Friday, June 09, 2017
An Inner Literalist
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), "Translator's Note," Vergil, Aeneid Book VI: A New Verse Translation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), p. vii:
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This translation of Aeneid VI is neither a "version" nor a crib: it is more like classics homework, the result of a lifelong desire to honour the memory of my Latin teacher at St. Columb's College, Father Michael McGlinchey....The set text for our A-level exam in 1957 was Aeneid IX but McGlinchey was forever sighing, "Och, boys, I wish it were Book VI."Id., p. ix:
Michael McGlinchey created an inner literalist who still hunts for the main verb of a sentence and still, to the best of his ability, disentangles the subordinate clauses, although usually nowadays with the help of a crib from the Loeb Library or the old Penguin Classics.
