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The Frogs-Part9_Aristophanes(450-385BC)_Translated Works(翻译文学)

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O bring me fire, and bring me frankincense.

I'll pray, or e'er the clash of wits begin,
To judge the strife with high poetic skill.

Meanwhile (to the CHORUS) invoke the Muses with a song.
CHORUS

O Muses, the daughters divine
of Zeus, the immaculate Nine,

Who gaze from your mansions serene
on intellects subtle and keen,

When down to the tournament lists,
in bright-polished wit they descend,

With wrestling and turnings and twists
in the battle of words to contend,

O come and behold what the two
antagonist poets can do,

Whose mouths are the swiftest to teach
grand language and filings of speech:

For now of their wits is the sternest
encounter commencing in earnest.

DIONYSUS
Ye two, put up your prayers before ye start.

AESCHYLUS
Demeter, mistress, nourisher of my soul,

O make me worthy of thy mystic rites!
DIONYSUS (to EURIPIDES)

Now put on incense, you.
EURIPIDES

Excuse me, no;
My vows are paid to other gods than these.

DIONYSUS
What, a new coinage of your own?

EURIPIDES
Precisely.

DIONYSUS
Pray then to them, those private gods of yours.

EURIPIDES
Ether, my pasture, volubly-rolling tongue,

Intelligent wit and critic nostrils keen,
O well and neatly may I trounce his plays!

CHORUS
We also are yearning from these to be learning

Some statelymeasure, some majestic grand
Movement telling of conflicts nigh.

Now for battle arrayed they stand,
Tongues embittered, and anger high.

Each has got a venturesome will,
Each an eager and nimble mind;

One will wield, with artistic skill,
Clearcut phrases, and wit refined;

Then the other, with words defiant,
Stern and strong, like an angry giant

Laying on with uprooted trees,
Soon will scatter a world of these

Superscholastic subtleties.
DIONYSUS

Now then, commence your arguments,
and mind you both display

True wit, not metaphors, nor things
which any fool could say.

EURIPIDES
As for myself, good people all,

I'll tell you by-and-by
My own poetic worth and claims;

but first of all I'll try
To show how this portentous quack

beguiled the silly fools
Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came,

in Phrynichus's schools.
He'd bring some single mourner on,

seated and veiled, 'twould be
Achilles, say, or Niobe

-the face you could not see-
An empty show of tragic woe,

who uttered not one thing.
DIONYSUS

'Tis true.
EURIPIDES

Then in the Chorus came, and rattled off a string
four continuous lyric odes:

the mourner never stirred.
DIONYSUS

I liked it too. I sometimes think
that I those mutes preferred

To all your chatterers now-a-days.
EURIPIDES

Because, if you must know,
You were an ass.

DIONYSUS
An ass, no doubt;

what made him do it though?
EURIPIDES

That was his quackery, don't you see,
to set the audience guessing

When Niobe would speak; meanwhile,
the drama was progressing.

DIONYSUS
The rascal, how he took me in!

'Twas shameful, was it not?
(To AESCHYLUS) What makes you stamp and fidget so?

EURIPIDES
He's catching it so hot.

So when he had humbugged thus awhile,
and now his wretched play

Was halfway through, a dozen words,
great wild-bull words, he'd say,

Fierce Bugaboos, with bristling crests,
and shaggy eyebrows too,

Which not a soul could understand.
AESCHYLUS

O heavens!
DIONYSUS

Be quiet, do.
EURIPIDES

But not one single word was clear.
DIONYSUS

St! don't your teeth be gnashing.
EURIPIDES

'Twas all Scamanders, moated camps,
and griffin-eagles flashing

In burnished copper on the shields,
chivalric-precipice-high

Expressions, hard to comprehend.
DIONYSUS

Aye, by the Powers, and
Full many a sleepless night have spent

in anxious thought, because
I'd find the tawny cock-horse out,

what sort of bird it was!
AESCHYLUS

It was a sign, you stupid dolt,
engraved the ships upon.

DIONYSUS
Eryxis I supposed it was,

Philoxenus's son.
EURIPIDES

Now really should a cock be brought
into a tragic play?

AESCHYLUS
You enemy gods and men,

what was your practice, pray?
EURIPIDES

No cock-horse in my plays, by Zeus,
no goat-stag there you'll see,

Such figures as are blazoned forth
in Median tapestry.

When first I took the art from you,
bloated and swoln, poor thing,

With turgid gasconading words
and heavy dieting,

First I reduced and toned her down,
and made her slim and neat

With wordlets and with exercise
and poultices of beet,

And next a dose of chatterjuice,
distilled from books, I gave her,

And monodies she took, with sharp
Cephisophon for flavour.

I never used haphazard words,
or plunged abruptly in;

Who entered first explained at large
the drama's origin

And source.
AESCHYLUS

Its source, I really trust,
was better than your own.

EURIPIDES
Then from the very opening lines

no idleness was shown;
The mistress talked with all her might,

the servant talked as much,
The master talked, the maiden talked,

the beldame talked.
An outrage was not death your due?

EURIPIDES
No, by Apollo, no:

That was my democratic way.
DIONYSUS

Ah, let that topic go.
Your record is not there, my friend,

particularly good.
EURIPIDES

Then next I taught all these to speak.
AESCHYLUS

You did so, and I would
That ere such mischief you had wrought,

your very rungs had split.
EURIPIDES

Canons of verse I introduced,
and neatly chiselled wit;

To look, to scan: to plot, to plan:
to twist, to turn, to woo:

On all to spy; in all to pry.
AESCHYLUS

You did: I say so too.
EURIPIDES

I showed them scenes of common life,
the things we know and see,

Where any blunder would at once
by all detected be.

I never blustered on, or took
their breath and wits away



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