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| ISBN-13: | 9781611490039 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University Press Copublishing Division |
| Publication date: | 05/12/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 374 |
| File size: | 532 KB |
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"Arms, and the Man I sing ..."
A Preface to Dryden's Æneis
By Arvid Løsnes
University of Delaware Press
Copyright © 2011 Arvid LøsnesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61149-003-9
CHAPTER 1
The Tradition of Aeneid Translation in Britain
Up to 1600
TRANSLATION IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS HAS A LONG history. The earliest literary translation in the Western world is said to be the translation of Homer's Odyssey into Latin by Livius Andronicus about 250 BC, a crude rendering that thus introduced the epic to Roman literature. Apart from this, the earliest statements related to the art of translation stem from famous Latin writers such as Cicero and Horace, both of them advocating freedom in translation. Possibly, then, it was from these sources that the medieval translators found justification for cultivating their form of translation, which can best be called "adaptation," allowing themselves almost complete freedom in adapting the original to their way of thinking. Thus, the earliest renderings of the Aeneid into English by Chaucer and Caxton were extremely free, seemingly without regard either for what the Latin poet was actually saying, or for the historical context or the intention of the work.
With the Renaissance came the new classical education of the humanists, and a more direct understanding of the ancient authors. But as yet the art of literary translation had no real theoretical basis. A central concern of translation being to develop the vernacular and enrich its literature, in general little thought was given to the specific relationship of the translation to the original. In this perspective, patriotic emulation of what had been done elsewhere, especially in France and Italy, was an important motive of English translators during this period—that of boosting the general cultural standard and the educational possibilities of the masses through the translation into English of the great works of classical antiquity.
In this context, an important issue was related to the question of the adequacy/inadequacy of the English language in transferring these works into English. As R. F. Jones points out, it was generally agreed that the language was "inadequate for elegance, but adequate for the expression of ideas." Accordingly, a concern for matters of style or artistic expression was clearly overshadowed by a concern for instruction and edification. Thus, even when the first translations proper of the Aeneid appeared in the form of verse in the middle of the sixteenth century, these translations made little or no attempt to reproduce the stylistic elements of Virgil's epic. Besides, there was no tradition to draw upon in this respect, so in general the main concern of these translators was to convey the sense of the original, thus making the lexical content of Virgil's poem available to those who knew no Latin.
As we consider the work of the four translators of the whole or parts of the Aeneid produced in sixteenth-century Britain, the experimentatal nature of their efforts emerges at once. Thus, although they are all in verse, it is striking that each employed a different metrical form: Gavin Douglas (1553) used iambic pentameter couples, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1557) exploited blank verse, while Phaer and Twyne (1573) turned to fourteener couplets, and Richard Stanyhurst (1582) to quantitative hexameters. However, in spite of the major differences this gave rise to and that mark these renderings, it may be worth examining the extent to that the work of these translators can be said to constitute a tradition which can be meaningfully related to the more closely knit seventeenth-century tradition of Aeneid translation to which Dryden belongs.
Gavin Douglas's Eneados, a version of the Aeneid rendered in a Middle Scots dialect of Lowland Scotland, was the first translation proper of Virgil's epic making use of a British vernacular. Although completed in 1513, it was not published until 1553. Positioned thus in time, with his translation Douglas stands with one foot in the Middle Ages, the other in the Renaissance, a feature that makes his achievement extremely difficult to assess. On the one hand, the translation can be seen to draw on positive qualities traceable to its medievalism, while on the other, there is also clear evidence of the positive qualities of the Renaissance spirit in Douglas: his Eneados was the first British translation of the whole of the Aeneid using the original itself as the basis of his translation; he rejects the romantic conception of the Dido story, defending Aeneas' desertion of Dido as being basic to the poem; and, seeing in Aeneas the prototype of the ideal prince, he interprets the Aeneid as a poem of instruction for kings and princes, a literary genre typical of the Renaissance.
However, the result of this is that it also suffers from a basic flaw—it lacks a unity of conception, such that side by side with medieval elements and conceptions we find Renaissance elements and conceptions, not in a convincing synthesis, but more often in conflict with each other. This uncertainty in Douglas's mode of rendering the poem also reveals itself in other aspects of his translation—for example, in the mixture of Scottish contemporary features and classical Roman features within the overall setting of the ancient classical world—with disturbing effect. On the other hand, in attempting to give a valid picture of Douglas's achievement in translating the Aeneid, C. S. Lewis maintains that Douglas, with his medieval and Scottish features, is closer to the original than any of the later classical translators. Indeed, he says that reading the Latin after having read Douglas "is like seeing a favourite picture after it has been cleaned," which strikes the same note as does the distinguished classical scholar, Professor R. G. Austin, when he says that he felt he will teach Latin better for, among other things, "having seen Douglas' picture of Aeneas with his laughing eyes and crisp hair." Thus it would appear that Douglas's Eneados is both a great Scottish poem and, with its general fidelity to the sense of the original together with its medieval freshness and directness, also represents a great Scottish translation of the Aeneid, which gives insights that later "classical" renderings tend to obscure.
