Part 22

For all the fuss about Divus' errors of elegance Samuelis Clarkius and Jo. Augustus Ernestus do not seem to have gone him much better---with two hundred years extra Hellenic scholarship at their disposal.

The first Aldine Greek Iliads appeared I think in 1504, Odyssey possibly later.[4] My edition of Divus is of 1538, and as it contains Aldus' own translation of the Frog-fight, it may indicate that Divus was in touch with Aldus in Italy, or quite possibly the French edition is pirated from an earlier Italian printing. A Latin Odyssey in some sort of verse was at that time infinitely worth doing.

Raphael of Volterra had done a prose Odyssey with the opening lines of several books and a few other brief passages in verse. This was printed with Laurenzo Valla's prose Iliads as early as 1502. He begins:

"Dic mihi musa virum captæ post tempora Troiae Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes Multa quoque et ponto passus dum naufragus errat Ut sibi tum sotiis (sociis) vitam servaret in alto Non tamen hos cupiens fato deprompsit acerbo."

Probably the source of "Master Watson's" English quantitative couplet, but obviously not copied by Divus:

"Virum mihi dic musa multiscium qui valde multum Erravit ex quo Troiae sacram urbem depopulatus est: Multorum autem virorum vidit urbes et mentem cognovit: Multos autem hic in mare passus est dolores, suo in animo, Liberans suamque animam et reditum sociorum."

On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to believe that Clark and Ernestus were unfamiliar with Divus. Clark calls his Latin crib a composite "non elegantem utique et venustam, sed ita Romanam, ut verbis verba." A good deal of Divus' _venustas_ has departed. Clark's hyphenated compounds are, I think, no more Roman than are some of Divus' coinage; they may be a trifle more explanatory, but if we read a shade more of color into _αθέσφατος οἶνος_ than we can into _multum vinum,_ it is not restored to us in Clark's _copiosum vinum_, nor does _terra spatiosa_ improve upon _terra lata, εὐρυδείης_ being (if anything more than _lata_): "with wide ways or streets," the wide ways of the world, traversable, open to wanderers. The participles remain in Clark-Ernestus, many of the coined words remain unchanged. Georgius Dartona gives, in the opening of the second hymn to Aphrodite:

"Venerandam auream coronam habentem pulchram Venerem Canam, quae totius Cypri munimenta sortita est Maritimae ubi illam zephyri vis molliter spirantis Suscitavit per undam multisoni maris, Spuma in molli: hanc autem auricurae Horae Susceperunt hilariter, immortales autem vestes induere: Capite vero super immortali coronam bene constructam posuere Pulchram, auream: tribus autem ansis Donum orichalchi aurique honorabilis: Collum autem molle, ac pectora argentea Monilibus aureis ornabant...." etc.

Ernestus, adding by himself the appendices to the Epics, gives us:

"Venerandam auream coronam habentem pulchram Venerem Canam, quae totius Cypri munimenta sortita est Maritimae, ubi illam zephyri vis molliter spirantis Tulit per undam multisoni maris Spuma in molli: hanc autem auro comam religatae Horae Susceperunt hilariter, immortales autem vestes induere: Caput autem super immortale coronam bene constructam posuere Pulchram, auream, perforatis autem auriculis Donum orichalci preciosi: Collum autem molle ac pectora Candida[5] Monilibus aureis ornabant...." etc.

"Which things since they are so" lead us to feel that we would have had no less respect for Messrs. Clarkius and Ernestus if they had deigned to mention the names of their predecessors. They have not done this in their prefaces, and if any mention is made of the sixteenth-century scholars, it is very effectually buried somewhere in the voluminous Latin notes, which I have not gone through _in toto_. Their edition (Glasgow, 1814) is, however, most serviceable.

TRANSLATION OF AESCHYLUS

A search for Aeschylus in English is deadly, accursed, mind-rending. Browning has "done" the Agamemnon, or "done the Agamemnon in the eye" as the critic may choose to consider. He has written a modest and an apparently intelligent preface:

"I should hardly look for an impossible transmission of the reputed magniloquence and sonority of the Greek; and this with the less regret, inasmuch as there is abundant musicality elsewhere, but nowhere else than in his poem the ideas of the poet."

He quotes Matthew Arnold on the Greeks: "their expression is so excellent, because it is so simple and so well subordinated, because it draws its force directly from the pregnancy of the matter which it conveys ... not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in, stroke on stroke."

He is reasonable about the Greek spelling. He points out that _γόνον ἰδὼν κάλλιστον ἀνδρῶν_ sounds very poorly as "Seeing her son the fairest of men" but is outshouted in "Remirando il figliuolo bellissimo degli uomini," and protests his fidelity to the meaning of Aeschylus.

