Euripides

“ The reader may surrender himself to the full enjoyment of the sonorous verse without that uneasy feeling which so often suggests itself in dealing with a translation which breathes the true spirit of poetry, that the poetical effect of the English has been attained by a sacrifice of fidelity to the original. . . It carries the reader along with it in the same irresistible rush which is the great charm of the Greek original, a charm which no other writer, not even Chapman himself, has so well succeeded in reproducing. ”

“ There are three classes of readers whom a translator may have in view—the general reader, for whom the perfect translation is that which does not suggest an original, and whom it is therefore hard to satisfy;—the scholar, to whom the original is a joy, and (when improved by his own emendations) a pride, and whom it is impossible to satisfy;—hear his lasciate ogni speranza, "no one has ever translated a Greek chorus, and no one ever will!" ”

“ The convention was understood, and the illusion was no more impaired by the continued presence of the same chorus in the orchestra, than it is in a modern theatre by our consciousness that the same actors are waiting behind the scenes; and certainly men's minds were not jarred by a sense of discord, and brought down from heaven to earth, as with us, when the descent of the curtain on a scene which has thrilled the house with high-wrought emotion is followed by a babble of gossip and by the shrill importunities of waiters. ”

“ Athens would seem better worth living for and dying for, when men realized that they held her in joint-possession with Gods, when they recognised that, in guarding as a sacred trust her immemorial institutions, in celebrating her splendid festivals, they were sealing to themselves the blessings intertwined with these, when they grasped the thought that in planning, toiling, and fighting for her, they were fellow-workers with Athena, Apollo, and the Twin Brethren. ”

“ The average Greek believed implicitly in the historical truth of the story of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and remembered that not only were the heroes guarded and guided at every turn by the Immortals, but that the consummation of the Iliad, the burial of Hector, and that of the Odyssey, the reconciliation of Odysseus with his subjects, were alike brought about by the intervention of deities, of Hermes and Athena respectively. What the modern girds at as the chronique scandaleuse of Olympus, bore a very different aspect to the average Greek. Instead of degrading the Gods, it elevated man. ”

“ It does seem strange that the singers who during the present century have enriched English poetry with wealth of metrical variety lavish beyond all precedent, should have lived in vain for the translator of the Greek drama, especially since those magnificent notes of chorus-music were struck by the author of Atalanta in Calydon and Erechtheus, after which the good old Pindaric-ode pattern, with its guilelessly capricious alternations of longs and shorts, seems curiously out of date. ”

“ The form of verse in which a translator finds that he can—not, perform his task most quickly, but—do his best work, the mould into which, for him, the great thoughts of the ancient master most felicitously run, so that his task becomes a labour of love, that is for him the best, and he will not wisely let preconceived theories bar his choice, or the authority of imposing names turn him out of his own path. ”

“ The position of Euripides in literature may fairly be called unique. Other great writers, not only of antiquity, but of modern times, have, when once immediate posterity has countersigned the verdict of their contemporaries which allotted them a place amongst the immortals, thereafter held it as by unassailable right. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, are but examples of a multitude whose crowns have not only never been challenged, but have gathered lustre with the lapse of ages. The eighteenth-century eclipse of Shakspeare is, in our own literature, the one striking exception to the rule. ”

“ And that a dramatist who may himself have held higher and worthier views of the Deity should here have conformed to popular conceptions, is evidence, not of inconsistency, but of wisdom. "He fed them with milk, and not with strong meat." To help men to be honest and true, to be haters of injustice and jealous for the right, the old faith was better than the new scepticism.
2. His second object may well have been to make men better patriots, by recalling to the spectators' minds the divine origin of their race, their city, their religious institutions, and their national policy. ”

“ For it is certain that the modern view is diametrically opposed to that of the Athenian audience. In their eyes—1. Admetus was a noble character: 2. He was in the right in respect to the motif and incidents of the play: 3. He reaped the just reward of the good man.
1. Admetus was a noble character, for he displayed the highest social virtue recognised by a Greek—hospitality, the crowning height of unselfishness, as truly a part of patriotism in peace, as heroism was in war. ”

“ Now, it must be remembered that all these movements of gliding limb and swaying form were not only rhythmical accompaniments to the words and music, but were in themselves significant, nay, eloquent, among a race who (like some peoples of southern Europe in our own day) carried pantomimic gesture to such perfection that a conversation might be carried on, or a public address delivered, without the utterance of a single articulate word. ”

