which translation of iliad and oddyssey should i read
They're still untranslated and the last readers of Homeric Greek have died.
>>24113394Why on earth u wanna read that? Cos of the Nolan film?
>>24113394I’m reading the Fitzgerald translation and I like it. Not sure if it’s a good translation or whatever.
>>24113394Check the /lit/ archive, we don't have to have this thread every day
>>24113399woah>>24113400teh lolz :P>>24113401Haven't heard of that one. The recommendations I've gotten so far are fagles and lattimore.
>>24113394Faggles
>>24113399People still read Homeric Greek. I know quite a few.
stop being a translation fetishist and find whatever's at your used bookstore, which is probably Fagles. if you don't have the sophistication to assess a translation on your own knowledge-based, it literally does not matter for your first read, with the exception of Pope (no shade on Pope, but if you wanted to read that translation on a first approach, you would already know you did)
>>24113554this is the correct take. just get Fagles. it's fine. you are not doing the kind of deep philological work that necessitates forty volumes of commentary and two critical apparatuses. if they don't have Fagels, just get whatever they have
>>24113394I went with Latimore because I compared Book I 25-30 with Fagles and found it more poetic.
>Alexander PopeAchilles' wrath, to Greece the direful springOf woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reignThe souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!>FitzgeraldAnger be now your song, immortal one,Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter lossand crowded brave souls into the undergloom,leaving so many dead men—carrionfor dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.Begin it when the two men first contendingbroke with one another— the Lord MarshalAgamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus.>FaglesRage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,feasts for the dogs and birds,and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.>LattimoreSing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achillesand its devastation, which put pains thousand-fold upon the Achaians,hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong soulsof heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feastingof dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplishedsince that time when first there stood in division of conflictAtreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.
>FitzgeraldSing in me, Muse, and through me tell the storyof that man skilled in all ways of contending,the wanderer, harried for years on end,after he plundered the strongholdon the proud height of Troy.He saw the townlandsand learned the minds of many distant men,and weathered many bitter nights and daysin his deep heart at sea, while he fought onlyto save his life, to bring his shipmates home.But not by will nor valor could he save them,for their own recklessness destroyed them all—children and fools, they killed and feasted onthe cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,and he who moves all day through heaventook from their eyes the dawn of their return.Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus,tell us in our time, lift the great song again.>LattimoreTell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was drivenfar journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.Even so he could not save his companions, hard thoughhe strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some pointhere, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.>FaglesSing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns …driven time and again off course, once he had plunderedthe hallowed heights of Troy.Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sunand the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,start from where you will—sing for our time too.>ChapmanThe man, O Muse, inform, that many a wayWound with his wisdom to his wished stay;That wander’d wondrous far, when he the townOf sacred Troy had sack’d and shiver’d down;The cities of a world of nations,With all their manners, minds, and fashions,He saw and knew; at sea felt many woes,Much care sustain’d, to save from overthrowsHimself and friends in their retreat for home;But so their fates he could not overcome,Though much he thirsted it. O men unwise,They perish’d by their own impieties!That in their hunger’s rapine would not shunThe oxen of the lofty-going Sun,Who therefore from their eyes the day bereftOf safe return. These acts, in some part left,Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.
>>24113582just pulled out my copies, I would not say this in this way. "poetic" is a quality we'd have to spend hours discussing. Lattimore is very faithful, in many ways the most, but it scans totally foreign to the English reader of poetry. Fagles often reads like Tennyson. I stand by the fact that anyone asking the question of "which translation" should read what they find, which will almost certainly be Fagles, and then if so moved, to continue through different translations
>>24113619Ok instead of poetic, I'll say I liked the prose better. But I just spent last year reading the KJV so Latimore was a breeze in comparison; I've heard people say he's 'difficult' or something, compared to Fagles.
