Thread by @EmilyRCWilson

Sorry about how messy that Dawn thread turned out, because of my mismanagement of the twitter genre. I am pasting it in here and going to try to make it a continuous line, in case anybody wants to read through all. I won't paste other people's comments, just mine & quotations.

For people who want a quick, tweet-length sense of a few different English stylistic modes used for Homer: here's the first two lines of book 5.
Ἠὼς δ᾽ ἐκ λεχέων παρ᾽ ἀγαυοῦ Τιθωνοῖο ὤρνυθ᾽,
ἵν᾽ ἀθανάτοισι φόως φέροι ἠδὲ βροτοῖσιν...

The imbalanced balance between deathless and others is crucial. I think the original is more emphatic than I managed, in hinting that mortals might be an afterthought. But there are always compromises; you can never write everything you hear or feel.

Here are those two lines in the first English translation, the wonderful George Chapman: AURORA rose from high-born Tithon's bed,
That men and Gods might be illustrated,

"Illustrate" was, in Chapman's time, used to "illuminate" the mind; there's no instance in OED of "illustrate" meaning just "shed light on", before 1625 (i.e. later than Chapman's Odyssey). Chapman wants cognitive / ethical enlightenment wherever possible.

Now here's Pope:
The saffron morn, with early blushes spread,
Now rose refulgent from Tithonus' bed...

Pope really wants "morn" to be doing the walk of shame.

Something I only just realized: both Pope and Chapman claim that the bed belongs to Tithonos.

Cowper:
Aurora from beside her glorious mate
Tithonus now arose, light to dispense
Through earth and heav’n....

Notice how loose (inaccurate?) Cowper is: "earth and heav'n" is not the same as "those who die and those who don't". He depersonalizes. Also notice the prissiness of "dispense".

Loeb, Murray/ Dimcock (prose):
Now Dawn arose from her couch from beside lordly Tithonus, to bear light to the immortals and to mortal men...

The Loeb is often imagined to be "literal". Here, it adds "her" to the "couch" (!), and adds "men" (!). It also introduces a LOT of archaism: "bears", "arose", "lordly". It seems to me really unlikely that Homer ever sounded as clunky as that to anyone.

Here's Samuel Butler's prose translation (I think 1900 but need to check).
And now, as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonos - harbinger of light alike to mortals and immortals...

The use of "harbinger" strikes me as misleading: the Greek says that Dawn actually BRINGS the light, not that she's the announcer of light that's being conveyed by some other means.

I've heard people express affection for the prose one by T. E. Lawrence, so here he is:

Dawn rose from her marriage-bed beside high-born Tithonus to bring her daylight to both gods and men.

Lawrence is the only one in this batch who makes them actually MARRIED. Given the various rumors about TEL's sexual proclivities, is he trying extra-hard to make sure it's all legit. and bourgeois?

Richmond Lattimore:
Now Dawn rose from her bed, where she lay by haughty Tithonos,
carrying light to the immortal gods and to mortals....

"Haughty" feels weirdly judgmental to me, for a word that seems to be generally used "of general commendation" (Cunliffe), for elite characters. We could also argue about whether or not rhythm matters.

Lattimore knew they're not hexameters. Those are 2 complete lines. 1st: I hear it as spondee, dactyl, dactyl, trochee, dactyl, spondee; next, definitely only 5 beats, definitely has two iambs. It's not a regular rhythm. It's hexameter-ish sometimes. And maybe that's OK.

Lattimore is often represented and seen as a particularly faithful translator. In fact, we all interpret. We dance different ways along the tightrope, trying to balance all the different truths.

Robert Fitzgerald:
Dawn came up from the couch of her reclining,
leaving her lord Tithonus' brilliant side
with fresh light in her arms for gods and men

It's surprising that not one but TWO of these C20 versions make poor old Dawn sleep on the couch. Fitzgerald is 1961. Loeb, LIGHTLY revised in 1995. If it were 1750, a couch would be a totally different thing.

The 'brilliant side' is a weird addition. Is he less brilliant when he flips over? "Reclining" is also a marked thing to add. & it's an interesting move to make Tithonos important not for his status in general (as per Greek), but for his status over her -- "her" lord.

He could be shiny like a cicada's wings, if we give Fitzgerald more credit.

That's apparently the Twitter limit, so I will add a separate thread for Part 2, Lombardo/ Fagles/ Wilson

Now here are those two lines in the first English translation, the wonderful George Chapman: AURORA rose from high-born Tithon's bed,
That men and Gods might be illustrated,

"Illustrate" was, in Chapman's time, used to "illuminate" the mind; there's no instance in OED of "illustrate" meaning just "shed light on", before 1625 (i.e. later than Chapman's Odyssey). Chapman wants cognitive / ethical enlightenment wherever possible.

