For a novelist often regarded as ‘middle-brow’, twentieth-century author Mary Renault’s books are striking in their historical accuracy, psychological complexity and meaningful social impact. Scholars agree that her historical fiction is remarkably faithful: ‘The only bonafide Hellenist in twentieth-century fiction,’ Professor Bernard F. Dick wrote of Renault in 1972; ‘a real grip and feeling for the realities of the ancient world,’ observed Oxford University Fellow Robin Lane Fox in a 2013 interview for the BBC. Indeed, Renault’s historical novels, which are set against the backdrop of Greece and its former empire, can offer gripping reading material for budding classicists: in a tribute to Renault in The New Yorker, American writer Daniel Mendelsohn, a life-long fan of her work, quotes an Oxford don who once ‘told an eager amateur that to get a sense of what ancient Greece was really like one had only to read Renault—“Renault every time.”’ Although she studied English at Oxford University, Renault had no formal education in Classics and only visited Greece twice herself. Her high level of repute among academics is thus impressive.
Through the lens of her work it appears that Renault, who lived between 1905 and 1983, viewed the classical world as the cultural golden age. Had she joined the ‘ancients versus moderns quarrel’ of the 1700s, which saw academics debate the superiority of ancient literature over modern, and vice versa, Renault would almost certainly have advocated for the former. Particularly revealing was her definitive switch in 1956 from writing contemporary works set in Britain to solely publishing novels that fictionalise the ancient world. She had found a new formula: her Mediterranean backdrops are deeply transportive; her admiration for cerebral, pioneering Greeks, such as Alexander the Great, Socrates and Plato, brings them to life.
Mary Renault
Renault’s work has both united and divided readers over the years: powerful touchstones for many gay readers in their positive depiction of homosexual love, her books also contain some problematic attitudes. These more unappealing aspects of her work can often be grounded within the context of Renault’s veneration of the mores and values of the ancient world. In a BBC documentary to mark 60 years since the publication of Renault’s groundbreaking book The Charioteer (1953), radio broadcaster Sue MacGregor pertinently observed that ‘Mary had quite rigid ideas about noble societies, and she felt we’d lost this in the 20th century world’. Her Greek heroes, most often young men of aristocratic birth, are idealised for their embodiment of adventure, morality and honour, and her novels place a high value on individual triumph and acts of valour. In The Last of the Wine (1956), the novelist’s first Hellenic tale, the qualities which elevate her characters are captured in a letter from a father to his adolescent son, whom he advises to search for valiance and rectitude in future lovers. At times, Renault seems to fixate on championing attributes like these in her characters, overlooking the structural inequalities in the ancient societies of her novels which set limits on who was able to evince these prized qualities.
The Charioteer, which despite its classical-sounding title paints a moving portrait of a young corporal’s sexual bildungsroman in post-war Britain, secured Renualt’s place in the gay literary canon for its postive and nuanced depiction of homosexual love, rare in literature at the time. It also, unsurprisingly, caused controversy – particularly in the United States, where it remained unpublished for six years. In her ancient Greek novels, however, Renault was able to accurately situate romantic and physical relationships between men as social convention, and writing about this period allowed her to portraythese relationships with significantly less backlash. In ancient Greece intimacy between men(notably of the pederastic form) was not viewed as other; there is, in fact, no equivalent ancient Greek word for ‘homosexual’, only distinct terms to denote roles (such as erastes – the mature male, and eromenos – his adolescent lover). Ironically, The Last of the Wine, which Renault wrote following The Charioteer and which also deals with a romance between men as its central theme – this time, in ancient Athens – saw great success in America.
RENAULT, Mary. The Charioteer. 1953. £375.00. (Item sold)
According to Renault the presentation of ‘acceptable’ homosexuality, made possible by her novels’ new context, was inspired by the belief of one of her own characters in The Charioteer: ‘it’s not what one is; it’s what one does with it.’ In the ancient world Renault imagined a place where her characters were not restricted by their sexual identity. This may reflect a desire to avoid in her narratives what she, harshly, deemed self-pity; in a letter to Mendelsohn, with whom she maintained a decades-long correspondence – she described Radcylffe Hall’s notorious lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness as containing an “impermissible allowance of self-pity”. Renault and her lifelong romantic partner, Julie Mullard, lived together for fifty years, until Renault’s death, but neither identified as ‘lesbian’, disliking the term for themselves.
