BMCR 2009.06.10: Peti on Nelson, Thomas Hobbes: Translations of Homer. (2 vols.)

Eric Nelson (ed.), Thomas Hobbes: Translations of Homer. (2 vols.).
Oxford/New York:  Clarendon, 2008.  Pp. cii, 733.  ISBN 9780199262144.
$250.00.

Reviewed by Miklo/s Pe/ti, Ka/roli Ga/spa/r University, Budapest
Word count:  2102 words
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Hobbes' translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey are published as
Volumes 24 and 25 in the grand project of the Clarendon Edition of the
Works of Thomas Hobbes. Completed in the last years of Hobbes' life
when, as he himself says in his prefatory essay, he had "nothing else
to do" (xcix), the translations have remained on the periphery of
Hobbes scholarship, and they have not proved too inspiring for literary
scholars either. As the meagre reception of the work and the absence of
modern editions show, readers seem to have happily assented to Pope's
often-quoted verdict: "His [Hobbes'] poetry [in the translations], as
well as Ogilby's, is too mean for criticism."[[1]] Eric Nelson's new
edition of the text presents a challenge to this received consensus: in
the extended General Introduction and throughout the notes to the text
he argues systematically and persuasively that the translations
represent Hobbes' attempt to reinterpret the Homeric epics in
accordance with his political philosophy, i.e. that "Hobbes's Iliads
and Odysses of Homer are a continuation of Leviathan by other means"
(xxii).[[2]] Nelson's stance thus involves a thorough reappraisal of
many significant, yet hitherto often neglected or condemned features of
the text (e.g. anachronisms, instances of indebtedness to other
translations, etc.), as a result of which the two elegantly presented
volumes will not only become the definitive edition of Hobbes' Homer
for many years to come, but will hopefully also enter the wider
discourse about early modern translations of the classics.

The rather poor reception history of the work has been thought to be
anticipated by Hobbes himself whose already-quoted explanation for his
project ("Why then did I write it? Because I had nothing else to do"
(xcix)) -- together with his reason for omitting commentary from the
volumes ("But why without Annotations? Because I had no hope to do it
better than it is already done by Mr. Ogilby" (xcix)) -- have usually
been taken to intimate the translator's excuse for the quality of his
text. However, as Nelson points out in the 'Introduction' section of
the General Introduction, the available evidence (a piece of which is
published by him for the first time) suggests quite the contrary.
Hobbes is far from self-demeaning in these lines: the reference to
Ogilby is ironic, while the statement about the lack of other tasks is
not so much a conventional expression of otium as an actual reflection
of Hobbes' difficult public position towards the end of his life.
Virtually bereft of other ways to publish, the elderly Hobbes chose the
Homeric epics to "teach the precepts of his philosophy" (xxi), and to
correct what he had seen as dangerous in the early modern reception of
the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The background against which Hobbes' Homer came to existence is
outlined in the 'Composition and Sources' section where, besides
establishing the time of composition and identifying the Greek text
Hobbes was probably using, Nelson enumerates the several Latin "cribs"
and English interpretations the translator must have consulted in his
work. This attempt to contextualize Hobbes' rendering also informs much
of Nelson's commentary, and all through the volumes prompts the
reconsideration of the translation's position among late-16th- and
17th-century English interpretations of Homer. Reading Hobbes' text
more closely than before (i.e. when his version had been regarded as
little more than a vague and rather unfortunate echo of Ogilby's) this
and the following sections of Nelson's General Introduction (and later
also his notes) reveal an intricate range of possible influences, but
also mark where the translator had significantly departed from his
predecessors. For example, Nelson convincingly points out Hobbes'
slight yet significant indebtedness to Arthur Hall's 1581 Tenne Bookes
of Homers Iliades (turned into English from Hugues Salel's French), the
"black sheep" of Elizabethan translations, which has rarely entered the
scholarly discourse for more than outright ridicule of its awkward
language, its royalist bias, or its rank anachronisms. The survey of
possible influences, however, goes beyond mere source-hunting as Nelson
in this section draws attention to how Hobbes' choice of rhyming verse
may be interpreted in the wider context of 17th-century literature, and
especially in contrast to Milton's project in Paradise Lost to recover
"ancient liberty [. . . ] to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern
bondage of Rimeing."[[3]]

