The Translator’s Invisibility

Lamb’s life attests to the fact that the increasing moral conservatism of English society during this period was affecting not only the middle and working classes, but the aristocracy as well. This bourgeois cultural movement toward moral reform, spurred by the rise of Evangelical Christianity and accompanied by the institution of various philanthropic “societies,” led to the proliferation of moral and religious tracts and continued the bowdlerization of literary texts that {97} characterized English poetry translation at least since Pope (Quinlan 1941; Perkin 1989:90, 120–121, 240).[17] Lamb’s first-hand knowledge of the casual sexual morality among the Whig aristocracy may have made him more receptive to the emergent conservatism in English culture, since there can be no doubt that he contributed to it. His work in the theatre included an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (Lamb 1816), whose goal, he announced in an “Advertisement,” was “to restore Shakespeare to the stage, with no other omissions than such as the refinement of manners has rendered necessary.” Lamb omitted this dialogue, for example, between Timon and “the churlish Philosopher” Apemantus:

Tim. Wilt thou dine with me, Apemantus?

Apem. No; I eat not lords.

Tim. And thou shouldst, thou’dst anger ladies.

Apem. O they eat lords; so they come by great bellies.

Tim. That’s a lascivious apprehension.

Apem. So thou apprehend’st it; take it for thy labour.

(Shakespeare 1959:I.i.203–208)

Lamb treated Shakespeare just as he did Catullus, expurgating the text of any coarse language, and his like-minded contemporaries approved of his work, with one commentator observing that “much is omitted in the dialogue, and generally with propriety” (Genest 1832:584). Lamb saw no contradiction between professing liberalism as a Whig politician and censoring canonical literary texts. He followed what David Cecil has called the “canons of Whig orthodoxy. All believed in ordered liberty, low taxation and the enclosure of land; all disbelieved in despotism and democracy” (Cecil 1965:7).[18] Lamb’s calculated omission of the carnivalesque in his literary projects must be taken as another gesture of social superiority by a member of the hegemonic class. Lamb’s elitism, however, was couched in terms that were belletristic instead of social: he viewed a poetry translation or a theatrical adaptation as a refined form of entertainment, an exercise in aesthetic appreciation performed during periods of leisure, often in private. He prefaced his Catullus translation with a poem entitled “Reflections before Publication,” wherein he presented his work, not as an engaged act of cultural restoration or canon revision, but as the “pleasing” diversion of an amateur who is now contemplating whether to share it with others:

{98} The pleasing task, which oft a calm has lent
To lull disease and soften discontent;
Has still made busy life’s vacations gay,
And saved from idleness the leisure day:
In many a musing walk and lone retreat,
That task is done;—I may not say complete.
Now, have I heart to see the flames devour
The work of many a pleasurable hour?
Deep in some chest must I my offspring thrust,
To know no resurrection from the dust;
Or shall I, printing in this age of paper,
Add to th’unnumber’d stars another taper?

(Lamb 1821:I, ix–x)

Lamb was one of those future aristocrats for whom Sir John Denham developed the domesticating method of translating classical poetry, shrinking from the prospect of publication because poetry translation was not the serious work of politics or government service. And with an appropriateness that Denham would have appreciated, Lamb’s courtly self-effacement was cast in fluent heroic couplets.