Lord Derby’s version is curiously bad. Strange that one striving to utter to modern ears words which in the Iliad seem to break from the heart should go out of his way for “sire” and “brethren”! And for “wedded love,” it is not only incorrect, but mawkish, and therefore in this place detestable. Cowper likewise is weak and false. “Parents” is intolerable; ποτνια and θαλερος are overlooked. And in exchange for those adjectives we have “all that I have lost” (pure Cowper). Mr. Bryant does very much better, but he is again somewhat cold; and coldness here is hardly pardonable. He was determined to give the last line literally; but to put παρακοιτης in the vocative, as Voss has done, makes the verse literal enough and more glowing. Both Voss and Mr. Bryant are wrong in ποτνια. The active participle (liebende) is out of the question, and even “dear” conveys an erroneous impression of the relations subsisting between mother and daughter in the Homeric age. Ποτνια predicates a sentiment of respect and reverence, and is often associated with the names of deities. For an exact analogue we must go back to English domestic life in the last century. We shall find it in what was then a household word—“honored mother.” We must do Lord Derby the justice to say that he had hit upon the translation in line 413. It is a pity that he did not repeat it here. Θαλερος has proved a stumbling-block to most translators. It is a beautiful word: and placed with exquisite propriety in the mouth of a young wife who gazes on the bravest face and noblest form in Ilium. Mr. Bryant’s “youthful” is not absolutely wrong, but it is rather the impression which youth and health make upon the eye, their visible glory, their “purple light,” which Homer makes in θαλερος. Blühende gives it exactly. We wish that with these perfect words Andromache might have vanished from literature. The later myths dishonor her. It seems a crime against nature to recount of this woman that
“Victoris heri tetigit captiva cubile,”
and that Hector’s widow bore children to the son of Achilles. Surely instinct would have taught her the tenet of a later philosophy: “We are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.” Not in Euripides and Virgil, but rather in Racine, would we follow the fortunes of that Andromache whom we knew by the Scæan gate.
Let us glance next at the concluding lines of the eighth book. They have been translated by Tennyson, and it may be interesting to contrast his version. Mr. Bryant writes:
“So high in hope they sat the whole night through
In warlike lines, and many watch-fires blazed
As when in heaven the stars look brightly forth
Round the clear-shining moon while not a breeze
Stirs in the depths of air, and all the stars
Are seen and gladness fills the shepherd’s heart,
So many fires in sight of Ilium blazed
Lit by the sons of Troy between the ships
And eddying Xanthus: on the plain there shone
A thousand; fifty warriors by each fire
Sat in its light. Their steeds beside the cars—
Champing their oats and their white barley—stood,
And waited for the golden morn to rise.”
Tennyson renders the same passage thus:
“And these all night upon the ridge of war
Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed;
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful when all the winds are laid
*****
... and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart.
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain, and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire.
And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds
Stood by the cars waiting the thronèd morn.”
Some may prefer the general effect of the Laureate’s lines, but our American version adheres quite as closely to the text. We are surprised, however, to find “warlike lines.” Mr. Tennyson’s alternative translation, “ridge of war” is an exact reproduction of the Greek, ἀνα πτολεμοιο γεφυρας. “Bridge,” which he first wrote, is post-Homeric. Lord Derby’s phrase is close enough, but wanting in pictorial power: