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ON NOT KNOWING GREEK

Shelley takes twenty-one words in English to translate thirteen words of Greek.

πᾶς γõυν πσιητής γίγνεται, κἄν ἄμουσος ἦ τὸ πρίν, ◌̓õν ἂν Ἔρως ἄφηται.

. . . For every one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, becomes a poet as soon as he is touched by love.

Every ounce of fat has been pared off, leaving the flesh firm. Then, spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly, dancing, shaking, all alive, but controlled. Then there are the words themselves which, in so many instances, we have made expressive to us of our own emotions, thalassa, thanatos, anthos, aster—to take the first that come to hand; so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet fittingly without blurring the outline or clouding the depths Greek is the only expression. It is useless, then, to read Greek in translations. Translators can but offer us a vague equivalent; their language is necessarily full of echoes and associations. Professor Mackail says “wan”, and the age of Burne-Jones and Morris is at once evoked. Nor can the subtler stress, the flight and the fall of the words, be kept even by the most skilful of scholars—

. . . thee, who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb

is not

ἅτ᾽ ἐν τάφῳ πετραίῳ,
αἰ, δακρύεις.

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