venuti

130 The Translator’s Invisibilitytranslator’s part—“defecates to a pure transparency,” anddisappears.(ibid.:103)In this remarkable analogy, Arnold’s translation “principles” assumeda Christian Platonic metaphysics of true semantic equivalence,whereby he demonized (or fecalized) the material conditions oftranslation, the target-language values that define the translator’swork and inevitably mark the source-language text. Current English“modes of thinking, speaking, and feeling” must be repressed, like abodily function; they are “alien” excrement soiling the classical text.This is an antiquarianism that canonized the Greek past whileapproaching the English present with a physical squeamishness.Arnold didn’t demonize all domestic values, however, since he wasin fact upholding the canonical tradition of English literarytranslation: following Denham, Dryden, Tytler, Frere, herecommended a free, domesticating method to produce fluent,familiar verse that respected bourgeois moral values. The differencebetween the foreign text and English culture “disappears” in thistradition because the translator removes it—while invisibly inscribinga reading that reflects English literary canons, a specific interpretationof “Homer.” In Arnold’s case,So essentially characteristic of Homer is his plainness andnaturalness of thought, that to the preservation of this in his ownversion the translator must without scruple sacrifice, where it isnecessary, verbal fidelity to his original, rather than run any risk ofproducing, by literalness, an odd and unnatural effect.(Arnold 1960:157–158)For Arnold, what determined familiarity of effect was not merelytransparent discourse, fluency as opposed to “literalness,” but theprevailing academic reading of Homer, validated by scholars at Eton,Cambridge, and Oxford. Indeed, Arnold’s main contention—and thepoint on which he differed most from Newman—was that only readersof the Greek text were qualified to evaluate English versions of it: “acompetent scholar’s judgment whether the translation more or lessreproduces for him the effect of the original” (Arnold 1960:201).Throughout the lectures Arnold repeatedly set forth this “effect” inauthoritative statements: “Homer is rapid in his movement, Homer isplain in his words and style, Homer is simple in his ideas, Homer is