E330600A. Prometheus Bound.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1833, pp. 610–611.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3.
As this very interesting volume modestly presents itself to our notice without a name, we deem it uncourteous to break the studied silence of the author, or to say more than that it is to a female pen we are indebted for what we believe to be absolutely [p. 611→] unique in English literature—an attempt on the part of a young lady to translate a play of Æschylus; and who, if report speaks truly, has read every word of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and this, too, ere she is well out of her teens. That for such noble desertion of the fashionable and frivolous pursuits of her sex, our fair authoress will be ranked a decided bas bleu, is what she is too wise not to expect, and of course too high-minded to regret what she may truly call κάλλιστον ὄνειδος. For ourselves, and all* who conceive that women are born for higher purposes than to stammer out bad French, and squall worse Italian, to fill portfolios with daubs for drawings, or to rattle the keys of a piano,—the appearance of a volume, that reminds us of the days of a Dacier and Carter, cannot fail to be highly welcome; satisfied as we are that, if more young ladies would turn from the living languages to the dead, and especially to Greek, the only perfect medium of thought ever invented by man, they would not only add greatly to their stock of intellectual amusements, but also benefit the other sex, by compelling them to aim at a higher standard of merit, before they could ever aspire to the favour of the fair, much less presume upon their boasted superiority over the “weaker vessel.”
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*In this number neither Euripides nor Juvenal were willing to enrol themselves, as invidiously remarked by Muretus, Var. Lect. viii. 21. Lord Byron, too, is known to have hated a blue stocking “cane pejus et angue” in consequence, probably, of his intercourse with the Turks, who are wont to say that “one tongue is quite enough for one woman.”
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As a specimen of our author’s ability to do justice to the original, we will extract her version of the opening speech of Io in v. 57.
What land? what habitants? and who
The being that I look unto,
Tempested in rock and chain?
For what crime dost thou sustain
Such chastisement? and, oh, declare
Where have I hapless wander’d—where?
Ah me! ah me! ah me!
Again the gad-fly spurs me, wretched maid!
Oh earth, avert the earth-born Argus’ shade!
I fear mine eyes should be
On him, the thousand-eyed
Herdsman, who walketh, looking craftily;
Whom, albeit dead, the grave hath fail’d to hide;
But, passing from the shades, who doggeth me,
Making me wander famine-worn beside
The sand-encircled sea:
While undertoned his waxen reed doth keep
A tune engend’ring sleep.
Oh woe! oh woe!
Where are, ye gods, my wand’rings wide directed?
Me, in what crime, thou Jove, what crime detected,
Yok’st thou to suff’ring, so,
And thus to goading terror dost thou doom me
Wretched and madden’d? Oh, with fire consume me,
Hide me with earth, to beasts my body fling:
Spurn not my prayer, oh king!
Too many wand’rings on my strength have press’d,
Nor know I where I shall attain to rest.
Cho. What saith the hornëd virgin, hearest thou?
Pro. How can I hear not the fly-goaded maid,
The child of Inachus, who warm’d with love
Saturnius’ breast; and now, by Juno’s hate,
Is forced to tread the ever-length’ning ways?
Io. Whence didst thou utter forth my father’s name?
Say to the sorrowing one—who canst thou be,
Oh miserable thou, who dost acclaim
Such true discourse to miserable me?
Naming the Jove-impellëd malady,
Which goads with furious sting, my strength down sweeping;
And with the hungry scourges of whose leaping,
Urged wildly on, I sought this path,
Subdued by Juno’s wily wrath?
Of those acquaint with misery,
Who alas! are sad as I?
But now what suffering waits me, plainly show;
And what, oh what the med’cine of my woe.
Speak to the wand’ring maid, if ought thou know.
By comparing this version with the original, it will be seen that our author has, to use her own words, “kept as closely to the sense, as was poetically possible”; and so little, indeed, has she swerved, not only here, but through the whole play, from her purpose, that every reader of the Prometheus, who wants a crib-book, would do well to bind up this translation with the Greek text, in lieu of the literal prose Latin or English versions usually put into the hands of their pupils by the teachers of the March-of-Intellect æra.
As regards the Miscellaneous Poems attached to the translation of the Prometheus, and for which the authoress pleads so prettily in her preface, we are free to confess that to our taste they are the gems of the volume.
Reviewed:
Prometheus Bound (EBB), London: A.J. Valpy, 1833.
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