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Geoffrey Hill’s Sapphics: A Translator’s Perspective

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Abstract

The various possibilities of scanning and enacting some Latin metres imply that modern poets or translators trying to reshape them in their own language have first and foremost to choose what to reshape. Though Latin metres govern syllabic duration, verse ictus and word accent, their modern equivalents tend to stick to ictuses or accents alone. The most prominent feature in the few exceptions to this rule is attention to counterpoint. Having translated Odi Barbare into Portuguese, keeping the original metre and style, I argue that Hill is one of these exceptions, study his debts to Carducci, Sidney, and Horace, and show how he deals with counterpoint in one programmatic ode (whose Portuguese translation is given in an appendix).

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Notes

  1. See Hill’s remarks in his interview for Standpoint (22/06/2010): ‘The second derives from a rediscovery of the power and beauty of one of Sir Philip Sidney’s lyrics in Arcadia, a demanding technical exercise in English “Sapphics”’, available online here: https://standpointmag.co.uk/text-july-10-yes-i-was-wired-weird-chris-woodhead-geoffrey-hill-interview/ [accessed 12 November 2020]. Cf. G. Hill, ‘Odi Barbare’, in Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952–2012, ed. Kenneth Haynes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 833–86 (835), where he acknowledges to be ‘re-cadencing Sidney’s sapphics’.

  2. See, e.g. A. L. Clifton, ‘Geoffrey Hill: Poetics, Faith, Politics’, PhD diss., University of Queensland, 2013, where the author studies how the poet draws on some of his predecessors.

  3. I mean Ludo: Epigraphs and Colophons to ‘The Daybooks’ and The Daybooks themselves – whose only exception, in terms of Hill’s engagement with traditional poetic forms, is Liber Illustrium Virorum, more or less freely modelled on Robert Lowell’s ‘Rebellion’.

  4. See Geoffrey Hill: Essays on His Later Work, ed. John Lyon and P. McDonald, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. It should be noted that Hill’s late diction is much less studied than his late themes and ‘mood’.

  5. See K. O’Hanlon, ‘“A final clarifying”: Form, Error, and Alchemy in Geoffrey Hill’s Ludo and The Daybooks’, Etudes Anglaises, 71, 2018, 2, pp. 207–221.

  6. I.e. Geoffrey Hill: Odi Barbare, ed., trans., and comm. Érico Nogueira, São Paulo, Filocalia, (Forthcoming, Autumn 2021). See Appendix 2 for my translation of Ode II. The same phonological principles discussed for English and Italian in this article apply to Portuguese. See M. H. Mateus & E. d’Andrade, The Phonology of Portuguese, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, especially pp. 109–128.

  7. This interview is available online: https://literaryreview.co.uk/an-interview-with-geoffrey-hill [accessed 12 November 2020]. For a more detailed definition of counterpoint in poetry, see G. M. Hopkins, Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 144: ‘…a strong effect of double rhythm, of a second movement in the verse besides the primary and essential one, and this comes to the same thing or serves the same purpose as counterpointing by reversed accents as in Milton’. Despite Attridge’s dismissal of the term as inaccurately metaphorical, it is critically fruitful to use it as a tool for reading certain kinds of poetry, as I hope to show in this article. Cf. D. Attridge, The Rhythms of English Poetry, London-New York, Routledge, 1982, pp. 17–18: ‘Hopkins’s influential borrowing of the term “counterpoint” from music, for instance, gives the erroneous impression that the double structure is the equivalent of two voices in a polyphonic composition, each clearly perceptible, and each with a distinct character of its own. But what we are aware of in reading a metrical line is an onward movement which at times approaches a marked regularity and at times departs from it, constantly arousing and thwarting rhythmic expectations’.

  8. The coincidence of titles is evidence enough for assuming that Hill’s Odi Barbare is an homage to Carducci’s. Hill’s Ode II confirms this evidence (as we shall see below).

  9. Sidney’s systematic placement of the main caesura right after the hendecasyllable’s 5th syllable leaves no doubt in this regard. Cf. L. M. Kayser, ‘Modern Alcaics and Sapphics and the Reading of Horace’, The Classical Journal, 50, 1954, 3, pp. 120–122.

