EDITOR’S NOTE

Professor John Stuart Blackie [1809-1895], in his day fondly called “Scotland’s greatest Greek scholar,” began his translation of Æschylus when he was still comparatively a young man, in 1837-8, and he did not complete it, working intermittently, until 1846. Even then, there was a process of revision and correction to be gone through, which carried on the work by a further term of three or four years.

The translation had occupied twelve years, says Miss Stoddart, in her biography (1895), but only the first three and the last three of those years were specially devoted to the work. Carlyle interested himself in finding a London publisher for the translation, and he characteristically mingled his praise of it with blame. He spoke of it indeed as “spirited and lively to a high degree,” and added, “the grimmer my protest against your having gone into song at all with the business.” It was Professor Aytoun who suggested the rhymed choruses. Leigh Hunt wrote to Blackie, approving where Carlyle had demurred. He said: “Your version is right masculine and Æschylean, strong, musical, conscious of the atmosphere of mystery and terror which it breathes in;” and he especially admired the poetic interpretation given “to the lyrical nature of these fine Cassandra-voiced ringing old dramas.”

The following is a list of the chief English translators of Æschylus:—

The Tragedies translated into English Verse; R. Potter, 1777, 1779.

The Seven Tragedies literally translated into English Prose, from the Text of Blomfield and Schütz, 1822, 1827.

Literal translation by T. A. Buckley, 1849.

The Lyrical Dramas . . . into English Verse, J. S. Blackie, 1850; into English Prose, F. A. Paley, 1864, 1891; E. H. Plumptre, 1868, 1873; Anna Swanwick, 1873; from a revised text, W. Headlam, 1900, etc.

The Seven Plays in English Verse; L. Campbell, 1890.

The Agamemnon was translated by Dean Milman, 1865; and “transcribed” by Robert Browning, 1877. A. W. Verrall’s edition of the text, with commentary and translation, appeared in 1889.

The most important of the earlier editions of the text was that by Stanley; of the more recent, that by Schütz, Wellauer, and Hermann.

PREFACE

{1}

The poet who publishes an original work, or the painter who exhibits the product of his own brush, does well, in the general case, to spare himself the trouble of any sort of introductory exposition or explanation; for the public are apt to look upon all such preambles as a sort of forestalling of their own critical rights: besides that a good work of art contains within itself all that is necessary to unfold its own story to an intelligent spectator. A translator, however, is differently situated. In interposing himself between the original author and the public, he occupies the position of an optical artist, who, when he presents to the infirm human eye the instrument that is to enable it to scan the path of the stars, is bound, not merely to guarantee the beauty, but to explain to the intelligent spectator the principle, and to make intelligible the reality of the spectacle. Or, as all similes limp, we may say that a translator stands to the public in the position of the old Colchian sorceress, who having cut a live body in pieces, and

submitted it to a new fermentation in a magic pot, engaged to produce it again re-invigorated in all its completeness. The spectators of such a process have a right to know, not only that something—it may be a very beautiful and a very attractive thing—has come out of the cauldron, but also that the identical thing put in has come out without transmutation or transformation. And if there has been transmutation or transformation to any extent, they are entitled to know how far.

Now, with regard to poetical translation, I honestly confess that I consider the reproduction, according to the German idea of a facsimile in all respects corresponding to the original, an impossible problem. In the alembic of the translator’s mind it is not merely that the original elements of the organic whole, being disintegrated, are to be restored, but the elements out of which the restoration is to be made, are altogether different; as if a man should be required to make a counterpart to a silk vesture with cotton twist, or to copy a glowing Venus of Titian in chalk. The reproduction, in such a case, can never be perfect; the copy may be something like—very like—the original, but it is not the same; it may be better in some points, and in some points worse. Just so in language. It is impossible sometimes to translate from one language into another. {2} Greek, for instance, is a language so redundant with rich efflorescence, so tumid with luxuriant growth and overgrowth of all kinds, that our temperate language, unless it allow

itself to run into sheer madness, must often refuse to follow it. Like a practised posture-maker or expert ballet-dancer, the old Hellenic dialect can caper gracefully through movements that, if attempted, would twist our English tongue into distortion or dislocation. Æschylus, in particular, was famous, even amongst the Greeks, for the fearless, masculine licence with which he handled the most flexible of all languages. This licence I profess to follow only where I can do so intelligibly and gracefully. The reader must not expect to find, in the guise of the English language, an image of Æschylus in every minute verbal feature, such as its gigantic outline has been sketched by Aristophanes.

