At 04:58 PM 10/17/98 +0100, Colin Burrow wrote:
>David's problem with the end-stopping of the couplets is one that many
>share. I think the epigrammatic nature of the couplet, though, is often
>over-stated: it is a matter of recalibrating our ears a little to hear that
>shifts in the position of caesurae, half- rather than full- rhymes, and tiny
>modulations in punctuation can carry major drama. You can't look at Hilliard
>with the same eyes you use to look at Rubens, and you can't hear Dryden's
>delicacy with ears adapted to blank or free verse.
...
>I think (no-one is allowed to say this these days of course) that this is
>great writing. It responds with vigour to the scene which Virgil is
>describing, and it understands that Virgil's rhythm and pacing is often
>delicately mimetic in the battle scenes of the Aeneid as elsewhere. Yes it
>is in couplets; but no two couplets are the same. Delicacy of modulation is
>possible within a rigid form in a way that it is not when a translator opts
>for greater freedom.
This is well spoken, and confirms what Paul said earlier: Dryden's couplets
"are not merely 'pithy little epigrams' but complex poetic structures with
a rich, often dislocating, rhythmical variation which often makes one
forget they're couplets."
But I think the painting analogy tells both ways. It would be a mistake
to
seek in Botticelli the pleasures one finds in Constable; if you tried, no
one would pity you. But with a translation it is different: to say that you
cannot expect to find the pleasures of Virgil in Dryden's translation of
Virgil is to admit that Dryden has, in some measure, failed. Or perhaps it
is to say that his medium failed him.
Again, this is not to say that the end-stopped couplet is a bad, or
inflexible, medium! I emphatically do not find myself wishing that Pope had
written the "Essay on Man" in blank verse. That poem was MADE for the
rhyming couplet!
But what has the medium of the "Essay" to do with Virgil's hexameters?
There are perhaps more ideas than forms to put them in: no one wants to
say, for instance, that the "Essay on Man" is the only poem that can
properly be put into end-stopped couplets. And Colin is right to say that
"you can't hear Dryden's delicacy with ears adapted to blank or free
verse." Nevertheless, it is no use pretending that end-stopped couplets can
do everything that blank verse can do. Or vice versa: both have their uses.
What is the good of a rhyming couplet if you don't notice the rhyme? Again,
this is not to say that Dryden's Virgil is a bad poem. I maintain, however,
that the symmetry of thought which its couplets impose do make it a bad
translation.
One final question (or salvo): What do Dryden's defenders make of the
fact
that the poet himself later expressed a regret (upon reading Paradise Lost)
that he had not used the same medium (blank verse) in his translation of
the Aeneid?
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David Wilson-Okamura http://www.virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of Chicago Online Virgil discussion, bibliography & links
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