  10. See G. Aricò, ‘Orazio nella Formazione Culturale e Poetica di Carducci’, in “Non omnis moriar”. La Lezione di Orazio a Duemila Anni dalla Scomparsa, ed. C. D. Fonseca, Galatina, 1993, pp. 255–77. See also G. L. Bickersteth, Carducci: A Selection of his Poems, with Verse Translations, Notes, and Three Introductory Essays, London, Longmans, 1913, p. 55: ‘… Italian being derived from Latin, and Carducci’s chief model being Horace, it is really Latin metre which chiefly concerns us’. It is worth noting that Bickersteth’s translation from Carducci’s ‘Alle fonti del Clitumno’, one of the poems I analyse below, has a more Swinburnian than properly Carduccian rhythmical contour, and might have been known to Geoffrey Hill. This translation is given in Appendix 1. Cf. Bickersteth, Carducci, p. 318: ‘The metre of my translation is modelled on Swinburne’s “Sapphics”, and imitates the Greek cadence […]’.

  11. I would like to thank Professor Kenneth Haynes for his permission to quote him on Hill’s knowledge of Latin.

  12. See Odi Barbare II, 4–5; IV, 1–2; VII, 7–8; XIV, 1; and XIX, 1.

  13. For English, see, e.g. M. Halle & S. J. Keyser, English Stress: its Form, its Growth and its Role in Verse, New York, Harper and Row, 1971. For Italian, see P. M. Bertinetto, Strutture Prosodiche dell’Italiano. Accento, Quantità, Sillaba, Giuntura, Fondamenti Metrici, Florence, Accademia della Crusca, 1981. Though outdated in some respects, F. B. Agard & R. J. Di Pietro, The Sounds of English and Italian, Chicago and London, 1965, offers a description of stress as the main phonological feature of both languages.

  14. See M. Loporcaro, Vowel Length from Latin to Romance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015. As for ancient evidence, see, e.g. Augustine, De Musica II, i, 1 ss.

  15. See M. Nicolau, ‘Les Deux Sources de la Versification Latine Accentuelle’, ALMA, 9, 1934, pp. 55–87.

  16. See S. Mattiacci, ‘Le Origini della Versificazione Ritmica nella Tarda Antichità Latina’, in Poesia dell’Alto Medioevo Europeo: Manoscritti, Lingua e Musica dei Ritmi Latini, ed. F. Stella, Florence, SISMEL, 2000, pp. 5–23 (5–6).

  17. See B. Baldwin, ‘Some Aspects of Commodian’, Illinois Classical Studies, 14, 1989, 1–2, pp. 331–46.

  18. See Augustine, De Musica IV, xiii, 18–19.

  19. Ibid. V, v, 9 ss.

  20. See also Augustine, Epistles CI, 3, to Memorius. It is possible to read Augustine’s epistles (as well as his opera omnia) in Latin here: https://www.augustinus.it/latino/lettere/index2.htm [accessed 1 December 2020]

  21. See K. Zeleny, Itali modi: Akzentrhythmen in der lateinischen Dichtung der augusteischen Zeit, Vienna, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008. For the nature of word accent in Latin, see W. S., Allen, Accent and Rhythm, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 129–99, and also P. Probert, Latin Grammarians on the Latin Accent: The Transformation of Greek Grammatical Thought, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 17–45, who summarizes the modern discussion of the Latin accent from the mid-19th century to date.

  22. Note that, though not all heavy syllables are distinguished by an ictus, in Latin an ictus position tends largely to be filled by a heavy syllable – which explains the origin of this compensation mechanism.

  23. See, e.g. J. Luque Moreno, ‘Forma y Medida en los Versos Greco-Latinos: La Génesis del Sistema de Niveles’, EMERITA. Revista de Lingüística y Filología Clásica (EM), 70, 2002, 2, pp. 231–56 (255): ‘We can prove that, from late antiquity onwards, when quantity-sensitivity was disappearing, both reciters and schoolmasters try to convey the verse “lengths” through an artificial performance that mimics classical pronunciation by way of stressing the strong beats; this is what the grammarian Marius Plotius Sacerdos did as early as in the late 3rd century AD, and what has been done ever since’. And also S. Boldrini, Fondamenti di Prosodia e Metrica Latina, Rome, Carocci, 2004, pp. 21–22: ‘As long as quantity-sensitivity prevailed over other sensitivities, the Latins never read poetry as we do today. This way of reading is the invention of one who, no longer able to grasp the true quantity-based rhythm of a Latin verse, tried to recreate it so as to phonically distinguish poetry from prose. It means that a metrical accentuation was intentionally made up to emphasize certain verse elements by way of a vocal ictus’.

