Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1902-08-14
UNIQUE LITERARY FEAT
Homer's "Iliad" Translated Into
English Hexameter.
WORK OF A HARVARD STUDENT.

Albert j. Lonney of the Law School
Performs a Task That Has Dehed
Generations - Pope, Bryant and
LongfelIow Found 1t Beyond Their
Great Talent.
A Harvard Law school man, Albert
]. Lonney, has performed a feat long
ago pronounced impossible by Pope and
Bryant, the translation of Homer's
-Lliad" into English heXameter, avs a
special dispatch from Cambridge to the
Philadelphia Press. Men for ages have
essayed this task and failed. Pope and
Bryant gave up the task as hopeless,
and Longfellow, after devoting weeks
of labor on the subject, fOund his own
great talent entirely inadequate to the
tremendous task. Two men alone have
succeeded in changing the original
Greek into heXameter verse in another
Iongue-Voss, the great German au.
thor, and Lonney, who, although a
STRIPPING in the literary world, has
come out like David and defeated the
giant that his mighty predecessors
were unable to overcome.
:. Lonney is q man Of exceptional abil-
ity, not only as a student of Greek, but
as a scholar In the broadcast sense of
the word. He is not a literary man in
the sense that he made literature his
study while he was in college. His ed
~ucation in Harvard up to the time he
was graduated in 81 was carried on
along the broadcast lines, Greek coming
in only as one of those subjects which
the pupil owed and concerning which
he wanted to instruct himself. From
his earliest days the Greek language
had appealed to him.
Lonney's success came only after Pc
RODS of depression, encouragement
and firing effort. In order to get into
the spirit Of the poem he conceived the
idea of committing it to memory before
he essayed- to translate. This was not
q difficult thing for sc expert a stu
dent. and he easily had the first book
by heart when he started his tremen-
dous task. For the first two months
encouragement stared him in the face.
He found the English language seem
ingly inadequate for hexameter trans
latiou. and after laboring necessarily
on his translation he found at the end
pf that time that scarcely twenty i'm
perfect lines were the result Of all his
efforts.
This was in the early spring of 1900.
"A little more than a year later, after a
period of encouragement and utter de-
p~ression-after he had practically CIV
zen up the work as hopeless-Lonney
received an inspiration. A difficult line
that had bothered him in his previous
effort cleared itself. He hurried to put
it on paper and, stimulated by success,
finished the first two books two weeks
later. The first few lines were correct
ed, and he now had a completed work.
His first book starts as follows:
Wrath, o Calliope sing, of Achilles the
scion OF PeleuS;
whitening wrath, which placed unmeas-
ured woe on Acheeans.
Many a Stalwart soul it dispatched prema-
turely to hades.
The difficulty which Lonney found in
his translation was the same that
Longfellow had noticed when he made
his attempt, the marked difference in
the number Of particles in the English
and in the Greek and German. The
meter also presented a hard problem.
He followed the original Greek line for
line, almost word for word, and in pre-
serving the relatively of the context he
emphasized both the meaning n the
beauty of the original. The first word
of his translation, for instance, CORE
spends exactly to the Greek, while the
whole line follows the text without the
slightest deviation.
After the translation Of the first book
.Lonney had little difficulty in working
out the succeeding three. The cata-
logue of the ships, found in the second,
was postponed until the third and
fourth were completed, at which time
the daring young author found little
difficulty in performing the most diff.
cult part of his task. The translation
yof the fourth book has just been COM
.pleted. Twenty are yet to come, but
Lonney has the matter well in hand
and is confident that he will succeed in
completing the translation.
The beauty Of Lonney's translation
lies in three important facts-the pres
ervation of the original meter, line fol
line, it's practical l~iterality n the pres
%Aeryation of the Greek spirit produced
by the perfect imitation of the Greek
verse. What success he has attained
can best be judged from his lines. TIT
following selection is taken from the
first book, when Nestor intervenes be
tween Achilles and Agamemnon:
Nestor of Pylos arose, the clear and mel.
lifuous speaker
From whose musical tongue the word:
flowed sweeter than honey;
Two generations of speakers already had
passed from his vision,
Sleeping now in the dust, who once were
his boyish companions,
Born in sacred Pylos, and this was thu
third he was ruling.
Carefully weighing his words. he aros'
and addressed the assembly.
In the above quotation it will be no
ticed that the author has kept the me
ter strictly, giving at times the igh
tripping effect of Homer and at 9th