File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1998/phillitcrit.9802, message 64


Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 22:54:53 -0800
From: goya-AT-uvic.ca (Michael Chase)
Subject: Re: PLC: Enameled In Fire



>
>You are absolutely right, so what you do is give the poet the benefit of
>the doubt, and assume that this is _not_ how he is using it, since, as I
>said earlier, it would be redundant as well as trite.

M.C.: *What* poet, ferchrissake? We are dealing with some nineteenth
century translator of Plutarch, who may or may not have been able to
distinguish poetry from his posterior. Might this stout gentleman, whoever
he was, have been redundant or trite? You betcha!

        In a sense this whole discussion is silly, redundant, and trite. It
was not - I guess I must repeat - *Plutarch* who used the image "enameled
in fire", but some translator. Why did he use it? Because he thought it
sounded good; I suppose, but does anyone *really* care about the poetic
intentions of some anonymous 19th-century  hack? Did he accurately render
Plutarch's Greek original? No, if, as I continue to think, the passage in
question is the one I posted from the Erotikos, where the word translated
as "enamelled" simply means "mixed".

      Are there no critical editions out there which actually *identify*
Plutarch's citation? Until we find out *with certainty* what Plutarchean
passage is being translated, we're just pissing in the wind.

        Peevishly, Mike.

Michael Chase
(goya-AT-uvic.ca)
Dept. of Greek and Roman Studies
U. of Victoria,
Victoria, B.C.
Canada




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