It's Greek to Me

While reading Jacob's Room, coupled with "On not Knowing Greek," I was struck by the problems of language and translation--not only of translating Greek, but of translating the body through writing. By reading the Greek plays, or letters from loved ones, the reader must translate the writer's body into the readers space to gain any understanding. Likewise, the writer must translate their body onto the page to be understood. The problems with translation are the gaps in understanding that are left through the navigation of time and space; whether that be a gap in understanding the language, the culture, or the "place" of the author upon writing.

Woolf opens her essay "On not Knowing Greek" with the following passage:

For it is vain and foolish to talk of knowing Greek, since in our ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say? (Woolf, "Greek")

Ironically, she begins by saying that it is foolish for girls to want to learn Greek, as they would be at the bottom of a class of boys, and that they can't understand the "difference of race and tongue…[or] tradition." The same could be said for boys, who also can't get back to the original sounds and meanings. But she continues on in the essay describing Greek literature as though she has learned Greek, and has been able to "know [Electra], that we have picked up from little turns and twists of the dialogue hints of her character, of her appearance, which, characteristically, she neglected; of something suffering in her, outraged and stimulated to its utmost stretch of capacity," (Woolf, "Greek"). She hints at some understanding of Greek after having just told the reader that it is "foolish to talk of knowing Greek."

 Woolf also seems to claim that the time and space that have been traveled lends unintended meaning to the Greek. She says, when reading a Greek play,

at once the mind begins to fashion itself surroundings. It makes some background, even of the most provisional sort, for Sophocles; it imagines some village, in a remote part of the country, near the sea. Even nowadays such villages are to be found in the wilder parts of England, and as we enter them we can scarcely help feeling that here, in this cluster of cottages, cut off from rail or city, are all the elements of a perfect existence (Woolf, "Greek").

When translating a Greek play, the reader can’t help but to place the play in his or her current space. One does not imagine an Ancient Greek village, but a contemporary English village. The meaning of the play, the knowing of the characters, depends on the space in which they are read and understood.

In Jacob’s Room, Woolf also looks at the problems of translation. She states, “A strange this--when you come to think of it--this love of Greek, flourishing in such obscurity, distorted, discouraged, yet leaping out, all of a sudden” (Woolf, Jacob's Room 77). For Jacob, Greek is obscure, distorted, and discourage, and yet “Jacob knew no more Greek than served him to stumble through a play" (Woolf, Jacob's Room 78). The term “stumble” leaves the reader to believe that Jacob can’t get full meaning or understanding from the Greek, but can only get the meaning he creates for it based upon the space he occupies, where meaning “leap[s] out, all of a sudden, especially on leaving crowded rooms, or after a surfeit of print, or when the moon floats among the waves of the hills” (Woolf, Jacob's Room 77). By changing space – moving out of a crowded room – meaning becomes suddenly apparent.

 Much like Greek, the letters in Jacob’s Room must be translated. The difference in language and culture is presumably smaller, but the reader must keep in mind how words can hold different meanings for different people. Each person’s background and experiences shape how that individual understands the world. Woolf says of letters in Jacob’s Room

 Still, there are letters that merely say how dinner's at seven; others ordering coal; making appointments. The hand in them is scarcely perceptible, let alone the voice or the scowl. Ah, but when the post knocks and the letter comes always the miracle seems repeated -- speech attempted. (Woolf, Jacob's Room 97)

The translation of the letter’s conveying concrete information is simple—be ready for dinner at seven, bring this amount of coal, etc. But the translation of a writer’s body (hand) and voice is an attempt at speech, translating the written to spoken and attempting to recreate the author in the reader’s space.