Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 01:18:46 +0200 From: Anatoly Vorobey Subject: Joy joy joy C.S.Lewis's book on 16th century literature is so brilliant in style and essence, so vivid and insightful that one wants to dance around chanting passages from it. I just cannot refrain from quoting it; oh, why couldn't he have lived to our times? >From the second paragraph of the book, in the Preface: When I have quoted from neo-Latin authors I have tried to translate them into sixteenth-century English, not simply for the fun of it but to guard the reader from a false impression he might otherwise receive. When passages from Calvin, Scaliger, or Erasmus in modern English jostle passages from vernacular writers with all the flavour of their period about them, it is fatally easy to get the feeling that the Latinists are somehow more enlightened, less remote, less limited by their age, than those who wrote English. It seemed worth some pains to try to remove so serious and so latent a misconception. As I write 'French' not _Francais_, I have also written 'Scotch' not _Scottish_; aware that these great nations do not so call themselves, but claiming the freedom of 'my ain vulgaire'. >From page 80, opened at random. The quote is long and worth it; read it -- I spent much more time typing it in than you'll spend reading it! ---start quote--- The plan of translating the _Aeneid_ had been in Douglas's mind ever since 1501, for in the _Palice_ Venus commissions him to do that work. He finished it in 1513, having spent only eighteen months on the actual translation; but it bears in almost every line the impress of a mind so long steeped in Virgil that when he set pen to paper he knew exactly what had to be done and many of his problems (we may suppose) had been subconsciously solved. If I speak of this great work at some length I trust the reader will bear with me. Its greatness easily escapes modern eyes. The public for which it was intended no longer exists; the language in which it was written now awakes false associations or none; its very original has been obscured first by classicism and then by the decay of classicism. An effort is required of us. The _XIII Bukes of Eneados_, as Douglas called his version, were undertaken partly as a correction of Caxton's _Eneydon_ (1490) which Douglas claims to have read 'with harmes at his hert', and he piques himself on the fidelity of his own version and even hopes that it will be fit for use in the schoolroom: a neidfull wark To thame wald Virgill to childryng expone; For quha list note my versis one by one Sall fynd tharin hys sentens every deill And almaiste word by word. (_Dyrectiown of his Buik_) The modern reader, whose Latin is likely to be better than his Scots [1], will test this claim most easily in the reverse manner - that is by keeping an open Virgil on his knees for glossary and comment while he is reading Douglas. He will find that _almaiste word by word_ is an exaggeration: Douglas expands freely both for literary effect and also for the inclusion of explanations, and himself, in anotherplace, has reminded us that Saint Gregory 'forbiddis us to translait word eftir word' [2]. But if he often inserts, he never omits; and the two texts are generally so close that a glance at one serves to elucidate anything that is difficult in the other. At worst, Douglas is a very honest translator and always lets you see how he is taking his Latin; his mistakes - for some he makes - are never sheltered by vagueness of Dryden or Pope. His Virgil differs from the received text of our own days [...] Poetically, the first impression which Douglas's version makes on a modern English reader is one of quaintness. I am glad that the question of quaintness should cross our path so early in the book; let us get it out of the way once and for all. To the boor all that is alien to his own suburb and his 'specious present' (of about five years) is quaint. Until that reaction has been corrected all study of old books is unprofitable. To allow for that general quaintness which mere distance bestows and thus to be able to distinguish between authors who were really quaint in their own day and authors who seem quaint to us solely by the accident of our position - this is the very _pons asinorum_ of literary history. An easy and obvious instance would be Milton's 'city or suburban' in _Paradise Regained_. Everyone sees that Milton could not have foretold the associations that these words now have. In the same way, when Douglas speaks of the Salii 'hoppand and siggand wonder merely' in their 'toppit hattis' it is easy to remember that 'top hats', in our sense, were unknown to him. But it is not so easy to see aright the real qualities of his Scots language in general. Since his time it has become a _patois_, redolent (for those reared in Scotland) of the nursery and the kaleyard, and (for the rest of us) recalling Burns and the dialectal parts of the Waverley novels. Hence the laughter to which some readers will be moved when Douglas calls Leucaspis a 'skippair', or Priam 'the auld gray', or Vulcan the 'gudeman' of Venus; when _comes_ becomes 'trew marrow', and Styx, like Yarrow, has 'braes', when the Trojans 'kecklit all' (_risere_) at the man thrown