Verse Translation
Lucas dedicated much of his time to making classical poetry accessible to modern readers through verse translations. His Greek Poetry for Everyman (1951, Everyman Library 1966) and Greek Drama for Everyman (1954) (many reprints) were praised for their grace and fidelity, and were hailed by reviewers as "Cambridge’s single-handed answer to the Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation". With introductions and notes the two volumes were an ambitious project – nothing on this scale had been attempted by a single translator before, or has since. His versions pre-suppose, however, an understanding of metre and the caesura, and a taste for a poetic style closer to Morris than to Pound.
Read more about this topic: F. L. Lucas
Famous quotes containing the words verse and/or translation:
“But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their servant though all are underground.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
—General prologue, Wycliffe translation of the Bible (1384)