Renault seems to have wrestled with her own identity, and remarked on more than one occasion that she wished she had been born male, and felt better suited to what was considered boyish behaviour when she was a child. Her mother was hostile about this, and apparently made clear her preference for Renault’s more feminine sister. These biographical aspects may help to illuminate why Renault chose to write predominantly about male love and adventure, while a disheartening majority of her female characters fulfil marginal, stereotypical roles. Renault did not identify as what she saw as typically female, and made problematic comments in letters to friends about women whom she judged lightweight and domesticised (traits her traditionally-minded mother would probably have approved of), while David Sweetman’s 1993 biography of Renault quotes a letter in which she describes spending time with housewives: “I have a terribly sad feeling like looking at a lot of animals that have moulted and got silly from being kept in a cage”. Convention considerably restricted women in Renault’s lifetime, and her inability to live openly with a female partner would have represented another check to her freedom. This is likely the reason she and Mallard chose in 1948 to emigrate to Durban, South Africa, where they were able to live more freely in the comparatively liberal atmosphere of an artistic ex-pat community. We may speculate, however, that Renault’s choice of homosexual love between bold heroes, in command of their own fate, as a subject for her novels was driven by these factors: the freedom she sought may, justifiably, only have been imaginable as male.
RENAULT, Mary. The Last of the Wine. 1956. £800.00. (Item Sold)
That The Charioteer and her subsequent Hellenic novels dealt straightforwardly with homosexual attraction served as a source of solace and affirmation for millions of gay readers, who would likely have been prosecuted or persecuted had they been ‘discovered’ in the 1950s, and in decades afterwards. Daniel Mendelsohn’s retelling of the impact Renault’s work had on his formative years illustrates the beacon of hope she offered even in the 1970s:
Reading Renault’s books, I felt a shock of recognition. […] Until that moment, I had never seen my secret feelings reflected anywhere. Pop music meant nothing to me, since all the songs were about boys wanting girls or girls wanting boys; neither did the Y.A. novels I’d read, for the same reason. Television was a desert. (“Will & Grace” was twenty-five years in the future.) Now, in a novel about people from another place and time, it was as if I had found a picture of myself.
It is hard to overestimate the impact such a moment must have had on a young person’s sense of self, and it led Mendelsohn to secrete his feelings in a letter to Renault in South Africa. Though her initial response was characteristically unsentimental, the exchange marked the beginning of the long correspondence between them.
RENAULT, Mary. The Praise Singer. 1978. £50.00. (Item sold)
Renault’s books also gained new meaning for some during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. In a Guardian article entitled ‘Mary Renault’s The Charioteer is antidote to shame’, English Actor Simon Russell-Beale touchingly describes the comfort he found in her work:
At a simple, visceral level the picture of handsome men falling in love without guilt or shame was the perfect antidote to life in a city traumatised by the arrival of a hideous disease.
In Renault’s novels readers may find as many questions as they do answers, but this only adds to their depth and interest. For an aspiring classicist, her historical fiction can add colour to ancient Greek culture and society; for feminists, her novels may raise challenging issues; for LGBTQ+ readers, they have confirmed, excited and reassured. What is certain is Renault’s ability to capture the imagination; to draw you into an ancient world.
Lauren Hepburn interviews Peter Harrington’s Theodora Robinson about her role as a cataloguer and some of the items she has worked with.
Tell us a bit about the importance of cataloguing – where does it sit within the rare book industry?
Rare book cataloguers inspect and write descriptions of the items acquired before they are presented to customers. At Peter Harrington every book, manuscript, photograph, or artwork is catalogued individually, which involves delivering a report on the condition of the item, checking the bibliographic details, and writing notes that explain to the client what the item is and why it is valuable.