In the last two sections of the General Introduction ('Hobbes on Epic
Poetry'; 'The Translations'), Nelson goes on to elaborate in detail on
how Hobbes' special theory about heroic poetry and his actual
interpretation of the Homeric epics differ from those of his
contemporaries and predecessors. Setting the 1675 "Essay Concerning the
Vertues of an Heroic Poem" in the context of Hobbes' oeuvre, Nelson
shows that the translator's insistence on "discretion" as the chief
epic virtue reflects his lifelong mistrust of rhetoric, and is
consistent with his attempt to narrow the gap between philosophy and
poetry. In practice, the Hobbesian idea of epic discretion finds
expression primarily in the "decorous representation of heroes"
(xxxviii), and would ultimately serve a didactic and political purpose:
in Hobbes' commonwealth, just as in Plato's, no abuse of authority is
tolerable. It might seem strange, therefore, that Hobbes chose the
frequently "indiscreet" Homeric epics to elaborate this idea of
discretion; however, as Nelson suggests, the translator's strictures
should be interpreted in relation to his own work. In other words,
Hobbes' purpose was not simply to deliver the contents of his source
text in English, but rather to create a new, discreet epic by
neutralizing the dangerous political implications of the Iliad and the
Odyssey. This radical reinterpretation of Homer is at the same time an
open attack on what Nelson calls the Homeros Sophos tradition, i.e. the
allegorical-Neoplatonic interpretive strain that had since antiquity
provided the means to explain away whatever might have been considered
indiscreet in Homer, and had to an overwhelming extent determined early
modern conceptions of the Homeric epics, most notably perhaps in
Chapman's translations. Rejecting the idea of a divinely-inspired,
prophetic Homer whose "wisdom" was occassionally forced by interpreters
to align with Christian beliefs, Hobbes tries to purge the Iliad and
the Odyssey of all traces of indiscretion. This is most apparent in
scenes featuring or reflecting on rhetoric, but is also quite striking
in the consistent presentation of Agamemnon, and even in less
conspicuous aspects of the text such as the use of "low" words in
connection with bards featured in the epics ("fiddlers" according to
Hobbes), or the layout of the frontispiece of the 1677 edition.

After the thorough General Introduction, Nelson briefly explains his
editorial policy in the Textual Introduction, and povides a general
Bibliography for consultation in which, given the previous state of
scholarship, studies dealing with Hobbes' Homer are not more than a
handful. The prefatory material ends with Hobbes' 1675 "Essay" and
Wallim's "discreet" biography of Homer based on pseudo-Herodotus
(originally prefaced to the translations). The actual text of Hobbes'
Homer faithfully preserves all the peculiarities of the first editions
-- except for the indentation of alternate lines, instead of which the
complete text is left-aligned --, and is accompanied by textual notes
to mark the relatively few, and only occasionally significant variant
readings (deriving from the different editions which appeared within
Hobbes' own lifetime). The text is reproduced in a large, conveniently
readable font, and is generally faultless, although I have counted a
number of typos, e.g. "fight" for "sight" (Iliad VIII. 496); "tkae" for
"take" (Iliad XIX.10); "broughtyou" (Odyssey VII. 280).[[4]] The same
goes for the various Greek quotations in the introduction and the
commentary where there are only a few missing or misplaced accents or
breathings, e.g. <greek>ei)amenh=|</greek> for
<greek>ei(amenh=|</greek> (xcviii n. 22); <greek>xaracas</greek> for
<greek>xara/cas</greek> (xcix n. 25), etc.

As for the commentary, part of Nelson's notes gloss difficult or
unusual words or expressions, offer explanations for characters and
places, or identify obvious mistranslations, omissions or anachronisms.
As Hobbes' Homer sometimes features words like "charre" (chariot)
"cracking" (boasting), or "bait" (stop for a meal), etc., the need for
explanatory glosses is evident, and there are only minor
inconsistencies: e.g. "rost" is glossed in the Iliad (VIII. 490), but
is not in the Odyssey (XVII. 148), neither is "Penelope her heart"
(i.e. Penelope's heart in Odyssey XVII. 142), although similar
expressions, like "Telemachus his side" (Odyssey XV. 200), usually are.
The notes providing information about the cultural, mythological, or
geographical background are noticeably (and understandably) less
consistent than the glosses, and occasionally one encounters strange
solutions, e.g. "Tydides" is used by Hobbes for Diomedes several times
in Book V of the Iliad (and all throughout the epic), yet is noted only
once (V. 723 -- not the first occasion the name crops up); "Boreas" is
extensively glossed in the Odyssey, but never in the Iliad, etc.
Similarly, Nelson notes that Hobbes uses the anachronistic expression
"Devil" in Odyssey XI. 55 and 572 for the Greek <greek>dai/mwn</greek>
(in the Greek XI. 61 and 587, respectively), and also in Odyssey XVII.
460 ("like any Devil") where it stands for <greek>melai/nh| khri\
e)/oike</greek> (XVII. 500 in the Greek), but he does not comment on
the presence of the term in Zeus' impatient address to Hera (Iliad IV.
25; in the Greek <greek>daimoni/h</greek>, IV. 31), or in Aeolus'
bewildered question to Odysseus (Odyssey X. 65: "Some Devil crost you";
in the Greek <greek>ti/s toi kako\s e)/xrae dai/mwn;</greek> X. 64).