“ The introduction of the deity takes place in each after the dénouement is effected. What the God does is to speak the epilogue, so to say, of the piece in the form of prophecy or ordinance. His intervention serves, not to save the credit of the dramatist, but to bring home to the spectators the religious significance of this, and, by inference, of every drama of human destiny.
The poet's object we may conceive to have been twofold:—1. To remind the audience that, if their deities were real beings, they were as real for them as for the men of the heroic age. ”

“ The compact once made, we may fairly infer that it was impossible to draw back from it: a mortal could not play fast and loose with the powers beneath, and "the Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts." Hence, though Admetus passionately cries to Alcestis to take him with her, he does not, he cannot, propose the impossible, to die instead of her. Again, it was part of the fitness of things that the less valuable life should be surrendered for the more valuable. ”

“ They are the offspring of subjective criticism; and a commentator is never on more perilous ground than when he makes his own comprehension or appreciation of a passage the criterion of its genuineness. In examining these destructive-constructive assaults on the text, it has more than once seemed to me that the impatience of a too-clever scholar has rejected a deep thought instinct with poetic feeling, in favour of an obvious and commonplace sentiment. ”

“ In the Phœnician Maidens, the Iphigeneia at Aulis, and the Andromachê, the chorus is so constituted, that its members, though profoundly impressed by the events passing before them, are but slightly interested in the personages of the drama, who are comparative strangers to them. Hence they are inclined to dwell upon what does concern themselves as much as the actors, the workings of fate, the fulfilment of the Gods' doom, the far issues involved: only in the climax of the tragedy is their attention arrested, as it were in spite of themselves, by actual present developments. ”

“ Next to Shakespeare, Euripides has been the best abused poet in the history of literature. And the reason is the same in both cases: each has been associated prominently with a dramatic revolution vast enough to draw out the fundamental difference between two classes of minds—those that incline to a simple ideal perfectly attained, and those that sympathize rather with a more complex purpose which can be reached only through conflict. ”

“ PREFACE.
"It is," remarks the author of The Ancient Classical Drama, referring to Euripides, "to the disgrace of English scholarship that we have no verse translation of this all-important poet produced in our own day." Though some might peradventure challenge the inference, on the plea that our scholars have been more profitably employed, the fact is indisputable. The comparative neglect of Euripides by translators for more than a century past is, indeed, one of the enigmas of English scholarship. ”

“ Secondly, to admit such a contention would be to lay down as a literary canon the absurd rule that the perfect dramatist may not descant on the emotions, experiences, and aims, which are the master-springs of action and passion in human life, except with exclusive reference to the particular persons or situations which illustrate them in each case. ”

“ So, in the Andromachê, the cautious reticence of the chorus, who, as subjects of the royal house, dare not utter their sentiments, [10] imparts to the heroine a forlorn grandeur, which stimulates the spectators' sympathy and admiration.
In the Electra, the protagonists, daring a deed without a name, enter a valley of shadows of death where human experience has no chart for guidance, where human wisdom can but tremble, and human conscience shudder ”

“ For there can be no dispute that it greatly enhances the difficulty of achieving blank-verse worthy of the name as the vehicle for a translation uniting the above-mentioned essentials. He must be a consummate artist indeed, who, with such a fourfold object to keep in view, never admits a resolved foot, or the spondaic effect of concurrent monosyllables, save where the sound is designed to echo the sense. ”

“ The changes in ancient drama promoted by this third of the three great masters are all in the direction of modern variety and human power: from the confined standpoint of Attic Tragedy they may represent decay; in the evolution of the universal drama they are advance and development, Euripides laid the foundation for an edifice of which the coping-stone is Shakespeare. ”

“ The task of selection is no easy one, as almost every page contains some happy rendering of the Greek or some passage instinct with the true Homeric spirit." — John Bull.
"Took the literary world by a surprise that soon ripened into admiration." — British Weekly.
"Has already taken a high place amongst English versions of Homer." — Cambridge Review.
"Sounding Saxon such as no previous translator of Homer into verse has employed. . . We are unwilling to mention particular parts of the work for fear of intimating that some may be better than others. . . ”

“ Yet no sympathetic reader will tamely suffer his private judgment to be taken by storm, and the more I study Euripides, and try to realize, with respect to each reading thus arraigned and condemned, the mental attitude of the poet and his audience, the less am I satisfied that modern scholarship is doing itself credit by this eagerness to reject MS. readings on purely aesthetic grounds. ”

