On Andreas Divus and George Chapman.
Divus' Latin translations of Homer were also used by George Chapman in his English translations of the Iliad and Odyssey - so, did Chapman influence Pound? Or did he want to do a better job?
From Pound's letters, to W.H.D. Rouse, 30/12/9134:
Pound talks about people "whose interest I have aroused in the Odyssey and been unable to slake, as they are all too sensitive to read the tushery provided by "adorned" translations, though hey might stick a couple of pages of Pope and a dozen or so of Chapman."
So Pound thinks less of Pope's translations than he did of Chapman's, I gather.
In the same letter, he also discusses the difficulties of translation: "Can you augment it? Can you keep the drive of the narration and yet put back some of what you have skipped? What happens if you fgo through it again, making as straight a tale for adults?"
This is all pretty fascinating stuff. I love reading selected letters from writers, it gives such an insight. You also come across really well-known quotes from people, quotes you've read in lit crit, but never realised they could have been an off-the-cuff comment about a book from the same sentence as a joke, or something that was directed at a certain person. That's where wide reading on writers comes in so handy, you build up a picture of the writer's thought processes and general character (at least when writing to friends and acquaintances) - all this helps when you reread their works.
Update: I found another letter to W.H.D. Rouse from 1935 (6 June) that talks about Chapman: "the first essential is the narrative movement, forward, not blocking the road as Chapman does. Everything that stops the reader must go, be cut out. And then everything that holds the mind, long after the reading, i.e., as much as is humanly possible, must bee clamped back on the moving prose. It is enough to break six men's backs, and if you hadn't been there in a sailing boat, I shd. lie down and surrender..."
The letter also mentions Pound's reluctance to work with the Greek; as he says, he was "too god damn iggnurunt of Greek", and "when I do sink into the Greek, what I dig up is too concentrative; I don't see how to get the unity of the whole."
So Divus had the unity? Pound thought (in the same letter, again) that "neither Dante nor Homer had the kind of boring "unity" of surface that we take to be characteristic of Pope, Racine. Corneille.... A translation of the Odyssey seems to me so enormous an undertaking, and the requirements include all the possible masteries of English."
Great stuff. P. nevertheless did a pretty great job of translating part of the Odyssey for Canto 1... - He says "years' work to get that. Best I have been able to do is cross cut in "Mauberley", led up to:
"... imaginary
Audition of the phantasmal sea-urge..."
which is totally different. and a different movement of the water, and inferior."
Inferior? So which part of the Odyssey was he working with, there? And how the heck do I find it?
From Pound's letters, to W.H.D. Rouse, 30/12/9134:
Pound talks about people "whose interest I have aroused in the Odyssey and been unable to slake, as they are all too sensitive to read the tushery provided by "adorned" translations, though hey might stick a couple of pages of Pope and a dozen or so of Chapman."
So Pound thinks less of Pope's translations than he did of Chapman's, I gather.
In the same letter, he also discusses the difficulties of translation: "Can you augment it? Can you keep the drive of the narration and yet put back some of what you have skipped? What happens if you fgo through it again, making as straight a tale for adults?"
This is all pretty fascinating stuff. I love reading selected letters from writers, it gives such an insight. You also come across really well-known quotes from people, quotes you've read in lit crit, but never realised they could have been an off-the-cuff comment about a book from the same sentence as a joke, or something that was directed at a certain person. That's where wide reading on writers comes in so handy, you build up a picture of the writer's thought processes and general character (at least when writing to friends and acquaintances) - all this helps when you reread their works.
Update: I found another letter to W.H.D. Rouse from 1935 (6 June) that talks about Chapman: "the first essential is the narrative movement, forward, not blocking the road as Chapman does. Everything that stops the reader must go, be cut out. And then everything that holds the mind, long after the reading, i.e., as much as is humanly possible, must bee clamped back on the moving prose. It is enough to break six men's backs, and if you hadn't been there in a sailing boat, I shd. lie down and surrender..."
The letter also mentions Pound's reluctance to work with the Greek; as he says, he was "too god damn iggnurunt of Greek", and "when I do sink into the Greek, what I dig up is too concentrative; I don't see how to get the unity of the whole."
So Divus had the unity? Pound thought (in the same letter, again) that "neither Dante nor Homer had the kind of boring "unity" of surface that we take to be characteristic of Pope, Racine. Corneille.... A translation of the Odyssey seems to me so enormous an undertaking, and the requirements include all the possible masteries of English."
Great stuff. P. nevertheless did a pretty great job of translating part of the Odyssey for Canto 1... - He says "years' work to get that. Best I have been able to do is cross cut in "Mauberley", led up to:
"... imaginary
Audition of the phantasmal sea-urge..."
which is totally different. and a different movement of the water, and inferior."
Inferior? So which part of the Odyssey was he working with, there? And how the heck do I find it?
posted by David | 6:39 PM
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