Theocritus Part 1

Theocritus.

by Theocritus.

PREFACE.

I had intended translating all or nearly all these Idylls into blank verse, as the natural equivalent of Greek or of Latin hexameters; only deviating into rhyme where occasion seemed to demand it. But I found that other metres had their special advantages: the fourteen-syllable line in particular has that, among others, of containing about the same number of syllables as an ordinary line of Theocritus. And there is also no doubt something gained by variety.

Several recent writers on the subject have laid down that every translation of Greek poetry, especially bucolic poetry, must be in rhyme of some sort. But they have seldom stated, and it is hard to see, why.

There is no rhyme in the original, and _prima facie_ should be none in the translation. Professor Blackie has, it is true, pointed out the "a.s.sonances, alliterations, and rhymes," which are found in more or less abundance in Ionic Greek.[A] These may of course be purely accidental, like the hexameters in Livy or the blank-verse lines in Mr. d.i.c.kens's prose: but accidental or not (it may be said) they are there, and ought to be recognised. May we not then recognise them by introducing similar a.s.sonances, etc., here and there into the English version? or by availing ourselves of what Professor Blackie again calls attention to, the "compensating powers"[B] of English? I think with him that it was hard to speak of our language as one which "transforms _boos megaloio boeien_ into 'great ox's hide.'" Such phrases as 'The Lord is a man of war,' 'The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,' are to my ear quite as grand as Homer: and it would be equally fair to ask what we are to make of a language which transforms Milton's line into [Greek: e shalpigx ohy proshephe ton hoplismhenon hochlon.][C] But be this as it may, these phenomena are surely too rare and too arbitrary to be adequately represented by any regularly recurring rhyme: and the question remains, what is there in the unrhymed original to which rhyme answers?

To me its effect is to divide the verse into couplets, triplets, or (if the word may include them all) _stanzas_ of some kind. Without rhyme we have no apparent means of conveying the effect of stanzas. There are of course devices such as repeating a line or part of a line at stated intervals, as is done in 'Tears, idle tears' and elsewhere: but clearly none of these would be available to a translator. Where therefore he has to express stanzas, it is easy to see that rhyme may be admissible and even necessary. Pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and the _In Memoriam_ stanza for some one of Horace's metres. Where the heroes of Virgil's Eclogues sing alternately four lines each, Gray's quatrain seems to suggest itself: and where a similar case occurs in these Idylls (as for instance in the ninth) I thought it might be met by taking whatever received English stanza was nearest the required length.

Pope's couplet again may possibly best convey the pomposity of some Idylls and the point of others. And there may be divers considerations of this kind. But, speaking generally, where the translator has not to intimate stanzas--where he has on the contrary to intimate that there are none--rhyme seems at first sight an intrusion and a _suggestio falsi_.

No doubt (as has been observed) what 'Pastorals' we have are mostly written in what is called the heroic measure. But the reason is, I suppose, not far to seek. Dryden and Pope wrote 'heroics,' not from any sense of their fitness for bucolic poetry, but from a sense of their universal fitness: and their followers copied them. But probably no scholar would affirm that any poem, original or translated, by Pope or Dryden or any of their school, really resembles in any degree the bucolic poetry of the Greeks. Mr. Morris, whose poems appear to me to resemble it more almost than anything I have ever seen, of course writes what is technically Pope's metre, and equally of course is not of Pope's school. Whether or no Pope and Dryden _intended_ to resemble the old bucolic poets in style is, to say the least, immaterial. If they did not, there is no reason whatever why any of us who do should adopt their metre: if they did and failed, there is every reason why we should select a different one.

Professor Conington has adduced one cogent argument against blank verse: that is, that hardly any of us can write it.[D] But if this is so--if the 'blank verse' which we write is virtually prose in disguise--the addition of rhyme would only make it rhymed prose, and we should be as far as ever from "verse really deserving the name."[E] Unless (which I can hardly imagine) the mere incident of 'terminal consonance' can const.i.tute that verse which would not be verse independently, this argument is equally good against attempting verse of any kind: we should still be writing disguised, and had better write undisguised, prose.

