I've started getting interested again in early twentieth century translations of Meleager of Gadara, after finding out earlier in the year that T. E. 'of Arabia' Laurence nearly took a run at him. Our university library and archive have a couple of rarities tucked away and I'm looking at one right now, Richard Aldington's The Poems of Meleager of Gadara (1920).
Aldington published with the Egoist Press, born from the wreckage of the Egoist magazine (1914-19) and best known for a constellation of literary Modernists: the end papers of his two-and-sixpence Meleager advertise Joyce, Wyndham Lewis (founder of Vorticism), Eliot, and Pound, and end by trailing a forthcoming something-or-other titled Ulysses. Aldington himself was a poet of no mean reputation (Images, 3s6d net). But the Egoist also had an established list of translations and Aldington was especially active on that front, with versions of Anyte (bundled with Edward Storer's Sappho), Latin Renaissance poets, and finally, Meleager. These little volumes sat alongside versions of Euripidean choruses by H.D., and of Posidippus and Asclepiades by Storer.
We know that the Imagists especially prized Greek epigram for its lapidary concision, spare phrasing, and striking...well, images. I must look up Storer's versions; he was an interesting fellow. Aldington's in the meantime strike me as worth blogging. He admits to some self-censorship at the outset and declares his regret at the necessity in a not-yet-modernised England:
... V.208, XI.223 and XII.86 are obscene. Two lines have been omitted from XII.33 and XII.41. This translation is, therefore as complete as can possibly be expected, since nine of the fourteen omitted are probably not by Meleager at all, and the others could only be printed in an enlightened country. I have reason to believe that this is by far the most complete translation issued in English. Those who know French and wish to see how a Greek peot ought to be translated, should read M. Pierre Louÿs' translation of a hundred poems of Meleager.
Hmmm, Louÿs... another rabbit-hole. Looking to the Loeb, Paton did fudge the closing line of 12.33, but not the far worse 12.41 ('goat-mounting herds'). And it would not have occurred to me that 12.86 was obscene at all; Paton translates it fully. Plenty to think about in coming weeks.
