have met with this remark, if we mistake not, in one of the critical papers of Mr. G. H. Lewes; and it is important. To take an example:-Here is the passage in the prologue to Faust, where Mephistopheles first gives his impression of Faust's character. "Fürwahr! er dient euch auf besondere Weise. Nicht irdisch ist des Thoren Trank noch Speise. Er ist sich seiner Tollheit halb bewusst; Vom Himmel fordert er die schönsten Sterne Befriedigt nicht die tiefbewegte Brust." We find this passage rendered with tolerable exactness of mean- And from the Earth demands each highest zest, Calm not the craving of his deep-moved breast." Yet, were this translation more exact in all respects than it is, it would not be perfect as a representation of the original. Ferne and far, for example, have precisely the same meaning intellectually; but they differ in sound, and far to an Englishman has not precisely the same emotional effect as ferne to a German. And so universally. Love is the English for the Latin amor, and yet amor is not love; and gold in English is a much more mouth-filling and soul-filling word than aurum in Latin, as if the Englishman had a greater and more solemn sense of the grandeur of the thing meant. There are, therefore, natural limitations to the powers of translation, in any case, from one language into another. And though this remark may seem overstrained, it deserves to be taken into account whenever the question of the value of translations in general is treated. It affects also the special question as to the propriety in some cases of being content with a prose translation. Thus, while it is undoubtedly true that a literal prose translation of two such lines as these:"The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that," would be miserably jejune as compared with the original; the advocate of a prose translation might ask, in reply, how much of this comparative jejuneness would be owing to the fact of the version being in prose, and how much to the equally undeniable though less obvious fact, that in any translation whatever, whether in prose or in verse, the identical associations which make the foregoing words, "stamp," "gowd," &c., so weighty to the Scottish ear, must inevitably perish. In short, this consideration makes it clear, that though the poetical translator, by adhering to the rhythm of the original, may convey much, even he cannot convey all, of that force of the original which lies in the sound. His means of representing the original are in this respect less imperfect than those of the prose translator; and if he can manage the meaning equally well, he has of course the advantage by a twofold merit; but even his representation must remain defective, and far from the exactitude of a fac-simile. In the two works before us—the one a literal prose translation of the plays of Eschylus by an Oxford scholar; the other a poetical translation of the same plays by one who is both a scholar and a man of genius-the question as between prose translations and poetical translations of poetry of such a kind and of so ancient a date, is brought to a practical issue. No author could be named, in translating whose works all the difficulties of translation in general could be more signally present than in those of schylus; and none with regard to whom effort towards overcoming these difficulties could be better bestowed. What we call the works of schylus, are seven plays, or, as Professor Blackie names them, seven Lyrical Dramas, surviving out of some seventy or eighty, composed by a literary man of Athens, in the early part of the fifth century before Christ, and performed, under his superintendence, by trained actors and singers, in the presence of vast audiences assembled for the purpose at stated Athenian festivals. They consist each of two parts of nearly equal dimensions-the one dialogue, properly so called, spoken or declaimed with a loud voice by actors, dressed so as to appear of gigantic stature, who moved slowly about the stage, representing the divinities or heroic personages of some sacred Greek story; the other song, properly so called, sung either in solo by those actors, or by a large band of other assistants, called the chorus, ranged on a particular part of the stage, and usually intended to represent the mythic and sympathizing public in the midst of which the events of the drama were supposed to have taken place. Such was the favourite form of literary activity among the Greeks at the time when Eschylus lived, i.e., at and immediately after the Persian invasion, and the great battles of Marathon and Salamis; and such was the form of literary activity in which Eschylus, devoting himself to it as his special calling or profession, became an acknowledged master. The true counterpart of this kind of literary activity in the present time would rather be, as Professor Blackie remarks, the preparation of libretti for sacred operas, if we had such things, than the preparation of tragedies in the modern sense. As an ancient Athenian-as a free citizen of that wonderful commonwealth, which, though it never contained a population, slaves included, of more than 400,000 souls, has bequeathed to the world so large a proportion of the whole intellectual wealth it can now exhibit-schylus had to take part in other occupations besides that of sacred play-writing. In politics he was known as a conservative, a man who revered the old and somewhat aristocratic institutions of his native city, and saw them with grief disappearing; and, as a soldier, he was one of those who had hewn with his sword at the Persian backs on Marathon, and stood all night on the anxious deck at Salamis. These, however, were but episodes in his career; and his true profession was that of preparing lyrical dramas which might win the prize, and be performed with applause, at the great festivals in honour of the god Bacchus or Dionysos. He was famous even in the mechanical minutiæ of this art. Not only did he enlarge the drama itself beyond its original scope, by introducing a second, and afterwards a third actor, in addition to the solitary actor who had till then declaimed all the dialogue-thus permitting a larger variety of parts in the piece; he was also a notable improver of the stage-scenes and decorations, and he took more pains than any contemporary