Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1902-08-07
UNIQUE LITERARY FEAT
Houer's "Iliad" Translated Into
English Hexameter.
WORK OF A HARVARD STUDENT,

Albert j. Lonney of the Law School
Performs a Task That Has Defed
Generations Pope, Bryant and
Longfel1ow Found 1t Beyond Their
Great Talent.
A Harvard Law school man, Albert
j. Lonney, has performed a feat long
ago pronounced impossible by Pope and
Bryant, the translation of Homer's
"IIiad' into English heXameter, says 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 deyoting 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 hexameteE verse in another
tongue-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 a man Of exceptional abil-
1ty, not only as q student of Greek, but
as a scholar ia 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 '97 was carried on
along the broadcast lines, Greek coming
in only as one of those subjects which
the pupil loved 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 so 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.
lie found the English language SEEM
ingly inadequate for hexameter trans
lation, and after laboring necessarily
on his translation he found at the end
of 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 thai a year later, after a
period of diScoura cement and utter de-
pression-after he had practically CIV
en- 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
1T 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 Caniope sing, of Achilles the
scion Of Peleus;
Whitening wrath, which placed unmeas-
ured woe on Achaeans.
Many a sta1wart soul it dispatched prena-
turely to hades.
The difficulty which Lonney found in
his translation was the same that
L~ongfellow 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 and 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
of the fourth book has just been com
pleted. Twenty are yet to come, but
Ionney has the matter well in hand
and is confident hat he will succeed in
completing the translation.
The beauty of Lonney's translation
lies in three important facts-the pres.
~erYation of the original meter, line for
line, its practical literality and the pres
ervation 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. The
following selection is taken from the
first book, when Nestor i~ntervenes be
tween Achilles and Agamemnon:
Nestor of Pylos arose, the clear and mel
IfuouS speaker
From whose musical tongue the words
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 the
third he was ruling.
Carefully weighing his words. he arose
and addressed the assembly.
In the above quotation it will be no
tieed that the author has kept the me
ter strictly, giving at times the Hght
tripping effect Of Homer and at 9th