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KulakRevolt  1yr ago (anarchonomicon.substack.com)   3382 thread views

Crowned Masterpieces of Eloquence: We used to be a Civilization

anarchonomicon.substack.com

A piece I wrote on one of the most fascinating and incredible thriftstore finds I've ever stumbled upon.

The Edwardians and Victorians were not like us, they believed in a nobility of their political class that's almost impossible to understand or relate to, and that believe, that attribution of nobility is tied up with something even more mysterious: their belief in the fundamental nobility of rhetoric.

Still not sure entirely how I feel about this, or how sure I am of my conclusions but this has had me spellbound in fascination and so I wrote about it.

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Great piece.

I've found I prefer older translations of the classics to newer translations. I've read both Garth's Ovid and Mandelbaum's, the latter in class the former for pleasure. I got so much more out of the former, even though the latter is (according to the academics I know who could actually read it in the original) far more accurate to the original meaning. This piece from the Paris Review actually asks a lot of the same questions comparing different verse translations to a different modern prose translation

Modern Prose:

Some tried to escape by climbing to the hilltops, others, sitting in their curved boats, plied the oars where lately they had been ploughing; some sailed over cornlands, over the submerged roofs of their homes, while some found fish in the topmost branches of the elms. At times it happened that they dropped anchor in green meadows, sometimes the curved keels grazed vineyards that lay beneath them. Where lately sinewy goats cropped the grass, now ugly seals disported themselves. The Nereids wondered to see groves and towns and houses under the water; dolphins took possession of the woods, and dashed against high branches, shaking the oak trees as they knocked against them. Wolves swam among the flocks, and the waves supported tawny lions, and tigers too. The lightning stroke of his strong tusk was of no use, then, to the wild boar, nor his swift legs to the stag—both alike were swept away. Wandering birds searched long for some land where they might rest, till their wings grew weary and they fell into the sea.

Old Verse, by Dryden:

One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne,

and ploughs above, where late he sowed his corn.

Others o’er chimney tops and turrets row,

and drop their anchors on the meads below:

or downward driv’n, they bruise the tender vine,

or tossed aloft, are knocked against a pine.

And where of late the kids had cropped the grass,

t>he monsters of the deep now take their place.

Insulting Nereids on the cities ride,

and wond’ring dolphins o’er the palace glide.

On leaves and masts of mighty oaks they browse,

and their broad fins entangle in the boughs.

The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep;

the yellow lion wanders in the deep.

His rapid force no longer helps the boar;

the stag swims faster than he ran before.

The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,

despair of land and drop into the main.

Ditto the Iliad. Pope's verse translation:

Then thus the hero of Anchises’ strain:

“To meet Pelides you persuade in vain:

Already have I met, nor void of fear

Observed the fury of his flying spear;

From Ida’s woods he chased us to the field,

Our force he scattered, and our herds he kill’d;

Lyrnessus, Pedasus in ashes lay;

But (Jove assisting) I survived the day:

Else had I sunk oppress’d in fatal fight

By fierce Achilles and Minerva’s might.

Where’er he moved, the goddess shone before,

And bathed his brazen lance in hostile gore.

What mortal man Achilles can sustain?

The immortals guard him through the dreadful plain,

And suffer not his dart to fall in vain.

Were God my aid, this arm should check his power,

Though strong in battle as a brazen tower.”

And a more modern prose translation by Kline:

‘Lycaon,’ Aeneas replied, ‘why urge me to fight the brave son of Peleus, when I reject any such idea? It would not be the first time I confronted swift-footed Achilles. He chased me from Ida with his spear, when he raided our herds and sacked Lyrnessus and Pedasus. Zeus saved me then, giving me strength and speed, or I would surely have fallen to Achilles and Athene. She went before him, a saving light, rousing him to kill the Leleges and Trojans with his spear. No warrior can face Achilles in combat: some immortal always goes by his side to ward off danger. His spear is true and never falls to earth without piercing human flesh. Yet if the gods allowed fair play, he would not beat me easily, even though he thinks himself a man of bronze.’

