In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

In fact, eloquence in English will inevitably make use of the Latin element in our vocabulary.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.