If the work is to be translated
into prose, let it be into such prose as we write and speak among
ourselves. A volume of poetical prose, i.e. affected prose, had
better be in verse outright at once. Poetical prose is never
tolerable for more than a very short bit at a time. And it may be
questioned whether poetry itself is not better kept short in ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred.
Translating the Odyssey
If you wish to preserve the spirit of a dead author, you must not
skin him, stuff him, and set him up in a case. You must eat him,
digest him and let him live in you, with such life as you have, for
better or worse. The difference between the Andrew Lang manner of
translating the Odyssey and mine is that between making a mummy and a
baby. He tries to preserve a corpse (for the Odyssey is a corpse to
all who need Lang's translation), whereas I try to originate a new
life and one that is instinct (as far as I can effect this) with the
spirit though not the form of the original.
They say no woman could possibly have written the Odyssey. To me, on
the other hand, it seems even less possible that a man could have
done so. As for its being by a practised and elderly writer, nothing
but youth and inexperience could produce anything so naive and so
lovely. That is where the work will suffer by my translation. I am
male, practised and elderly, and the trail of sex, age and experience
is certain to be over my translation.
Pages:
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281