“ A translator who does not wish to burden his work with notes, which have their proper place in a commentary, must continually make his choice, without remark, between various disputed readings and interpretations. ”

“ There are, again, a few choral odes which, though relevant to their own dramatic context, yet admit of more general application; and to these some writers have applied the stricture of Aristotle, that "they are no more relevant to the particular plays in which they occur, than to any other tragedy." ”

“ That the man should thereupon decline to accept the boon, would have seemed to the Greeks, not false delicacy merely, but impiety; just as it would have seemed to a Hebrew impious for Abraham to renounce the favour of God when it involved the sacrifice of his son. The acceptance of the condition was perhaps the easier, because the time of its fulfilment was indefinite, as we gather from ll. 524 and 526, where Herakles, while referring to Alcestis' pledge as a matter well known to him, yet has no idea that the time for its redemption has come. ”

“ Mr. Way's version is faithful. It is poetical. It affords a good idea of the original. A play read through in his translation may be appreciated as a real piece of literature. ... In the iambic passages, Mr. Way has translated line-for-line. . . In the lyrics, he has given himself a freer hand, and has produced some really fine poetry. . . The more advanced student, and especially the intelligent lover of literature who does not read Greek with ease, will be genuinely grateful to Mr. Way for having enabled them to appreciate for them- selves the genius of Euripides."—Athenæum. ”

“ An exhaustive treatment of our author would require a large volume, such as has been already given to French students by Professsr Paul Decharme. Euripide et l'Esprit de son Théatre is an admirable book, interesting and thorough, appreciative yet judicial, marked by ripe scholarship, fine literary taste, and original thought. ”

“ Has given new life to Homer in an English metrical dress, and the fidelity of the version is matched by the fire and force infused into the rendering. Mr. Way is like Chapman in his freedom and swing, but he is richer in colouring, although he is rigidly close to his text. Trans- lates Homer as one poet can alone translate another. Has the true Homeric feeling, and he seems to live the verse that he renders with such remarkable force, fidelity, and spirit. ”

“ It is in his interest that I have preserved, in the version here presented, a line-for-line correspondence with the original in the blank-verse dialogue, and, for the most part, in the choruses also, [2] which latter will in many cases, I think, be found by the scholar who compares them minutely with the original to be more nearly literal "construes" than perhaps they look.
I have regarded it as a fortunate coincidence that the edition of the plays most extensively used by young students is also that which has on general grounds most commended itself to my judgment. ”

“ Way, and yet we doubt whether the interval offers any version of Homer which is not, by com- parison with these, formal and mechanical. . . This fascinating volume . . abounds in instances of the combination of freedom of expression with essential fidelity to the meaning . . has made a distinct contribution to the resources of Homeric translation. . . He has adopted a metre in which it would, we think, be impossible to main- tain a high level of poetry without a poetic gift of his own. Mr. Way's adventure admits of no mean between failure and success. ”

“ Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. The simple interpretation which I have hazarded above assumes that selfishness is the special taint from which our pity and fear need to be purified. These emotions are too apt to be based on solicitude for ourselves or our friends. ”

“ The reader who has heard that Schlegel called the Electra "of all Euripides' plays the very vilest," may examine for himself the work, a few lines of which paralysed the hands uplifted to destroy conquered Athens. When Donaldson stigmatizes him as "a bad citizen and an unprincipled man, a dramatist who degraded the moral and religious dignity of his own sacred profession," it is sufficient to ask the reader to find, if he can, in the poet's own pages a justification for such a diatribe. ”

“ Hallowed wreaths suggested inevitably to a Greek the wreath of wild-olive won at the festival of Zeus in the Olympic Games. The parents could imagine no prouder ambition, especially if effort were sweetened by such a divine assurance of success ”

“ The hospitable man embodied for them the virtues, not only of the modern philanthropist, but also those of the enlightened diplomatist: he established and maintained friendly relations with other states, gaining for his city allies, and for her people friends and protectors in foreign lands, and that in days when, without such, not only was travel perilous, but even commerce was difficult and precarious. ”

“ No such work has been produced by any English scholar on any Greek poet; and, till some of our brilliant commentators shall cease for a while to "hunt old trails," and shall essay a task which has long been waiting for a competent hand, Professor Decharme's volume must remain, for English as much as for French readers, the standard book on Euripides. ”