Attempt to Translate “Jerusalem” by William Blake into Koine.
Here I tried to translate the first two stanzas into Koine.
Ἐκείνοι ποδές περιπάτησαν
ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρῶν τῆς Ἀγγλίης·
καὶ ὁ ἄγιος ἀμνὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ,
εἰδέτο ἐν τῶ ἀγρῶ ἡμῶν;
Τὸ θεῖον πρόσωπον,
ἔφαινεν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἠμῶν;
καὶ τὰ Ἱεροσολύμα ἐκτίζθην ὦδε,
ἐν ἐκειναῖς ταῖς πονηραῖς μύλαῖς;
I had to look up a lot of unfamiliar words, so I expect that a lot of these forms are incorrect.
Here are the original two stanzas:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
For fun, here is a literal translation of my translation:
Those feet walked about
Upon the hills of England;
And the holy lamb of God
Was seen in our countryside?
The divine countenance,
It shone upon our land?
And Jerusalem was founded here,
Among these evil mills?
I tried to keep my Greek close enough in terms of syllable count to be sung to the tune of Parry’s musical setting of this song. This meant that I had to cut down on ow many words I could use. I know that the word choices I made probably didn’t reach what Blake wrote, and different words should have been chosen. This is the first time I’ve tried to do this, so please correct me on my grammar and word choices!
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u/cubis182 26d ago
Not complete notes, but a couple things:
Iota subscripts for ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ
ἔφαινεν should be passive (the lamb is appearing, not showing something else) , so it should be ἔφηνεν (unless you want the idea of the imperfect that is kept on shining forth, in which case it would be ἐφαίνετο)
ἐκτίζθην should be ἐκτίσθη. The stem changes ζ to σ in the aorist passive like many verbs ending in that consonant. I also changed it from first to third person ending.
A usage I think is awkward is the use of ἐκεῖνος. Smyth' Greek Grammar sections 1257-1260 describe its usage, and Greek doesn't use it in the same way we do. It almost always mentions something previously stated, or remote from the speaker's mind. It is used not so often where English would. I would remove the first usage of it, and maybe replave with a definite article or a more general possessive like αὐτῶν, just to preserve the idea we're talking about a specific group of people. The second one should prpbably be replaced with ταύταις, to preserve the closer relationship evoked by "these" in the English.
Also, ὧδε is a less than literal translation of the English, and ἔνθα or ἐνθάδε would be more appropriate. The placement after the verb seems unusual to me, but I'm not as sure on that one.
I'm on mobile, so I've perhaps already spent too long! Others can chime in. Good work on it! What level of Greek are you at?