What, then, we might ask, is Douglas's contribution to the tradition of Aeneid translation? L. M. Watt provides a useful perspective when he says that "the true measure of the achievement of a pioneer is perhaps not so much what he achieved as what he left behind him in his forward step." Most importantly perhaps, Douglas translated the whole of the Aeneid at a time when translators commonly focused their interest on episodes such as "The Fall of Troy" or "The Loves of Dido and Aeneas." Similarly, he insisted on translating from the original Latin, not from versions in other languages, as was so common in the medieval period. Thus, too, he can be said to have lifted the Aeneid out of the darkness of the medieval sentimental romance, and to have given his readers a translation of the whole of the Aeneid based on the original itself, doing so with a directness and liveliness of language that made Virgil almost seem a Scottish contemporary poet. This is very likely his major achievement, and although Douglas possibly makes Virgil too much of a Scottish contemporary poet, in this he struck instinctively upon one of the secrets of successful verse translation. Later, in the seventeenth century, both Denham and Dryden discovered this secret and explicitly made it part of their program as translators, saying that their aim was to make Virgil speak such English as he would have done if he had been born in England as their contemporary. In the same way as Douglas represents fidelity by insisting that the translator ought to translate from the original text itself, one of his main concerns was to be faithful to the "sentens"— the overall sense—rather than the words of the original. Thus, in this concern for conveying the sense, he tends to expand and elaborate on the original, and in this can be said to foreshadow the mode of translation that Dryden later championed and described as "paraphrase, or translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; and that too is admitted to be amplified, but not altered."
Douglas's version was followed by translations of Books II and IV of the Aeneid by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey—published together in 1557. It is known that Surrey's translations were made with continual help from Douglas's Eneados, and it been has found that, in more than 40 percent of his lines, Surrey's wording was noticeably influenced by that of Douglas. Here, then, we have the beginnings of a tradition of borrowing that established itself in the following century and contributed to the development of an integrated tradition of Aeneid translation. However, in spite of these borrowings, the two translations are very dissimilar. If abundance and diffuseness are striking characteristics of Douglas's treatment of Virgil's narrative, concentrated phrasing and terseness verging on barrenness or austerity are the corresponding characteristics of Surrey's translation.
On the other hand, admirable though Surrey's conciseness generally may be, and though his literalness and brevity might be taken to represent a reflection of the style of the original, numerous examples of his use of strange Latinisms and awkward phrasing imitative of the Latin counteract this effect. His translations are in blank verse—the first example of this meter in English poetry. Now one would have expected that the freedom from rhyming that this verse form gives—in contrast to the rhyming couplet—would have provided Surrey with ample opportunity to produce a more fully adequate representation of the Aeneid, with regard to both content and style, than his couplet rivals could. His prosody is certainly more Virgilian than, for example, Douglas's; thus he succeeds, too, where Douglas fails, in giving his translation a certain degree of epic dignity and stateliness. But he fails—where Douglas succeeds so generously—in reproducing the richness of Virgil's narrative. Indeed, the barrenness of the narrative that stems from the compressed literalness of Surrey's mode of translation works against the general dignity of his style, and detracts considerably from the impression of epic elevation that he often is able to create. Thus, failing to take positive advantage of his verse form both with regard to scope and style the use Surrey made of it can also be said to affect his version in a negative way. The freedom that blank verse gives leads sometimes to his telescoping lines and sentences whose concise brevity thus accumulated leads to obscurity of expression and, combined with his literalism, results in compression and intricate phrasing that reveals itself again and again with disturbing effect.
If Surrey differs from Douglas in his conciseness, he also does so in his attempt to recreate the general effect of Virgil's epic style. In this important respect, his mode of rendering the original provides a closer relation to Virgil than Douglas's does. His use of blank verse allows him to reproduce something of the flow of Virgil's hexameter verse, even though his lines tend to be end-stopped, lacking the flexibility achieved by later masters of this verse form. His diction is plain but dignified, while his numerous Latinisms—often in the form of literal renderings of Latin constructions—give his translations a Latinate flavor that is not out of place as long as this does not obscure the sense. Although compressed and intricate, and therefore awkward at times, his overall mode of expression is characterized by restraint and dignity. Thus Dryden's characterization of Virgil's style as "majesty in the midst of plainness" might also be applied to Surrey, although it may be objected that there is too much plainness—even an austere barrenness—that marks the literal conciseness of his rendering and tends to counteract the element of dignity and elevation.
