My Commonplace Book

by Unknown

There is nothing here, nor in the translation that follows, to indicate that there has been any interference with the text. It is only upon turning to the notes at the end of the translation (which the average reader would hardly study) that we find the third line is “practically interpolated.” He gives reasons for this that are not easy to follow, and says “If I am wrong, the refrain is probably a mere cry for revenge;” I add that the latter is the generally accepted meaning, and the only meaning I can see in the original Greek.

Now Professor Murray’s object in all this is to convey in words that appeal to our minds his conception of the devout, religious and, therefore, highly moral attitude of, not only Euripides, but also his Athenian audience. The attitude of mind must be that of the audience, as well as the dramatist, because none but devout, religious people go to a “Service of Song,” and, as stated above, the Bacchae was a very popular play among the Greeks. If, however, Professor Murray thought that, by colouring, altering, and adding to the play, he gave a more correct impression of it as it appeared to the Greeks, he was perfectly at liberty with that object to mistranslate as much as he pleased—provided he told his readers and hearers that they were not reading or hearing the words that Euripides wrote.

Has he told them this? The book is entitled “Euripides translated into English rhyming verse.” In the Preface he also begins by telling us definitely that it is a translation; later on he says: “As to the method of this translation ... my aim has been to build up something as like the original as I possibly could, in form and what one calls ‘Spirit.’ To do this, the first thing needed was a work of painstaking scholarship, a work in which there should be no neglect of the letter in an attempt to snatch at the spirit.” He then goes on to tell us that “The remaining task” was to reproduce the poetry of the original and (here is the only admission that he has varied from the text) he ‘has often changed metaphors, altered the shapes of sentences, and the like.... On one occasion he has even omitted a line and a half’ (because unnecessary) and he says, he ‘has added, of course by conjecture, a few stage directions.’ Let the non-classical reader look back over what has been said above and ask himself whether such words—however carefully studied—would have given him the least impression of what this “translation” actually amounts to.

Without entering into any long discussion as to the so called “purity choruses” of the Bacchae, let us simply ask the question, Does this pious, fervently-religious version represent the actual play that the cruel, lying, treacherous and unspeakably sensual Greeks flocked to see and enjoy? Further comes a much more important question, Would such a “translation,” put before English readers, or staged before an English audience, give them a true or a false idea of the character of the Greeks?

I might compare with this Ruskin’s view of the Greek character (The Crown of Wild Olive.). This is what he says the Greeks won from their lives: “Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain.” (Italics mine.) This is truly amazing! I am tempted to go back again to Professor Murray’s Euripides (p. lxiii) and quote a like passage:

“Love thou the day and the night,” he (Euripides) says in another place. “It is only so that Life can be made what it really is, a Joy: by loving not only your neighbour—he is so vivid an element in life that, unless you do love him, he will spoil all the rest!—but the actual details and processes of living, etc., etc.”

The italics are again mine—but here it will be seen that Euripides has, as a matter of course, anticipated the great evangel of Christ! He has even gone a step further—but I must leave Professor Murray to his love of the “details and processes of living,” whatever that may mean.

Finally, in this extraordinary essay, I come to something which is absolutely repulsive. I must first briefly premise that the Dionysiac mystery cult was not sectarian. It was orthodox, believing in the plurality and the profligacy of the gods. Its adherents had no more idea of morality or purity than other Greeks. Its rites were indecent. The so-called “purification rites,” including regulations regarding continence, were simply training rules preparatory to their hideous orgies. The essential rite of the cult was practised by the Maenads or Bacchantes. They tore to pieces live animals (and at one time human beings) and devoured their raw, quivering flesh. As stated above, these horrible women are Professor Murray’s “Saints.” He now proceeds to draw an analogy between their loathsome god Dionysus and Jesus Christ! Thus Dionysus is born of God (Zeus) and a human mother. He is the “twice-born”—having been hidden in Zeus’s thigh after birth! He “comes to his own people of Thebes, and—his own receive him not.” Again “It seemed to Euripides in that favourite metaphor of his, which was always a little more than a metaphor, that a God had been rejected by the world that he came from.” Dionysus “gives his Wine to all men.... It is a mysticism which includes democracy, as it includes the love of your neighbour.” Dionysus “has given man Wine, which is his Blood and a religious symbol.” In the translation Dionysus is called “God’s son” and even “God’s true son.” Reading this and such statements as Miss Jane Harrison’s ([see p. 292, n.]), one stands amazed. Apparently this fanatical enthusiasm destroys the critical faculties, so that the enthusiast becomes utterly incapable of appreciating the beauty and value of Our Lord’s ethical teaching and its exemplification in His life.