Instigations Part 47

Obscurities inherent in the thing occur when the author is piercing, or trying to pierce into, uncharted regions; when he is trying to express things not yet current, not yet worn into phrase; when he is ahead of the emotional, or philosophic sense (as a painter might be ahead of the color-sense) of his contemporaries.

As for the word-sense and phrase-sense, we still hear workmen and peasants and metropolitan bus-riders repeating the simplest sentences three and four times, back and forth between interlocutors: trying to get the sense "I sez to Bill, I'm goin' to 'Arrow" or some other such subtlety from one occiput into another.

"You sez to Bill, etc."

"Yus, I sez ... etc."

"O!"

The first day's search at the Museum reveals "Aeschylus" printed by Aldus in 1518; by Stepha.n.u.s in 1557, no English translation before 1777, a couple in the 1820's, more in the middle of the century, since 1880 past counting, and no promising names in the list. Sophocles falls to Jebb and does not appear satisfactory.

From which welter one returns thankfully to the Thomas Stanley Greek and Latin edition, with Saml. Butler's notes, Cambridge, "typis ac sumptibus academicis." 1811--once a guinea or half a guinea per volume, half leather, but now mercifully, since people no longer read Latin, picked up at 2s. for the set (eight volumes in all), rather less than the price of their postage. Quartos in excellent type.

Browning shows himself poet in such phrases as "dust, mud's thirsty brother," which is easy, perhaps, but is English, even Browning's own particular English, as "dust, of mud brother thirsty," would not be English at all; and if I have been extremely harsh in dealing with the first pa.s.sage quoted it is still undisputable that I have read Browning off and on for seventeen years with no small pleasure and admiration, and am one of the few people who know anything about his Sordello, and have never read his Agamemnon, have not even now when it falls into a special study been able to get through his Agamemnon.

Take another test pa.s.sage:

??t?? ?s?? ??a????, ???

??s??, ?e???? d? t?sde de???? ?e???

????? d??a??a? t??t????. ??d' ?d ??e?. 1445

"Hicce est Agamemnon, maritus Meus, hac dextra mortuus, Facinus justae artificis. Haec ita se habent."

We turn to Browning and find:

"--this man is Agamemnon, My husband, dead, the work of this right hand here, Aye, of a just artificer: so things are."

To the infinite advantage of the Latin, and the complete explanation of why Browning's Aeschylus, to say nothing of forty other translations of Aeschylus, is unreadable.

Any bungling translation:

"This is Agamemnon, My husband, Dead by this hand, And a good job. These, gentlemen, are the facts."

No, that is extreme, but the point is that any natural wording, anything which keeps the mind off theatricals and on Klutaimnestra actual, dealing with an actual situation, and not pestering the reader with frills and festoons of language, is worth all the convoluted tushery that the Victorians can heap together.

I can conceive no improvement on the Latin, it saves by _dextra_ for _de???? ?e???_, it loses a few letters in "se habent," but it has the same drive as the Greek.

The Latin can be a whole commentary on the Greek, or at least it can give one the whole parsing and order, and let one proceed at a comforable rate with but the most rudimentary knowledge of the original language. And I do not think this a trifle; it would be an ill day if men again let the cla.s.sics go by the board; we should fall into something worse than, or as bad as, the counter-reformation: a welter of gum-shoes, and cocoa, and Y.M.C.A. and Webbs, and social theorizing committees, and the general h.e.l.l of a groggy doctrinaire obfuscation; and the very disagreeablizing of the cla.s.sics, every pedagogy which puts the masterwork further from us, either by obstructing the schoolboy, or breeding affectation in dilettante readers, works toward such a detestable end. I do not know that strict logic will cover all of the matter, or that I can formulate anything beyond a belief that we test a translation by the feel, and particularly by the feel of being in contact with the force of a great original, and it does not seem to me that one can open this Latin text of the Agamemnon without getting such sense of contact:

"Mox sciemus lampadum luciferarum 498 Signorumque per faces et ignis vices, An vere sint, an somniorum instar, Gratum veniens illud lumen eluserit animum nostrum.

