Читать книгу On Translating Homer онлайн

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To feel that Chapman’s measure, though natural, is not Homeric; that, though tolerably rapid, it has not Homer’s rapidity; that it has a jogging rapidity rather than a flowing rapidity; and a movement familiar rather than nobly easy, one has only, I think, to read half a dozen lines in any part of his version. I prefer to keep as much as possible to passages which I have already noticed, so I will quote the conclusion of the nineteenth book, where Achilles answers his horse Xanthus, who has prophesied his death to him^[16].

Achilles, far in rage,

Thus answered him:—It fits not thee thus proudly to presage

My overthrow. I know myself it is my fate to fall

Thus far from Phthia; yet that fate shall fail to vent her gall

Till mine vent thousands.—These words said, he fell to horrid deeds,

Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds.

For what regards the manner of this passage, the words ‘Achilles Thus answered him’, and ‘I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia’, are in Homer’s manner, and all the rest is out of it. But for what regards its movement, who, after being jolted by Chapman through such verse as this,