It's over for Homer.
This has been a familiar academia lie for ten years now. If anything the clankers suggesting it offers hope for its credibility falling.
>>25272161>the entire world disagreeing with me and the free market itself demonstrating value is irrelevant because my digital basketweaving support group said sodo you have any idea how unhinged you are to base your entire personality on contrarianism?
I can already tell that "look what my ai just said" is gonna be the new "look what this person on twitter just said"
>>25272155what's your problem with Emily Wilson's translation?
>>25272174>Tell me about a complicated man, Muse
>>25272169Go take a look at the state of the masses and get back to me.
>>25272184>anon thinks a meme is actually realfigures no one on this board actually reads while pretending to be smarter than others
>>25272198I wonder if it‘s funnier and more retarded if you think classifying that as irrelevant because it‘s from her other Homer translation is some kind of gotcha or if you got this high on your horse about going to the texts while thinking she never actually wrote that.
>>25272184polutropos => many-turned => duplicitous, shrewdcomplicated => folded => layered => duplicitous, shrewd
Quite funny that Pope turned the Iliad into an English 18th century poem full of 18th century ideas of decency and proper behaviour and cutting out some of the more unpleasant things, and half the people here admire it. But E Wilson - whose Greek is surely better than Pope’s - adds a few of her own touches, and suddenly it’s all clutching of pearls like she graffitied the Parthenon.
>>25272208prove it, if you can
>>25272287It’s just sexism and misogyny at its core. Nothing more.
>>25272170what year are you posting from, 2020?
>>25272155>modern masterpieceLol
>>25272287by literary worth alone Pope shits on her scribbles
>>25272287Because there are two main ways to translate a poem:>Try to be as accurate in meaning as possible, even if it means sacrificing aesthetics for precision>Try to capture the aesthetic power of the original in the target language, even if it means being flexible with the literal meaningWith obviously the Platonic "Perfect Translation" doing its best to maximize both metrics. Wilson's translation does poor on both counts; it neither captures the grandeur and poetic splendor of Homer's original text, nor does do its best to precisely translate the meaning of the Greek (otherwise it wouldn't be rendered in the wholly foreign iambic pentameter verse.) Pope's translation only fails on the first count but hits an absolute home run on the second count, and is thus superior.
>>25272308The meme line is the first line in her translation of the Odyssey you dunce
>>25272169>the entire world disagreeing with meI don't disagree with him
>>25272155>Homer>doesn't write about domestic life, that's Hesiod>Hesiod>he sees just fine, the blind one is HomerWho writes this shit?
>>25272397so you can't prove it?
>>25272372The trouble with this metric is it requires knowing something about Homer’s aesthetic. It isn’t >grandeur and poetic splendorHomer’s power is his proper semi-barbaric flavour, not Pope’s elegant couplets. One classicist put it 'the Iliad is not beautiful but sublime; the Aeneid is not sublime but beautiful’. If we’re being strict about the metric, translating Homer into the idiom of Virgil is a pretty fundamental miss.
>>25272287>- adds a few of her own touchesHer translation is ostensibly inferior compared against all of the common names, Lattimore, Fagles, Fitzgerald, etc...She does nothing new but her prose and fidelity are worse across the board, go ahead and compare more than just the opening invocation, her writing is laughably bad. The reason people dislike her translation is because it has no reason to exist but the fact she is a woman pushes it into circulation, that's rightly distasteful.
>>25272482She may have written it for the same reason Homer did: to turn a profit. And since we’re dealing in ostensibles, she’s ostensibly more readable for the non-Classical public, which is the point of a translation.
>>25272496>she’s ostensibly more readable for the non-Classical public, which is the point of a translation.Since you are a low IQ dunce making points already anticipated and defeated I will repeat myself, there already exists a better translation to this effect, several in fact. Fagles is far better for the average pleb shitsucker like yourself.
>>25272496>he may have written it for the same reason Homer did:>Homer>write>:tfw not sure if bot or needful third worlder
>>25272506>Homer wasn't real goy, he was just a collection of bards whose work was compiled over centuries!Nobody is falling for this bullshit
>>25272506Standard shorthand.
>>25272477Prove what? I’ll bite your bait. In my impression it’s been going like this>Anon posts meme Emily Wilson line; granted it’s not from her translation of the Iliad but her Odyssey translation, but the ostensible goal is to highlight her lack of ability in translating Homeric texts>The point above flew over your head completely, as shown by you posting a screencap of the Iliad, implying that by virtue of the above line not appearing in her Iliad translation therefore Anon is false; while it does appear in her own translation of the Odyssey, a source material that’s similar enough to the Iliad as to often be grouped together in regular discussionIf you need me to spell things out even further for you, then I seriously worry for your level of intellect
>>25272513NTA but if you’re falling for this level or ragebait you should be more worried about your own level of intellect
>>25272184The most important line in the entire epic and she’s already fucked it up. I’m more mad that she doesn’t make it so that the line begins with the word “Man”, which sets up a contrast with the Iliad beginning with the word “Wrath”. One work standing for the wisdom and endurance of Man; the other divine and glorious Wrath.Basically, Chapman FTW>The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way>Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay
>>25272518Ngl, man, I just can’t help it sometimes. Let me indulge in my pettiness once in a while.
>>25272520>"inform">childish rhymingA literal shiver of disgust ran down my body. How do anglos have no shame at all?
