A BOOK OF GREEK VERSE.*
GREEK is often spoken of scornfully as a "dead" language, but those who take up this delightful book will hardly assent to the description. It is, indeed, a somewhat curious question when a language can be said to die. Even a barbarous and unwritten tongue may die hard if, as Humboldt records, the extermination of a South American tribe did not prevent its speech being long perpetuated by a parrot. But when written records remain a language cannot wholly die. It may fall into a millennial and deathlike sleep, and yet only await the spell which shall awaken it to new vitality. Since the dis- covery of the Rosetta stone the hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs are no longer dumb ; and from the time of the Renaissance Greek has been throughout Western Europe not only a living but a quickening spirit, while in Mr. Headlam's case, at any rate, it is difficult to determine whether it or English is his ordinary medium of speech and thought. As to writing, indeed, he leaves no doubt. "Greek," he says plainly, "in my experience, is easier to write than English," and he certainly uses it as if it were his mother-tongue. Look, for instance, at the following (p. 19) :— * A Book of Greek Verse. By W. Headlam, LIttD.,Cambridge : at the University Press. [6s. net.] Xeip poe, daipor p4p o yap Oval go-r* Oran o? tro rorac (pa weitZtenr, 4,101:66, rAas lv v4Spouro,
airradecrcrty
itc opfkis FATEls, lorb Tar 8k aidais tkos 14 ty,eus, reOlxit ohlyeio-' 6s, OrreAAcnv gpa &flaw arthp' is Croy.
This is not so much a rendering as a reincarnation of Shelley's wonderful stanzas. The soul that animates them has found a fresh embodiment, and breathes new life into that old Aeolic dialect which was the speech of Sappho. Or take this fragment, which describes the going forth of a divine decree :— aka 8' IK ITEI.LYCZY &OS alTO Op4PON, e ZEr#, TE4Y rcircpares 06pctrotley, bewDs aixgards, axbucetrrov Odlos
.retlirbv gxcay crary, • • • ' •
Surely, we imagine, no one but Pindar could have written this, or ventured on that magnificent image of "the Almighty word leaping from heaven, a stern warrior bearing as a sharp sword the commandment of Zeus." The lines seem to speak to us with his living voice, and no one would suspect that they have not an Hellenic but a Hebrew source, being a very literal rendering of a verse in the Apocrypha (The Wisdom of Solomon, xviii. 15). But the version so reproduces the spirit of the original as to give it, as it were, a second birth, and to arouse a more quick and lively apprehension of the writer's thought by presenting it in a different shape. And that is exactly what all good translation should do. It is not a mere art of words, a pretty playing with phrases, but needs a far more penetrating skill. It needs a power to pierce through all that is formal and outward to the very heart of poetry. The translator must become of one mind with the poet whose work he would revive; his pulse must throb with the same emotions, and a like inspiration must animate his words. Then, and then only, can he become a true interpreter, and it is Mr. Headlam's distinction that he appears to have no lesser aim. He is indeed a master of form, and in his versions (both from and into Greek) of passages the merit of which depends chiefly on their literary art he often shows a technical facility that is almost marvellous; but his peculiar praise is, we think, that his renderings make the soul and spirit of the original leap again to life. A single illustration must suffice, and it shall be taken from a difficult chorus (95-101' in The
Suppliants, which thus speaks of the action of Zeus :—
" From towering Hope's ambitious height Down to Perdition's blackest pit
He hurls the aspiring thoughts of Man, Yet stirs not, yet exerts no force: Calm in his will's enabled might His throned imaginations sit, And see the World's harmonious Plan Accomplished in its ordered course."
The Greek of the second stanza is so compressed, so pregnant with thought, and so individual in style that it needs consider-
able knowledge to grasp its meaning. A mere verbal imitation, however clever, would be futile ; but Mr. Headlam re-creates. "The consciousness of the poet's mind," to use a phrase of Coleridge's, "is diffused over" the translator's, and Aeschylus speaks to us across the centuries as though be bad risen from the dead. No doubt Mr. Headlam sometimes
fails. In the effort to reproduce a series of masterpieces, composed in many different styles, he must necessarily do so; but although at times he may not satisfy our judgment as to artistic form, he always stirs and invigorates our sense of poetic merit. His volume may be warmly com- mended to all who have any taste either for scholarship or poetry ; and if they wish to understand fully how translation may not be merely a change of form, but also a real transfusion of vitality, they should read his rendering of Victor Hugo's Guitare into Theocritean verse. If he could have read the Greek rendering, the author himself would, we think, have doubted whether his own poem was the original.
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