Without hesitation, it can be said that Mathew Arnold, Victorian poet and essayist, wielded a bold confidence in the subject of translation theory and poetics. In his “On Translating Homer,” Arnold simultaneously critiques the translational practice of a contemporary and lays out his own methodology for such a feat as the translation of Homer, a writer agelessly cherished as one of the world’s greatest. Arnold’s essay engages translational theory via a sound translational critique, a combination which propels the essay’s prominent points about how one should approach a translation of Homer. “On Translating Homer” is an essay that, on the periphery, navigates a polemic discourse between contemporaries while, at the same time, addressing the complexities of translating a monumentally influential writer.
The conversation itself between Arnold and John Henry Newman is a dynamic one, because at the root of their biting exchange is friendship.^1 Why this is a provocative setup for an essay on translation is that it is an exchange that mimics certain characteristics of Saidian humanism, namely that it confronts intellectual power by objectifying it, and then separates from it to identify its own conveyances via what that "other" is not. Examples of this foreignizing come out of the subjective setting up of objective analyses; Arnold turns Newman's translational stance into a matter that is personal, a scholastic stand-off in which a true mastery of Homer is on the line. Such passages as the following give example:
So Mr. Newman may see how wide-spread a danger it is, to which he has, as I think, in setting himself to translate Homer, fallen a prey. He may well be satisfied if he can escape from it by paying it a tribute of a single work only. He may judge how unlikely it is that I should 'despise' him for once falling a prey to it.^2
This polemic styling of Arnold's presentation invokes intellectual hostility, turning Newman into "prey," but at the same time, he illuminates the logical trajectory by which he sets out to define his own methods for proper translational methods. Newman is merely the impetus off of which Arnold pushes to make his points. Thus, he utilizes what is proposed by the "other," and deploys his own theory by juxtaposing it with what it is not.
Although Arnold's advice to future translators of Homer is workable, it is also abstract in that it demands style rather than just method. This is to be expected from a poet who specializes in the aesthetics of words, and the most objectively sound piece of advice that he offers his readers surrounds the Greek and English hexameters; even though the English hexameter may not capture the essence of the ancient Greek hexameter, translators should still work within its framework with what is available to
them.^3
His words, in and of themselves, speak first of all to the poetics of Homer and the complex process of capturing a writer's essential character. When that character contains what Arnold describes as, "a grand style in simplicity," then his writing requires a translation that has a great capacity for embodying its free and intelligible qualities.# Conversely, "a grand style in severity" demands a more intellectual, pragmatic and poetically questing style of translation, as it is more scholarly; simplicity simply exists within its own grace, while severity strives to find it. Thus, the latter is more easily recreated, while the former requires a greater sensitivity and acute awareness in the act of translation. These two styles demarcate an important difference between poetics and other modes of writing; poetry is not prose, nor is it scholarly, yet it demands the scholarly work of translation nonetheless.# While he demands that Homer be approached with simplicity, he also breathes encouragement into the future translators of Homer when he states that Homer's writing inevitably will not be destroyed by translation: "... rather will the poetry of Homer make us forget his philology, than his philology make us forget his poetry."
If indeed the "poetic" and "non-poetic" are considered to be separate languages, then each school's translations of Homer come into contact via critique in an additional process of translation that is interlingual, out of which more translations may arise. This first example of Arnold's translational methodology, of separating the simple and severe
styles, brings about certain dangers in approaching Homer's Greek:
... by even pressing too impetuously after it, one runs the risk of losing it. The critic of poetry should have the finest tact, the nicest moderation, the most free, flexible, and elastic spirit imaginable [...]. The less he can deal with his object simply and freely, the more things he has to take into account in dealing with it -- the more, in short, he has to encumber himself -- so much the greater force of spirit he needs to retain his elasticity.^4
The same grace that is to be found in poetic simplicity may thus slip away if a poetic translator strives too strenuously to capture it, and one way Arnold cites this happening has to do with the inevitability of anachronism. For Arnold, it is irrelevant to consider whether or not a word is out of date in contemporary language. It makes more sense to consider why it may have been used purposefully to sound old, for the sake of amplifying the intentions of the writing.^5
If a provocative conclusion may be drawn from Arnold's guidance on Homer's translation, it is that the translator wields a certain "power." Arnold uses this word to describe the result of intellectual qualities; while many strive for it, few ever attain it to the title's fullest capacity.^6 The power of the translator originates at the source of his understanding of a text's message, and comes to fruition when the message is communicated using the same simplicity and styling that went into creating it. While it may be utilized in the understanding of polemic exchange, it can ultimately be of great service when re-visiting the messages of great writers, pending for a broader readership.
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