  24. See K. Hanson, ‘Quantitative Meter in English: The Lesson of Sir Philip Sidney’, English Language and Linguistics, 5, 2001, 1, pp. 41–91 (43–44).

  25. See, e.g. P. Kiparsky, ‘Stress, Syntax and Meter’, Language, 51, pp. 576–16, where, besides studying in detail the interactions of stress, word, and phrase structure in English, the author also briefly compares stress-based with quantity-based metrical systems.

  26. For a sound description of these interactions, see L. P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1963, pp. 89–134.

  27. I.e. respectively, poetry read with the metrical accentuation that originated in late antiquity, and poetry read as prose. See, e.g. F. D’Ovidio, Versificazione Italiana e Arte Poetica Medioevale, Milan, Hoelpi, 1910, pp. 292–57, who describes how the Italian practice of reading Latin poetry aloud, by the beginning of the 20th century and before, signalled word stress, not verse ictus, in any line of verse. The situation must have changed in the meantime, otherwise the description provided by Boldrini would be wrong. Cf. n. 23 above. This is precisely what Carducci did in his Odi Barbare, as we shall see in due course in this paper.

  28. See F. G. Klopstock, Gedanken über die Natur der Poesie, Frankfurt, Insel, 1989, pp. 9–21. Cf. J. H. Voss, Des Publius Virgilius Maro Landbau, Hamburg, C. E. Bohn, 1789, pp. iii-xxiv. For disagreements – in points of detail – between Klopstock and Voss, see E. Linckenheld, Der Hexameter bei Klopstock und Voss, Strasbourg, C. & J. Goeller, 1906.

  29. See L. Falconi, Metrica Classica o Metrica Barbara? L’Esametro Latino e il Verso Sillabico Italiano, Turin-Rome, Loescher, 1885. As Carducci’s method consists in reshaping Latin metres by means of traditional Italian verses, it allows for more variations and is not so strict as the method of Klopstock and Voss.

  30. See my O Esmeril de Horácio: Ritmo e Técnica do Verso em Português, São Paulo, Filocalia, 2020, where I give a full account of Latin metres in Portuguese verse. I have read through most of the German, Italian and English corpora, and can say that the same applies to them – i.e. most of the German, Italian and English poets or translators who seek to reproduce Latin metres in their language follow either the verse ictuses or the word accents. So, the very few who pay attention to both, and, while reproducing the ictuses, do not disregard the accents – and vice versa –, deserve full recognition of their metrical feat. As I hope to demonstrate below, Carducci, Sidney, and Hill are among these few. For Greek and Latin metres in German, W. Bennett, German Verse in Classical Meters, The Hague, Mouton, 1963, is still useful. G. Carducci, La Poesia Barbara nei Secoli XV e XVI, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1881, and A. H. Baxter, ‘The Introduction of Classical Metres into Italian Poetry, and their Development to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century’, PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1898, give a fairly complete overview of the status quaestionis in Italian letters. For Greek and Latin metres in English, see T. S. Omond, English Metrists, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1921, and K. Haynes, English Literature and Ancient Languages, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.

  31. See S. Harrison, Victorian Horace, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

  32. For an in-depth analysis of the interplay between ictus and accent in Horace’s Sapphics, see A. Becker, ‘Listening to Lyric: Accent and Ictus in the Latin Sapphic Stanza’, The Classical World, 103, 2010, 2, pp. 159–82, where the author focuses on the essential rhythmical role of ictus and accent coincidence and counterpoint.