I understand the value of accuracy in modern academic translations*, that they better capture the word-for-word meaning of the original text. But so much of the spirit is lost when the translator clearly does not believe in the text in the way the original writer did. The modern translator of Homer does not believe in the glory of battle, the modern translator of Ovid does not understand the playfulness of the gods to be a thing of beauty. The modern translations are drab, or they view the events of the stories as horrors. Homer and Ovid did not view their stories that way, and that meaning is more important than the syntax.

The spirit of the work is an unbroken chain of interpretation from Homer and Ovid to Pope and Dryden, but it is lost in a modern Classics department. I was lucky enough that my professors in undergrad at least had a hint of that, at least understood enough of it from their professors to be able to give a taste of it before returning to questions of "Queering the authorship" or whatever the fuck. The next generation of Classics students may not even get that. They may be taught by Postmodernists who were taught by Postmodernists, they will know no other way to look at the Iliad than through a queer Feminist of Color lens, and something will be lost. I recently completed this lecture course on the Early Middle Ages, at one point when discussing the discursive concept of The Dark Ages, professor Freedman suggests that we are reentering a new dark ages if we define a dark age by knowledge of Homer. The Greeks and Romans knew Homer, the dark ages lost that knowledge, the Renaissance and Enlightenment regained it, we are losing it once again.

*A second, equally facile, argument is made that the archaisms of the old translations hold them back, make it difficult for ordinary readers to enjoy them. This is often used as a reason why the Bible must be endlessly retranslated and updated. It's enough to make one wish to return to the Latin Mass, perhaps I should finally learn it in full. It is precisely classic literature that grounds a language, whether it is the Greeks and Homer, or the English and Shakespeare. We should reach back for these works while we can still read them with only a minimum of effort, and preserve them so that our heritage as modern English speakers can stretch from the Elizabethan to today. If we let our ability to read the Classics slip away, if we need translations of Shakespeare and Milton and Pope, we will lose that unbroken heritage, our children will be unable to regain it.

It's hard for me to take rhyming couplets seriously. They are so sing-songy and monotonous that they almost seem inherently comic to me. I much prefer Fagles's Iliad over the small amount of Pope's Iliad that I read. Pope's Iliad is probably my least favorite Iliad translation that I have seen. To me it just seems like it is a lot of Pope and not much Iliad. To be fair, I do not know any variety of Greek so I can only judge English-language Iliads on their own merits.

If you could recommend one chapter of one translation of one classic (the Odyssey or any other) that conveys the spirit of the original text, what would you choose?

Book X of the Metamorphoses, in the Garth translation I recommended above. It covers Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion, Venus and Adonis, Atalanta; along with a pile of others. Orpheus and Adonis are key myths to understanding the classical world, they tend to get skipped over or shortchanged in favor of the Sword and Sandals stuff like Hercules and Achilles in popular adaptations but they were hugely important religious stories. It also gives a really good feel for Ovid's method, in that it mixes with stories like Atalanta that are playful, Pygmailion that are meaningful but small time, and stories that are profoundly meaningful and religiously significant like Orpheus. It's light and beautiful and gorgeous and fun and important.

if we need translations of Shakespeare and Milton and Pope, we will lose that unbroken heritage, our children will be unable to regain it.

Words just don't mean what they used to in Shakespeare's time. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just how language changes. Example:

“Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment,” which seems to mean that you should let other people criticize you but refrain from judging them—strange advice. But by “take censure” Shakespeare meant “evaluate,” so that Polonius is really saying “assess” other men but don’t jump to conclusions about them.

Why stop at Shakespeare? He wasn't the first to write in English, after all. Perhaps we should ground our language in the classic work of the Gawain poet.

Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye

To clanly clos in golde so clere,

Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye,

Ne proved I never her precios pere.

Sure, you need to learn a few words, but it's already just about comprehensible.

