The Translator’s Invisibility

The mention of “contest” in the parenthetical remark seems at first to question the credibility of heroic genealogies for English kings, whether historical or literary: “contest” as a reference to the historiographical “controversy” or “debate.” But the couplet quickly shifts the issue from credibility to social effectivity: even if of questionable authenticity, poetic genealogies (“Homers birth”) are cultural capital and can motivate political and military conflict. In England’s case, however, the heroic genealogies are metaphysically validated, by “Nature design’d.” For Denham, the Brute legend constituted a strategic move in an ideological cultural practice, poetry in the service of a specific political agenda. But, like many of his contemporaries, he was apt to mask these material conditions with providentialist claims and appeals to natural law that underwrite a notion of racial superiority.

Denham’s choice of Virgil’s Aeneid was uniquely suited to the nationalistic leanings of his domesticating translation method. And in line with the recurrent Trojan genealogies of English kings, his choice of an excerpt he entitled The Destruction of Troy allowed him to suggest, more directly, the defeat of the Caroline government and his support for monarchy in England. Denham’s political designs can be seen, first, in his decision to prepare Book II for publication. In 1636, he had {53} written a version of the Aeneid II–VI, and in 1668, he revised and published part of IV under the title, The Passion of Dido for Aeneas. In 1656, he chose to issue the excerpt whose “argument,” the fall of Troy, better lent itself to topicality. The topical resonance of his version becomes strikingly evident when it is juxtaposed to the Latin text and previous English versions. Book II had already been done in several complete translations of the Aeneid, and it had been singled out twice by previous translators, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wroth. Yet both of them had rendered the entire book (some eight hundred lines of Latin text). Denham, in contrast, published an abbreviated translation (some 550 lines) that ended climactically with Priam’s death.

haec finis Priami fatorum, hic exitus illum
sorte tulit Troiam incensam et prolapsa uidentem
Pergama, tot quodam populis terrisque superbum
regnatorem Asiae. iacet ingens litore truncus,
auulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus.

(Mynors 1969:ll. 554–558)

Thus fell the King, who yet surviv’d the State,
With such a signal and peculiar Fate.
Under so vast a ruine not a Grave,
Nor in such flames a funeral fire to have:
He, whom such Titles swell’d, such Power made proud
To whom the Scepters of all Asia bow’d,
On the cold earth lies th’unregarded King,
A headless Carkass, and a nameless Thing.

(Denham 1656:ll. 542–549)

By removing the character and place names in the Latin text (“Priami,” “Troiam,” and “Pergama,” the citadel at Troy) and referring only to “the King,” Denham generalizes the import of the passage, enabling Priam’s “headless Carkass” to metamorphose into a British descendant’s, at least for a moment, inviting the contemporary English reader to recall the civil wars—although from a decidedly royalist point of view. Denham’s translation shared the same impulse toward political allegory that characterized, not only the various revisions of Coopers Hill, but also royalist writing generally during the years after Charles’s defeat, including Fanshawe’s translation of Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido {54} (1647) and Christopher Wase’s translation of Sophocles’ Electra (1649).[4]