Prose translations are of course tenable, and are (I am told) advocated by another very eminent critic. These considerations against them occur to one: that, among the characteristics of his original which the translator is bound to preserve, one is that he wrote metrically; and that the prattle which pa.s.ses muster, and sounds perhaps rather pretty than otherwise, in metre, would in plain prose be insufferable. Very likely some exceptional sort of prose may be meant, which would dispose of all such difficulties: but this would be harder for an ordinary writer to evolve out of his own brain, than to construct any species of verse for which he has at least a model and a precedent.

These remarks are made to shew that my metres were not selected, as it might appear, at hap-hazard. Metre is not so unimportant as to justify that. For the rest, I have used Briggs's edition[F] (_Poetae Bucolici Graeci_), and have never, that I am aware of, taken refuge in any various reading where I could make any sense at all of the text as given by him.

Sometimes I have been content to put down what I felt was a wrong rendering rather than omit; but only in cases where the original was plainly corrupt, and all suggested emendations seemed to me hopelessly wide of the mark. What, for instance, may be the true meaning of [Greek: bolbhost tist kochlhiast] in the fourteenth Idyll I have no idea. It is not very important. And no doubt the sense of the last two lines of the "_Death of Adonis_" is very unlikely to be what I have made it. But no suggestion that I met with seemed to me satisfactory or even plausible: and in this and a few similar cases I have put down what suited the context. Occasionally also, as in the Idyll here printed last--the one lately discovered by Bergk, which I elucidated by the light of Fritzsche's conjectures--I have availed myself of an opinion which Professor Conington somewhere expresses, to the effect that, where two interpretations are tenable, it is lawful to accept for the purposes of translation the one you might reject as a commentator. [Greek: tetootaiost] has I dare say nothing whatever to do with 'quartan fever.'

On one point, rather a minor one, I have ventured to dissent from Professor Blackie and others: namely, in retaining the Greek, instead of adopting the Roman, nomenclature. Professor Blackie says[G] that there are some men by whom "it is esteemed a grave offence to call Jupiter Jupiter," which begs the question: and that Jove "is much more musical"

than Zeus, which begs another. Granting (what might be questioned) that _Zeus, Aphrodite_, and _Eros_ are as absolutely the same individuals with _Jupiter, Venus_, and _Cupid_ as _Odysseus_ undoubtedly is with _Ulysses_--still I cannot see why, in making a version of (say) Theocritus, one should not use by way of preference those names by which he invariably called them, and which are characteristic of him: why, in turning a Greek author into English, we should begin by turning all the proper names into Latin. Professor Blackie's authoritative statement[H]

that "there are whole idylls in Theocritus which would sound ridiculous in any other language than that of Tam o' Shanter" I accept of course unhesitatingly, and should like to see it acted upon by himself or any competent person. But a translator is bound to interpret all as best he may: and an attempt to write Tam o' Shanter's language by one who was not Tam o' Shanter's countryman would, I fear, result in something more ridiculous still.

C.S.C.

*** For Cometas, in Idyll V., read _Comatas_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: BLACKIE'S _Homer_, Vol. I., pp. 413, 414.]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_., page 377, etc.]

[Footnote C: Professor Kingsley.]

[Footnote D: Preface to CONINGTON'S _aeneid_, page ix.]

[Footnote E: _Ibid_.]

[Footnote F: Since writing the above lines I have had the advantage of seeing Mr. Paley's _Theocritus_, which was not out when I made my version.]

[Footnote G: BLACKIE'S _Homer_, Preface, pp. xii., xiii.]

[Footnote H: BLACKIE'S _Homer_, Vol. I., page 384.]

IDYLL I.

The Death of Daphnis.

_THYRSIS. A GOATHERD._

THYRSIS.

Sweet are the whispers of yon pine that makes Low music o'er the spring, and, Goatherd, sweet Thy piping; second thou to Pan alone.

Is his the horned ram? then thine the goat.

