Homer
The Iliad
Translation by Richmond Lattimore
Chicago 1951
The
translation of the Iliad by
Richmond Lattimore (1951) was greeted in many quarters with widespread praise,
often bordering on hyperbole—the following comment, for example: “The feat
is so decisive that it is reasonable to foresee a century or so in which nobody
will try again the put the Iliad into
English verse. Taste may
change greatly, but it looks to me as if Mr. Lattimore’s version would survive
at least as long as Pope’s, for in its way it is quite as solidly
distinguished,” a remark, ironically enough, from Robert Fitzgerald, whose
translation of the Iliad
(which
many people, myself included, believe superior to Lattimore’s) appeared in
1963. And since its
appearance, Lattimore’s Iliad has
remained very popular (in a survey conducted in 1987, Lattimore’s translation
was preferred by three quarters of the respondents).
Lattimore’s
translation uses a six-beat line with a flexible number of syllables and strives
for a line-by-line fidelity to the Greek text, a habit which the first person to
try it (T. S. Brandeth in 1846) described as having “no great merit,” an
opinion with which I concur whole heartedly. Even
the advantage of being able to reference the Greek text easily is unavailable in
Lattimore’s text because his version does not number the lines. His
vocabulary is, for the most part, as he says, “my own ‘poetical language,’
which is mostly the plain English of today.” The
result earned praise for rescuing Homer from prose translations, which had
outnumbered poetical renditions in the previous years. And
many readers obviously like the result—a “weighty” poem which keeps them
moving through the text and living up to Lattimore’s eminently pragmatic
answer to Arnold: “I do not think nobility is
a quality to be directly striven for; you must write as well as you can, and
then see, or let others see, whether or not the result is noble.” Lattimore
may also have put the rest the endless debates about the suitability of the
hexameter for English verse (although, in fairness to the other debaters, one
should note that his hexameter is much more flexible than they were prepared to
admit).
Lattimore
has also had his critics who complain about various things, including his syntax
(in Knopff’s words: “misprints, mistranslations, obscurities, or outrages to
the English language”). The plainness in the vocabulary is not matched by
the clarity in the sentences, so that (as in many of Lattimore’s other
translations—of Aeschylus, for example) there is a constant need to pause in
order to sort out just what a particular phrase or sentence
means (“I, who am such as no other of the bronze-armoured Achaians,” “My
mother bore me not utterly lacking in warcraft,” and so on). Here’s
a random sample, taken from a moment in Achilles’ response to Odysseus: “not
if he gave me gifts as many as the sand or the dust is.” Clear
enough perhaps, but not idiomatic English, for sand cannot be “many” any
more than “dust” can. We
have to supply the missing: “grains of . . .” A
small example but not untypical—and, in my view, very irritating. Here,
too, the rhythm maintains the hexameter but in the process ends up sounding
awkward and forced, anything but an outburst from a passionate man who has
worked himself up into a temper. Reading
Lattimore’s Iliad I’m
always reminded of Dr. Leavis’ comment about how Milton’s verse “calls
pervasively for a kind of attention … toward itself.”
There
no more could a man who was in that work make light of it,
one who still unhit and still unstabbed by the sharp bronze
spun in the midst of that fighting, with Pallas Athene’s hold on
his hand guiding him, driving back the volleying spears thrown.
I
cannot surrender myself to the narrative because I’m so often having to puzzle
out the exact meaning, even in little details like the phrase “wine-blue”
sea—a puzzling epithet (blue wine?) which obliterates the evocative ironic
resonance of the more familiar “wine dark” sea.
In
fairness to Lattimore, one has to concede that many readers obviously settle
into to the somewhat odd style and do not share the discomfort I experience. But
any reader who gives clear, idiomatic English a high priority in selecting a
poetic translation should have a very good look at the translations of Fagles,
Fitzgerald, and Lombardo (to say nothing of my own) before subjecting themselves
(and, more importantly, their students) to Lattimore’s translation.
Lattimore’s
translation is available on line in an interlinear Greek-English format at the
following link: Chicago
Homer.