His weakness in this work is where it essentially lay in all of his expression, it rests in the term "ideas"--"Thought" as Browning understood it--"ideas" as the term is current, are poor two dimensional stuff, a scant, scratch covering. "Damn ideas, anyhow." An idea is only an imperfect induction from fact.

The solid, the "last atom of force verging off into the first atom of matter" is the force, the emotion, the objective sight of the poet. In the Agamemnon it is the whole rush of the action, the whole wildness of Kassandra's continual shrieking, the flash of the beacon fires burning unstinted wood, the outburst of

_Τροιάν Αχαιῶν οὖσαν_,

or the later

_Τροίαν Ἀχαιοὶ τήδ' ἔχουσ' ἐν ἡπέρα._

"Troy is the greeks'." Even Rossetti has it better than Browning: "Troy's down, tall Troy's on fire," anything, literally anything that can be shouted, that can be shouted uncontrolledly and hysterically. "Troy is the Greeks'" is an ambiguity for the ear. "Know that our men are in Ilion."

Anything but a stilted unsayable jargon. Yet with Browning we have

"Troia the Achaioi hold," and later,

"Troia do the Achaioi hold," followed by:

"this same day I think a noise--no mixture--reigns i' the city Sour wine and unguent pour thou in one vessel--"

And it does not end here. In fact it reaches the nadir of its bathos in a later speech of Klutaimnestra in the line

"The perfect man his home perambulating!"

We may add several exclamation points to the one which Mr. Browning has provided. But then all translation is a thankless, or is at least most apt to be a thankless and desolate undertaking.

What Browning had not got into his sometimes excellent top-knot was the patent, or what should be the patent fact that inversions of sentence order in an uninflected language like English are not, simply and utterly _are not_ any sort of equivalent for inversions and perturbations of order in a language inflected as Greek and Latin are inflected. That is the chief source of his error. In these inflected languages order has other currents than simple sequence of subject, predicate, object; and all sorts of departures from this Franco-English natural position are in Greek and Latin neither confusing nor delaying; they may be both simple and emphatic, they do not obstruct one's apperception of the verbal relations.

Obscurities _not inherent in_ the matter, obscurities due not to the thing but to the wording, are a botch, and are _not_ worth preserving in a translation. The work lives not by them but despite them.

Rossetti is in this matter sounder than Browning, when he says that the only thing worth bringing over is the beauty of the original; and despite Rossetti's purple plush and molasses trimmings he meant by "beauty" something fairly near what we mean by the "emotional intensity" of his original.

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 Stephanus 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 passage 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 passage:

Οὖτός ἐσιν Αγαμέμνων, ἐμὸς Πόσις, νεκρὸς δέ τῆσδε δεξιᾶς χερός Ἔργον δικαίνας τέκτονος. Τάδ' ὦδ ἔχει. 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 _δεξιᾶς χερός_, 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 classics 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 hell of a groggy doctrinaire obfuscation; and the very disagreeablizing of the classics, 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 obumbratum 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 Percutit; 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 Kassandra 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 ships, of men, Destroyer of cities, From delicate-curtained room Sped by land breezes.

"Swift the shields on your track, Oars on the unseen traces, And leafy Simois Gone red with blood."[6]

Contested Helen, _Ἀμφινεικῆ_.

"War-wed, contested, (Fitly) Helen, destroyer of ships; of men; Destroyer of cities,

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

"Swift on the shields 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 fashion (not Euripides' fashion).

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 nobilem memorabilem _(Agam. animam),_ Deflorasti per caedem inexpiabilem. Talis erat tunc in aedibus Eris viri domitrix aerumna."

Clytemnestra:

"Nequaquam mortis sortem exopta 1470 Hisce gravatus; Neque in Helenam iram convertas, Tanquam viriperdam, ac si una multorum Virorum animas Graecorum perdens, Intolerabilem dolorem effecerit." * * * * *

Clytemnestra:

"Mortem haud indignam arbitrar 1530 Huic contigisse: Neque enim ille insidiosam cladem Aedibus intulit; sed meum ex ipso Germen sublatum, multum defletam Iphigeniam cum indigne affecerit, Digna passus est, nihil in inferno Glorietur, gladio inflicta Morte luens quae prior perpetravit."

"Death not unearned, nor yet a novelty in this house; Let him make talk in hell concerning Iphigenia."

(If we allow the last as ironic equivalent of the literal "let him not boast in hell.")

"He gets but a thrust once given (by him) Back-pay, for Iphigenia."

One can further condense the English but at the cost of obscurity.

