The Translator Konstantinos Theotokis: Tracing His Intellectual Path in His Ancient Language Translations

Abstract

Konstantinos Theotokis (1872–1923) was a multilingual translator with a wide range and variety of translation work. Although this has engaged scholars in individual aspects, an overall overview of the intellectual trajectory that dictates his choices is still lacking. In this paper I attempt to help trace this trajectory with reference to those of the author’s ancient language translations that relate to the period 1895–1912, are made in close chronological continuity with each other, and present, through a notable presence of the natural world, a focus on the cosmological and ontological issues posed by nature, life and death, destruction and rebirth. As will be seen, Theotokis’s preoccupation with Indology, and the related translations, his translation of Virgil’s Georgics and Lucretius’s De rerum natura, are linked both to his personal existential concerns and to the cultural assumptions of the time and his ideological pursuits.