How did you come to be a cataloguer at Peter Harrington?
I had finished my Masters degree in Greek and Latin Literature and was looking for jobs working with books and manuscripts. I came across Peter Harrington slightly by accident, as I actually hadn’t heard of the rare book trade at that point! I had been searching for positions at auction houses or in the heritage sector when Matthew Haley at Bonhams pointed me in the direction of rare book dealers; I scoured the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (ABA) vacancies page for about six months before the advert for my role came up.
I enjoy pretty much every part of bookselling, but discussing our books with customers and researching items to buy or that we have acquired are my favourite aspects. There are so many projects to be a part of at Peter Harrington that it makes for a varied life, and because we exhibit at numerous international fairs there’s travel involved, too (mainly to the U.S., for me). One of my highlights so far has been creating Peter Harrington’s first catalogue of works by women, In Her Own Words: Works by Exceptional Women, which I produced with my colleague Emma Walshe. We’ve also just completed our latest Children’s Literature catalogue – it’s been about five years since we last published one with this theme, so it’s well overdue!
What does a day at the bookshop look like for you?
I wear a lot of different hats at Peter Harrington, so no two days are the same, but typically I’ll be editing a print catalogue, researching books to acquire, or cataloguing items we have bought. My role is quite dynamic, and it can change quickly if there is a customer who needs something urgently or if a new project starts swiftly. Recently, I had a very last-minute trip to New York which was booked just the day before I flew. That is unusual, though; usually I know about trips well in advance.
(POTTER, Beatrix.) Christmas gift of a gilder’s set for her friend Gertrude Mary Woodward. . £4,500.00. (Item sold)
You’ve catalogued thousands of items – can you pick out a couple that have stood out to you as particularly special?
There are two pieces that just left my desk that I really enjoyed researching. The first is a Christmas gift from Beatrix Potter to her close friend Gertrude Mary Woodward. It’s quite unusual: a gift of a gilding set, not a book, and there was a lovely connection between the two women, who were both artists. Gertrude also helped Beatrix choose a printer to publish Peter Rabbit.
The second item is a manuscript account of the friendship and exploits of six young women during the Second World War. It is such an interesting and surprisingly entertaining insight into their lives against the backdrop of the war – despite their bombed houses and war work, there are amusing accounts of raucous evenings when they are on leave, including a run-in with a policeman on their way home one night. I also particularly loved the tale of how, on a day out, the girls got drenched in a sudden rain shower, so hung their wet clothes from the luggage rack of their train to dry: ‘the compartment soon looked like a gipsy encampment, so much so that a man, attempting to enter our carriage at a wayside station, gave one look at our wet belongings, exclaimed “Good Lord!” and shut the door again quickly!’
(WOMEN; WORLD WAR II.) Original manuscript notebook. April 1942 – March 1943. £1,250.00. (Item sold)
Cataloguing our copy of Gone With the Wind, inscribed by Vivien Leigh, was also special, and I visited The V&A Museum archives to compare her inscription in it with early samples of handwriting in her diaries. It is quite a remarkable item because the inscription pre-dates her landing the career-defining role of Scarlett O’Hara in 1938. Leigh had read Gone With the Wind at Christmas, 1936, and became obsessed with the idea of playing the female lead in producer David O. Selznick’sforthcoming film adaptation; she was so sure that she would get the role that she even presented a few copies of the book, including the one I catalogued, to fellow actors on the opening night of a stage play she was starring in, a bold two years before she was cast!
Finally, last year I was very excited to track down a copy of The Goodness of St Rocque by Alice Dunbar – the first published collection of short stories by an African-American woman – which we included in our women’s works catalogue.
(LEIGH, Vivien.) MITCHELL, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. . £12,500.00. (Item sold)
DUNBAR, Alice. The Goodness of Saint Rocque and other stories. 1899.
This International Women’s Day, Peter Harrington celebrates Sylvia Beach, the trailblazing bookseller and publisher who helped shape the literary landscape of her age. A century ago, she opened a higgledy-piggledy bookshop and lending library on Paris’ Left Bank called Shakespeare and Company. It was celebrated and frequented by exceptional artists and authors, from Simone de Beauvoir to Man Ray, and Beach’s collections helped promulgate English-language writing across Europe. Today, Beach leaves behind two particularly astonishing legacies: not only the world’s most famous bookshop, but also the publication of one of Modernism’s greatest works, James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Beach was born in the United States in 1887, and lived on Library Street in Princeton, New Jersey. She was a europhile; after living in France from 1901 to 1905, when her father was assistant minister of the American Church in Paris, Beach travelled back to Europe a number of times and even lived in Spain before returning to Paris at the end of World War I to study literature at the Sorbanne.
Adrienne Monnier, Sylvia Beach and James Joyce at Shakespeare and Company, Paris 1938.
Soon after, she visited La Maison des Amis des Livres, a bookshop on the banks of the Seine that was owned by Adrienne Monnier. That a woman should run such an enterprise was rare and impressive, and it galvanised Beach to open one herself. In 1919 a decisive telegram was sent to her mother: ‘Opening bookshop in Paris. Please send money.’ So, with a little financial support and the help of Monnier, who became her lifelong friend and lover, Shakespeare & Co. opened later that year. It was soon so popular that they had to relocate to a bigger space on Rue de l’Odéon, the same street as Monnier’s own lending library. Ernest Hemingway’s evocative description of Shakespeare and Company is as inviting as the shop must have been: ‘a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living.’
In her memoir, lovingly entitled Shakespeare and Company, the full extent of Beach’s influence on the literary circles of Europe and America is revealed. Her intimate recollections position the bookshop as Paris’ most multicultural salon. Through it, she brought a dizzying number of international artists and writers together, both on the shelves and in real life. Friends and patrons included the likes of Ernest Hemingway (‘my best customer’), F. Scott Fitzgerald and ‘Mr and Mrs Pound’ from the US, Jean Prévost, Paul Valéry and André Gide from France, and from Britain and Ireland, T. S. Eliot, DH Lawrence and, of course, Joyce.
“My loves were Adrienne Monnier and James Joyce and Shakespeare and Company.” – Beach
Beach’s detailed account of publishing Ulysses in 1922is indispensable. After Joyce revealed to her that no one would print his controversial epic in full, she offered to, under the imprint of Shakespeare and Company. Unpaid, Beach near-sacrificed herself to do so. A monumental struggle with printers eventually led to 100 copies being distributed by Shakespeare and Co. on Dutch handmade paper. Due to his own financial troubles, Joyce later negotiated a more lucrative contract with a US publisher, but Beach was steadfast, writing in her memoir, ‘A baby belongs to its mother, not to the midwife, doesn’t it?’ But without Beach’s vision, courage and perseverance, Ulysses may never have been.
First edition, first issue, of James Joyce’s Ulysses, published by Shakespeare and Company in 1922.
During France’s occupation a German soldier entered Beach’s bookshop and demanded to buy her personal copy of Finnegan’s Wake, the book in which Joyce paid tribute to his publisher: ‘for Who-is-silvier’. True to character, she boldly refused and, in response, was threatened to have the shop’s contents confiscated. With the help of Monnier and others, Beach hastily packed up and hid her entire library and closed the doors of Shakespeare and Company. Little did she know how her legend would live on.
BEACH, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. London : 1960. £6,000.00. (Item sold)
First edition of Beach’s memoir, inscribed by Beach and with her bookplate.
Considering how long Dylan Thomas was cogitating the essence of Under Milk Wood (from 1931, at 17-years-old), it is paradoxically jarring to know how accelerated and chaotic its near-completion became at the end of his life. Theatre performances of its first full-length draft took place in the spring of 1953, but Thomas was still writing lines until his death in October of the same year. Some of those revisions were intended for the play’s reading on BBC radio and its subsequent publication in Condé Nast’s Mademoiselle magazine, but Thomas died suddenly of respiratory issues, aged just 39, while his manuscript was still under review.
Tracking the conception and creation of Under Milk Wood adds to its fascination. A glimpse of it is first seen in teenage Thomas’ submission to the Swansea Grammar School magazine in 1931, which, much like Under Milk Wood, contained surreal domestic conversations; two years later he spoke of writing a play about a fictional Welsh village, again focusing on the daily and domestic lives of its inhabitants. The proposed title (the village’s name), Llareggub, hinted at the direction it would take – read backwards, it reveals the irreverent, bawdy humour that characterise his last work.
Dylan Thomas in the White Horse Tavern New York Photograph: Bunny Adler.
In conversations with the author Richard Hughes in 1939 and 1943, Thomas expressed an interest in writing scripts about Welsh villagers. In the first instance, he had the ambitious idea that real villagers would play themselves; the second discussion confirmed his aim to combine the mundane with madness: perhaps the village would be ‘certified mad’ by the government. Six years later, in 1949, Thomas finally completed the first half of what would become Under Milk Wood, which, at the time, he gave the more self-explanatory title, The Town That Was Mad. In 1952, it was renamed Llareggub, a Piece for Radio Perhaps and published in the Italian literary journal Botteghe Oscure. The new title reflected Thomas’ desire to have the polyphonic tale performed and heard, but he felt unable to complete its second half. He informed the journal’s editor and, in ‘53, wrote to Gwyn Jones, “I’ve been terribly busy failing to write one word of a more or less play set in a Wales that I’m sad to say never was…”
Thomas’ writer’s block remained until just moments before the play’s first stage production in New York later that year, when the producer is said to have locked him in a room backstage to finish the script (it was finally handed to the actors shortly before the curtain went up). Ten years had passed since Thomas first contemplated his Welsh play, but he had frantically drafted its final third on the day of its performance. He continued adding more lines for shows later that month, and more still for New York productions in October, and the manuscripts that were sent to the BBC and Mademoiselle magazine. Douglas Cleverdon, a producer at the BBC, described what he received from Thomas as ‘extremely disordered’ and certainly not a final draft.
THOMAS, Dylan. Under Milk Wood. Advance proofs of the first complete appearance in print of Under Milk Wood, in John Malcolm Brinnin’s article “Dylan Thomas and his Village”, published in the February 1954 issue, volume 38, number 4, of Mademoiselle. New York : . £1,500.00 (Item sold)
Typed letter on Mademoiselle headed paper signed by Cyrilly Abels, the managing director of Mademoiselle, to a recipient whose name has since been redacted
Fortunately for Thomas, this was not everyone’s view. In a note attached to advance proofs of Under Milk Wood for Mademoiselle magazine, which published the play in February 1954, Managing Director Cyrilly Abels wrote, ‘I hope you will find Under Milk Wood as exciting as I do each time I read it–and I’ve read it five times to date!’ This proof – to which Abels attached her enthusiastic note – constitutes the earliest known issuance of the complete text. A magazine known at the time for its literary connections (publishing short pieces by numerous brilliant writers, including Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, William Faulkner and Alice Munro), Mademoiselle also famously played host to a young Sylvia Plath, whose role as Guest Editor in the summer of 1953 provided ample material for her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. Coincidentally this was the same year that Mademoiselle commissioned the 28-page spread that included Thomas’ verse play: Plath was a devoted admirer of Thomas’ work is said to have been distraught when she missed the opportunity to join a lunch meeting between him and the magazine’s editor. The editors of Mademoiselle collaborated with Thomas, the poet and literary critic John Malcolm Brinnin, and photographer Rollie McKenna to publish ‘Dylan Thomas and his Village’, a feature that would bring the play to life in print.