  33. In his review of Geoffrey Hill’s Odi Barbare, E. Reiss, ‘“Pitch me vox clamans”: Geoffrey Hill’s Odi Barbare’, Agenda, 46, Sept. 2012, 4, pp. 83–89 (85), states that ‘In its strong form, towards which Hill tends, each longer Sapphic line demands seven stresses out of a possible eleven’. This is technically wrong. First, because ictuses and accents are not the same phenomenon, and, therefore, the Sapphic hendecasyllable cannot demand seven stresses, let alone eleven; second, because Geoffrey Hill seems aware of their difference, as I hope to demonstrate below; and, third, because Roman Jakobson’s famous distinction between verse design and verse instance suggests that a strong syllable falling on the upbeat is felt as weaker than any contiguous syllable falling on the downbeat – which, in the hendecasyllable, limits the stresses to five. Cf. R. Jakobson, ‘Linguistics and Poetics’, in Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (MA)-London, The Belknap Press, 1987, pp. 62–94 (78): ‘Far from being an abstract, theoretical scheme, meter – or in more explicit terns, verse design – underlies the structure of any single line – or, in logical terminology, any single verse instance. Design and instance are correlative concepts. The verse design determines the invariant features of the verse instances and sets up the limits of variations’. That is why I call second voice or counterpoint the accented, strong or closed syllables put on an upbeat – because there they lose their emphasis in comparison to the downbeats, and cannot be taken as stresses. Nevertheless, they do retain something of their original force, there is no question, and this acts as a secondary (if weaker) rhythmic line, alongside the primary one. Reiss’s article contains the only detailed discussion of Hill’s metrics in Odi Barbare so far – at least to my knowledge.

  34. These are precisely the stanzas imitated by Geoffrey Hill in the poem analysed below.

  35. See A. Ruggenini, Studio Psicologico sull’ Ode “Alle Fonti del Clitumno” di Giosuè Carducci, Naples, Federico & Ardia, 1920.

  36. See P. G. Beltrami, La Metrica Italiana, 5th ed., Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011.

  37. For the concept of rhythmical setting, or verse setting (in Spanish ‘engarce del verso’), see A. García Calvo, Tratado de Rítmica y Prosodia y de Métrica y Versificación, Zamora, Lucina, 2006, p. 372.

  38. See the classic article by E. Sapir, ‘The Musical Foundations of Verse’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 20, 1921, 2, pp. 213–28 (224), where the great American linguist shrewdly states that ‘Verse, to put the whole matter in a nutshell, is rhythmically self-conscious speech or discourse’ – which, applied to the case under consideration, shows that a silent rhythm requires meticulous attention if it is to be mentally heard at all.

  39. See G. Pascoli, ‘Regole di Metrica Neoclassica’, in Poesie e Prose Scelte, vol. 2, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2002, p. 239.

  40. See K. Hanson, ‘Quantitative Meter in English’ (n. 24 above), pp. 44–45.

  41. Ibid., pp 50-88.

  42. For this ode’s last version – which is the one we print and study here –, see Hill, ‘Odi Barbare’ (n. 1 above), p. 836. Its first published version had no punctuation, and appeared in Standpoint on 22 June 2010; it is available online: https://standpointmag.co.uk/text-july-10-geoffrey-hill-new-poems/ [accessed 12 November 2020].

  43. For tmesis in Horace, see Q. Horati Flacci Opera III: De Horatio poetico eloquio, ed. D. Bo, Turin, Paravia, 1960, p. 80.

  44. See Virgil, Georgics IV, 281–314; 538–58. For the philosophical principles underlying Virgil’s description of the bougonia, see P. Osorio, ‘Vergil’s Physics of Bugonia in Georgics 4’, Classical Philology, 115, January 2020, 1, pp. 27–46.

  45. See Reiss, ‘“Pitch me vox clamans”’, (note 17 above) p. 83: ‘The Sapphic line… has a reputation for being foreign or barbarous to the English tongue, because it does not, on the whole, mimic or reproduce the rhythms of the English speaking voice, as iambic pentameter, for instance, can. Perhaps that is what attracts Geoffrey Hill to it’.

  46. See R. Jakobson, Selected Writings V: On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers, ed. Stephen Rudy and Martha Taylor, The Hague, Mouton, 1979, p. 15: ‘The theory of unconditioned correspondence between verse and spirit of language we replace by the theory of organized violence of poetic form over the language’. I think Hill is clearly working within this Jakobsonian frame in his Odi Barbare.