>>24113453Should we make a rentry for newfags like this one?https://rentry.org/limbisbooks
>>24113633not my issue, but we can assume this would be the OP's issue, no? I've done a lot of translation from Latin and Russian, languages where verb position on account of declensions is mobile and varied, and I can see how much Lattimore pays attention to the sentence structure of the original Greek, which I enjoy, but that is indeed foreign. "Terrible was the clash that rose from the bow of silver." Beautiful--very strange. Even rendering a small change, "terrible was the clash that rose from the silver bow" puts us closer to our language and how we speak it. I just think we need to be realistic, and this is not condescending, with what will be appealing to someone who is trying to engage with the Iliad and the Odyssey as epic poetry. It matters what kind of engagement you are trying to have.
>>24113394Peter Green
>>24113554Avoid Elizabethan-esque flowery poetry because you will not understand what the fuck is going on.
>>24115597I love Elizabethan poetry... my point is about a translation's preservation of the language's sentence structure and what is more natural to the modern speaker of English's ear
>>24115607I mean translations that read like Elizabethan poetry. Not only do the anachronisms get in the way, it totally misses the direct-style of Homeric poetry.
>>24115624agree, but I still enjoy those translations. it's just different strokes, though for like Pope it's really a parallel work I'd argue. I was thinking just now about how maybe (playing here, would have to really explore this) you can group the translations broadly into Anglo-Saxon dominant vs Latinate dominant vs mixed modes, the way like Lydia Davis talks about that dynamicmy hunch is that Fagles is way more Anglo-Saxon than the majority of other translations
>>24115631That's exactly it, and it's why my taste heavily favours the Germanic, and why I have an interest in Anglish and English purism. Kurt Eggers puts it better than any one I have ever read, and it explains why a lot of poetry does absolutely nothing for me at all.>When the German built, there arose under his hand cathedrals and towers that pushed to the clouds in strangely bizarre shapes, when he wrote his ballads become brittle and dry and of a chaste, secluded beauty; they must hurt the ear of whoever loves the pleasant sound of southern verse.
>>24115634as a quad-lingual (native English tho), I'm on the opposite spectrum re purity, though I love the Germanic influence on English. I am in awe of how supple the English lexicon is. I just prefer to see writers negotiating, and with sophistication, the broad range of modes the language can display. certain sentences sound disheveled when you achieve an immediate relationship to etymology. it's clear when the writer has no such relationship. the rhythms are off, the nuance is off, etc.intellectually, the prose writers I find very impressive are those like Joyce. someone who can sail gamely from the lowest to the highest registers without pause, someone who can play with the full palette of English while creating and negotiating dialect/foreign elements both in their vernacular and formal modes. it's satisfying and neat to see how writers in other languages attempt this too (thinking of Sorokin and Pelevin rn mostly)
>>24115653That's very interesting. Perhaps I would be more open to the Latin influences if I knew Latin. As things stands, a lot of Romantic language does more to obscure than to reveal.As Paul Turner writes in his introduction to Utopia:>[Ralph Robinson's] archaic idiom is liable to obscure More's perfectly plain meaning [...] For hundreds of years Latin served as a universal language through which one could speak directly, not only to people of other languages, but other time periods as well.
>>24115692Latin is something everyone should and can have. I'd encourage you to pick up Wheelock's and just dabble through it when the mood strikes. Latin is way more approachable than learning a modern language, just an idea if you have an interestbut I think you're onto something in terms of obscuring. when people are bullshitting, or expressing a thought poorly (whether in fiction or non-) and in a bloated way, they lean more towards Latinate words. why is that?
Reading is a female habit, grow some balls, faggot
>>24115723It's because English *is* a Germanic language with Latin influence. The Romantic elements tend towards being used more so for pomposity than description. Wikipedia gives the examples of "birdlore" for "ornithology," and "speechcraft" for "grammar." Perhaps these examples are not so powerful to you because you have a greater knowledge of these languages, but to me they are, of the demystifying effect of the purposeful use of Germanisms. This worked find when the Academics and Rhetoricians were are aristocrats who taught Latin, but now education has been so thoroughly democratised and dumbed down, it does more to obscure. As far as I am aware the Germans and Scandinavians don't do this, and their academia is far more linguistically pure.
>>24113394Alexander Pope