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Almost 30 years later, Henderson, the chair of Boston University's classics department, is in charge of editing the best-known translations of classical literature, Harvard University Press's Loeb Classical Library. And his dissertation struggle is serving him well; the honesty that inspired him then drives his extremely faithful translation of some of the comic playwright's most famous works, naughty bits and all. Out this month, the volume is part of an ongoing effort to update and retranslate the Loeb Library's collection of almost 500 books. Launched in 1911 by Harvard alum James Loeb, "the Loebs" have served ever since as an introduction to the ancients' works for novice classicists or interested readers, featuring translations next to the original texts. But the translations were rarely faithful. "When the library started . . . it was illegal to translate anything very racy," Henderson says. When offending passages weren't missing entirely, the Greek was rendered in Latin; ribald Romans usually had their verse rendered in Italian. The new Loebs put it all in plain English, and capture the sexual frankness of the originals. They also do a better job with the original tone. In one relatively tame example, a line from Aristophanes once read, "as I heard them sung . . . there crept upon my soul a pleasant, dreamy, rapturous titillation." Henderson's version is to the point: "Just hearing it brought a tingle to my very butt!" Shocked. Shocked! The old Loebs embodied a Victorian tradition of prudery that had a deep impact on how ancient culture was viewed. "People had a very distorted perspective on what was actually in there," says Alexander Sens, a classics professor at Georgetown University. "That led to the mistaken notion that the Greeks were like upper-class Brits, all aristocrats who sat around thinking pure thoughts about truth and beauty." But in truth the annual fertility festivals that featured comedies like Aristophanes's Lysistrata and The Birds--or the truly wild Women at the Thesmophoria, which Henderson says "hasn't ever been translated straight"--would still scandalize many audiences today. Dedicated to the wine god Dionysus, they were a venue for expression that might otherwise not have been tolerated (decorations and costumes made good use of giant phalluses, for example). But it was usually political satire and topical references that shocked, not the sex. The accuracy and honesty of the new versions should help revive
the series' reputation among scholars, who long viewed them as inferior
because of their omissions. Still, as a new generation of students
takes up the comedies, many flinch at the plays' homophobia, ethnic
slurs, casual references to slavery, and misogynistic language--issues
the Victorians wouldn't have blinked at. "My students always
ask, `Is that really in there?' " Henderson says. "One
generation's standards of [political correctness] are often hard
for the next to understand." |
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