And so it did. Passing time on a train journey in the winter of 1954, American author James Salter flicked through Mademoiselle and happened upon the newly published Under Milk Wood. In his autobiography he describes the discovery in vivid detail:
In the bluish issue of a women’s magazine in which the models, maddeningly prim, wore little hats and white gloves there was a curious article that caught my eye. It was a tribute to a plumpish Welsh poet whose photograph, taken outside the door of his studio in a seaside town, a manuscript stuck in the pocket of his jacket, was beguiling. John Malcolm Brinnin, perhaps excerpting it from his book, had written about Dylan Thomas and somehow the piece had appeared in Mademoiselle. There was a picture of Dylan Thomas’s wife, children with celtic names, and even a snapshot of his mother.
Brinnin’s lyric description of seedy, romantic life was an introduction to the poem that followed, in overwhelming bursts of language, page upon page. It was Under Milk Wood, roguish, prancing, with its blazing characters and lines. The words dizzied me, their grandeur, their wit. In the soft, clicking comfort of the train I feasted on it all.
On 24th October Thomas experienced breathing difficulties and looked close to collapse at the theatre, ominously saying that he felt his play had ‘taken the life out of him’. Over the next week his health deteriorated further and on 5th November he was taken to hospital, but he did not recover.
Despite its tumultuous journey, Under Milk Wood is one of Dylan Thomas’ best-known and most-popular works. It is constructed using the same enthralling, rhythmic, playful and at times subversive language and structure that he’s known (and loved) for. His ‘play for voices’ sits somewhere between Aristotle and T.S. Eliot: Its linear form and rollicking humour recalling Greek comedy; its plurality of voices and improvement on being heard of course evokes The Waste Land. \Henry W. Wells, a contemporary Professor of English at Columbia University, considered Under Milk Wood proof that Thomas was ‘an even greater innovator in the long than in the short poem.’
In the decades since, Thomas’ seminal script has been produced and recorded globally with all-star credits to its name. It has had music composed by Elton John, been directed by Antony Hopkins, and performed by world-class casts that have included Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Jones, Alan Bennett, Charlotte Church and Rhys Ifans. The late music producer George Martin CBE (aka ‘the fifth Beatle’) recorded a mostly-sung album version of Under Milk Wood, which was performed to an audience that included the Prince of Wales to commemorate the launch of Martin’s independent recording company. Under Milk Wood has seen productions on every scale – in Australia alone it’s been produced as a one-woman-show and also been adapted by composer Tony Gould to be performed alongside the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra. That Under Milk Wood is one of Thomas’ greatest and most far-reaching works is indisputable; its complex and protracted genesis makes it all the more intriguing an achievement.
Penelope and her Suitors (1912) by John William Waterhouse
The last ten years have brought particular focus to women’s engagement with the Classics. 2017 saw Emily Wilson publish her much-lauded translation of the Odyssey, and much of the press surrounding the publication focused on her status as a rare female translator of Homer’s work. She was, however, by no means the first to blaze this trail: 300 years previously, the first woman to translate Homer was a prolific but now largely forgotten scholar named Anne le Fèvre Dacier.
Dacier grew up in Saumur in the Loire region of France, where she was taught Ancient Greek and Latin by her father, Tanneguy Le Fèvre, a professor of classics. That he educated his daughter during the 17th century was unusual, and, happily, prepared her to become one of the foremost classical scholars of her day, as well as one of the most inspiring since.
Anne le Fèvre Dacier
It is a testament to her talent that Dacier’s ouvre has been held in high regard, and remained academically relevant for centuries. Even before her best-known work was published, French academic Gilles Ménage had dedicated his 1690 Historia Mulierum Philosophorum (The History of Women Philosophers) to Dacier, describing her as ‘the most learned of women, whether in the present or the past’. Touchingly, there is a school in Angers, France, where Ménage was born, named after her. Over a hundred years later, in 1803, she was again listed as one of history’s great female intellectuals by British writer Mary Hays. Hays included Dacier in her 300-entry encyclopedia of the most ‘illustrious and celebrated women’ of all time, alongside figures such as Agrippina the Elder and Queen Elizabeth I. More recently, in Harvard University Press’s The Classical Tradition, a 1,000-page volume that explores the legacy of the ancient world, Dacier is credited with popularising the classics during the Neoclassical period (particularly with women) and, through her championing of the poet, returning Homer to the literary foreground. The editors of the tome note that after Dacier’s proficient versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were published, no one else ‘dared to translate Homer for half a century’ .