overboard in the boat race, or, newly landed in Latium, regaled themselves with 'scones'. For we see the language that Douglas wrote 'through the wrong end of the long telescope of time' [3]. We forget that in his day it was a courtly and a literary language, not made for village churls But for high dames and mightly earls. Until we have trained ourselves to feel that 'gudeman' is no more rustic or homely than 'husband' we are no judges of Douglas as a translator of Virgil. If we fail in the training, then it is we and not the poet who are provincials. About this first mental adjustment there can be no dispute; but there is another adjustment which I think necessary and which may not be so easily agreed to. Virgil describes Aeneas, on hearing Turnus's challenge, as _laetitia exsultans_; Douglas says 'he hoppit up for joy, he was so glad'. To get over the low associations of the verb 'hop' in modern English is the first adjustment. But even when this has been done, there remains something - a certain cheerful briskness - in Douglas which may seem to us very un-Virgilian. Here is another example; Virgil writes: Quamvis increpitent socii et vi cursus in altum Vela voccet, possisque sinus implere secundos. (iii. 454) Douglas translates: Ya, thocht thi fallowis cry out, Hillir haill! On burd! ane fair wind blawis betwix twa schetis! [Hillir hail - a nautical cry; On burd - "aboard"] It is admirably vivid; but it sounds very unlike the Virgil we knew at school [4]. Let us suspend judgement and try another passage. lumenque juventae Purpureum et laetos oculis adflarat honores. (i. 590) Douglas says that Aenaes' mother made him 'Lyk till ane yonkeir with twa lauchand ene' [lauchand ene - "laughing eyes"]. [5] The picture is fresh and attractive; somehow unlike the Aeneas of our imagination. But is that because Virgil has never said anything about the beauty of Aeneas, both here and in other places? On the contrary, Virgil quite clerly has told us that his hero was of godlike beauty. There has been something in our minds, but not in the mind of Douglas, which dimmed the picture; our idea of the great king and warrior and founder apparently shrinks (as Virgil's and Douglas's did not) from the delighted vision of male beauty. Douglas shocks us by being closer to Virgil than we are. Once a man's eyes have been opened to this, he will find instances everywhere. _Rosea cervice refulsit_: 'her nek schane like until the rois in May' [6] Do you prefer Dryden's "she turned and made appear Her neck refulgent"? But _refulsit_ cannot possible have had for a Roman ear the 'classical' quality which 'refulgent' has for an English. It must have felt much more like 'schane'. And _rosea_ has disappeared altogether in Dryden's version - and with it half the sensuous vitality of the image. Thus, again, Douglas translates _omnibus in templis matrum choris_ by 'in caroling the lusty ladeis went'. If this seems altogether too merry and too medieval, turn to Dryden again, and you will find that Dryden has flatly refused to translate those five words at all. And that brings us to the real point. It is hard to blame Dryden for suppressing _matrum chorus_. In the style which he is using it simply cannot be translated. As long as we are under the spell of schoolroom 'classicality' we can do nothing; 'women', 'wives', 'matrons' are all equally fatal. But it will go at once and delightfully into the medieval line about ladies 'caroling'. And the reason is that at this point there is a real affinity between the ancient and the medieval world, and a real separation between both of them and the modern. And as soon as we become aware of this we realize what it is that has made so many things in Douglas seem to us strangely un-Virgilian. It is not the real Virgil; it is that fatal 'classical' misconception of all ancient poets which the humanists have fastened upon our education - the spectral solemnity, the gradus epithets, the dictionary language, the decorum which avoid every contact with the senses and the soil. (Dryden tells us that though he knew _mollis amaracus_ was sweet marjoram, he did not so translate it, for fear 'those village words' should give the reader 'a mean idea of the thing'). Time after time Douglas is nearer to the original than any version could be which kept within the limits of later classicism. And that is almost another way of saying that the real Virgil is very much less 'classical' than we had supposed. To read the Latin again with Douglas's version fresh in our minds is like seeing a favourite picture after it has been cleaned. Half the 'richness' and the 'sobriety' which we have been taught to admire turns out to have been only dirt; the 'brown trees' disappear and where the sponge has passed the glowing reds, the purples, and the transparent blues leap into life. ---end quote--- [1] Ha! [2] Nice; what is the source of this? [3] !!! where is this metaphor coming from? [4] Ha ha! [5] I wasn't sure I understand the rest of the passage either, so I looked it up in Dryden's translation and it reads -- "And giv'n his rolling eyes a sparkling grace, // And breath'd a youthful vigor on his face;". [6] I presume schane is "shone". Yours, Anatoly. -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton