ABSTRACT
People argue about translation using the language of ethics. Fidelity-that ancient and problematic criterion for judging literary translations-comprehends not only precision and accuracy, but also loyalty. To be faithful is to keep a promise, and the extraordinary passion that often confronts newly translated poetry comes from a visceral sense of promises kept or betrayed. So long has this been true that it has become proverbial: from the punning Italian adage traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor) to the epithet belles in–dèles, €rst applied in the seventeenth century to vernacular renderings of classical texts.1 To what, or to whom, must the translator be faithful? And what promises must be kept? These, it turns out, are not easy questions to settle. They remain vital, despite their antiquity, to translators and theorists; for readers they often remain unarticulated and the range of responses insuf€ciently examined. Both judgment and appreciation suffer as a result.