Now here's Pope:
The saffron morn, with early blushes spread,
Now rose refulgent from Tithonus' bed...

Pope really wants "morn" to be doing the walk of shame.

Something I only just realized: both Pope and Chapman claim that the bed belongs to Tithonos.

Cowper:
Aurora from beside her glorious mate
Tithonus now arose, light to dispense
Through earth and heav’n....

Notice how loose (inaccurate?) Cowper is: "earth and heav'n" is not the same as "those who die and those who don't". He depersonalizes. Also notice the prissiness of "dispense".

Loeb, Murray/ Dimcock (prose):
Now Dawn arose from her couch from beside lordly Tithonus, to bear light to the immortals and to mortal men...

The Loeb is often imagined to be "literal". Here, it adds "her" to the "couch" (!), and adds "men" (!). It also introduces a LOT of archaism: "bears", "arose", "lordly". It seems to me really unlikely that Homer ever sounded as clunky as that to anyone.

I think some people want a translation that captures the experience of the struggling student in intermediate-level Greek. The pain can feel authenticating. But it's not the only possible way to read and experience Homer, whose style is generally very clear.

Here's Samuel Butler's prose translation (I think 1900 but need to check).
And now, as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonos - harbinger of light alike to mortals and immortals...

The use of "harbinger" strikes me as misleading: the Greek says that Dawn actually BRINGS the light, not that she's the announcer of light that's being conveyed by some other means.

I've heard people express affection for the prose one by T. E. Lawrence, so here he is:

Dawn rose from her marriage-bed beside high-born Tithonus to bring her daylight to both gods and men.

Lawrence is the only one in this batch who makes them actually MARRIED. Given the various rumors about TEL's sexual proclivities, is he trying extra-hard to make sure it's all legit. and bourgeois?

Richmond Lattimore:
Now Dawn rose from her bed, where she lay by haughty Tithonos,
carrying light to the immortal gods and to mortals....

"Haughty" feels weirdly judgmental to me, for a word that seems to be generally used "of general commendation" (Cunliffe), for elite characters. We could also argue about whether or not rhythm matters.

Lattimore knew they're not hexameters. Those are 2 complete lines. 1st: I hear it as spondee, dactyl, dactyl, trochee, dactyl, spondee; next, definitely only 5 beats, definitely has two iambs. It's not a regular rhythm. It's hexameter-ish sometimes. And maybe that's OK.

Lattimore is often represented and seen as a particularly faithful translator. In fact, we all interpret. We dance different ways along the tightrope, trying to balance all the different truths.

Robert Fitzgerald:
Dawn came up from the couch of her reclining,
leaving her lord Tithonus' brilliant side
with fresh light in her arms for gods and men

It's surprising that not one but TWO of these C20 versions make poor old Dawn sleep on the couch. Fitzgerald is 1961. Loeb, LIGHTLY revised in 1995. If it were 1750, a couch would be a totally different thing.

The 'brilliant side' is a weird addition. Is he less brilliant when he flips over? "Reclining" is also a marked thing to add. & it's an interesting move to make Tithonos important not for his status in general (as per Greek), but for his status over her -- "her" lord.

He could be shiny like a cicada's wings, if we give Fitzgerald more credit.

Stanley Lombardo:
Dawn reluctantly
Left Tithonus in her rose-shadowed bed.
Then shook the morning into flakes of fire.

I kind of like "rose-shadowed" and "flakes of fire", tho' they are not in Homer at all. Interesting that he makes her reluctant to get up; poor old Tithonus has no epithet and is only good for one thing.

She's not a working goddess in Pope, but I think quite a lot of the others acknowledge that she has to get up to do her important job. Lombardo makes her maybe the most torn, juggling her sex life with her career responsibilities.

Robert Fagles:
As Dawn rose up from bed by her lordly mate Tithonus,
bringing light to immortal gods and mortal men...

The addition of "mate" makes a difference. An odd word choice. The Greek does not label the relationship in any way. Also interesting that Fagles adds both "gods" and "men". You might think that mortals would include non-men, but in fact, no.

Emily Wilson:
Then Dawn rose up from bed with Lord Tithonus,
to bring the light to deathless gods and mortals.

Yes, metre; as you can see from these examples, mine is the only modern one that actually scans. Plus, I liked the almost-suggestion that Dawn is a bit like a mail-woman, bringing the daily necessities to diverse populations. A buried thought of Larkin's "Aubade".

I think the non-Latinate words sometimes have more zing. Immortal feels a bit frozen sometimes. The choice to be or not to be deathless-with-goddess is at stake in Book 5, so I wanted the zing for that particular line.

I regretted not managing to do more alliteration, to reflect that of the original (φ...φ). I alliterate elsewhere, not always in the same places as the original, because it's not always possible without doing a Lombardo.