Nonetheless, these are only minor reservations, especially since the
most extensive and most important part of Nelson's commentary is in the
notes dealing with Hobbes' special reading -- very often misreading --
of the source text. Drawing on the Greek original as well as quoting
liberally from the "competing" English and Latin sources (Chapman,
Sponde, etc.), Nelson's notes highlight even in unexpected places how
Hobbes' idea of discretion works in practice. On a very general level
this is apparent in the translator's constant efforts to alleviate the
dire conflict at the heart of the Iliad, and to promote the idea of
"discretion" as a decisive character trait of heroes in the Odyssey --
the term and its variant forms standing as equivalents for Greek
expressions ranging from <greek>pinuto/s</greek> (IV. 212; in the Greek
IV. 211), through <greek>e)sqlo/s</greek> (VII. 63; in the Greek VII.
73), to <greek>fresi\n h(/|sin a)rhrw/s</greek> (X. 520; in the Greek
X. 553) --,[[5]] but the effects of Hobbes' project are also
discernible in such details as, for example, the reservation of the
term "king" for Agamemnon, or the translation of Homeric
<greek>a)gorh/</greek> as "Parliament" (e.g. in Iliad VIII. 444; VIII.
489 in the Greek). One could perhaps wish for further reflection on how
Hobbes' occasional rendering of repeated lines or passages identically
(or with slight changes) relates to the practice of other early modern
translators, but the absence of such information does on no account
challenge the fact that the commentary aptly complements the General
Introduction by following up several aspects of the translation
closely. Nelson's notes will undoubtedly be instrumental in all further
critical evaluations of Hobbes' Homer.

At the end of the General Introduction Nelson wryly reminds us that
Hobbes' version had quickly lost its appeal: already for
late-17th-century readers the translator "had made Homer so discreet
that there was no longer any reason to read him" (lxxvi). True, the
translations have not been able to stand the test of time, and the
emphasis on "discretion" is only one of the reasons why the first look
into Hobbes' Homer has for the majority of readers quickly proved to be
the last; one could also mention the drab verse, Hobbes' tendency to
abridge the narrative, or the omission of several similes (which
already Pope had remarked). Yet Nelson's edition throws new light on
the text and makes us rethink the translation's critical heritage. This
of course does not mean that Hobbes' Homer will suddenly be allotted
the same significance and attention as the great historical versions
(Chapman's or Pope's translations) have duly received, but Nelson's
elucidation of Hobbes' peculiar interpretation certainly rescues the
text from oblivion, and provides new reasons to read the "discreet
Homer", new perspectives both for Hobbes scholars and literary
historians interested in early modern translations. In the long run,
furthermore, the consideration of Hobbes' Homer could also prove
fruitful in the wider context of English and comparative literary
studies: it is enough to think of Milton's very different, but equally
radical revaluation of the classics in Paradise Lost, or even Spenser's
"Letter of the Authors" according to which Homer in the Iliad "hath
ensampled a good governour" in the person of Agamemnon,[[6]] to see
that Hobbes' discreet version is not without interesting constrasts and
parallels.


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Notes:


1.   Maynard Mack, ed., The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of
Alexander Pope vol. 7 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 21 2.

2.   Nelson credits this turn of phrase to Quentin Skinner.

3.   John Milton, Paradise Lost, Barbara Lewalski, ed. (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2007), 10.

4.   Unless otherwise indicated, book and line numbers of the Iliad and
the Odyssey refer to Hobbes' translation.

5.   Hobbes also uses the term in negative contexts, e.g. in Alcinous'
indirect reproof of Nausicaa, an instance Nelson does not note: "'Twas
in my Child an indiscretion" (Odyssey VII. 279); the Greek expression
is <greek>e)nai/simon ou)k e)no/hse</greek> (VII. 299).

6.   Hugh Maclean and Anne Lake Prescott, ed. Edmund Spenser's Poetry
(New York: Norton, 1992), 1. Spenser does not mention Achilles.