Magin_Edward-thesis

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while it may be difficult to discern someone’s boundaries, it is possible to understand
their basic attitudes towards creative endeavors in poetry.
In 1720 the philosopher Voltaire (1992:30) wrote the following words to Anne
Dacier, a French scholar and translator of the classics:
I am convinced that we have two or three poets in France who would be
able to translate Homer very well; but I am equally convinced that nobody
will read them unless they soften and embellish almost everything
because, Madame, you have to write for your own time, not for the past.
It seems that Voltaire was likely a supporter of Antoine Houdar de la Motte’s method of
translation (Sidnell 1998:11). Houdar de la Motte states the following in response to the
critics of his translation of Homer published in 1714:
I have followed those parts of the Iliad that seemed to me worth keeping,
and I have taken the liberty of changing whatever I thought disagreeable. I
am a translator in many parts and an original author in many others.
(Houdar de la Motte 1992:29)
Regarding his reasoning for reducing the twenty-four volumes into twelve, he says:
At first sight you might think that this could only be done at the expense
of many important elements. But if you pause to reflect that repetitions
make up more than one-sixth of the Iliad, and that anatomical details of
wounds and the warriors’ long speeches make up a lot more, you will be
right in thinking that it has been easy for me to shorten the poem without
losing any important features of the plot. I flatter myself that I have done
just that and I even think I have succeeded in bringing the essential parts
of the action together in such a way that they form a better proportioned
and more sensible whole than Homer’s original. (Houdar de la Motte
1992:29)
Houdar de la Motte only seems to mention in passing the existence of an original context,
an original audience that would likely have appreciated many features of the Iliad that he
himself finds undesirable:
I have, therefore, only corrected―as far as possible―those defects in the
poem that have a shocking or boring effect, since those are unforgivable. I
have left the gods their passions, but I have always tried to preserve their
dignity. I have not deprived the heroes of their unjust pride, which often
appears as “grandeur” to us, but I have deprived them of the avarice, the
eagerness, and the greed with which they stoop to looting, since these