Pound's Greek was actually much better than scholars give him
credit for. I've spent the last two years working on his translation of
Sophocles with a wealth of materials at my disposal (his Greek edition of
Sophocles with his extensive notes on it, his Liddell and Scott,
handwritten drafts, various typed manuscripts, etc.) and will be
able to prove he had an adequate grasp of Greek. Not on the level
of a classics scholar, but certainly equal to most undergraduate classics
majors.
 
In his entire translation of the Elektra, for example, I found
very few grammatical mistakes. In most cases, what looks like a
mistake is a deliberate misreading. This is evident when one compares the
early notes on the Elektra and the first draft with the later version. His
first stab at the Greek is pretty literal and shows a good understanding
of the language.
 
In fact, I will argue that Pound was meticulous in his reading of the
original, if loose in actual translation. If you look at his edition of
Liddell and Scott (the Greek-English Lexicon), you'll find marginal
notes in which Pound corrects the editors, indicating
not only that he actually looked up the examples of specific words in
other texts, but that he recognized in many cases that L & S made an
error in citation (i.e. he knew that a certain word occured in Book 10 of
Homer's Iliad, and not Book 4).
 
This will be part of my book, ultimately, but I'm currently working it up
into an article for separate publication.
 
Anita George
Department of English
Yale University
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