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Translators and Traducers: Some English Versions of the Song of Roland, Stanzas 83-851

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Translators and Traducers: Some English Versions of the Song of Roland, Stanzas 83-851 Robert Francis Cook Translators and Traducers: Some English Versions of the Song of Roland, Stanzas 83-851 IKE ALL SCHOLARS AND TEACHERS whose fields are aspects of medieval culture, those of us who work with the history and literature of Lmedieval France, or who teach and study the literary masterpieces of that civilization as elements of comparative literature, are obliged to remember constantly that our work is affected, in greater or lesser degree, by the nature of the translations available to us, to our colleagues, and to our students. There is nothing surprising or profound about this notion as a general matter, but it should not, perhaps, go without saying in every instance. It is especially when we see incontrovertible evidence of a failure larger than the slip of the pen, of an error of translation which is not strictly lexical, that we begin to recall how complex an endeavor it can be to interpret a lost language and a lost civilization. The technical problems of translating are not the only ones involved. Our training as specialists is designed to make us keenly aware of morphological and stylistic traps, of the uncertainty of lexical boundaries in medieval language (when is a glaive in fact a sword, despite our expec- tations to the contrary?) and of rhetorical patterns—periphrastic cors, doublets like bele et gent (or is that a doublet?)—especially troubling to an audience familiar with Pound or William Carlos Williams. But the somewhat different problem I want to treat here is a problem peculiar to specialists and the experienced, and it is one not often raised in connection with the translation of medieval literature. It is a matter not so much of an inability to read as of over-reading; it is the difficulty raised by the fact that the translator inhabits a particular academic universe, and hence a particular hermeneutic world, and it can have far-reaching conse- quences, as a consideration of the Song of Roland, stanzas 83-85, will show. The examples I will give show nothing new about the art of trans- lation, therefore, except as they represent not a misunderstanding of the brute linguistic fact nor even a misunderstanding of some particular 1An abbreviated version of this paper was read at the 1978 meeting of the South- eastern Medieval Association in Lexington. Kentucky. 327 328 Olifant / Vol. 7, No. 4 / Summer 1980 cliché of the author's culture, but rather a sort of induced mental block, a beclouding of the act of translation by the action of an outside force whose influence, here at least, can hardly be said to have served the transmission of the known Oxford text to non-specialists. The lion in the path for all students of Roland in English2 is surely the Penguin Roland by Dorothy Sayers.3 Through it, countless students and some professors have had their first contact with the famous text, so often cited as a paradigm of the knightly condition and knightly ideals in the twelfth century (if not, indeed, in the eighth). For some time, this paperback was the only inexpensive Roland in English, and although Roland translations are now more numerous and more diverse than formerly, it remains one of the most widely available, with all the prestige and marketing power of the series, and twenty years' habits of citation, behind it. Its most obvious defect is its forced archaism, and that slippery coating may have made it too easy for us to swallow the interpretive prejudice it expresses. More of the latter in a moment. In order to avoid later confusion, I would like first to digress briefly, and say a word or two about the effect of archaism itself. Deliberate archaism is almost too easy for us to deal with in these times. The error of historical perspective that it represents is very simple; all it does is put ancient and unfamiliar terms into the mouths of charac- ters whose discourse in fact contains few such terms or none. It is misleading because its effect is to give the reader, not the "feel" of the text itself, but the "feel" of what it is like to be an antiquarian of limited experience, to whom the original text is attractive because it is still a bit queer. Poetic diction is another matter, not of necessity compounded of unusual terms and contorted syntax. The artificial introduction of those things into a medieval poem implies—wrongly for most purposes—that the patina of age is one of the work's more important features. To the 2French translations pose problems different enough in some respects to be beyond the scope of this discussion. Chief among these is surely the false cognate; thus Moignet, for example, sometimes translates the technical feudal terms aimer, amur,feid, onur, etc., by transposition, using their Modern French cognates, and sometimes he translates them lexically; cf. his vv. 45, 86, 315, and others. Thus soldeiers is 'mercenaries' in 34 as well as in 133. 