One of the main questions facing anyone wishing to take up the challenge of (re)translating theAeneid is the choice of metrical form to be used in the target language: should the translator, or should he or she not, seek a form that reproduces Virgil's dactylic hexameter? I have noted the wide variety of strategies used in translations written in Scots, English, French, Italian and Russian over the period from the 16th to the 19th century.
During this long period, we can list variants: heroic couplets, unrhymed blank verse, "fourteeners", French and Russian alexandrines, ballad metre, octosyllables, ottava rima, anapests and hexameters. The task was therefore to analyze and interpret the ideological meaning that animates and inspires this varied mix: I researched and analyzed the cultural paradigms evoked by the choice of each of these metrical forms. In my opinion, there are at least two points of view from which to appreciate the choice of a metre for translation: the past/present axis, and the domestic/foreign axis. It follows that the two questions these choices raise are, on the one hand, whether the metre chosen by the translator uses the idiom commonly used for the epic, or whether it proposes to offer resonances of ancient poetry; on the other, whether such a metre belongs to the translator's own vernacular, or whether it is borrowed from a foreign culture that is presented as a model of sophistication.
