Sunday,
November 19, 2006
"The Aeneid",
the Story of
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
Italians have it right when they insist "traduttore
traditore," for every
translator is, of necessity, a traitor to the original text.
Robert
Frost hit the nail on the head: When asked what poetry is, he said,..... it's what's lost in
translation.
But, Thomas Cahill in reviewing Robert Fagles translation,reports that it
is magnificent. When you are faced with something incredibly complex yet
beautifully simple, you must bow your head before inexplicable greatness.
That's the case here.
Aeneas,
the prince escaping the ruin of
We know that Virgil, dying in 19 BC (less than a month before his 51st
birthday), left instructions for "The Aeneid"
to be burned. He had not been able to finish it and thought it unworthy of
publication. Caesar Augustus,
Here we touch on "The Aeneid's" less savory
associations as propaganda for a merciless politician. Try though he may in his
fine postscript, Fagles cannot completely exonerate Vir g! il,
except by pointing to "the price of empire" as a lesson for our time
and by asserting that Virgil "may speak, from a distance that seems to
narrow every year, to our own history as well."
Another,
perhaps deeper problem with the poem is the undeniable blandness of its central
character, necessitated, I suspect, because he is a stand-in for Augustus. Your
only choice with Augustus was to make him nobly bland or a caricature with
blood dripping from both sides of his mouth. Aeneas has none of the tender
humanity of Hector in "The Iliad," none of the robust, sometimes
comic craftiness of Odysseus in "The Odyssey." He's a symbol with
even less individuality than Everyman (who is no one in particular).
On the other hand, Aeneas gives splendid speeches.......
BOOK
REVIEW
Thomas
Cahill Reviewer
Robert
Fagles tackles "The Aeneid"
Sunday,
November 19,2006
Now
here's an unrewarding subject: translation. The Italians have it right when
they insist "traduttore traditore," for
every translator is, of necessity, a traitor to the original text.
Robert
Frost hit the nail on the head: When asked what poetry is, he said, it's what's
lost in translation.
Nevertheless, we all need translators to open to us masterpieces written in
languages we have not enough lifetime to learn. I have
tried a few turns at translation, wishing, for instance, to give readers a
greater sense of the earthiness of the Bible than its reverend and reverent translators
are willing to reveal. But I have never, and will never, attempt to translate
in its entirety a vast masterpiece, one of those monuments more lasting than
bronze that form the foundation of a Great Books course. How could one go about
it, keeping a consistent, yet unflagging, tone for hundreds of pages? And if
the work is poetry, the task would loom like the spinning of straw into gold,
night after horrifying night for years to come.
A new edition of "The Aeneid," Virgil's
imperial masterpiece, has arrived just as the whole world is witnessing the s
t! ress fractures in our own
imperial enterprise. And I'm here to report that it is magnificent. When you
are faced with something incredibly complex yet beautifully simple, you must
bow your head before inexplicable greatness. That's the case with Robert Fagles' translation.
But to leave it at that is still a dishonor to his
accomplishment. One must say more: This work, this miraculous beast of a text,
is so enjoyable that you will hardly know you are reading an ancient
masterpiece. Fagles gives us an "Aeneid" so fresh, so of our moment, that even
classicists may fail to recognize it, so long has the original languished in
the hands of inadequate translators and academic windbags.
How did Fagles do it, this third monumental
achievement in translation (the earlier two being his "Iliad" and
"Odyssey")? I cannot say, because I cannot figure it out. All I can
do is point, like a child watching his first parade, at some of the delights he
has bestowed upon us. Above al l! , there is the forward rhythm. The
"ocean-roll of rhythm" that Tennyson found in Virgil seems present in
Fagles' lines with all its incantatory pressure, yet
never does the translator yield to the temptation of grandiosity. His language
is always our language, spoken as any one of us might speak it if the spirit of
Virgil came to possess us. He begins the famous beginning thus:
Wars and a man I sing an exile
driven on by Fate,
he was the first to flee the coast of Troy,
destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil,
yet many blows he took on land and sea from the gods above
thanks to cruel Juno's relentless rage and many losses
he bore in battle too, before he could found a city....
To help you appreciate the difference between Fagles
and earlier translators, here is the beginning of the translation that many of
us grew up with, C. Day Lewis':
I tell about war and the hero who first from Troy's fron
t! ier,
Displaced by destiny, came to the Lavinian shores,
To Italy a man much travailed on
sea and land
By the powers above, because of the brooding anger of Juno,
Suffering much in war until he could found a city....
Both Lewis and Fagles know that "arms" is
not the best way to translate Virgil's first word, arma.
But Fagles also knows that the word, however
translated, must come first and that Aeneas is "a man," not
"the" man. Latin, lacking articles, requires the English translator
to choose; surely, Aeneas, the prince escaping the ruin of
We know that Virgil, dying in 19 BC (less than a month before his 51st
birthday), left instructions for "The Aeneid"
to be burned. He had not been able to finish it and thou
g! ht it unworthy of publication. Caesar Augustus,
Here we touch on "The Aeneid's" less savory
associations as propaganda for a merciless politician. Try though he may in his
fine postscript, Fagles cannot completely exonerate
Virgil, except by pointing to "the price of empire" as a lesson for
our time and by asserting that Virgil "may speak, from a distance that
seems to narrow every year, to our own history as well." Another, perhaps
deeper problem with the poem is the undeniable blandness of its central
character, necessitated, I suspect, because he is a stand-in for Augustus. Your
only choice with Augustus was to make him nobly bland or a David Levine carica t! ure
with blood dripping from both sides of his mouth. Aeneas has none of the tender
humanity of Hector in "The Iliad," none of the robust, sometimes
comic craftiness of Odysseus in "The Odyssey." He's a symbol with
even less individuality than Everyman (who is no one in particular).
On the other hand, Aeneas gives splendid speeches, as this one after a terrible
storm at sea:
My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now,
we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us
an end to this as well. You've threaded the rocks
resounding with Scylla's howling rabid dogs,
and taken the brunt of the Cyclops' boulders too.
Call up your courage again. Dismiss your grief and fear.A
joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this....
But splendid speeches do not an engrossing hero make. Even the severe
... man of
Night and day the gates of shadowy Death stand open wide,
but to retrace your steps, to climb back to the upper air
there the struggle, there the labor lies....
The way to the Underworld is, in some measure, the way of literature. To be a
writer is to pass the gates of Death, find out what lies beyond and return to
tell a tale. This Virgil succeeds in doing with skill, for he never loses his
sense of the sadness of this world and Fagles
never l! oses Virgil's
thread.
In Book X, Aeneas' enemy Turnus, who means to prevent
him from settling in
The victory of Aeneas the Roman over Turnus the more
real Roman is indeed ambiguous. Even Virgil the propagandist knew that such a
victory had a hollow ring to it. It has been customarily taught that Virgil
meant to go further, not to end with this ambivalent triumph. But it's just
possible that Virgil here is pushing the cost of violence in our faces, as we thi n! k of our own homes and
loved ones and "the great works" that only peace provides.
One thing is certain: "Fortune speeds the bold" or "Fortune favors the brave,"
as an older translation has it. Fortune has certainly favored Fagles for his bravery and sped this bold, unwearied
translator to his tripartite kudos.
Thomas Cahill is the author of "The Hinges of History" series, which
includes "How the Irish Saved Civilization" and, most recently,
"Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of
Feminism, Science, and Art From the Cults of Catholic Europe."
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