3The Song of Roland (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1957). Cook / Translations of the Roland 329 reader of the translation, of course, the archaism becomes an intrinsic feature of the work, for the reader has no immediate way of circumscribing it or separating it from the other features. Such trafficking, then, masks the poet's art by making it appear, especially to those students who themselves have limited historical perspective, that the Song of Roland must have been, from the moment of its conception, verbally strange, possibly even laughable. We should not forget that this sort of tampering can assume consid- erable importance in the surface texture of a translation. A few examples will suffice to remind us of what it looks like, though it may be years since we have read through one of the translations here quoted. Both Charles Scott-Moncrieff and Frederick Bliss Luquiens indulged in atmospherics before Sayers. Scott-Moncrieff's stanzas 74 and 55 were enough to give any budding medievalist pause (the full effect is obtained by reading them aloud): From the other part, Turgis of Turtelose, He was a count, that city was his own; Christians he would them massacre, every one. Before Marsile among the rest is gone, Says to the King: "Let no dismay be shewn! Mahum's more worth than Saint Peter of Rome; Serve we him well, then fame in field we'll own. To Rencesvals, to meet Rollanz I'll go, From death he'll find his warranty in none. See here my sword, that is both good and long [:] With Durendal I'll lay it well across; Ye'll hear betimes to which the prize is gone. Franks shall be slain, whom we descend upon, Charles the old will suffer grief and wrong, No more on earth his crown will he put on. (The Song of Roland [New York: Dutton, 1920], p. 31.) or this: Charles the Great that land of Spain had wasted, Her castles ta'en, her cities violated. Then said the King, his war was now abated. Toward Douce France that Empereur has hasted. Upon a lance Rollant his ensign raisèd, High on a cliff against the sky 'twas placèd; The Franks in camp all through that country baited. 330 Olifant / Vol. 7, No. 4 / Summer 1980 Cantered pagans, through those wide valleys racèd, Hauberks they wore, their sarks were doubly plated. Swords to their sides were girt, their helms were lacèd, Lances made sharp, escutcheons newly painted: There in the mists beyond the peaks remainèd, The day of doom four hundred thousand waited. God! What a grief. Franks know not what is fated. (p. 24) But while such verse may bore the professor of literature and bemuse the undergraduate, it does not attain the pinnacle of awkwardness reached by such lines as these, from Sayers's Penguin translation, stanzas 18 and 154: "Barons, my lords, whom shall we send of you To Saragossa, the Sarsen king unto?" "Myself," quoth Roland, "may well this errand do." "That you shall not," Count Oliver let loose; "You're high of heart and stubborn of your mood, You'd land yourself, I warrant, in some feud. By the King's leave this errand I will do." The King replies: "Be silent there, you two! Nor you nor he shall on that road set foot. By this my beard that's silver to the view, He that names any of the Twelve Peers shall rue!" The Franks say nothing; they stand abashed and mute. (p. 61) or this: The County Roland is mighty of his mood, Walter de Hum well-famed for knightlihood, And the Archbishop a warrior tried and proved; Betwixt their valours there's not a pin to choose. In the thick press they smite the Moorish crew. A thousand Paynims dismount to fight on foot, And forty thousand horsemen they have, to boot, Yet 'gainst these three, my troth! they fear to move. They hurl against them their lances from aloof, Javelins, jereeds, darts, shafts and spears they loose. In the first shock brave Walter meets his doom. Turpin of Rheims has his shield split in two, His helm is broken, his head has ta'en a wound, His hauberk's pierced, the mail-rings burst and strewn, By four sharp spears his breast is stricken through, Killed under him his horse rolls neck and croup; Th'Archbishop's down, woe worth the bitter dule. (p. 131) Cook / Translations of the Roland 331 I must confess my inability to understand how the author of Lord Peter Wimsey's tripping speeches, a poet in her own right, with an Honors degree from Oxford in Medieval French, can have perpetrated such crimes not only against the Song of Roland but against English poetry.
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