The Classics in Modernist Translation

Description

This volume sheds new light on a wealth of early 20th-century engagement with literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity that significantly shaped the work of anglophone literary modernism. The essays spotlight 'translation, ' a concept the modernists themselves used to reckon with the Classics and to denote a range of different kinds of reception - from more literal to more liberal translation work, as well as forms of what contemporary reception studies would term 'adaptation', 'refiguration' and 'intervention.' As the volume's essays reveal, modernist 'translations' of Classical texts crucially informed the innovations of many modernists and often themselves constituted modernist literary projects. Thus the volume responds to gaps in both Classical reception and Modernist studies: essays treat a comparatively understudied area in Classical reception by reviving work in a subfield of Modernist studies relatively inactive in recent decades but enjoying renewed attention through the recent work of contributors to this volume. The volume's essays address work significantly informed by Classical materials, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Ovid, and Propertius, and approach a range of modernist writers: Pound and H.D., among the modernists best known for work engaging the Classics, as well as Cummings, Eliot, Joyce, Laura Riding, and Yeats Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS FIGURES CONTRIBUTORS FOREWORD THE CLASSICS, MODERNISM AND TRANSLATION: A CONFLICTED HISTORY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION Rationale Modernist translations Structure of the volume CHAPTER 1 ‘SEEKING . . . BURIED BEAUTY’: THE POETS ’TRANSLATION SERIES Selection of translators The translations Source texts Form and content Reviewers’ reactions Conclusion PART I EZRA POUND ON TRANSLATION CHAPTER 2 OUT OF HOMER: GREEK IN POUND’S CANTOS CHAPTER 3 TRANSLATING THE ODYSSEY: ANDREAS DIVUS, OLD ENGLISH AND EZRA POUND’S CANTO I CHAPTER 4 TO TRANSLATE OR NOT TO TRANSLATE? POUND’S PROSODIC PROVOCATIONS IN HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY RESPONDENT ESSAY 1 RINGING TRUE: POUNDIAN TRANSLATION AND POETIC MUSIC PART II H.D.’S TRANSLATIONS OF EURIPIDES: GENRE, FORM, LEXICON CHAPTER 5 TRANSLATION AS MYTHOPOESIS: H.D.’S HELEN IN EGYPT AS META-PALINODE CHAPTER 6 REPRESSION, RENEWAL AND ‘THE RACE OF WOMEN’ IN H.D.’S ION Speech and repression H.D.’s feminist cultural critique CHAPTER 7 BRAVING THE ELEMENTS: H.D. AND JEFFERS Voice as strategic resistance Strangenesses: acts of cognition as revelation Beyond tragedy’s tower: Jeffers’ panoramic auditorium Soundness, a salutary attitude of the depths Chorus as inner mood curtain: they wore veils over their eyes Writing from no place Exodos CHAPTER 8 REINVENTING EROS: H.D.’S TRANSLATION OF EURIPIDES’ HIPPOLYTUS Defying eros ‘in vain’ ‘Kupris/creator of all life’ ‘how Kupris strikes’ / . . . ‘she incites all to evil’ Conclusion: ‘that most passionate of passions, the innate chastity of the young’ RESPONDENT ESSAY 2 H.D. AND EURIPIDES: GHOSTLY SUMMONING PART III MODERNIST TRANSLATION AND POLITICAL ATTUNEMENTS CHAPTER 9 ‘UNTRANSLATABLE’ WOMEN: LAURA RIDING’S CLASSICAL MODERNIST FICTION CHAPTER 10 LOST AND FOUND IN TRANSLATION: THE GENESIS OF MODERNISM’S SIREN SONGS Eliot and the genesis of classical modernism Joyce’s ‘Sirens’ and the nightmare of history Conclusion CHAPTER 11 ‘TRYING TO READ ARISTOPHANE’: SWEENEY AGONISTES , RECEPTION AND RITUAL ‘A man of high seriousness’ Musical drama A ritual plot A new (old) form The classics and the shock of the old CHAPTER 12 ‘STRAIGHT TALK, STRAIGHT AS THE GREEK!’: IRELAND’S OEDIPUS AND THE MODERNISM OF W.B. YEATS RESPONDENT ESSAY 3 MODERNIST TRANSLATIONS AND POLITICAL ATTUNEMENTS CHAPTER 13 MODERNIST MIGRATIONS, PEDAGOGICAL ARENAS: TRANSLATING MODERNIST RECEPTION IN THE CLASSROOM AND GALLERY ‘Facing three ways’: H.D.’s Hermes and modernist migrations Musings in the museum Classical Convergences : myth, poetry and art in conversation Sample convergence: Aphrodite Migrations, translations, departures AFTERWORD: MODERNISM GOING FORWARD NOTES WORKS CITED INDEX