My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Matthew Arnold’s “On Translating Homer” was a very enjoyable set of three lectures on what he considers the important aspects of a good translation of Homer as well as his thoughts on various translations that were available by 1861. These lectures are infamous for his fierce attack on Francis Newman’s translation of Homer. While Arnold pulled no punches, his analysis is very good, in my opinion. Newman’s translation was very poor and awkward. He also offers critical, yet well thought out, analyses of several other translations, including those by Cowper, Pope and Chapman.

Arnold lays out four items necessary for a good translation. It must be eminently rapid, plain and direct in syntax and words, plain and direct in substance of thought (i.e. in manner and ideas) and noble.

He says that Milton is wonderful but slow and full of pauses and consciousness. Homer is more direct and flowing. Arnold suggests that Cowper followed Milton’s style in his translation of Homer and severely slowed his translations flow and pacing. Pope’s translation added too much extra flourish, but his pacing was very rapid (p. 14). Arnold says that rhyme is not necessarily evil, but that it can be misused. He suggests Chapman had wonderful rhyming, but it linked sections that shouldn’t have been linked (e.g. bridging two divergent lines of thought, but ones that needed to be linked to keep the rhyme scheme in place). Further on Chapman, Arnold says that while he is plain spoken, fresh, vigorous and rapid, his Elizabethan mindset was too active, too complex than the original Homer was (p. 26-28). Chapman goes overboard, embellishing and adding things that just aren’t there.

In his second lecture, among other things, Arnold says that translation must reproduce the “general effect” of the original (p. 31). He suggests that the ballad-style is not suitable to Homer.

In his third lecture, he tries to evaluate the four translations of Cowper, Pope, Chapman and Newman. He also suggests that hexameter is the best choice for translating Homer. I do not agree as it seems somewhat forced in three long translations that Arnold does on his own.

My favorite translation of Homer so far was the Earl of Derby’s which came out a few years after these lectures. I’d like to know what Arnold thought of that one, but haven’t come across any clues yet.