>tfw have read most popular translations of the Iliad, even the psychotic Pope>have read the Fagles, Fitzgerald, and Lattimore simultaneously (comparing passages)>all three do better than the others and have more merit in various parts, often on the very same page. >tried to read the Wilson and the Alexander translation the same way with the above 3>at no point did I ever prefer a word, line, or sentence from either against the above 3It cannot be overstated how significant this is, failing to distinguish yourself at all across hundreds of pages in a story where frankly, the translation often falls into carelessness (I laugh every time Fitzgerald says 'big blade' like some child) is truly fucking embarrassing, there are numerous unhinged throway versions from the 17th century that regularly beat the big 3 sometimes where these fail to do so once.
>>25272627Pouring too much energy into comparing translations of Homer feels like scrutinising casual maps meant for tourists - they're designed for general readers, not scholars seeking the precise contours of the original.
>>25272198
>>25272184Complicated, for some reason unknown to you, does not apply as a descriptor for Odysseus?
>>25272738are you acting obtuse on purpose or are you actually retarded (Complicated) ?
>>25272507Nta, but I think he means that Homer sang it on the side of the road, rather than actually write it, though by "write" one can mean purely "create".
>>25272155I apologise if this reads badly, but I'm on mobile.Reading the whole thread, I must address the inherent shortcoming of translating Homer into english, which is the dactylic hexameter. My own mother tongue, which is much closer to greek, manages to completely retain the mode of rhyme, but then, translating iambic pentameter, which is much more suited to english, for example, is impossible without sounding off. So English is almost never going to retain the original sound of the greek without adding unnecessarily long words, as it is a morphemic language, while greek is phonetic and more reliant on syllable rhyming (my slavic language also is, so it just works so well). Thus, english translators, as one anon said, must really make the choice between retaining voice, or retaining meaning. To me, the Illiad and the Odyssey are not supposed to be quite grandiose or romantic. As another comment also noted, they are actually semi-barbaric, frank in their retelling of how death succumbs everyone, even the greatest of heroes (The Illiad), and of the ways a man may transform and redeem himself from past mistakes (the Odyssey). With that, I wanted to focus on the "complicated man" line. Polytropos can mean many different things. I'd say "many-faceted", "of many ways" are the closest direct translations, but what is Homer trying to say with this?> That Odysseus is witty and crafty, and can adapt to many situations, or get himself out of trouble> That Odysseus is "many-traveled", that he's been to many places and grown wise because of itOr,> That Odysseus is prone to being dishonourable. That he can be the hero who won the war for the Aegeans, but also did it in such a dirty manner as killing people in their sleep and sneaking soldiers in the city under the cover of a present.And I personally think that the last reading is the most literary and intriguing. "Of many ways" calls to the witty, trickster-like nature of Odysseys, however, "complicated" makes it much more personal. I can see it as a good description for a man who was taken through trickery from his family and land to fight in a war for 10 years, who, through dishonourable actions, finally won that war, but who's craftiness saved his crew dozens of times. I'm having trouble formulating my argument, but I think you get what I mean. Perhaps "complicated" is a bit too diminishing to his character and that's what really troubles purists, and I am also focusing entirely on one line, and not the translation as a whole, which I haven't read, but it is a word as ambiguous as polytropos. It is a simpler decision to use it, rather than "many-sided" "many-faceted", "many-traveled", " of many ways", all of which cover a single possible reading of the original.
>>25272627My version will be the best once I finish it, just wait anons.
>>25272478>Homer’s power is his proper semi-barbaric flavourThis whole post kinda seems like splitting hairs since what you‘re describing is moreso a terse, fundamental flavor of grandeur and poetic splendor than a separate category. And Wilson is ass on this count too.
>>25272274>what is context"Polutropos" very obviously means "wandering."Also, "complicated" is not a synonym of "duplicitous" or "shrewd."
>>25272520>Chapman FTW/thread
>>25272174She's a feminist cunt with an axe to grind.
>>25272507Homer wasn't a writer.Also, compare The Odyssey with The Iliad, and tell me the same guy composed both.
>>25272534>NOOOOOO! YOU CAN'T HECKIN' TRANSLATE A POEM INTO THE MOST NATURAL FORM FOR THE TARGET LANGUAGEShow me an English poem in dactylic hexameter, you posturing faggot.
>>25274379Lattimore‘s superior translation
Give me one good reason why nobody ever says fuck it and translates the first line to something to the effect of>tell me about a polytropic man
>>25274379
>>25274367Who’s it obvious to? The word shows up twice in the Homeric corpus, Homer had plenty of safer epithets to hand - polymechanos, polytlas, polyphron, polyplanetos (literally wandering) - and chose none of them: he was reaching for an uncommon word. A classicist reads that as deliberate. Also you missed the point there: I wasn’t saying complicated is a synonym for duplicitous/shrewd. I was tracing a semantic chain. The etymology mirrors the layered ambiguity of polutropos.
>>25272169>the entire world disagreeing with meyou mean the people who read Homer once when they were 14 and then once again when they were 26 and trying to pretend to be smart to impress a lover?>and the free market itself demonstrating valuekek
Pope > Lattimore > everything else
>>25273947My point is Homer’s register is specifically not the elevated courtly aesthetic that ‘grandeur and poetic splendor’ implies.
>>25273947>And Wilson is ass on this count too.So is Pope, that’s sort of the point.
>>25272757How about you describe what exactly you DON'T like about the word complicated being used in this context?
>>25274367polutropos has never been obvious.
>>25272169Well done for calling these retards out, but it’s probably a waste of energy.
Stop being so contrarian, >>25272169.
