemn and most brilliant feast; as for the fairest of her myths, and those dearest to Athenian imagina- tion, he found a place for them in the high reliefs of the metopes, and the sculpture in the round of the pediments." Or, again, what can be made of a passage like the following (L, 161), without reference to the French :—" The dimensions of these stones are everywhere far greater than those generally seen in our quarries ; but it should be noticed that not two are exactly alike. Numbers were placed against the stratum ; but as the bed from which they were extracted was very deep, their horizontal tables were found too far apart to be used in coursed work." The meaning is, that the stones were quarried in long
vertical strips, but laid horizontally, so that they lie in the wall not as they would in their natural bed, but against the grain. Bat more serious, perhaps, than such occasional lapses is the freedom the translator has used throughout in altering the original. Sometimes the change is by way of addition that is not pertinent, but the general tendency is to a process of com- pression, which often shears away the qualifying clauses of the original, and sometimes leaves it hardly intelligible. There is a difference in bulk between original and translation of about one hundred and fifty pages, and only a small part of this difference is accounted for by the omitted renderings of sacred texts. Altogether, this is a translation which it is impossible to recommend. The only justification of such a work is that it should be done thoroughly well. In this ease, it is so done that the help of the original is too often necessary to explain what the writer would call the "transliteration."
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