In Latin Poetry Across Languages, Stephen Hinds offers a dazzling view of Latin literary history through a kaleidoscopic collection of narratives that take shape, word-by-word and even letter-by-letter, at the intersections of language and culture. It is a collection of stories and “intertextual juxtapositions” (p. 1) that showcase and celebrate the power of language qua language to shape and reshape classical tradition across space and time.
A brief introduction outlines the book’s objectives and provides useful descriptions of the seven chapters, which are broadly grouped into two sections: the first three focus on ancient conversations between Latin and Greek poetry, while the final four examine interactions between Latin and (primarily English) modern poetry.
Chapter 1 (“Counterfactual Literary History”) begins from a simple but often unasked question about the Latin literary landscape: given the nature of elite Roman education and the intimate relationship between Latin and Greek literature, why was it not more common for Roman poets also to write poetry in Greek? After investigating some contributing factors and “dead ends,” Hinds turns to two 4th-century CE exceptions, Claudian and Ausonius, the latter of whom offers a dizzying display of interlinear—and even intraverbal—bilingual verse in Epist. 6 (e.g., erramus gelidoτρομεροὶ καὶ φρικτοpoetae, 6.6).
In Chapter 2 (“Transliteralism for Beginners”), Hinds takes a “transliteral” approach to Latin epic proems as particularly charged sites of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural intertextuality. As he defines it, transliteralism is an intertextual mode whereby correspondences between texts are established “at points of heuristic intersection between allusion, translation, and even word-by-word and character-by-character correspondence” (p. 42).[1] The first case study unpacks Livius Andronicus’ Odussia fr. 1, the inaugural incipit of the entire Latin epic tradition, before Hinds turns his attention to elemental allusions in the proems of Germanicus’ Aratea, Vergil’s Aeneid, Statius’ Achilleid, and the Ilias Latina. While the case studies are cogent (as always with Hinds), the second chapter could benefit from different organizational and editorial choices. First, the explicit focus on “transliteralism” is not unique to this chapter but is already brilliantly illustrated in the close readings of Chapter 1 and active throughout the volume.[2] Second, the chapter reflects on the possibilities and limitations of digital tools for studying intertextuality, a vestige deliberately retained from an earlier conference paper version of the chapter.[3] While addressing such questions is a “timely” (p. 2) endeavor, I found the technological meditations herein to be more distracting than insightful in this new context.
While the cross-linguistic, cross-cultural dialogue with Greek literature sustained by Latin poets was the subject of study in the previous two chapters, Chapter 3 (“Parallel Lives”) reverses this. Hinds first turns to Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae as a repository of commentary “across Greek and Latin language and culture” (p. 69). This foray into Gellius is particularly valuable insofar as Hinds uses it to move beyond the Greco-Latin binarism, underscoring how, via Gellius’ repeated use of opicus at crucial moments of intercultural and interlinguistic commentary, the Oscan option haunts Latin literature as a tertium aliquid of unrealized poetic possibility.[4] The rest of Chapter 3 comprises readings of Greek epigrams that, via allusions to Latin literature, demonstrate the attitude of active resistance to engagement with Latin poetry that otherwise motivates Greek poetry’s intertextual silence.
Following a brief “Middle Proem” tracing themes of linguistic vitality and prestige across the ancient and post-antique sections, the second half of the volume kicks off with Chapter 4 (“Diptych and Virtual Diptych”), an exploration of parallel Latin and vernacular compositions in certain early modern poets. Most of the chapter is dedicated to two Latin-English “twin” poems by Andrew Marvell, On a Drop of Dew & Ros and The Garden & Hortus—translingual diptychs that comment upon each other while self-consciously thematizing the poet’s bilingual literary proficiency. Hinds then moves on to a text that is conspicuously Latinate yet was composed only in English—Milton’s Paradise Lost. In lieu of a true compositional twin, Hinds examines several Latin translations made by others as panels in a “virtual diptych.” The chapter concludes with brief consideration of the proem to Ronsard’s Franciade and Du Bellay’s true diptych, À Pierre de Ronsard & Elegiae 6.
Discussion of the bilingual poetry of Milton and Du Bellay is continued in Chapter 5 (“Passages to Italy”), now with especial attention to the ways in which each poet uses the trope of poetic travel—a metaphor cued by actual visits to Italy made by both poets—to reflect on “transcultural issues of language and identity” (p. 8). As Hinds brilliantly demonstrates, the poets’ journeys across language boundaries are not simply a matter of aesthetic or intellectual significance but also confrontations with classical tradition.
Chapter 6 (“Latinity, Lake Poetry, and Lyric Revision”) jumps into the 19th century to explore the poetry of William Wordsworth—a surprising choice for this book, given Wordsworth’s self-proclaimed role as champion of a new poetic tradition. And yet, it is precisely his resistance to classical tradition (or at least to its perceived excesses) that makes Wordsworth such a valuable addition to this book. Hinds focuses primarily on moments of tension precipitated by confrontation with the classical, starting with Wordsworth’s (abandoned) attempts to translate the Aeneid toward the end of his career and concluding with close-ups of translations of the Georgics done in his youth. In between, attention is given to two poems, Laodamia and Dion, that show the poet grappling with the push-and-pull of classical tradition across multiple versions and in almost every line.
