A Translator’s Notebook: The Third Stasimon of Euripides’ Hippolytos
by  Diane Arnson Svarlien
 
     I propose a detailed, practical discussion of some of the choices I made in translating the third stasimon of Euripides’ Hippolytos (1102-50) into English verse.

     Although it is difficult for me to stand outside and comment upon my own context, perhaps by justifying my own moves (based on what I take to be Euripides’ moves) I can present a clear picture of what one type of present-day Euripides translation into English can be like.

     I found this ode unusually rich and dense in its language and, hence, a greater than usual challenge to translate. Adding to the challenge is a well-known textual crux relating to the attribution of the lines. I will discuss how my decision to give the strophes to a secondary male chorus (retaining the masculine participles in the text) and the epode to a combined chorus was influenced by my sense of the ode’s internal logic and its relation to the rest of the play.

     Any piece of poetry presents the translator with countless small choices tied to every word: what can be kept, and what is worth trading for what. My first decision in translating Euripides’ choruses was metrical. I felt that it was essential to preserve the responsion, but I allowed myself a lot of freedom in the shape of each line, provided that its rhythms matched those of its counterpart in the strophe/antistrophe. This freedom no doubt facilitated my first betrayal of Euripides: the sheer number of words I used, 326 to Euripides’ 180. This seems to far exceed my usual rate of padding, probably because of the many stylistic elements in this ode that I was unwilling to lose.

    Foremost among these are the repetitions and echoes, both within the ode and connecting the ode to other parts of the play. Words, syllables, and ideas resonate from stanza to stanza with intricate precision: for example, the meta- of metaballomena in antistrophe alpha echoes meta- in the same metrical position in the strophe; each meta-, and the sentence each is part of, conveys the idea of change, and is preceded by an iambic word or phrase that reinforces this idea: ameibetai in the strophe, ton aurion in the antistrophe. I wanted to preserve not only the cerebral effect of the repetitions of important words and roots (such as elpis, tukh-, and ouketi) but also the euphonic effects of Euripides’ sound-patterning. The easiest way to do this was to use syllables unstintingly.

     In antistrophe beta there were two places where I felt that preserving verbal echoes was more important than translating the literal meaning of a word, and that the resulting complex of images was ultimately more faithful to Euripides than a lexically accurate translation would have been. The first of these is the word suzugia, “yoking,” in the first line of antistrophe beta. The adjective form of this word appears in the epode: suzugiai Kharites (1148). While I might have used “yoke” in the lines about horses (1131), I didn’t think this word would work for the Graces. Instead I shifted to another piece of equestrian apparatus, and translated “twining  reins” for the horses, answered by the “twining arms” of the Graces.

     My second act of lexical disloyalty also involved both the musical arts and a detail of chariot construction. In 1135 Euripides calls the frame of a lyre the antux; later, in the messenger speech describing Hippolytos’ death, he uses this word for the rail of Hippolytos’ chariot (1188 and 1231). In these later lines, I omitted any mention of the chariot rail, substituting the phrase “twining reins” to preserve the resonance with the third stasimon. As for the lyre, I discarded it, frame and all; in place of mousa hup' antugi khordân, “muse beneath the frame of the strings,” I have “music that once poured.” Although I have given up the striking, unique phrase antugi khordân (Barrett notes that antux is used nowhere else of a lyre), and the light personification of mousa (in conjunction with aupnos), I have gained, with the word “poured,” a kind of synaesthesia (suggesting the wine that flows at such festivities), along with the assonance and alliteration with “horses” in the same line, bringing close together the ideas of music and horsemanship, as Euripides’ Greek does in other ways. This connection is further helped along by the phrase “drumbeat of hooves,” which I used because Enetân and Limnas in these lines (1131-2) echo Phaidra’s anapestic mad scene earlier in the play (228, 231). Again, the presence of an echo was more important to me than the meaning of the repeated word: I dropped the adjective Enetos, “Venetian,” from both 231 and 1131. “Drumbeat of hooves” translates hippokrotos in 229.

     So, although the meanings of the words antux and Enetos have completely disappeared from my translation, and rhythmic hooves and twining reins have been repeated, even though they do not translate anything explicitly present in Euripides’ Greek, I feel that I have preserved what is more important, the relation of images and ideas to each other, and the linking of passages by verbal echoes.

     Through these examples and others like them I hope to convey my sense of what the verse translator’s responsibilities and priorities should be.

©copyright 1999 by Diane Arnson Svarlien