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File: Emily Wilson Homer.jpg (214 KB, 1440x690)
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>fucks up your Epics
>nothin personnel kid
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>>25159413
I’ve never read a single page of her translations, are they that bad?
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So she just changed servant to slave and flute girl to prostitute and mentioned how the slaves were raped constantly? No wonder women love her translation
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>>25159420
/lit/ will say yes, but anyone who gets their opinions on homeric translation from 4chan should be ignored unless they can demonstrate proficiency in homeric greek, which no one here can. most of the hate wilson gets on here for her translation is just woman hating. occasionally someone will reference "polytropos" as if they read greek and post that picture of the fitzgerald/fagles/wilson/etc translations side-by-side and act as if this proves whatever point they're trying to make. again, if they can't read homeric greek, they can be ignored
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>>25159448
She's not gonna fuck you lil brobro lol
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>>25159420
Yes. Just compare the translations and you'll see how flat, unevocative her translation feels.

>Fitzgerald
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to 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 on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through heaven
took 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.

>Lattimore
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far 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 though
he 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 point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.

>Fagles
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns …
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the 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 Sun
and 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.

>Emily Wilson
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
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>>25159465
>Alexander Pope (and his buttbuddies he used because he couldn't be arsed to do the full translation himself like in the Iliad)
The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall
Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall,
Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d,
Their manners noted, and their states survey’d,
On stormy seas unnumber’d toils he bore,
Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore:
Vain toils! their impious folly dared to prey
On herds devoted to the god of day;
The god vindictive doom’d them never more
(Ah, men unbless’d!) to touch that natal shore.
Oh, snatch some portion of these acts from fate,
Celestial Muse! and to our world relate.

>Chapman
The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way
Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
That wander’d wondrous far, when he the town
Of 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 overthrows
Himself 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 shun
The oxen of the lofty-going Sun,
Who therefore from their eyes the day bereft
Of safe return. These acts, in some part left,
Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.

>Mandelbaum
Muse, tell me of the man of many wiles,
the man who wandered many paths of exile
after he sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.
He saw the cities—mapped the minds—of many;
and on the sea, his spirit suffered every
adversity—to keep his life intact,
to bring his comrades back. In that last task,
he will was firm and fast, and yet he failed:
he could not save his comrades. Fools, they foiled
themselves: they ate the oxen of the Sun,
the herd of Hélios Hypérion;
the lord of light requited their transgression—
he took away the day of their return.
Muse, tell us of these matters. Daughter of Zeus,
my starting point is any point you choose.
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>>25159467
The Pope sure took liberties
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>>25159462
you sound like a retarded zoomer tiktok comment section
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>>25159474
Bro I think you better know Greek before because you know my post is too good for you
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>>25159448
The translator being a woman has nothing do with it, that rap battle in Metamorphoses is just as lambasted even though it was written by a man.
No one has any problems with Grossman's Quixote or, if you limit yourself to poetry, with Sayer's Divine Comedy or Ruden's Aeneid. That's because, unlike Wilson, their translations read well.
>unless they can demonstrate proficiency in homeric greek
Accuracy is irrelevant, Fitzgerald and Pope takes copious liberties, yet their translations are loved because they're great poets.

