Dryden's version

I thought that since I was comparing so many translations of this passage from the Iliad, I should also put up Dryden's version, which--I have to say--I like the best:

Achilles cut him short; and thus replied:
My worth allow'd in words, is in effect denied.
For who but a poltroon, possess'd with fear,
Such haughty insolence can tamely bear?
Command thy slaves: my freeborn soul disdains
A tyrant's curb; and restive, breaks the reins.
Take this along; that no dispute shall rise
(Though mine the woman) for my ravish'd prize:
But, she excepted, as unworthy strife,
Dare not, I charge thee dare not, on thy life,
Touch ought of mine beside, by lot my due,
But stand aloof, and think profane to view:
This falchion, else, not hitherto withstood,
These hostile fields shall fatten with thy blood.

He said; and rose the first: the council broke;
And all their grave consults dissolv'd in smoke.
The royal youth retir'd, on vengeance bent,
Patroclus follow'd silent to his tent.

Mean time, the king with gifts a vessel stores;
Supplies the banks with twenty chosen oars:
And next, to reconcile the shooter god,
Within her hollow sides the sacrifice he stow'd:
Chryseis last was set on board; whose hand
Ulysses took, entrusted with command;
They plough the liquid seas, and leave the lessening land.

Atrides then, his outward zeal to boast,
Bade purify the sin-polluted host.
With perfect hecatombs the god they grac'd;
Whose offer'd entrails in the main were cast.
Black bulls, and bearded goats on altars lie;
And clouds of savory stench involve the sky.
-in Fables Ancient and Modern, lines 411-441

The break in the speech, where Homer makes Achilles' speech buckle under the force of his anger, is wonderfully rendered. Where Pope smoothes it out, and Fagles makes too big a deal of it, Dryden simply repeats: "Dare not, I charge thee dare not, on thy life..." You'll notice it takes advantage of the line, which Dryden always segments deftly: never breaking it up, and never shooting for too much equipoise or balance, he nevertheless uses all its parts to help him out. He doesn't treat the form as an empty container, or rather is happy to let what is transfused (his famous metaphor for translation), settle into the form in this or that way, and be moulded by it. It's like blowing glass, to use another metaphor from manufacture (Dryden, by the way, was fond of these: "the genius of our countrymen in general [is] rather to improve an invention than to invent themselves, as is evident not only in our poetry but in many of our manufactures"). You blow the glass and try to get the shape as perfect as you can, but you're constantly having to negotiate the ways this very fluid material changes, under the influence of time, heat, gravity. So you work with these forces and the changes they make in the material: you turn the shape around, smooth it out, or sometimes puff it out more and change its whole dimension (if you can't get it the way you want it on the small scale, you simply switch scales, shifting between them). You'll see what I mean when you look again at the passage and see the amount of enjambment, and find the heavy use of very hard caesuras--which start as medial but then, falling too early and too late, make the middle of the line a space of action instead of a place of balance (this is why the "Dare not" line is so great).

But there are also just some really crazy, creative choices, which just win you over. "Poltroon" is just amazing, a wonderful blurty sort of word, strange and foreign. It doesn't so much break propriety as transform itself into a cussword--the effect of this being differently forceful. Something similar happens with "in effect," which sounds way too familiar to our ears now but, if you hear it and stress it a little can hear has a wonderful sort of poignancy. There's also "ravish'd," which is quite unexpected, though you might miss it the first time through. And "dissolv'd in smoke." And then a wonderful metonymy, "the shooter god." "And leave the lessening land" is wonderful, and works well with the longer hexameter closing the scene. This also highlights Dryden's relatively sparing use of alliteration and assonance: unlike Pope, who (in my opinion) uses it too much in an effort to speed up the line, Dryden uses it economically, in select moments. This makes it stick.

Overall, though, there is that vigorousness that you can see in the first phrase, "cut him short": what a surprising, fresh way to lead you into the rest of the speech. If both Pope makes Homer energetic, nimble, rapid, restoring what he calls the "light" in the classic, Dryden's version of that energy is a sort of directness, forthrightness, even plainness, a willingness to be satisfied with less and with something rougher, but weirder or more curious.