ABSTRACT
We might have expected after studying his Preface that Mr. Browning would have chosen the prose alternative; for it is clearly not his purpose to reproduce the impression made upon his aesthetic sense by the Greek in an English poem, but to represent as faithfully as possible the ideas of Aeschylus, and to use the English language as a castmaker uses plaster of Paris. His translation is, however, in verse. In the choric passages he even uses rhyme, with that characteristic mastery for which he is famous: and here it may be parenthetically observed that in the rhymed structure, whether of the Choruses or of the Kommos in which Cassandra plays so terrific a part, his version is noblest, purest, and clearest, and is also, I think, really closest to the Greek. This choice of verse shows that Mr. Browning aimed, not only at representing the ideas of Aeschylus, but also at reproducing his form. The gesso of the English language was to take the very mould and pressure of the Greek outline in his hand. But language, unlike plaster, will not simply take a mould. It cannot be used as a mere vehicle, because it has its own vitality, its own independent suggestiveness, its own inevitable form. And here, in my humble opinion, the compromise adopted by Mr. Browning in his method of translation reveals its weak point. The result, as regards both language and form, is neither English nor Greek. It does not convey to the English reader either the pleasure of a poem in his own tongue, or the impression which the original makes on a scholar’s mind. Nor can its archaisms and quaint turns of phrase, suggesting as they do a thousand English reminiscences, convey the same aroma as the antiquated Aeschylean diction did to an Athenian of the age of Alexander.
