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046 - Mr Morris's Odyssey · Reviews

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  Speaker 1: Section forty five of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Karen Savage, Reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by
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  Speaker 1: Robert Ross, Section forty five Mister Morris's Odyssey, Poor Margazette,
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  Speaker 1: April twenty sixth, eighteen eighty seven. Of all our modern poets,
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  Speaker 1: mister William Morris is the one best qualified by nature
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  Speaker 1: and by art to translate for us the marvelous epic
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  Speaker 1: of the wanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only
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  Speaker 1: true story singer since Chaucer. If he is a socialist,
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  Speaker 1: he is also a saga man, and there was a
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  Speaker 1: time when he was never wearied of telling us strange
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  Speaker 1: legends of gods and men, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance.
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  Speaker 1: Master as he is of decorative and descriptive verse, he
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  Speaker 1: has all the Greeks joy in the visible aspect of things,
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  Speaker 1: all the Greeks sense of delicate and delightful detail, all
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  Speaker 1: the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures and exquisite materials, and
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  Speaker 1: imaginative designs. Nor can anyone have a keener sympathy with
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  Speaker 1: the Homeric admiration for the workers and craftsmen in the
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  Speaker 1: various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and the
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  Speaker 1: embroiderers in purple and fold, to the weaver sitting by
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  Speaker 1: the loom and the dyet dipping in the vat, the
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  Speaker 1: chaser of shield and helmet, the carver of wood or stone.
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  Speaker 1: And to all this is added the true temper of
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  Speaker 1: high romance, the power to make the past as real
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  Speaker 1: to us as the present, the subtle instinct to discern passion,
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  Speaker 1: the swift impulse to portray life. It is no wonder
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  Speaker 1: the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly looked forward
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  Speaker 1: to mister Morris's version of the Odyssean Epic, And now
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  Speaker 1: that the first volume has appeared, it is not extravagant
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  Speaker 1: to say that of all our English translations, this is
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  Speaker 1: the most perfect and the most satisfying. In spite of
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  Speaker 1: Coleridge's well known views on the subject, we have always
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  Speaker 1: held that Chapman's Odyssey is immeasurably inferior to his Iliad.
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  Speaker 1: The mere difference of meter alone being sufficient to set
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  Speaker 1: the former in a secondary place. Pope's Odyssey, with its
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  Speaker 1: glittering rhetoric and smart antithesis, has nothing of the grand
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  Speaker 1: manner of the original. Cowper is dull and Bryant, dreadful,
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  Speaker 1: and worsely too full of Spincerian prettiness. While excellent, though
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  Speaker 1: Messier's Butcher and Lang's version undoubtedly is in many respects,
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  Speaker 1: still on the whole, it gives us merely the facts
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  Speaker 1: of the odyssey, without providing anything of its artistic effect.
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  Speaker 1: Avia's translation, even though better than almost all its predecessors
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  Speaker 1: in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank
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  Speaker 1: beside mister Morris's. For here we have a true work
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  Speaker 1: of art, a rendering not merely of language into language,
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  Speaker 1: but of poetry into poetry. And though the new spirit
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  Speaker 1: added in the transformation may seem to many rather norse
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  Speaker 1: than Greek, and perhaps at times more boisterous than beautiful,
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  Speaker 1: there is yet a vigor of life in every line,
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  Speaker 1: a splendid ardor through each can that stirs the blood,
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  Speaker 1: while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and
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  Speaker 1: that producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight,
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  Speaker 1: exalts the senses. No less than it exhorts the soul.
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  Speaker 1: It may be admitted at once that here and there
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  Speaker 1: mister Morris has missed something of the marvelous dignity of
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  Speaker 1: the Homeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing
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  Speaker 1: and ringing meter, he has occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement
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  Speaker 1: and made stateliness give place to speed. But it is
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  Speaker 1: really only in such blank verse as Milton's that this
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  Speaker 1: effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, And
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  Speaker 1: in all other respects, blank verse is the most inadequate
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  Speaker 1: medium for reproducing the full flow and fervor of the
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  Speaker 1: Greek hexameter. One merit at any rate, mister Morris's version
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  Speaker 1: entirely and absolutely possesses. It is in no sense of
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  Speaker 1: the word literary. It seems to deal immediately with life itself,
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  Speaker 1: and to take from the reality of things its own
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  Speaker 1: form and color. It is always direct and simple, and
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  Speaker 1: at its best has some thing of the large utterance
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  Speaker 1: of the early gods. As for individual passages of beauty,
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  Speaker 1: nothing could be better than the wonderful description of the
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  Speaker 1: house of the Phaecian King, or the whole telling of
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  Speaker 1: the lovely legend of Circe. Or the manner in which
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  Speaker 1: the pageant of the pale Phantoms in Hades is brought
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  Speaker 1: before our eyes. Perhaps the huge epic humor of the
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  Speaker 1: escape from the Cyclops is hardly realized. But there is
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  Speaker 1: always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinating story into English.
