Sophocles. The Theban Plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (review)

In this work poet Ruth Fainlight and Classicist Robert Littman have collaborated in order to produce “a major work of poetry and a faithful translation of the original works” (back cover). While such an approach to translating Greek literature is by now a familiar one, it can be potentially reductive and misleading, since it seems to assume that knowledge of ancient Greek and poetic artistry are not to be found in a single individual. While such a combination of skills is hardly common, Robert Fagles, whose reputation as a translator rests in large part on his ability to convey the beauty and force of the original Greek, produced versions of the Theban plays in the early 1980s. Given this, it seems useful to keep his translation in mind when assessing this more recent work.

Generally speaking, the strength of these new translations is the combination of Fainlight’s poetic voice and a certain restraint that is often effective in allowing the lyricism of Sophocles’ language to come through. Consider the first stanza from the Ode to Man in Antigone (332–341):

πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀν- θρώπου δεινότερον πέλει τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν πόντου χειµερίῳ νότῳ χωρεῖ, περιβρυχίοισιν περῶν ὑπ’ οἴδµασιν, θεῶν τε τὰν ὑπερτάταν, Γᾶν ἄφθιτον ἀκαµάταν ἀποτρύεται, ἰλλοµένων ἀρότρων ἔτος εἰς ἔτος, ἱππείῳ γένει πολεύων.

Many things are wonderful, but nothing more wonderful and awesome than man. He can travel through surging waves and high-cresting surf driven by stormy southern winds across the grey and dangerous sea. Year after year he wears away the substance of immortal Earth, tirelessly working the soil with plough and mule.

The translation is relatively free in its handling of the original Greek. The rearrangement of clauses in lines 334–337 allows the translators to produce an easy, flowing pace that is in keeping with the original Greek’s use of Aeolic rhythms. Some of the euphonious (if familiar) English phrases, such as “surging waves,” “cresting surf” and “stormy southern winds,” can be understood to produce a pleasing aural effect just as the original Greek does by its use of repeated sounds in π and χ. I very much like the phrase “substance of the immortal Earth,” but ὑπερτάταν as “substance” is a bit of a stretch. However, the epithet ἀκαµάταν has been transferred to the subject. No doubt there is the general sense that humans are tireless in their working of the earth, but the reading of the text is clear, and we have the next line to indicate humanity’s ongoing effort. In addition, this juxtaposition of words in the Greek nicely suggests the wondrous nature of humanity since there is a basic contradiction at work in line 339 (as Griffin notes in his commentary, ad loc.), whereby man attempts to wear away that which cannot be so affected. Finally, by transferring the reference to the plow to the end of the stanza, while leaving ἰλλοµένων untranslated, the effect of line 340 is largely lost, in which the ongoing (“rolling”) work of the plows is linked to the turning of the years, all encapsulated in a single line.

While I might carp on certain particulars, I do think the translators here have done a good job of capturing the overall sense of the poetry in the Ode to Man. Compare Fagles’ rendition:

        Numberless wonders terrible wonders walk the earth but none the match for man— that great wonder crossing the heaving grey sea,       driven by the blasts of winter on through breakers crashing left and right,    holds his steady course and the oldest of the gods he wears away— the Earth, the immortal, the inexhaustible— as his plows go back and forth, year in, year out   with the breed of stallions turning up the furrows.

Fagles’ translation is forceful and reads well, but it strikes me as a bit agitated in its rhythm and pacing, with its use of dashes (and even its spatial organization) suggesting a choppiness of expression that is lacking in the original. It also seems just a bit too loud on the whole. Sophocles’ Ode to Man is certainly rousing and inspiring, but it...