By George Economou

Featured Art: Green and Blue: The Dancer by James McNeill Whistler

                         Άγε, ω βασιλεύ Λακεδαιμονίων

           Δεν καταδέχονταν η Κρατησίκλεια
           ο κόσμος να την δει να κλαίει και να θρηνεί·
           και μεγαλοπρεπής εβάδιζε και σιωπηλή.
           Τίποτε δεν απόδειχνε η ατάραχη μορφή της
           απ’ τον καϋμό και τα τυράννια της.
           Μα όσο και νάναι μια στιγμή δεν βάσταξε·
           και πριν στο άθλιο πλοίο μπει να πάει στην Aλεξάνδρεια,
           πήρε τον υιό της στον ναό του Ποσειδώνος,
           και μόνοι σαν βρεθήκαν τον αγκάλιασε
           και τον ασπάζονταν, «διαλγούντα», λέγει
           ο Πλούταρχος, «και συντεταραγμένον».
           Όμως ο δυνατός της χαρακτήρ επάσχισε·
           και συνελθούσα η θαυμασία γυναίκα
           είπε στον Κλεομένη «Άγε, ω βασιλεύ
           Λακεδαιμονίων, όπως, επάν έξω
           γενώμεθα, μηδείς ίδη δακρύοντας
           ημάς μηδέ ανάξιόν τι της Σπάρτης
           ποιούντας. Τούτο γαρ εφ’ ημίν μόνον·
           αι τύχαι δε, όπως αν ο δαίμων διδώ, πάρεισι.»

           Και μες στο πλοίο μπήκε, πηαίνοντας προς το «διδώ».

                         Come, O King of the Lacedaimonians

           Cratisicleia did not deign to allow
           the people to see her weeping and grieving;
           she walked in stately silence.
           Her serene demeanor revealed
           nothing of her sorrow and her torments.
           But even so, for a moment she couldn’t contain herself;
           and before she boarded the hateful ship for Alexandria,
           she took her son to Poseidon’s temple,
           and when they were alone she embraced him
           and kissed him, who was “suffering grievous pain,” says
           Plutarch, “in a state of conturbation.”
           But her strong character fought back;
           and regaining her self-composure, the magnificent woman
           said to Cleomenes, “Come, O King of the
           Lacedaimonians, when we come out
           of here, let no one see us weeping
           or acting in any way unworthy
           of Sparta. For this alone is in our power;
           our fortune will be only what the god might give.”

           And she boarded the ship, heading for that “might give.”

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By Karen Van Dyck

Featured art: Two Pupils in Greek Dress by Thomas Eakins

When I translated Jenny Mastoraki’s prose poem “The Unfortunate Brides” (1983) I drew on the beat and even the syllabic count of the Greek to create a rhythm that was legible, but new in English:

               . . . the way a roóster lights up Hádes, or a gílded jaw the speéchless night,
               a beást jángling on the rún, and the ríder búbbles up góld.

For Anglophone readers, the four phrases make up a recognizable stanza, though somewhat unusual with two long beats in the first two phrases and three shorter, faster ones in the last two. Newness arose not simply from the surreal imagery, but from the sound on which it rode.

To focus on the sound of the source text is to run counter to the dominant translation strategy, which focuses on meaning. This is true more generally, but also in the case of Modern Greek poetry. Translations such as those by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard introduced the poetry of C. P. Cavafy, George Sef-eris, Odysseas Elytes and Yannis Ritsos in an idiom that reads easily in English and makes the living tradition of myth and history readily available to an Anglophone audience.

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