2008. EBB to Anne Thomson
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 46–47.
[London]
Monday [?25 August] [1845] [1]
My dear Miss Thomson,
I send you at last my answers to your letter,—the frankness of which I consider to be not the smallest part of its kindness. For want of being a Pythia indeed, [2] I am very deficient in my responses, but you will trust to me, I know, for doing my best in the matter, .. although it vexes me to think that I might do much better if I had now the power I once had, of excavating in the old poets—large folios– The theogony notice of Ariadne you will find rendered as I could render it: they are bald lines to work upon. [3] When I had done, I remembered that Bacchus & Ariadne in the Naxos scene are treated of at large by a Greek poet of the fifth century, (early in the fifth, or late in the fourth I think) called Nonnus, in his Dionysiaca, [4] a poem consisting of upwards of twenty one thousand lines. He is a very wordy flowery writer, as most of those intermediate poets are; & I was forced to stop short in Ariadne’s lamentation, not to exceed excess myself. The passages I have translated are nearly the best of the whole poem, .. I should imagine—for I do not pretend to the virtue of having read the whole—but I have an impression (half knowledge & half instinct) that they are the best. Whether they will be acceptable to you,—any part of them, .. is a different side of the question,—and I leave the decision to you without a word more.
And now as to Aurora—! I send the whole antistrophe in question, so as to justify, by the context, my (slight? .. pardonable?) disobedience to Mr Burges’s rendering. [5] In some respects I have obeyed .. and I will alter anything,—if you & he shd decide it so. My own impression is that altogether it is a wrenching of the meaning rather, to illustrate Aurora in her chariot by such verses as these. Surely the chariot seems to belong to Tithonus himself & not to Eos– But this last word reminds me that when following the Greek traditions in all these papers, I have used the Greek names. Eos for Aurora, Zeus for Jove .. which perhaps may not suit the plan of your book. Tell me if it does not, & it can be changed at once. The public might be in a maze about the neologism, perhaps.
Aurora shows her face & her rosy fingers & ear again & again in the poets, but is apt to pass in a breath, .. before one has time to catch at the reins of the white horses. By the way, she is spoken of somewhere in Euripides, as one-steeded [6] ——as if she drove a Brougham .. or a gig .. & was ‘respectable’. But if the passage from the Troades contents you, it is enough.
This is all, I think, I have to say. Only I could swear on the cestus of Venus that the rose-song is not by Sappho, [7] .. one of the severest of writers as to style. And do believe that I have done (or misdone) all this with pleasure & am not to be thanked for it; & that it should have been done before if Nonnus did not live in a great folio which could only be read out of by short snatches, because Flush is jealous of it & it crushes his mistress.
Dear Miss Thomson
I am sincerely yours
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library, Gordon N. Ray Bequest.
1. In letter 2004, EBB mentions writing a reply to a letter from Miss Thomson. Based on EBB’s description of that reply, this is probably a response to another letter written about the same time, though conceivably earlier. We date this letter the Monday following no. 2004.
2. The priestess of Apollo at Delphi who obtained inspiration for delivering the oracles of the god by inhaling the sulphureous vapors coming out of the ground.
3. “Bacchus and Ariadne,” published in Last Poems (1862); see vol. 10, Appendix IV.
4. “How Bacchus Finds Ariadne Sleeping” and “How Bacchus Comforts Ariadne,” both published in Last Poems; see vol. 10, Appendix IV. Nonnus’s Dionysiaca is described in Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary as a “wonderful collection of heathen mythology and erudition.”
5. “Antistrophe,” published in Last Poems; see vol. 10, Appendix IV. A note to this translation reads: “Rendered after Mr. Burges’ reading, in some respects—not quite all.”
6. Cf. Euripides, Orestes, line 1005 (trans. Arthur S. Way).
7. “Song of the Rose,” published in Poems (1850); see vol. 10, Appendix IV.
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