As pointed out earlier, Surrey is known to have borrowed words and phrases from Gavin Douglas's translation, but he does not seem to have taken anything more fundamental from him. Apart from the fact that they are both faithful to the original—Douglas to the sense, Surrey to the actual words and structure of the lines—this feature underlines the characteristic difference between them: Douglas's generous expansiveness, and Surrey's austere conciseness, providing the hallmark of their respective translations. Surrey's fame resides to a large extent in his role as an innovator: his introduction of blank verse, as well as the English sonnet form, represents his major contributions to English literature. But his use of blank verse within the context of the tradition of Aeneid translation did not prove to be of the same importance—strangely enough one might say, because it seems obvious that the inherent flexibility of this verse form should be admirably suited to translating Virgil's unrhymed hexameters. In fact, blank verse was not used again in a translation of the Aeneid until the eighteenth century. Thus Surrey's most important contribution to the tradition of Aeneid translation probably lies in the attempt he made to reproduce something of Virgil's poetic style—the dignity and the formal epic quality of his expression. Thus, in spite of the fact that the English language during the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century was regarded per se as uneloquent, it has been maintained from early on that style was Surrey's "predominant poetical virtue." In this perspective, Surrey's translation might possibly be seen to represent something of a breakthrough in the history of Virgil translation. However, it has also been said that Surrey created a new poetic diction, and yet this hardly emerges in the diction of his Virgil translations, which is certainly not ornate or poetic, a certain element of epic dignity being achieved by the use of archaisms and Latinisms. Thus, apart from some instances of adjectives ending in–y, Surrey's translations contain no sign of what later became known as "poetic diction."
One year after Surrey's translations were published, Thomas Phaer's version of the first seven Books of the Aeneid appeared, in 1558. In 1562, Books VIII and IX and part of Book X were added, and in 1573, Phaer's work was reprinted with the additional Books of the Aeneid added by Thomas Twyne. Later, in 1584, the whole translation was again reprinted with the addition of Mapheius Vegius's Book XIII translated by Twyne. Further reprints followed in 1596, 1600, 1607, and 1620. The lavish praise bestowed on Phaer, and the many reprintings of this translation, indicate the high esteem in which it was held; indeed, it was not until 1632 that the next translation of the whole Aeneid, by John Vicars, appeared.
The reason for this esteem was clearly patriotic in relation to the primary effect of developing the vernacular and enriching its literature, but was probably also a result of the educational slant that translations of the classics often had during the sixteenth century in England. An examination of Phaer's translation confirms this basically practical attitude to translation, including the aim of educating and informing his less learned readers. Hence, his basic mode of translation is one of general and even extreme literalism, marked by a plodding concern to reproduce the meaning of Virgil's lines as closely as possible, almost line by line. Indeed, one cannot help being struck by the fact that, for example, in his rendering of these two Books Phaer's translation is shorter even than Surrey's, whose versions are remarkable for their conciseness, although it must be admitted that Phaer's fourteener line gives him an advantage both over Surrey's use of pentameter and Virgil's hexameter lines in respect to length. Phaer was thus almost able to give a line-for-line rendering, at times even following the structure of Virgil's lines and thus getting something of their effect. However, although the closeness of the rendering is in itself impressive and successful enough in the simple directness of its local effects, in terms of its total effect, the translation can hardly be said to live up to the contemporary acclaim it received. In this connection, however, it needs to be remembered that Phaer and Twyne's translation was the first and only translation of the whole of the Aeneid in modern English until 1632, and was therefore probably worthy of the admiration it then aroused, while its meter, the fourteener, being a storytelling meter and probably the very oldest in the history of English prosody, might at that stage have seemed the most natural to use in a narrative poem. At the same time, Phaer generally manages the meter well: by varying the pauses he is able to avoid the monotony that so easily creeps in if the rhythmic structure becomes too firm and repetitive. But even then the sheer length of the lines affects the momentum of the narrative, which tends to flag as each line "drags its slow length along," at times accompanied by padding to fill in the line. In addition, the phrasing is often intricate, awkward, and crude, and thus these long, cumbersome lines with their awkward phrasing are but seldom alleviated by effects of style—and when they are, the effect is generally lost in the diffuseness of the long line. The diction, too, is generally plain, and the occasional Latinisms usually seem to have been motivated by convenience, so that they convey no significant heightening or enriching effect, and are probably due to the literalism of Phaer's mode of translation. Furthermore, as with Douglas and Surrey, Phaer ignores the historical perspective, Anglicizing references to various personages in the story, with disturbing effect, as when Aeneas, for example, is referred to as "the Troian duke." Similarly, Sinon, who fooled the Trojans about the huge wooden horse left by the Greeks, and thus brought about the fall of Troy, is called "Sir Sinon," and mythological figures such as Juno and Tithonus are referred to as "dame Iuno Queene" and "Sir Tython," respectively, to mention only a few examples of this kind. If we, then, consider Phaer's standing seen in terms of the tradition of Aeneid translation, it is indeed difficult to see that his work had any positive influence on later translations leading up to that of Dryden, although his work was highly praised by his contemporaries. His meter, the fourteener, used for the first time in a translation of the Aeneid, cannot have made a very convincing impression on later translators of Virgil's epic up to the time of Dryden, since it was used only once: in a minor contribution to the tradition—a translation of Book II by Sir Thomas Wrothe—early in the following century.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 IntroductionPart 2 Part I: The Background
Chapter 3 Chapter 1: The Tradition of Aeneid Translation in Britain
Chapter 4 Chapter 2: The Art and Theory of Translation
Chapter 5 Chapter 3: The Sources
Part 6 Part II: From Virgil to Dryden
Chapter 7 Chapter 4: Publius Vergilius Maro — Roman Virgil: His Aeneidos
Chapter 8 Chapter 5: John Drydan — English Virgil: His Æneis