ANDREW LANG WE NEED HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK

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Page 10

Homer does not appear to have been acquainted with rubies; but what of that? And how noble, how eminently worthy of Pope it is to add that the ghosts "howl"! I tried to make them gibber, but ghosts do gibber in Homer (though not in this passage), so Pope, Fenton, Broome, and Co., make them howl.

No, Pope is not lightly to be rivalled by a modern translator. The following example, a far-off following of a noted contemporary poet, may be left unsigned--

"Wretches, the bane hath befallen, the night and the blight of your sin Sweeps like a shroud o'er the faces and limbs that were gladsome therein; And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all men are wet, And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the gateway are met, Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered, Hell opens her lips, And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, and sickens in spasm of eclipse."

The next is longer and slower: the poet has a difficulty in telling his story:

"Wretches," he cried, "what doom is this? what night Clings like a face-cloth to the face of each,-- Sweeps like a shroud o'er knees and head? for lo! The windy wail of death is up, and tears On every cheek are wet; each shining wall And beauteous interspace of beam and beam Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door Flicker, and fill the portals and the court-- Shadows of men that hellwards yearn--and now The sun himself hath perished out of heaven, And all the land is darkened with a mist."

That could never be mistaken for a version by the Laureate, as perhaps any contemporary hack's works might have been taken for Pope's. The difficulty, perhaps, lies here: any one knows where to have Pope, any one knows that he will evade the mot propre, though the precise evasion he may select is hard to guess. But the Laureate would keep close to his text, and yet would write like himself, very beautifully, but not with an Homeric swiftness and strength. Who is to imitate him? As to Mr. William Morris, he might be fabled to render [Greek text] "niddering wights," but beyond that, conjecture is baffled.

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The Greek Word Course : Lessons in Ancient Greek

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lang-homer.asp?pg=10