The Iliad of Homer. Homer

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Название The Iliad of Homer
Автор произведения Homer
Жанр Языкознание
Серия
Издательство Языкознание
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4057664131225



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XIII.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XIV.

       ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTEENTH BOOK.

       BOOK XIV.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XV.

       ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH BOOK.

       BOOK XV.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XVI.

       ARGUMENT OF THE SIXTEENTH BOOK.

       BOOK XVI.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XVII.

       ARGUMENT OF THE SEVENTEENTH BOOK.

       BOOK XVII.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XVIII.

       ARGUMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH BOOK.

       BOOK XVIII.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XIX.

       ARGUMENT OF THE NINETEENTH BOOK.

       BOOK XIX.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XX.

       ARGUMENT OF THE TWENTIETH BOOK.

       BOOK XX.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XXI.

       ARGUMENT OF THE TWENTY-FIRST BOOK.

       BOOK XXI.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XXII.

       ARGUMENT OF THE TWENTY-SECOND BOOK.

       BOOK XXII.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XXIII.

       ARGUMENT OF THE TWENTY-THIRD BOOK.

       BOOK XXIII.

       THE ILIAD.

       BOOK XXIV.

       ARGUMENT OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH BOOK.

       BOOK XXIV.

       Table of Contents

      Whether a translation of Homer may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare, and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the guide whom he professes to follow. Hence it has happened, that although the public have long been in possession of an English Homer by a poet whose writings have done immortal honor to his country, the demand of a new one, and especially in blank verse, has been repeatedly and loudly made by some of the best judges and ablest writers of the present day.

      I have no contest with my predecessor. None is supposable between performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has surmounted all difficulties in his version of Homer that it was possible to surmount in rhyme. But he was fettered, and his fetters were his choice. Accustomed always to rhyme, he had formed to himself an ear which probably could not be much gratified by verse that wanted it, and determined to encounter even impossibilities, rather than abandon a mode of writing in which he had excelled every body, for the sake of another to which, unexercised in it as he was, he must have felt strong objections.

      I number myself among the warmest admirers of Mr. Pope as an original writer, and I allow him all the merit he can justly claim as the translator of this chief of poets. He has given us the Tale of Troy divine in smooth verse, generally in correct and elegant language, and in diction often highly poetical. But his deviations are so many, occasioned chiefly by the cause already mentioned, that, much as he has done, and valuable as his work is on some accounts, it was yet in the humble province of a translator that I thought