"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and Translations

Keats's poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" was interesting to me in the way that it pointed out the fundamental difficulty of translation, and the effect that a difference in translation can have on the perception of the work of literature in question. Keats praises Chapman's translation of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad compared (implicitly) to the standard translation by Pope. The two translations, as we can see in the excerpts given in the book, are remarkably different, and not only because of their different metrical qualities and line lengths. Entire phrases present in one (such as "Such glories Pallas on the chief bestowed") are absent entirely from the other, or moved to a different place in the verse. This is a consequence of how differently the Greek and English languages (and poetry in particular) work. More closely-related languages, of course, are easier to translate, and Keats alludes to that in the poem. He claims to have been "[r]ound many western Islands" of poetry, referring to poetry from other Western European countries--France and Germany, perhaps--yet never having been able to fully appreciate the poetry of Homer to the degree that others praise it before seeing Chapman's translation. Keats compares the revelation of seeing the translation to discovering a new planet or seeing a new ocean. The magnitude of this shift raises questions about art, to what degree the original writer is responsible for the translated work, and whether we can in fact translate literature and maintain much of the original content at all. After all, if mere differences in translation can account for such a shift in perception, is not the translator as responsible for the final artistic product as the original author?

Keats's experience with Homer mirrors the one I had with Dostoyevsky, who wrote in another famously-difficult-to-translate language. The first time I tried to read Crime and Punishment, the translation I had seemed incredibly stilted and boring. A year or two later, I picked up a new translation recommended by a friend, and it was a revelation.