Arms and a man I sing, the first from Troy,
A fated exile to Lavinian shores
In Italy. On land and sea, divine will—
And Juno’s unforgetting rage—harassed him.
War racked him too, until he set his city
And gods in Latium. There his Latin race rose,
With Alban patriarchs, and Rome’s high walls.
Muse, tell me why. What stung the queen of heaven,
What insult to her power made her drive
This righteous hero through so many upsets
And hardships? Can divine hearts know such anger?
Carthage, an ancient Tyrian settlement,
Faces the Tiber’s mouth in far-off Italy;
Rich, and experienced and fierce in war.
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>>25159474
No shit retard. And yeah, her translation is shit, shut up.
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>>25159462
>>25159478
>>25159486
Fatherless posts.
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>>25159448
Uhh you didn't say anything
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>>25159448
you don't need to know greek to recognise bad English and lacklustre moralising.
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>>25159537
TRUTH NUKE
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>>25159448
Just say you liked it anon, it’s okay to like bad writing, though it speaks volumes about your taste.
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>>25159448
They hated him, because he told the truth.
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>>25159413
I like her translations. Her dad's pretty neat too.
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>>25159420
If you read at an 8th grade level and like expired soi, it's kino
>>
Does anybody know if her Seneca translations are better? They've been in print by Oxford for years and I've neve heard anyone criticise them.
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hey twitter, tell me about a complicated man
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Her translation isn't that bad. There are thousands of people pozzing up the classics and she isn't really one of them.
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>>25159605
>There are thousands of people pozzing up the classics
I’m not particularly au courant with what’s going on with these people, but what classics are they ruining?
>>
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>Emily Wilson described her 2017 translation of the Odyssey, the first of the entire poem into English by a woman, as “shining a clear light on the particular forms of sexism and patriarchy that do exist in the text.” In a case like this, where rather than, or as well as, offering a critique of a literary text in an introduction or footnotes, the translator consciously seeks to work in such a way as to point out unattractive aspects, a reader might feel it was useful to know who the translator was and where she was coming from.
>In a review examining three translations of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Wilson herself indicated how important it was for her to know the identity of a translator, remarking that she was plunged into “gloom when I realized that two of [the translations] are by elderly white men, both emeritus professors, and the other is by a younger white man, not an academic.”
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>>25159637
idk I'm just assuming.
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>>25159448
>unless they can demonstrate proficiency in homeric greek
>he thinks translated poetry should mimic the original style
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>>25159587
Post tits.
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>>25159644
It's 2026 and you're still getting oneshotted by the most watered down standpoint epistemology imaginable. One thousand year woke reich
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>>25159465
Beatless windbaggery.
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>>25159427
>changed servant to slave and flute girl to prostitute
so she made it better?
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>πολύτροπος -» complicated
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>>25160579
>>25159448
>occasionally someone will reference "polytropos" as if they read greek
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>>25160587
ὦ χαυνόπρωκτ' οὐτιδὰνε μόνον Ἐλληνιστ' ἀνέγνωκα τὸν θεῖον ποιητὴν, ἔρρ' Ἀϊδόσδε
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>>25159413
They were never "yours" to begin with.
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>>25160489
>windbaggery
Hoho! This made me chuckle, I’m going to start using this term for anything I find periphrastic.
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>>25159448
>/lit/ will point out authors who have translated it more accurately or with better style and give examples of her poor translation but this is bad because... um...
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>we are le hecking trad west, we will NVT apologize for our history. NO MORALIZING
>uhh... did this FOID just translate 'slave' instead of 'servant'? i LVTERALLY feel VNSAFE (odysseus is my comfort character and xitter pfp!!)... WHY ARENT THE HECKING TRAD HEROES MORALLY PERFECT?? SAVE ME ISRAEL!!!
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>>25162106
Go back to /pol/ you schizo, OP simply said she’s a shit translator.
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>>25159448
The verse is shit. It really IS that simple.
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>>25162106
peak soi crashout lmao
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>>25162106
Why are the humanities filled with people who hate the works they study?
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>>25162124
Why do you think this? The issue is that humanities have an extremely democratic view of human nature and think the greatest works humanity has ever produced regardless of culture or age, are for everyone, and think if the cattle are uninterested it is because the work is not being presented right, so it has to be warped or dumbed-down until the cattle will consume it. This has to do with undue love for and faith in the cattle, not hostility toward the work itself.
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>>25159448
You made this same retarded r*ddit post in the last thread we had about this retarded nepo chungus bitch who writes like ready player one
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>>25160478
>LMAO YOU'RE GETTING ONE-SHOTTED BY MY RETARDATION HAHA?!
Lay off the birth control
>>
>>25162124
They just like dressing up their brother's gi joes in barbie dresses to make him mad.
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>>25162145
I call it "the great leveling"
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>>25159413
>reading anything from Ancient Greece.
Maybe it’s time we grow up, yeah?
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>>25162268
>the western canon is the same as a plastic power fantasy object for 8 year olds
Nobody hates the western canon more than you.
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>>25162379
I hope you're a woman because you're displaying here a poor ability to abstract
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>>25162261
>incoherent seething
Like I said, oneshotted
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>>25162400
>doubling down
Know when to quit, sis
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I liked Stephanie McCarter's translation of Ovid, and Sarah Ruden's translation of Vergil. Both are also blank verse. But Wilson can't write. Her poetry is ugly and I think that is mostly why she is promoted. Caroline Alexander was the first woman to translate Homer and she was largely ignored compared to Wilson.

I don't think ugliness itself is something to be banished from art, it certainly has its place. Films like Gummo and Eraserhead and expressionist paintings demonstrate ugliness as a potent artistic vehicle. But there are some places it simply doesn't belong. It would never belong in ballet, it rarely belongs in opera. Does it belong in classical poetry? It defeats the whole purpose of classical literature; classical poetry is foremost an idealized beauty even when depicting horrific or unpleasant things.

Laying aside all that, the worst crime of Wilson's is that there is no talent to the ugliness. Ugly literature can be magnificently executed, Naked Lunch comes to mind. But Wilson's is not ugly in this way, more ugly on a bland, pedestrian way. Maybe that is the idea. She wants to bring it "down to earth"--an epic of gods and sorceresses and giants and superhumans. That can be done but I think to pull it off you would get something like Laurus, or magical realism, something tries to uplift and beautify the everyday and what is taken for granted. Not some sort of dogmatic pedestrianism. So ultimately, even if it's not the intent, it comes off as a sort of a t of revenge against classical literature and its worldview, submitting it to a sort of humiliation ritual and sucking out all the grandeur from it as a form of retribution for ita misogyny and so forth, and all the men who held it in high regard
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>>25162420
>still seething
Big woke is gonna trans your kid and there's nothing you can do about it
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>>25162430
Kid? I thought i was le heckin incel
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>>25162434
Keep gnashing your teeth while homosexuals run your city
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>>25159448
Also explains why the MAGAtards here dislike Amanda Gorman. They're just motivated by politics not art
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>>25162438
How long before your stock quips are exhausted, claudette?
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>>25162453
How long before you start sucking cock?
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>>25162462
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>>25161867
Yeah they were



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