On Translating Homer's Iliad

On Translating Homer’s Iliad Caroline Alexander Abstract: This reflective essay explores the considerations facing a translator of Homer’s work; in par- ticular, the considerations famously detailed by the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold, which remain the gold standard by which any Homeric translation is measured today. I attempt to walk the reader Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/50/1830900/daed_a_00375.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 through the process of rendering a modern translation in accordance with Arnold’s principles. “I t has more than once been suggested to me that I should translate Homer. That is a task for which I have neither the time nor the courage.”1 So begins Matthew Arnold’s classic essay “On Translating Ho- mer,” the North Star by which all subsequent translators of Homer have steered, and the gold standard by which all translations of Homer are judged. A reader will find Arnold’s principles referenced, directly or indirectly, in the introduction to most modern translations–Richmond Lattimore’s, Rob- ert Fagles’s, Robert Fitzgerald’s, and more recently Peter Green’s. Additionally, Arnold’s discussion of these principles serves as a primer of sorts for poets and writers of any stripe, not only those audacious enough to translate Homer. While the title of his essay implies that it is about translating the works of Homer, Arnold has little to CAROLINE ALEXANDER is the author of The War That Killed Achil- say about the Odyssey, and he dedicates his attention les: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad to the Iliad. The greater and more profound of Ho- and the Trojan War (2009), and the mer’s two epics, the Iliad relates the events of a few international best-sellers The Boun- weeks in the tenth and final year of the long, stale- ty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the mated Trojan War, and by doing so evokes the ten- Bounty (2004) and The Endurance: uousness of human life and the blighting tragedy Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Ex- of all war. At the time of Arnold’s writing in 1861, pedition (1998). She has written for The New Yorker, National Geographic, eighteen complete translations of the Iliad had been and Granta. The Iliad: A New Trans- published in the English language–a remarkably lation by Caroline Alexander was pub- small number given that the Iliad, the oldest of Ho- lished in 2015 by Ecco Press. mer’s two epics, is believed to have been composed © 2016 by Caroline Alexander doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00375 50 around 730–700 bc. Since then, and de- forts that have failed, “On Translating Ho- Caroline spite Arnold’s observation that at the time mer” is nonetheless a master class in such Alexander of his essay the “study of classical litera- poetic essentials as tone, pace, syntax, and ture is probably on the decline,”2 sixty- vocabulary. five new translations have appeared, a fig- Arnold’s assumption–not shared by ev- ure that does not take into account many eryone–is that a translation of Homer’s partial translations and adaptations. work should sound as much as possi- The most recent of those translations is ble like Homer. Arnold, then, precludes my own. And while I concur with Arnold the inspired interpretive approach taken that this effort required much time, I make by Christopher Logue, whose War Music no claim to courage. A better attribute and other works riff off portions of the Il- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/50/1830900/daed_a_00375.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 might be, to use a very Iliadic word, alkês, iad. While I am a great admirer of Logue’s which has connotations of “courage,” but work, as also of Alice Oswald’s more re- is more about “strength as displayed in ac- cent Memorial, which weaves an original tion,” to quote Liddell and Scott’s indis- elegiac poem out of the Iliad’s many de- pensable Greek-English Lexicon–in other scriptions of dying heroes, I concur with words, “fighting-spirit.”3 Undertaking a Arnold: the offering of a complete trans- translation of either of the Homeric poems, lation of the Iliad should strive to replicate but especially the Iliad, which at 15,693 lines the Greek original in as many ways as the of verse is some 3,000 lines longer than English language allows, as Arnold states, the Odyssey, is a lot like swimming a mon- “to reproduce the general effect of Homer.”5 ster workout: lap by lap one toils away, A successful translation, according to Ar- back and forth, and suddenly the end of nold, must uphold four principles, which the workout arrives and thousands of me- are best quoted in full as he declared them: ters–or verses–lie behind. [T]he translator of Homer should above all Matthew Arnold was not only a critic be penetrated by a sense of four qualities and accomplished classicist, but also a ma- of his author:–that he is eminently rapid; jor poet of his own age. He is the author of that he is eminently plain and direct both in such celebrated poems as The Scholar Gypsy, the evolution of his thought and in the ex- Dover Beach, and Balder Dead, the latter of- pression of it, that is, both in his syntax and fering a hint of what an Iliad translation by in his words; that he is eminently plain and him might have sounded like: direct in the substance of his thought, that So on the floor lay Balder dead; and round is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts, and he is eminently noble.6 spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly Having stated at the outset that he would thrown . .4 not translate Homer, Arnold was in the en- viable position of being able both to laud Yet as Arnold never did translate Homer, Homeric qualities and to launch wither- we have instead only his essay, which lays ing critiques at those translators who had out the rules for doing the job properly. The failed to realize them, without, so to speak, essay was originally delivered as a series of setting foot on the Trojan field of battle. three separate lectures, a fact that perhaps To revisit Arnold’s principles after having accounts for its easy-going, conversation- made an actual translation is a somewhat al readability. Arnold is not infallible; but more awkward business. But, as Arnold im- in its penetrating insights into what makes plied, translators of Homer are lion-heart- Homer sing and its fearless citation of ef- ed, and I will therefore attempt to explain 145 (2) Spring 2016 51 On Arnold’s principles in the shadow of my Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles Translating own efforts. the sleeping encampments Homer’s Iliad Far in the western prairies or forests that RAPID: The swiftness of the Homeric skirt the Nebraska, line of verse is principally due to the ep- When the wild horses affrighted sweep by ic’s meter–its rhythm–the dactylic hex- with the speed of the whirlwind, ameter: an ancient meter believed to de- Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes scend from Indo-European heroic poetic rush to the river.8 7 tradition. The Greek word dactyl means Even in what should be a fast-paced ac- “finger,” and like a finger, the poetic dac- tion scene, the English hexameter moves tyl has one long and two short units: in at a stately pace. Although Arnold advo- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/145/2/50/1830900/daed_a_00375.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 this case, syllables. The quantity of a syl- cated the dactylic hexameter as being, in lable, whether it is long or short, is deter- theory, the best meter for translation, he mined by the duration it takes to sound it. was able to find in the whole of English A long-short-short phrase, then, is much literature only one actual example that he like a phrase of whole-half-half notes in commended: the translation of a scant few music. Hex is Greek for “six,” and the dac- lines from book 3 of the Iliad by the Pro- tylic hexameter line accordingly consists vost of Eton, which to the modern ear, at of six such metrical units. In theory, that is, least, ring very flat: since the meter allows substitution of two longs (a spondee) for a dactyl, and the last Known to me well are the faces of all: their unit always has a two-beat ending, usually names I remember; a spondee, but on occasion a trochee (which Two, only two remain, whom I see not is long-short). Because individual lines of among the commanders, verse can obviously take a wide variety of Castor fleet in the car–Polydeukes brave 9 metrical shapes, these substitutions allow with the cestus (Homer Iliad 3.235–237) for great flexibility; this variety saves the In short, while the Iliad’s specific meter Iliad from sing-song monotony. greatly accounts for its epic swiftness, its In Greek, this meter moves very swiftly, literal replication does not work well in as can be discerned even in transliteration English. As a consequence, many metrical of the Iliad’s opening lines: patterns have been attempted by English- Menin a-eide thea, Pele-i-ado Achille-os speaking translators.

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