Praeconem hunc a littore video ob.u.mbratum Ramis olivae: testatur autem haec mihi frater Luti socius aridus pulvis, Quod neque mutus, neque accendens facem Materiae montanae signa dabit per fumum ignis."

or

"Apollo, Apollo! 1095 Agyieu Apollo mi!

Ah! quo me tandem duxisti? ad qualem domum?

"Heu, heu, ecce, ecce, cohibe a vacca 1134 Taurum: vestibus involens Nigricornem machina Percut.i.t; cadit vero in aquali vase.

Insidiosi lebetis casum ut intelligas velim.

Heu, heu, argutae lusciniae fatum _mihi tribuis_: * * * * *

"Heu nuptiae, nuptiae Paridis exitiales 1165 Amicis! eheu Scamandri patria unda!"

All this howling of Ka.s.sandra comes at one from the page, and the grimness also of the Iambics:

"Ohime! lethali intus percussus sum vulnere." 1352 "Tace: quis clamat vulnus lethaliter vulneratus?"

"Ohime! iterum secundo ictu sauciatus."

"Patrari facinus mihi videtur regis ex ejulatu. 1355 "At tuta communicemus consilia."

"Ego quidem vobis meam dico sententiam," etc.

Here or in the opening of the play, or where you like in this Latin, we are at once in contact with the action, something real is going on, we are keen and curious on the instant, but I cannot get any such impact from any part of the Browning.

"In bellum nuptam, Auctricem que contentionum, Helenam: 695 Quippe quae congruenter Perditrix navium, perditrix virorum, perditrix urbium, E delicatis Thalami ornamentis navigavit Zephyri terrigenae aura.

Et numerosi scutiferi, Venatores secundum vestigia, Remorum inapparentia Appulerunt ad Simoentis ripas Foliis abundantes Ob jurgium cruentum."

"War-wed, author of strife, Fitly Helen, destroyer of s.h.i.+ps, of men, Destroyer of cities, From delicate-curtained room Sped by land breezes.

"Swift the s.h.i.+elds on your track, Oars on the unseen traces, And leafy Simois Gone red with blood."[6]

Contested Helen, _?f??e???_.

"War-wed, contested, (Fitly) Helen, destroyer of s.h.i.+ps; of men; Destroyer of cities,

"From the delicate-curtained room Sped by land breezes.

"Swift on the s.h.i.+elds on your track, Oars on the unseen traces.

"Red leaves in Simois!"

"Rank flower of love, for Troy."

"Quippe leonem educavit.... 726 Mansuetum, pueris amabilem....

... divinitus sacerdos Ates (i.e. Paris) In aedibus enutritus est.

"Statim igitur venit 746 Ad urbem Ilii, Ut ita dicam, animus Tranquillae serenitatis, placidum Divitiarum ornamentum Blandum oculourum telum, Animum pungens flos amoris (_Helena_) accubitura. Perfecit autem Nuptiarum acerbos exitus, Mala vicina, malaque socia, Irruens in Priamidas, Ductu Jovis Hospitalis, Erinnys luctuosa sponsis."

It seems to me that English translators have gone wide in two ways, first in trying to keep every adjective, when obviously many adjectives in the original have only melodic value, secondly they have been deaved with syntax; have wasted time, involved their English, trying first to evolve a definite logical structure for the Greek and secondly to preserve it, _and all its grammatical relations,_ in English.

One might almost say that Aeschylus' Greek is agglutinative, that his general drive, especially in choruses, is merely to remind the audience of the events of the Trojan war; that syntax is subordinate, and duly subordinated, left out, that he is not austere, but often even verbose after a fas.h.i.+on (not Euripides' fas.h.i.+on).

A reading version might omit various things which would be of true service only if the English were actually to be sung on a stage, or chanted to the movements of the choric dance or procession.

Above suggestions should _not_ be followed with intemperance. But certainly more sense and less syntax (good or bad) in translations of Aeschylus might be a relief.

Chor. Anapest:

"O iniquam Helenam, una quae multas, 1464 Multas admodum animas Perdidisti ad Trojam!

Nunc vero n.o.bilem memorabilem _(Agam. animam),_ Deflorasti per caedem inexpiabilem.