This is an unsuccessful attempt to make Eiiripides stutter like
a con- tributor to the Imagist Anthology. The smooth iambics of the original, the carefully-wrought choric passages, are reproduced without differentiation by H. D. in a rattle of short lines, frequently monosyllabic, which suggest the jerky spasmodic utterances of a set of characters in the last stages of hYsteria. The wrapper of the book (Chatto and Windus, 6s.) declares that the translation " has rendered with remarkable success both the .. poetry and the modernity, unblurred by pedantry or false archaisna." After that, of course, it is not for us to judge ; but one wonders what this modern poetry can be of which these Imagist monosyllables are supposed -to be repre- sentative, and whether archaistic falsity or misinterpretation df 'the dratriatiat's intentions could gc; farther than, for example, it does in the prolonged reflec- tions on pp. 9 and to, about the possibility- of some tremendous ironic significance lurking behind the boy Ion's exquisite address to the Sun. This passage is characteristic of the ecstatic irrelevance of the long notes which are interpolated between scene and scene, even between speech and speech. And the outlook which the translator has brought to her task is perhaps best symbolised by the words with which her introduction ends : ." It is significant that the word ION has a double meaning. It may be translated by the Latin UNUS, meaning one, or first, and is also the Greek word for violet, the sacred flower of Athens." The significance is startling.
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