dramatist in teaching the actors, and training the dancers. During his life he had many competitors, some of whom occasionally beat him and carried off the honours of the festival; and, in his old age, he saw himself surpassed in popular estimation by his young fellow-townsman, Sophocles. After his death, however, which took place in Sicily, B. C. 456, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, the Athenians shewed their respect for him by permitting his dramas to be reproduced as new ones --an unusual honour, inasmuch as, after a piece had been once performed at the festival of Dionysos, it was, as a general rule, never performed in Athens again, but handed over to be performed, if there was a demand for it, in the minor theatres of the other Grecian towns. And that judgment which the ancient Athenians pronounced, posterity in all lands has ratified. The man's business in life was but to prepare spectacles to form part of the ceremonial at the festivals of the Bacchic god of Greek imagination; and yet when we moderns of the Christian world seek among the great men of the past for the one that may best stand as the type of nature's extreme in one of her grandest forthgoings, we find ourselves constrained to dwell by preference upon the name of old Eschylus. Mr. Buckley's Prose Translation. 273 Mr. Buckley's prose translation of Eschylus-forming one of that series of cheap translations from the Classics, for which, whatever defects criticism may detect in them, the public owes a hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Bohn-is certainly done on the principle of literal exactness. We cannot say much, however, in favour of Mr. Buckley's power of reconciling literal exactness with other qualities. The literality of his translation is frequently of that helpless kind which ends in unintelligibility; not a few of the passages in his version looking like the efforts of a faithful but somewhat dull schoolboy, who, after annexing to every word in a sentence its dictionary-meaning, remains without the slightest glimpse of the sense which the words convey as a whole. This, for aught we know, may arise from the fact that the translation was intended to be used as a key by pupils engaged in reading Greek; the result, however, is, that the reader is often left totally in the dark as to what a sentence may mean-and this not merely where there is an obscurity in the original text, but quite as often where there is none. Nor can we say much for Mr. Buckley in his additional capacity as an annotator. Many of his notes are a mixture of pedantry and flippancy, got up apparently for no purpose whatever but that the translator might seem to be annotating busily. Professor Blackie's translation of Eschylus belongs, of course, by its very nature, to a far higher order of performances than Mr. Buckley's. And, in that order, it is infinitely better done. The translation of the great tragic poet has evidently been to Professor Blackie a labour of love. Every line of the original has been conscientiously gone through by the translator, and the meaning rendered in a manner thoroughly intelligible to the English reader. Here, also, we have spirit, strength, large command of language, and abundant proof of a mind not only of original literary faculty, and native poetical tendency, but also richly cultured in classic lore. The preliminary dissertations, too, the introductions to the several plays, and the notes, are all admirable-exhibiting a fine combination of thought and scholarship, and serving to increase the reader's insight into the meaning of the poet, and to give a more vivid idea than he could. otherwise have, of the manner in which the dramas were originally put upon the stage. Altogether, we do not think it likely that the English language will ever possess a poetical translation of Eschylus of superior merit, or in which the duty of adhering faithfully to the original shall be more successfully harmonized with a free flow of verse. Possibly Professor Blackie might have more fully carried out his own views of what a translation of Eschylus should be, if he had dispensed with blank verse altogether in the choruses, and translated them from first to last VOL. XVI. NO. XXXI. S in rhyme; but it would be ungrateful to urge this or any similar criticism very forcibly, where so much difficulty has already been so unsparingly undertaken, and so patiently overcome. The book, as it exists, is a worthy addition to English literature. And yet, if, passing from the consideration of the merit of Professor Blackie's translation, as a general literary feat, we view it specially with relation to the question, how far this large amount of the labour of one of our really able men has contributed to bring Eschylus, in all his force and all his peculiarity, more closely and vividly before the minds of modern British readers than could have been possible without such help, we shall be forced to confess that, judging according to such a mode, we should have preferred being left with but a bald literal version, enjoying, at the same time, the pleasure of seeing so large a surplus of talent judiciously laid out on some independent performance. True, there are some points in which Professor Blackie's translation does enable us to pourtray the real spectacle of an Eschylean drama far more truly and powerfully than any prose translation could. Here, for example, is an extract from his translation of the first chorus in the Agamemnon, which, partly because it is in verse, partly because the verse is so good, seems to teach us with quite a new light, what a Greek chorus was. The chorus is rehearsing the song of the Greek seer, as he interpreted to the hosts going to Troy an omen of two eagles, the one black and the other silver-tipped, that were seen chasing a hare big with young. "The wise diviner of the host beheld, And knew the sign; The hare-devouring birds with diverse wings, The diverse-minded kings; And thus the fate he chanted:- Not in vain Old Troy shall surely fall, but not Till moons on moons away Have lingering rolled. Rich stores by labour massed, Our mounting hope with sadness! For the chaste Artemis a sore grudge nurses Against the kings; Jove's winged hounds she curses, The fearful hare with the young brood it bore. May the good omens shame the ill! |