Some men of literary note, in the present day, observing the great difficulties with which poetical translators have to contend, especially when using a language of inferior compass, have been of opinion that the task ought not to be attempted at all—that all poetical translations, from Greek at least into English, should be done in prose; and, in confirmation of this opinion, they point to the English translation of the Hebrew Bible as a model. But if, as Southey says, “a translation is good precisely as it faithfully represents the matter, manner, and spirit of the original,”1 it is difficult to see how this doctrine can be entertained. Poetry is distinguished from prose more by the manner than by the matter; and rhythmical regularity or verse is precisely that quality which distinguishes the manner of poetry from that of prose. In one sense, and in the best sense, Plato and Richter and Jeremy Taylor are poets; in another sense, and in the best sense, Æschylus and Dante and Shakespere are philosophers; but that which a

poet as a poet has, and a philosopher as a philosopher has not, is verse; and this element the advocates of a prose translation of poetical works are content to miss out! That the argument from the English translation of the Bible is not applicable to every case, will appear plain to any one who will figure to himself Robert Burns or Horace or Beranger in a prose dress. In the Bible we seek for the simplicity of religious inculcation or devout meditation, and would consider the finest rhythmical decorations out of place. Besides, the style of the Hebrew poetry is eminently simple; and the rhythmical element of language, so far as I can learn, was never highly cultivated by the Jews, whose mission on earth was of a different kind. The Greeks, on the other hand, were eminently a poetical people; the poetry of their drama, though not without its {3} own simplicity, is, in respect of mere linguistic organism, of a highly decorated order; and by nothing is that decoration so marked as by a systematic attention to rhythm. I consider,

therefore, that prose translations of the Greek dramatists will never satisfy the just demands of a cultivated taste, for the plain reason that they omit that element which is most characteristic of the manner of the original.

I am persuaded that the demand for prose translations of poets had arisen, in this country, more from a sort of desperate reaction against certain vicious principles of the old English school of translation, than from a serious consideration either of the nature of the thing, or of the capacity of our noble language. In Germany, I do not find that this notion has ever been entertained; plainly because the German poetical translations did not err, like our English ones, in conspiring, by every sort of fine flourishing and delicate furbishment, to obscure or to blot out what was most characteristic in their originals. The proper problem of an English translator is not how to say a thing as the author would have said it, had he been an Englishman; but how, through the medium of the English language, to make the English reader feel both what he said and how he said it, being a Greek. Now, any one who is familiar with the general run of English rhythmical translations, of which Pope’s Iliad is the pattern, must be aware that they have too

often been executed under the influence of the former of these principles rather than the latter. In Pope’s Homer, and in Sotheby’s also, I must add, we find many, perhaps all the finest passages very finely done; but so as Pope or Sotheby might have done themselves in an original poem written at the present day, while that which is most peculiarly Homeric, a certain blunt naturalness and a talkative simplicity, we do not find in these translators at all. The very things which most strike the eye of the accomplished connoisseur, and feed the meditations of the student of human nature, are omitted.

Now, I at once admit that a good prose translation—that is to say, a prose translation done by a poet or a man of poetical culture—of such an author as Homer, is preferable, for many purposes, to a poetical translation so elegantly defaced as that of Pope. A prose translation, also, of any poet, done accurately in a prosaic style by a proser, however much of a parody or a caricature in point of taste, may not be without its use, if in no other way, as a ready check on the free licence of omission or inoculation which rhythmical translators are so fond to usurp. But it is a mistake to suppose, because Pope, under the influence of Louis XIV. and Queen Anne, could not {4} write a good poetical translation of Homer, that therefore such a work is beyond the compass of the English language.2 I believe that, if Alfred Tennyson were to give the world a translation of the Iliad in the measure of Locksley Hall, he would cut Pope out of the market of the million, even at this eleventh hour. We are, in the present epoch of our

literary history, arrived at a very favourable moment for producing good translations. A band of highly-original and richly-furnished minds has just left the stage, leaving us the legacy of a poetical language which, under their hand, received a degree of rhythmical culture, of which it had been before considered incapable. The example of the Germans, also, now no longer confined to the knowledge of a few, stands forth to show us how excellent poetical translations may be made, free, at least, from those faults from which we have suffered. There is no reason why we should despair of producing poetical versions of the Classics which shall be at once graceful as English compositions, and characteristic as productions of the Greek or Roman mind. I, for one, have already passed this judgment on my own attempt, that if I have failed in these pages to bring out what is Greek and what is Æschylean prominently, in combination with force, grace, and clearness of English expression, it is for lack of skill in the workman, not for want of edge in the tool.

The next question that calls for answer is: it being admitted that a rhythmical translation of a Greek poem is preferable to a prose one, should we content ourselves with a blank rhythm (such as Shelley has used in Queen Mab, and Southey in Thalaba), or should we adopt also the sonorous ornament of rhyme. On this subject, when I first commenced this translation, about twelve years ago, I confess my feelings were strongly against the use of rhyme in translations from the antique; but experience and reflection have taught me considerably to modify, and, in some points of view, altogether to abandon this opinion. With regard to this matter, Southey has expressed himself thus:—“Rhyme is to passages of no inherent merit what rouge and candle-light are to ordinary faces. Merely ornamental passages, also, are aided by it, as foil sets off paste. But when there is either passion or power, the plainer and more straightforward the language can be made, the better.”3 This is the lowest ground on which the plea for rhyme can be put; but even thus, it will be impossible for a discriminating

translator to ward off its application to the Greek tragedy. In all poetry written for music, there will {5} occur, even from the best poets, not a few passages on which the mere reader will pronounce, in the language of Horace, that they are comparatively

“Inopes rerum nugaeque canorae.”