Chapter 7 (“Reversions of Pastoral”) develops an idea glimpsed previously in Chapters 3 (via Erycius’ contentious allusion to Ecl. 7.1–5 in AP 6.96.1–2) and 5 (via Milton’s adoption of a specifically British poetics in the Latin Epitaphium Damonis): pastoral is a genre wherein “the operations of classical tradition at large” (p. 245) are troped and negotiated across languages and cultures. In this chapter Hinds samples some early modern examples of the genre that effect transformation between cultural systems through various forms of transcodification, from transliteralism to adaptation, while homing in on moments of reversion to the genre’s first (especially Vergilian) principles. Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen and Baptista Mantuanus’ Adulescentia are considered as early modern examples in which the “Christianization” of the genre is (re)negotiated and performed. After dealing with Edmund Spenser’s philologically politicizing take in The Shepheardes’ Calender, we turn to a discerning discussion of a more recent, Hibernian version of pastoral: Seamus Heaney’s Bann Valley Eclogues, which enter into dialogue with Vergil to remake pastoral through a blend of poetic traditions, biographical details, and geopolitical anxieties.
The conclusion highlights central themes across the seven chapters and expresses hope that Hinds’ “canon-heavy study” (p. 293) might encourage other literary historical narratives that seek to break down the distinction between the center and periphery.
In sum, Latin Poetry Across Languages is an outstanding work of literary criticism. Particularly commendable is Hinds’ characteristic ability to treat intertextuality as a process more than a product, something already evident in Allusion & Intertext, but now with increased attention to translation as a multifarious mode of engagement. Moreover, in its construction of literary histories line by line and word by word, across language, culture, and time (and even across a single career in the case of Wordsworth), the book makes an important contribution to the study of reception, insisting upon a plurality of “classical traditions” rather than a monolithic “Classical Tradition.”[5] Such decentering work is especially germane as the field continues to wrestle with its history, its identity, and its survival.
If this book is deficient in any way, it is in the linguistic imbalance of its post-antique portion. Apart from the (albeit rich) treatment of two Pléiade poets in Chapters 4 and 5, the early modern vernacular material under consideration is predominantly in English. Hinds may be a “well-meaning tourist” (p. 3) in these early modern lands, but one would like a book that promises “adventures” across languages to be a bit more adventurous (and equitable) in its range.[6] Despite this, Latin Poetry Across Languages is an insightful and delightful contribution to the study of Latin literary history and intertextuality, from antiquity to modernity, replete with the perceptive philology so characteristic of Hinds’ scholarship. This volume is an essential read not only for any student or scholar of Latin literature but also for anyone who takes language seriously.
Bibliography
Zukofsky, Louis & Celia. 1969. Catullus (Gai Valeri Catulli Veronensis Liber). Cape Goliard Press.
Hardwick, Lorna & Christopher Stray. 2008. A Companion to Classical Receptions. Wiley-Blackwell.
Hinds, Stephen. 2020. “Pre- and Post-digital Poetics of ‘Transliteralism’: Some Greco-Roman Epic Incipits,” (421–45). In Neil Coffee, Christopher Forstall, Lavinia Galli Milić, & Damien Nelis (eds.), Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry: Contemporary Approaches. De Gruyter.
Bromberg, Jacques A. 2021. Global Classics. Routledge.
Czepiel, Maria. 2022. “Two Newly Discovered Poems by Garcilaso de la Vega” (741–76), Bulletin of Spanish Studies 99.
Dominik, William. 2023. “The Classical ‘Traception’: Reconceptualizing Classics in Africa (With an Analysis of Fugard, Kani and Ntshona’s The Island)” (29–65). International Journal of the Classical Tradition 30.
Notes
[1] In the world of translation studies, “transliteralism” more often refers to a translation style that privileges sound over meaning (better known as “homophonic” translation). The most well-known example of this phenomenon is Louis and Celia Zukofsky’s Catullus (1969).
[2] For example, in identifying a bilingual pun in Ausonius’ invocation to a “Greek muse” in Epist. 6.1: within Ἑλλαδικῆς is buried a Latinate root (dic-) that “speaks” to the cross-lingual agenda of the poem; see p. 38.
[3] See Hinds 2020.
[4] Opicus—that is, “Oscan” —was a Greek term of abuse leveled at uncultured Romans (as reported by Cato ap Plin. Nat. Hist. 29.14). The “Oscan option” was introduced in Chapter 1 during discussion of Ennius’ famous three hearts remark (preserved by none other than Gellius, NA 17.17.1–2).
[5] Cf. Hardwick & Stray 2008, Bromberg 2021, and Dominik 2023.
[6] Perhaps Petrarch, Poliziano, or Garcilaso de la Vega (see Czepiel 2022).