But the admiration Dacier’s translations received from her male contemporaries is perhaps the best evidence of their quality. That she was considered an eminent scholar in an era that was hostile towards learned women was a considerable anomaly, so much so that she is said to have become quite the topic of conversation in Parisian salons. Her first published volume, translations of the Hellenic poet Callimachus, is what catapulted her to success. It impressed fellow academics and caught the attention of the Dauphin’s assistant tutor, Pierre Daniel-Huet, who became her patron. Huet invited Dacier to contribute to – and even co-edit – the Dauphin’s selected reading of Latin texts, Ad usum Delphini (also known as The Delphin Classics), which were subsequently read by circles beyond the royal household and helped promulgate ancient literature. Simultaneously, she had a number of Greek and Latin prose and poetry translations published independently, meaning that between 1674 and 1684, over ten of her editions were made available for purchase.
(DACIER, Anne Lefèvre, trans.) HOMER. The Iliad. With Notes. To which are prefix’d, A large Preface, and the Life of Homer by Madam Dacier. 1712.
(DACIER, Anne Lefèvre, trans.) HOMER. L’Odyséé d’Homere, traduite en françois, avec des remarques par Madame Dacier. 1716.
Then came the first of her famed translations: Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. Dacier was the first woman to tackle the dactylic hexameter poem, which was first written down in the 8th century BC. Her interpretation captures the essence of the original, with an emphasis on accurate translation over artistic license. At the same time, Dacier’s Iliad is a beautiful example of Neoclassical French prose. Her translation nine years later of the Odyssey was equally admired and was even used by Alexander Pope as a helpful reference when writing his own. Ironically, his was decried by Dacier as being unfaithful to the original.
The difference in style between Dacier and Pope’s Odysseys typified a long-standing academic debate at the time – the querelle des anciens et des modernes (the ‘ancients versus moderns’ debate). In 1714, Dacier published a treatise entitled Des Causes de la Corruption du Goût (On the Causes of the Corruption of Taste), which firmly established her position as a proponent of classical literature’s superiority. She argued that it need not be ‘improved’ and scathingly reviewed what she saw as the deterioration of aesthetic taste since ancient times. Translators such as Antoine Houdar de la Motte disagreed: what he perceived as Homer’s primitive poetic style should be updated to suit cultivated modern tastes. Dacier so opposed this view that she produced an additional two commentaries on the topic, Une Défense d’Homère (A Defence of Homer, 1715), which directly rebuffed scholars’ criticisms of the poet, and Réflexions sur la Préface de Pope (Reflections on the Preface of Pope, 1719). The latter critiqued Pope’s liberal approach to translating Homer’s Odyssey, which was a looser reproduction of the poem written in verse. ‘Whereas Pope’s translation claimed to restore Homer’s brutality, Anne Dacier saw in the poet only harmony and regularity… and in what her contemporaries found shocking, she found traces of the golden age’ (Grafton and others). This veneration of Homer is evident in the multitudinous explanatory notes that accompany her translation: for Dacier, translating the Iliad was not just an academic challenge or means for an income, it was a deeply-felt passion project.
Other female retellings of Homer have appeared in recent years. In 2011, Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles reimagined the Trojan War from the perspective of the hero’s friend and lover, Patroclus. Just last year, Pat Barker told the story of the Trojan War in The Silence of the Girls, this time through the eyes of its female victims. What Dacier would have made of these retellings, we cannot know, but it seems apt that we should revisit her work now and celebrate her as a brilliant scholar – and, of course, as a spirited female pioneer.
If you’d like any further information on any of the books mentioned in this blog, please email us: mail@peterharrington.co.uk or call one of our booksellers on 020 7591 0220
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