Morshead is bearable in Clytemnestra's description the beacons.

"From Ida's top Hephaestos, Lord of fire, Sent forth his sign, and on, and ever on, Beacon to beacon sped tjie courier-flame From Ida to the crag, that Hermes loves On Lemnos; thence into the steep sublime Of Athos, throne of Zeus, the broad blaze flared. Thence, raised aloft to shoot across the sea The moving light, rejoicing in its strength Sped from the pyre of pine, and urged its way, In golden glory, like some strange new sun, Onward and reached Macistus' watching heights."

[1] Milton, of course, whom my detractors say I condemn without due circumspection.

[2] _I.e._ Clark is "correct," but the words shade differently. _Ἠκα_ means low, quiet, with a secondary meaning of "little by little."-_Submisse_ means low, quiet, with a secondary meaning of modesty, humbly.

[3] Later continued by l'Abbé de St. Chérroi.

[4] My impression is that I saw an Iliad by Andreas Divus on the Quais in Paris, at the time I found his version of the Odyssey, but an impression of this sort is, after eight years, untrustworthy, it may have been only a Latin Iliad in similar binding.

[5] Reading _ἀργυφέοισιν_, variant _ἀργυρέοισιν_, offered in footnote. In any case _argentea_ is closer than _candida_.

[6] "H.D.'s" translations from Euripides should be mentioned either here or in connection with "The New Poetry"; she has obtained beautiful strophes for First Chorus of Iphigenia in Aulis, 1-4 and 9, and for the first of the second chorus. Elsewhere she retains certain needless locutions, and her versification permits too many dead stops in its current.

IX

THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER AS A MEDIUM FOR POETRY

BY ERNEST FENOLLOSA

[_This essay was practically finished by the late Ernest Fenollosa; I have done little more than remove a few repetitions and shape a few sentences._

_We have here not a bare philological discussion, but a study of the fundamentals of all æsthetics. In his search through unknown art Fenollosa, coming upon unknown motives and principles unrecognised in the West, was already led into many modes of thought since fruitful in "new" western painting and poetry. He was a forerunner without knowing it and without being known, as such._

_He discerned principles of writing which he had scarcely time to put into practice. In Japan he restored, or greatly helped to restore, a respect for the native art. In America and Europe he cannot be looked upon as a mere searcher after exotics. His mind was constantly filled with parallels and comparisons between eastern and western art. To him the exotic was always a means of fructification. He looked to an American renaissance. The vitality of his outlook can be judged from the fact that although this essay was written some time before his death in 1908 have not had to change the allusions to western conditions. The later movements in art have corroborated his theories_.--EZRA POUND.]

This twentieth century not only turns a new page in the book of the world, but opens another and a startling chapter. Vistas of strange futures unfold for man, of world-embracing cultures half weaned from Europe, of hitherto undreamed responsibilities for nations and races.

The Chinese problem alone is so vast that no nation can afford to ignore it. We in America, especially, must face it across the Pacific, and master it or it will master us. And the only way to master it is to strive with patient sympathy to understand the best, the most hopeful and the most human elements in it.

It is unfortunate that England and America have so long ignored or mistaken the deeper problems of Oriental culture. We have misconceived the Chinese for a materialistic people, for a debased and worn-out race. We have belittled the Japanese as a nation of copyists. We have stupidly assumed that Chinese history affords no glimpse of change in social evolution, no salient epoch of moral and spiritual crisis. We have denied the essential humanity of these peoples; and we have toyed with their ideals as if they were no better than comic songs in an "opera bouffe."

The duty that faces us is not to batter down their forts or to exploit their markets, but to study and to come to sympathize with their humanity and their generous aspirations. Their type of cultivation has been high. Their harvest of recorded experience doubles our own. The Chinese have been idealists, and experimenters in the making of great principles; their history opens a world of lofty aim and achievement, parallel to that of the ancient Mediterranean peoples. We need their best ideals to supplement our own--ideals enshrined in their art, in their literature and in the tragedies of their lives.

We have already seen proof of the vitality and practical value of oriental painting for ourselves and as a key to the eastern soul. It may be worth while to approach their literature, the intensest part of it, their poetry, even in an imperfect manner.

I feel that I should perhaps apologize[1] for presuming to follow that series of brilliant scholars, Davis, Legge, St. Denys and Giles, who have treated the subject of Chinese poetry with a wealth of erudition to which I can proffer no claim. It is not as a professional linguist nor as a sinologue that I humbly put forward what I have to say. As an enthusiastic student of beauty in Oriental culture, having spent a large portion of my years in close relation with Orientals, I could not but breathe in something of the poetry incarnated in their lives.