Because Shakespeare has long been widely considered the greatest author not just in English but in any language. We anglophone peoples are blessed to speak the same modern English he wrote in, why would we wish to destroy that heritage when we could pass it to our children?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rJpQmhAUJlc

Except it's not the same language, because when he says "take each man's censure" it means something totally different. I'd have a better chance at understanding "Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye/Ne proved I never her precios pere.".

The heritage you want to pass on, of reading original Shakespeare and understanding everything he wrote, has been gone for hundreds of years.

the greatest author not just in English but in any language.

I don't think this is a widely held view, except perhaps among those who only speak English.

The heritage you want to pass on, of reading original Shakespeare and understanding everything he wrote, has been gone for hundreds of years.

It seems to have been alive and well in American culture until quite recently.

As far as Shakespeare being the greatest author of all time, I think he certainly makes everyone's shortlist regardless of where they're from. I would certainly rank him above the top writers in the other major European languages (Cervantes for Spanish, Goethe for German, etc.), but I can't speak to the best of the other major literary traditions except that Du Fu probably gives him a run for his money.

Soundbites and references to Shakespeare have been alive and well and in fact continue to be alive and well.

Garber also discusses the role Shakespearean rhetoric has played in American political culture since the founding. Quotes from Shakespeare have always been ubiquitous in American politics. They were used in the earliest days of the American republic. They are used with equal frequency today.

As for actually understanding everything that he wrote beyond the soundbites that remain comprehensible in The Year of Our Lord 2023, you cannot do that today without studying English as Shakespeare spoke it.

There's certainly a place for historical linguistics in our understanding of literature, but if you mean that the educated, literate reader of English needs to take a full course on Early Modern English to understand Shakespeare in the original, rather than simply referring to the footnotes that accompany any modern edition of his plays at moments of confusion, then I disagree. I will however allow that by my standards very few American English-speakers post-1960 count as being educated.

Moreover, it is entirely possible for individual works in archaic language to be understood even when anything else written in that stage of the language would not, so long as those works are continually read and reread, commented on, and taught by succeeding generations. I don't think it's fair to say that modern Christians reading the King James Bible don't understand its meaning if they don't know how to conjugate for thou or that Chinese people don't understand Tang Dynasty poetry because they are reading the characters using modern pronunciation where they no longer rhyme. The most extreme example of this is Hebrew, which was able to be revived as a spoken language solely because of an unbroken chain of literary transmission in the form of preserved religious texts.

If you're reading Shakespeare with footnotes, then the conversation is totally moot - I could read Chinese if you supply the proper footnotes.

I don't think it's fair to say that modern Christians reading the King James Bible don't understand its meaning

I guarantee you that there are parts of the KJV that people do not understand correctly (see the "censure" example above). "Thou" (which is not a verb and doesn't conjugate) has nothing to do with it. Words simply do not mean what they used to.

The most extreme example of this is Hebrew, which was able to be revived as a spoken language solely because of an unbroken chain of literary transmission in the form of preserved religious texts.

That's because people would literally learn Hebrew as a foreign language to understand the Torah. Yiddish speakers didn't just read every other word and fill in the gaps with the footnotes. There are no footnotes. This is exactly the opposite of the approach you are talking about with Shakespeare.

While Shakespeare didn't include footnotes, he also was writing plays, not novels -- moderns will have no problem understand what is going on most of the time watching a competent performance, despite the original language.

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I didn't read all that, but if your claim is that it doesn't matter what the actual meaning is and just vibes are enough, good news - there is no ability to understand Shakespeare that we can lose, because we don't actually care about understanding him.

Did you deliberately do the exact thing you are bemoaning for the irony? Your post doesn't read as irony, but it feels too rich to be accidental, it's a 200 word post.

I'm not bemoaning anything. Doesn't really matter to me if people actually understand Shakespeare or just read him for the vibes (and this guy is no Shakespeare).

The post I responded to was deliberately overwrought purple prose and was certainly not speaking clearly.

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