"NO GREAT SHAKES"

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 12, 16 January 1933, Page 7

"NO GREAT SHAKES"

SHAW ON HOMER

HIS NEW TRANSLATION

NO SEED OF GEEATNESS

Shaw seems to think Homer "no great shakes." Yet he has jspent the leisure of four years making a new translation of the "Odyssey," in spite of his twenty-seven predecessors at tha same job. This is not George Bernard but "T. E. Shaw"—the man who vainly tries to hide under this name the identity of Lawrence of Arabia. The "first novel of Europe" can hardly have escaped translation into any literary language. Miss Edith Hamilton writes in ."Roman Way" that "the earliest piece of (Latin) literature we know about is a translation of the 'Odyssey' made at the end of the First Punic War"'—five hundred years after the founding of Rome. Mr. Shaw—we must give him a name, though, it is one of his eccentricities to leave it off the title page—has paid somewhat dubious respects to his author in his preface. "Wardour Street Greek" is what he calls the original."Highly disrespectful," according to Mr. Gilbert Murray in the "Saturday Review of Literature," "that being the street in London famous for the sale of faked antique furniture." Shaw's defence is that "Wardour Street Greek like the 'Odyssey's' defies honest rendering," and he gives the famous old romance some sound cuffing. NOT GREAT ART. "Crafty, exquisite, homogeneous -whatever great art may be, these are not its attributes.• In this tale every big situation is burked and the writing is soft. The shattered 'Iliad' yet makes a masterpiece; while the f Odyssey' by its ease and interest remains the oldest book worth, reading for its story and the first novel of Europe. . Gay, fine, and vivid it is; never huge or terrible. Book XI, the "Underworld, verges toward ' terribilita' —ryet runs instead to' the seed of pathos, that feeblest mode of writing. The author misses his every chance of greatness, as must all his faithful translators." "In four years of living with this novel," says Shaw again in his'preface, "I have tried to deduce .the author from his self-betrayal in the work. "I found a bookworm,' no longer young, living from home, a mainlander, city-bred and domestic. Married but not exclusively, a' dog-lover, often hungry and thirsty, dark-haired. Fond of poetry, a great if uncritical reader of the 'Iliad,' with, limited sensuous range, but an exact eyesight which gave him all his pictures. A lover of old bric-a-brac, though as muddled an antiquary as Walter Scott. "It is fun to compare his infuriating male condescension toward inglorious woman with his tender .charity of head and heart for serving men. Though a stickler for the prides of- poets and a man who never misses a chance to cocker up their standing, .^et he must be (like writers two thousand years after him) the associate.of menials, making himself their friend and defender, by understanding." THE LOTOS EATERS. ' But let us get a taste of the new prose version, quoting from the famous episode of the Lotos-eaters:— "On the tenth, day we made the land of. the Lotos-eaters, men who browse on a fopd of flowers. We landed there to fill qur water-butts, while my crews snatched a meal on the shore, beside their likely vessels. "As soon as the first hunger for food and drink had passed, I chose out two tellows and added to them a third, as mnner, that they might go inland to spy out. and inquire what were the human beings there existing. "Off they went at once and met a party of these Lotos-eaters, who had no notion' of. slaying my "emissaries; instead, .they gave them a dish of their Lotos-flower. . And so it was tha 1. as each tasted of this honey-sweet plant the wish to bring news or return grew faint in Ik; rather ho preferred to dwell forever with the Lotos-eating men, feeding upon Lotos and letting ±ade fom his mind all memory of home. I had to seek them and drag them back on board. They wept: yet into the ships we brought them perforce and chained them beneath the thwarts, deep m the well, while I constrained the rest of my adherents to hurry aboard, lest perhaps more of them might eat Lotos and lose their longing lor home." 6 This version of the "Odyssey" is having great success with reviewers and readers have already made necessary a tnird or. fourth printing. Shaw's preface is discounted here and there Lewis Gannett of the New York Herald-Tribuna" suspects that he wrote with his bitter" tongue in' his cheek," and when he calls Penelope a sly, cattish wife," Professor Murray suspects he is "disguising his love in one of the accepted post-war methods." A STRANGE MAN. A strang6 man is Lawrence, who renounced ail hi? war honours/even his name and after helping lead the Arab revolt became a mechanic in the Eoval Air Force under the namo of T. E Shaw. . He is not English, according to his friend, Robert Graves, wh,f wrote 'Lawrence and the Arabian Advent ture," but<'lrish, Hebridean, Spanish, and Norse"—"mbced blood has meant for Lawrence a natural gift for learning foreign languages." In his personal sketch Mr. Graves thus sets forth Lawrence-— * i*H- e "f S? Ort (flve feet flve and ahalf inches), with his body lone I should judge, in proportion to his legs, for he is more impressive seated than standing. He has a big head of a Norse type, rising steeply at the back His hair la fair (not blonde) and rather nne; his complexion is fair, ana he could go unshaven longer than most men without showing it. The upper part of his faco is kindly, aW maternal; the lower part is severe, almost cruel. His eyes are blue-grey and constantly in motion. His hands and feet are small. He is, or was, of great physical strength; he has been seen to raise up a rifle at arm's length, holding it by the barrel-end, until it jas parallel, with the ground-yef'no SUSPect Mm °f beinS more floll 1? i T&* he won the res Pect of desert fighters by his feats of strength and agility as much as by his other Sr IBh ?f 6 Pass"test °f «k "iK order of fighters was the feat of springing off a trotting camel and leaping on again with one hand on the saddle arl a rifle in the other. ,It is said that Lawrence passed the test Innwte °f holdiin S Ws hands loosely folded below his bjeast, the elbows to his sides, and carries his head a little tilted, the eyes on the ground. He can sit or stand for hours at a stretch without moving a muscle . He talks in short sentences, deliberately and quietly without accenting his words strongly He grins a lot and laughs seldom.

Mr and Mrs Philip p ar j ßh) of H] - loyntoii, near Horncastle, celebrated their diamond wedding on 26th November' They were married on 26th November. 1872 For oo.year* of their 60 years of happy "married life they have lived in an ivycovered cottage. *