The discussion of my translation from Theocritus, which I have
followed with the liveliest interest, has not only been enlightening but
has also given me the very great pleasure of enabling me to feel as if
I were enacting in actuality one of my favorite scenes from Swift, in
which Gulliver asks the Governor of Glubbdubdrib, The Island of
Sorcerers, to use his necromantic powers to invoke the fabled figures of
antiquity:
Having a desire to see those ancients, who were most
renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on
purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might
appear at the head of all their commentators; but these
were so numerous that some hundreds were forced to
attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. I
knew and could distinguish those two heroes at first
sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other.
Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two,
walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were
the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle
stooped much, and made use use of a staff. His visage
was meager, his hair lank and thin, and his voice
hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were
perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had
never seen or heard of them before. And I had a
whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless, that these
commentators always kept in the most distant quarters
from their principals in the lower world, through a
consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so
horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to
posterity. I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to
Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than
perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a
genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But
Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I
gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to
him, and he asked them whether the rest of the tribe
were as great dunces themselves.
I shall certainly stay with this list. Who knows what other
fantasies of mine it may eventually incarnate?
To: BRITPOE([log in to unmask])
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