Is his the goat? to thee shall fall the kid; And toothsome is the flesh of unmilked kids.

GOATHERD.

Shepherd, thy lay is as the noise of streams Falling and falling aye from yon tall crag.

If for their meed the Muses claim the ewe, Be thine the stall-fed lamb; or if they choose The lamb, take thou the scarce less-valued ewe.

THYRSIS.

Pray, by the Nymphs, pray, Goatherd, seat thee here Against this hill-slope in the tamarisk shade, And pipe me somewhat, while I guard thy goats.

GOATHERD.

I durst not, Shepherd, O I durst not pipe At noontide; fearing Pan, who at that hour Rests from the toils of hunting. Harsh is he; Wrath at his nostrils aye sits sentinel.

But, Thyrsis, thou canst sing of Daphnis' woes; High is thy name for woodland minstrelsy: Then rest we in the shadow of the elm Fronting Priapus and the Fountain-nymphs.

There, where the oaks are and the Shepherd's seat, Sing as thou sang'st erewhile, when matched with him Of Libya, Chromis; and I'll give thee, first, To milk, ay thrice, a goat--she suckles twins, Yet ne'ertheless can fill two milkpails full;-- Next, a deep drinking-cup, with sweet wax scoured, Two-handled, newly-carven, smacking yet 0' the chisel. Ivy reaches up and climbs About its lip, gilt here and there with sprays Of woodbine, that enwreathed about it flaunts Her saffron fruitage. Framed therein appears A damsel ('tis a miracle of art) In robe and snood: and suitors at her side With locks fair-flowing, on her right and left, Battle with words, that fail to reach her heart.

She, laughing, glances now on this, flings now Her chance regards on that: they, all for love Wearied and eye-swoln, find their labour lost.

Carven elsewhere an ancient fisher stands On the rough rocks: thereto the old man with pains Drags his great casting-net, as one that toils Full stoutly: every fibre of his frame Seems fis.h.i.+ng; so about the gray-beard's neck (In might a youngster yet) the sinews swell.

Hard by that wave-beat sire a vineyard bends Beneath its graceful load of burnished grapes; A boy sits on the rude fence watching them.

Near him two foxes: down the rows of grapes One ranging steals the ripest; one a.s.sails With wiles the poor lad's scrip, to leave him soon Stranded and supperless. He plaits meanwhile With ears of corn a right fine cricket-trap, And fits it on a rush: for vines, for scrip, Little he cares, enamoured of his toy.

The cup is hung all round with lissom briar, Triumph of aeolian art, a wondrous sight.

It was a ferryman's of Calydon: A goat it cost me, and a great white cheese.

Ne'er yet my lips came near it, virgin still It stands. And welcome to such boon art thou, If for my sake thou'lt sing that lay of lays.

I jest not: up, lad, sing: no songs thou'lt own In the dim land where all things are forgot.

THYSIS [_sings_].

_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_.

The voice of Thyrsis. aetna's Thyrsis I.

Where were ye, Nymphs, oh where, while Daphnis pined?

In fair Peneus' or in Pindus' glens?

For great Anapus' stream was not your haunt, Nor aetna's cliff, nor Acis' sacred rill.

_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_.

O'er him the wolves, the jackals howled o'er him; The lion in the oak-copse mourned his death.

_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_.

The kine and oxen stood around his feet, The heifers and the calves wailed all for him.

_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_.

First from the mountain Hermes came, and said, "Daphnis, who frets thee? Lad, whom lov'st thou so?"

_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_.

Came herdsmen, shepherds came, and goatherds came; All asked what ailed the lad. Priapus came And said, "Why pine, poor Daphnis? while the maid Foots it round every pool and every grove, (_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_) "O lack-love and perverse, in quest of thee; Herdsman in name, but goatherd rightlier called.

With eyes that yearn the goatherd marks his kids Run riot, for he fain would frisk as they: (_Begin, sweet Maids, begin the woodland song_): "With eyes that yearn dost thou too mark the laugh Of maidens, for thou may'st not share their glee."