As A.T. Reyes relates the story in his introduction to C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile, Lewis’s unfinished translation of Virgil’s epic narrowly avoided the fate of the bonfire. In 1963, the year Lewis died, much of his literary stuff (not out of hostility, but rather non-interest by his brother, W.H Lewis; see p. 2) was put on to a bonfire over the course of three days. This item, fortunately, did not perish in the flames as so much else did. Lewis’s translation was by no means finished — we have all of book I, sizeable parts of books II and VI, plus fragments of others — but its survival is of great value and interest. In C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid, Reyes presents these extant translations of Lewis’s Aeneid. Also in the book is a foreword by Walter Hooper (literary executor of Lewis’s), a preface by D.O. Ross, and an introduction by Reyes.
Ross’s concise preface provides a comparison of Lewis’s translation of lines 159-168 of Book I of the Aeneid with that of three others translations: those by Mandelbaum, Lombardo, and Fagles. Reyes’s excellent introduction then gives brief biographical details of Lewis’s life along with a helpful account of some of Lewis’s views on poetic translation, literary trends, and his reasons for preferring Gavin Douglas’s translation of the Aeneid above all others. It’s an enlightening introduction — supported by numerous passages from Lewis’s owns works and letters — that would be well worth reading even if one wasn’t specifically interested in Lewis’s rendering of Virgil’s epic.
On the translation itself, I can comment only rather superficially. The first thing to mention is that Lewis chose to translate Virgil’s dactylic hexameter into English rhyming Alexandrine. The result, one of them, is a fun to read and almost always fluid movement, especially when reading aloud. Another thing to note, as Reyes’s points out, is that Lewis stays quite close to the Latin in terms of corresponding line numbers. This closeness is by no means always the case. In Robert Fitzgerald’s translation, for instance, line 628/29 (of Book I) is line 462 in Virgil’s Latin — a difference of 167 lines.
As mentioned, I’m not in a position to comment much on the translation, but one passage did stand out. The passage is from Book I, very early on, when Virgil gives us the first simile of the epic. The context is the immediate aftermath (or restoration, actually) of the storm caused by Aeolus at the request of Juno. Aeneas and company are thrown every which way about the sea until Neptune finally puts an end to the chaos. The simile is a political one, and Neptune is likened to a statesman — one who is able to confidently and effectively respond to state of chaos, thereby restoring order. Lewis translates as follows:
As when in mighty commonwealths the rascal crowd
Stirred to rebellion raises oft their voice aloud,
And ready to their mischief find both fire and stone,
If chance some graver citizen, for merits known,
Pass by, they strain to hear him and are silent all,
And at his words, corrected, their wild passions fall:”
(148-153)
The wild and out-of-control crowd, the ignoble vulgus, and their attentiveness to the master statesman, is given a lucid picture by Lewis. I particularly like the phrase “find both fire and stone”; the crowd is eager to wreak havoc, by whatever means, and is full of a rebellious disposition. Lewis captures the mood of the passage very well, and punctuates the chaotic atmosphere with his diction. The choice of “mischief” I especially like, which is then “corrected” by the capable leader. It’s a picture of the statesman possessed of supreme competence and the ability to turn disorder into order — the very thing Virgil wishes to convey.
Spectatio 