Take a perfectly simple stanza of Heine—
“Du bist wie eine Blume
So hold und schön und rein:
Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmuth
Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.”
Near as English is to German, incomparably more easy as it is to render German into English than Greek into English, it may be declared that no English rendering of this verse conveys, or ever will convey, exactly the impression of the German original.
In respect of mere musical sound, what other words could run precisely like those of Coleridge at the opening of Kubla Khan, or like Shelley’s “I arise from dreams of thee”? The case is exactly the same when we turn to a Greek lyric. Alcæus writes four words which mean simply “I felt the coming of the flowery spring”; but no juxtaposition of English words yet attempted to that effect can recall to the student of Greek the impression of
ἦρος ἀνθεμόεντος ἐπάϊον ἐρχομένοιο.
It is necessarily so with Sappho. She is an embodiment of the typical Greek genius, which demanded the terse and clear, yet fine and noble, expression of a natural thought, free, as Addison well says, from “those little conceits and turns of wit with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected.” True Greek art detests pointless elaboration, strained effects, or effects which have to be hunted for. The Greek lyric spirit would therefore have loved the best of Burns and would have recognised him for its own. But you cannot translate Burns. Neither can you translate Sappho. Nevertheless one attempt may be nearer, less inadequate, than another. Let us take the hymn to Aphrodite. It is quoted by the critic Dionysius for its “happy language and its easy grace of composition.”
The first stanza contains in the Greek sixteen words, big and little. In woeful prose these may be literally rendered “Radiant-throned immortal Aphrodite, child of Zeus, guile-weaver, I beseech thee, Queen, crush not my heart with griefs or cares.”
In turning Greek poetry into English, and so inserting all those little pronouns and articles and prepositions with which a synthetic language can dispense, it may be estimated that the number of words will be greater by about one half,—the little words making the odd half. But Ambrose Philips makes thirty-four words out of those sixteen—
“O Venus, beauty of the skies,
To whom a thousand temples rise,
Gaily false in gentle smiles,
Full of love-perplexing wiles;
O Goddess, from my heart remove
The wasting cares and pains of love.”
The italics should suffice for criticism upon the fidelity of this “translation.” Mr. J. H. Merivale, though more faithful to the material contents, finds forty-three words necessary—