In response to ‘Aeneid Wars‘

 

* * *

 

May 7, 2021

Dear colleague,

I just read A.M. Juster’s review of two new translations of the Aeneid in your magazine, here. His opinions are his opinions, and I take no issue with them. However, Juster makes two mistakes of fact in his assessment of Frederick Ahl’s 2007 translation. The review thus does a disservice to both Ahl and to your readers:

1. “Harold Bloom and acolytes of deconstructionism appear to have given Aeneid translators of the early twenty-first century even greater license to use the Aeneid as something akin to a writing prompt for sprawling free verse that wanders far from the source text. The … nadir is surely Frederick Ahl’s 2007 translation.”

In fact, Ahl’s translation is a line-by-line translation. Moreover, it is also in dactylic hexameter, the same meter as the original. I do not know why Juster gives the opposite impression. However, it may be related to his second error:

2. A good starting point for thinking about these two books is to look at 11.875 (quadripedumque putrem cursu quatit ungula campum), a line for which A.N. Wilson once contrasted the G.P. Goold “literal” translation from the venerable Loeb series with a laughable line from the Ahl translation. …

Cloven-footed quadruped clatter kicks clumps, quivers at a gallop (Ahl)

Juster has misquoted Ahl’s line, hence ruining both the meter and the sense. In fact it reads,

“Cloven-hoofed quadruped clatter kicks clumps, quivers plains at a gallop.”

 You can check it here in Google books.

Furthermore, in Googling around now, I see Juster misquoted the same line in a slightly better form in a 2018 review essay elsewhere on the Aeneid, here. There I see he misquoted “plains” as “plain,” but he again misquoted “footed” as “hoofed.”

I ask you to correct the record and acknowledge the mistakes publicly. 

Best,

Mike Fontaine
Professor of Classics
Cornell University