To these, rhyme is indispensable. Without this, these “trifles” will lose that which alone rendered them tolerable to the ancient ear; they will cease to be “canorous.” One must consider at what a disadvantage an ancient composer of “a goat-song” is placed, when the studiously modulated phrase which he adapted to the cheerful chirpings of the lyre, or the tumultuous blasts of the flute, is torn away from that music-watered soil which was its life, and placed dry and bloodless on the desk of a modern reader, beside the thought-pregnant periods of a Coleridge, and the curiously-elaborated stanzas of a Wordsworth. Are we to make him even more blank and disconsolate, by refusing him those tuneful closes of modern rhythmical language, which scarcely our sternest masters of the lyre can afford to disdain? It appears to me that rhyme is so essential an accomplishment of lyrical language, according to English use, that a translator is not doing justice to his author who habitually rejects it. I have accordingly adopted it more or

less in every play, except the Prometheus, the calm statuesque massiveness of which seemed to render the common decorations of lyric poetry dispensable. In the Seven against Thebes, I have, in the first two choral chaunts, rhymed only in the closes; and in the opening chorus of the Agamemnon, I have used irregular rhyme. In the Furies, again, I have allowed myself to be borne along in the most free and luxuriant style of double rhyme of which I was capable, partly, I suppose, because my admiration of that piece stimulated all my energies to their highest pitch; partly, because, there being no question that the lyric metre of the tragedians exhibits the full power of their language, the translator is not doing justice to the work who does not endeavour, as far as may be, to bring out the full power of his. The fact of the matter is, the translator’s art is always more or less of the nature of a compromise. If the indulgence of a luxuriant freedom is apt to trench on accuracy, the observance of a strict verbal accuracy is ill compatible with that

grace and elasticity of movement without which poetry has no existence. In the present translation, I have been willing to try several styles, if not to suit the humour of different readers, (which, however, were anything but an illegitimate object), at least to satisfy myself what could be done.

I shall now say a word on the principles which I have adopted with regard to the representation of the various Greek metres by {6} corresponding varieties of English verse. I say corresponding or analogous emphatically; for, whatever apish tricks the Germans may have taught their pliant tongue to play, the conservative English ear, “peculiarly intolerant of metrical innovations,”4 will not allow itself to be seduced—whether by the arguments of Southey, or the example of Longfellow—from the familiar harmonies of our old Saxon measures. Nor, indeed, is this stiffness of native metrical habit, a circumstance at all to be regretted. Every language has its own measures, which are natural and easy to it, as every man has his own way of walking, which he cannot forego for another, without affectation. I do not think Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs a whit the better, but rather the worse, for being written in the measure of the Odyssey; and the artificial choral versification of Humboldt, Franz, Schoemann, and Müller, in their translations from Æschylus, is, to my ear, mere

metrical monstrosity, which would read much better if it were broken down into plain prose.5 I have, therefore, not attempted anything of this kind in my translation, except accidentally; that is to say, when the Greek measure happened to be at the same time an English measure, as in the case of the Trochaic Tetrameter, of which the reader will find examples in the conclusion of the Agamemnon, and in various parts of the Persians. This measure, as Aristotle informs us,6 is a remnant of the old energetic triple time to which the sportive Bacchic chorus originally danced; and, as it seems to be used by the tragedians in passages where peculiar energy or elevation is intended,7 I do not think the translator is at liberty to confound it in his version with the common dialogue. With regard to the Iambic dialogue itself, there can be no question that our heroic blank verse of ten syllables, both in point of character and compass, is the natural and adequate representative of the Greek trimeter of twelve.8 The Anapæstic verse occasions more difficulty. The {7}

proper nature of this measure, as corresponding to our modern march-time in music, has been pointed out by Müller;9 and in conformity with his views, I have, in my translation, accurately marked the distinction, in the Agamemnon, the Suppliants, and the Persians, between the Anapæstic verses sung by the Chorus to march-time, when entering the Orchestra, and the regular odes or hymns sung after they were arrived at their proper destination round the Thymele. But how are we to render this verse in English? Our own Anapæstic verse, though the same when counted by the fingers, has, if I mistake not, a light, ambling, unsteady air about it, which is quite the reverse of the weighty character of the “equal rhythm,” as the ancients called both it and its counterpart the Dactylic.10 I have, therefore, thought myself safer in using, for this measure, the Trochaic verse of eight syllables, varied with occasional sevens and fives, generally without rhyme, in the Agamemnon with a few rhymes irregularly interspersed. In the Persians only I have made the

experiment, tried also by Connington in the Agamemnon, of rendering the Greek by the common English Anapæsts; the delicate-treading (ἁβροβάται) sons of Susa not seeming to require the same weight and firmness of diction for their sad vaticinations, as the stout-hearted Titan for his words of haughty defiance, and the Herald of the Thunderer for his threats.