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  Speaker 1: And where we are given so much poetry, we should
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  Speaker 1: not complain about losing a pun. And the exquisite idol
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  Speaker 1: of the meeting and parting with the daughter of Alcinous
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  Speaker 1: is really delightfully told. How good, for instance, is this
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  Speaker 1: passage taken at random from the sixth book, But therewith
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  Speaker 1: unto the handmaid's good le Odysseus spake, stand off, I
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  Speaker 1: bid you, damsels, while the work in hand, I take
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  Speaker 1: and wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them
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  Speaker 1: all around, since verily now this long while sweet oil
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  Speaker 1: they have not found. But before you not while I
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  Speaker 1: wash me for shame, I have indeed, amidst of fair
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  Speaker 1: tressed damsels, to be all bear of weed. So he spake,
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  Speaker 1: and aloof they gat them, And thereof they told the may.
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  Speaker 1: But Odysseus, with the river from his body, washed away
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  Speaker 1: the brine from his back, and his shoulders wrought broad
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  Speaker 1: and mightily, and from his head was he wiping the
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  Speaker 1: foam of the untilled sea. But when he had thoroughly
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  Speaker 1: washed him and the oil about him had shed, he
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  Speaker 1: did upon the raiment the gift of the maid unwed.
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  Speaker 1: But Athena's us forgotten dealt with him in such wise
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  Speaker 1: that bigger yet was his seeming, and mightier to all eyes.
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  Speaker 1: With the hair on his head crisp curling as the
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  Speaker 1: bloom of the daffodil, and as when the silver with
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  Speaker 1: gold is all laid by a man of skill, yea
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  Speaker 1: a craftsman whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athena have taught to
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  Speaker 1: be master over masters, and lovely work he hath wrought
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  Speaker 1: so she round his head and his shoulders shed grace abundantly.
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  Speaker 1: It may be objected by some that the line with
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  Speaker 1: the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom
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  Speaker 1: of the daffodil is a rather fanciful version of ULA's
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  Speaker 1: eg gaey cormas ujaquinsino anthe or moyas, and it certainly
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  Speaker 1: seems probable that the allusion is to the dark color
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  Speaker 1: of the hero's hair. Still, the point is not one
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  Speaker 1: of much importance, though it may be worth noting that
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  Speaker 1: a similar expression occurs in Ogleby's superbly illustrated translation of
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  Speaker 1: the Odyssey, published in sixteen sixty five, where Charles the
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  Speaker 1: second's master of the revels in Ireland, gives the passage.
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  Speaker 1: Thus Minerva renders him more tall and fair, curling in
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  Speaker 1: rings like daffodils his hair. No anthology, however, can show
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  Speaker 1: the true merit of mister Morris's translation, whose real merit
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  Speaker 1: does not depend on stray beauties, nor is revealed by
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  Speaker 1: chance selections, but lies in the absolute rightness and coherence
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  Speaker 1: of the whole, in its purity and justice of touch,
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  Speaker 1: its freedom from affectation and commonplace, its harmony of form
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  Speaker 1: and matter. It is sufficient to say that this is
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  Speaker 1: a poet's version of a poet, and for such surely
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  Speaker 1: we should be thankful. In these latter days of coarse
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  Speaker 1: and vulgar literature. It is something to have made the
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  Speaker 1: great Sea Epic of the South native and natural to
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  Speaker 1: our northern isle. Something to have shown that our English
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  Speaker 1: speech may be a pipe through which Greek lips can blow.
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  Speaker 1: Something to have taught Nausica to speak the same language
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  Speaker 1: as predator. The Odyssey of Homer done into English verse
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  Speaker 1: by William Morris, author of The Earthly Paradise in two volumes,
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  Speaker 1: volume one, Reeves and Turner. For the review of volume two,
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  Speaker 1: see mister Morris's Completion of the Odyssey, page two hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifteen, end of section forty five Mister Morris's Odyssey