Achilles Summons Thetis (1.345-63)

ὣς φάτο, Πάτροκλος δὲ φίλῳ ἐπεπείθεθ' ἑταίρῳ, [345]
ἐκ δ' ἄγαγε κλισίης Βρισηΐδα καλλιπάρῃον,
δῶκε δ' ἄγειν: τὼ δ' αὖτις ἴτην παρὰ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν:
ἣ δ' ἀέκουσ' ἅμα τοῖσι γυνὴ κίεν: αὐτὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς
δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς,
θῖν' ἔφ' ἁλὸς πολιῆς, ὁρόων ἐπ' ἀπείρονα πόντον: [350]
πολλὰ δὲ μητρὶ φίλῃ ἠρήσατο χεῖρας ὀρεγνύς:

μῆτερ ἐπεί μ' ἔτεκές γε μινυνθάδιόν περ ἐόντα,
τιμήν πέρ μοι ὄφελλεν Ὀλύμπιος ἐγγυαλίξαι
Ζεὺς ὑψιβρεμέτης: νῦν δ' οὐδέ με τυτθὸν ἔτισεν:
ἦ γάρ μ' Ἀτρεΐδης εὐρὺ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων [355]
ἠτίμησεν: ἑλὼν γὰρ ἔχει γέρας αὐτὸς ἀπούρας.

ὣς φάτο δάκρυ χέων, τοῦ δ' ἔκλυε πότνια μήτηρ
ἡμένη ἐν βένθεσσιν ἁλὸς παρὰ πατρὶ γέροντι:
καρπαλίμως δ' ἀνέδυ πολιῆς ἁλὸς ἠΰτ' ὀμίχλη,
καί ῥα πάροιθ' αὐτοῖο καθέζετο δάκρυ χέοντος, [360]
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ' ἔφατ' ἔκ τ' ὀνόμαζε:

τέκνον τί κλαίεις; τί δέ σε φρένας ἵκετο πένθος;
ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε νόῳ, ἵνα εἴδομεν ἄμφω.


Translation:
So he spoke, and Patroklos obeyed his dear comrade;
he brought lovely Briseis out and gave her to the heralds
to take away. They left at once and made their way
through the Achaean ships, the woman unwilling to go.
But Achilles withdrew from his comrades and sat on the gray shore,
weeping as he gazed out over the boundless sea. Time and again,
he stretched forth his arms and prayed to his dear mother:

Mother, since you bore me to live such a short life,
Olympian Zeus the Cloudgatherer should grant me
honor, but as it is he honors me so little,
for wideruling Agamemnon, Atreus’s son, has dishonored
me—he has taken my prize, seized it himself.

So he spoke, his tears falling, and his queenly mother heard him
as she sat in the depths of the sea by her old father’s side.
Right away she came up through the misty gray sea,
and she sat down beside him as he shed his tears;
she stroked his hand and spoke to him, saying,

My child, why do you weep? What grief has come over your thoughts?
Don’t hide it in your mind—speak up so we both know of it.


Comments:
This project is beginning to clarify for me some of the difficulties involved in translating Homer into English. And certain guiding principles are starting to take shape. One principle is to focus more on being faithful to Homer’s narrative and thematic riches and less on faithfully transmitting the poetic ones. What I mean is that the broad storyline, the individual episodes, the characters, the conflicts, the emotions, ideas, and issues, and so forth, all can be brought over into an English translation quite accurately, but the poetry itself cannot. The supple complexity of the dactylic hexameter line, the intricate effects generated through the artificial diction, the flexibility of word order, the formulaic language—these are qualities that are inevitably lost in English translation. One could try to replicate these features, but I don't think it would make for good contemporary English poetry. Instead, I think one should aim to develop a style that obliquely shadows the style of the source text. This is best accomplished by focussing one's efforts on devising rough equivalents for whatever one identifies as the key characteristics of the source text (e.g. Arnold's qualities of rapidity, plainness and directness in both vocabulary and syntax, plainness in matter and ideas, and nobility--to which I would want to add a few others). I think that by focussing on relaying a set of broad features like these rather than on replicating the poetry at a level of close detail, one can tap into one's creative energies more fully and not feel overburdened by a need for strict fidelity. Again, this is an obvious point, but it is one that has to be learnt by doing.