Tuesday 1 November 2016

Aristophanes: The Nightingale Song from The Birds



Spirit with speckled breast, 
Come, follow me 
Through thickets, up scree, 
To a nest 
In a cluster of rowan berries, 
Where my brown throat 
Shall sing what you taught me. 
There I shall dance to the nymphs' down-derries, 
Where Phrynichus once, like a bee, 
Knelt, sucking nectar out of your melodies. 

So shall the swans cry 
To the River-king 
With clamouring wings 
And fly 
Low over endless marshes. 
The sound in a wave 
Flows up to heaven. 
Winds cease for the cattle to listen, 
And the hounds' fur stands on end, 
While spirits stumble in breathless astonishment.


Tr. Leo Aylen (first published 1999). There must be hundreds of translations of this passage; this one creates its own music. Aylen is (was?) an impressively multi-talented man.

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