  47. See G. Hill, ‘The Tartar’s Bow and the Bow of Ulysses’, in Collected Critical Writings, ed. Kenneth Haynes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 192–207 (196).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank both CAPES (Brazil) and FAPESP (Brazil) for scholarships to conduct this research as a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford. I also thank Professor Stephen Harrison (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford) and Mr Chris Miller for their proofreading and sound advice.

Funding

This article presents some of the results of ‘Geoffrey Hill’s Sapphics in Odi Barbare: Survey and Annotated Verse Translation’, a research project funded by the CAPES Foundation, Brazil (PVEX 88881.337154/2019-01), from December 2019 to November 2020, and by the FAPESP Foundation, Brazil (BPE 2019/05053-1), from December 2020 to January 2021.

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  1. Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), Brazil, Estr. do Caminho Velho, 333, Jardim Nova Cidade, Guarulhos, SP, 07252-312, Brazil

    Érico Nogueira

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Appendices

Appendix 1

‘By the Sources of Clitumnus’ (first six stanzas) translated by G. L. Bickersteth. The distribution of accents shows that it stands closer to Hill than to Carducci.

Still, Clitumnus, down | from the mountain, dark with (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Waving ash-trees where | ’mid the branches perfumed (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Breezes whisper, wafting | afar the scent of (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Wild-thyme and wood-sage, (1, 4 = 2)

Still descend the flocks | in the misty ev’ning (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Unto thee; and still | do the boys of Umbria (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Dip the struggling sheep | in thy gleaming waters, (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

While from the bosom (1, 4 = 2)

Of the sunburnt mother, | who sits barefooted (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

By her cottage singing, | the smiling baby (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Turns towards his brothers | his chubby features (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Radiant with laughter; (1, 4 = 2)

And the father, wrapped | in his shaggy goatskins (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Like the Fauns of old, | doth direct with thoughtful (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Gaze the painted waggon | and team of sturdy, (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Beautiful oxen: (1, 4 = 2)

Beauteous oxen, massive | in shoulder, mild-eyed, (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

White as snow, with horns | that above their foreheads (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Curve like crescent moons, | such as gentle Virgil (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Loved for their beauty. (1, 4 = 2)

Even now, like columns | of smoke, the clouds rise (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Dark o’er Apennine: | ’mid her zone of gently (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Sloping hills how lovely, | austere, and verdant (1, 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5)

Umbrïa lieth! (1, 4 = 2)

Appendix 2

Odi Barbare II (in Portuguese). The distribution of accents matches Hill’s – though I am less successful in conveying the second voice, underlined below.

Qual Carducci quis, | pouco mais que rústico; (1, 3, [4], 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [2])

Não polido, não | bem-vinda a Aula Regis. (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Rétor engessado, | o sombrio consenso (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Com livre endosso. Eu o- (1, 4 = 2)

-deio o vulgo, dando | estocada ao senso, (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Pira a elisão. Diz | aos que movem o círculo: (1, 3, [4], 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [2])

Termos transparentes | ante a soleira (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Não nos profanem. (1, 4 = 2)

Bois sacrificiais, | de Virgílio o dom, (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Alvos, ruminantes, | sacrificiais – de (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Lira os cornos, farto | o Clitumno em cascos –, (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Sofrem as croas. (1, 4 = 2)

Bulha, aspérrimo a|nacoluto, táureo (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Metamorfo a linha | calcando, o desdi- (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

-toso sangue das | já ditosas vítimas. (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Ruína rotina: (1, 4 = 2)

Rimini em pó, Pisa | das tropas lama, (1, 3, [4], 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Apenino jorro | evacuando brusco (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Panzers Anzacs do | pedregoso visgo (1, 3, [4], 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [2])

Charco de corpos. (1, 4 = 2)

Virgílio ama abelhas | soa a Platão no (1, [2], 3, 5, 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Seu Banquete sobre | a imortalidade. (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Isto vale quanto | em repor plenárias (1, 3, 5, [6], 8, 10 = 5 + [1])

Da natureza? (1, 4 = 2)

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Nogueira, É. Geoffrey Hill’s Sapphics: A Translator’s Perspective. Int class trad 29, 214–230 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-021-00591-6

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