Good Lord this shit is boringWhy is it important to tell me the name of every character who is killed along with the name of his father and the city he is from? This adds nothing to the story other than making it laborious to get through.Perhaps it's just the Fagles translation?
>>25411282It was just a different time anon. If your name didn't get put in a book back then, you would literally cease to exist. Nowadays we don't really give a fuck about ideology, but if you were writing a book about the American Revolution in a time where Wikipedia didn't exist, and mythology also doubled as history, you'd bet your ass you'd write down every name you could, especially if people in Massachusets would cheer and say you're the greatest writer ever because you made Samuel Adams come across like a total badass.
>>25411285I meant genealogy, not ideology LMAO
>>25411282It’s is important to know where one is from and who they are related to. Only in modern globohomo times is this considered irrelevant.
>>25411282>This adds nothing to the story other than making it laborious to get through.The purpose of these epic poems was to serve as a record of past events. It was a way for people to remember their ancestors. An oral tradition version of a history book. They story is set in verse specifically so that it follows a verbal rhythm to make it easier to recite and remember. The Illiad and other epics like it are remembered as works of "literature" but they were originally orally transmitted, long before they were ever written down.
When will Chuds concede that the Wilson version is goated?
>>25411282The Iliad is today considered literature, but it was written and regarded primarily as a cultural record, not strictly entertainment. it's not really a form we have today, where it's a mashup of story, history, mythology, and record keeping. You may not care about knowing the name of every soldier, their father's name, and where they were from, but it wasn't written for your entertainment, it was written for ancient Greeks, and they certainly did care about that.
>>25411298I read it in November and it was my favorite version of The Iliad I've read.
>>25411282It was meant for loud recitation, the recitating poet would not retell the poem word by word, he would improvise a lot.>Why is it important to tell me the name of every character who is killed along with the name of his father and the city he is from?To make it more fun for the audience back then. Kytherans cheer when guy from Kythera appears, Thebans when Theban guy appears etc. It at the same time shows the scale of the conflict (people from all over greece fought in Agamemnon's army) and works as unifying poem against foreigners (many greek city states still feel like they are all greek).All translations you are reading are probably translations of medieval transcription from 10th century. It is a transcription of the Alexandrian version of the epics, that was created in Alexandrian library somewhere between 1st and 3rd century BC - centuries after the epics were created and that time they were already considered ancient and were written in version of greek that was so old the common greek did not understand it (and even when they were contemporary they were written/recited at intentionally "high" version of that ancient ancient greek language). Before that there were different regional versions - but only fragments of them written down. The alexandrian scribes connected them and created a canonical version. Before that every bard had his own version he would recite they had only the absolute core in common.
You're not Greek and not the intended audience, you have no blood-ancestry tying you to the conflict it describes. The people this epic was intended for DID have those ties, though. To them it was a record of their ancestors' achievements. The names meant something to them. It was an oral history giving shout-outs to people who were there, so their descendants could go "that's my great great great great great etc grandad!"
>>25411373No, you retard, that's not true. Do you think they remembered names of random jobbers that died in war that happened centuries before the poem was composed? American perchance?In the poem everytime any of the heroes kills some random soldier he is named, his city state is named and often there is at least 1 sentence about his life ('he was a shepherd', 'he was the youngest of three sons' etc.). The bard made it up and sprinkled in different jobbers depending on the audience - if they were Thebans they would mention more Thebans etc.The canonical version is composed from fragments of the regional versions so that's why it's mixture of random jobbers from everywhere in greece-It was just to make it more fun for audience, to make it better show. Nothing to do with direct ancestors, especially since the greeks in the poem are Achaians (and the poem calls them that) and the audience were Dorians - completely different people who migrated to greece after bronze age colapse.
read a different translation. fagles is very boring to me as well. lattimore, lombardo, wilson all better>>25411298chuds cant into taste>>25411311no shot 1500 lines of poetry was "cultural record"
>zoomer movie tourists discover they have no aptitude for literature
>>25411298>>25411316>>25411418Kill yourself commie/troon shills. wilson’s translation is subversive feminist slop.
>>25411504Calm down Fagles
>>25411282This is not a novel, do not read it like a novel.
>>25411285>back thenYou are a colossal retard and probably a burger.
>>25411282congratulations on finishing one and a half chapters of Homer
another filtered /tv/ tourist
stick to video games and anime.
>>25411282I had this problem, reading at the first time, the book is named, dropping all these people like you’re supposed to know them. For the first 5 to 6 chapters, I used ChatGPT until I got my bearings. Ended up, loving it in the end.I also read Fagles.
>>25412423Uh oh yuroid melty
It's a reasonable point you’re making. Translations are made for the general, non-Classical public, yet their authors seldom consider what will be immediately intelligible, and therefore readable, and what will not. Few translators soften the wearisome formality of phrase which slows down the action:>'So said the White-armed Goddess Hera, and the Owl-eyed Goddess Athene disregarded not. So Hera the Goddess-queen, daughter of Great Cronus, went her way'Is it necessary for Hera to be called 'White-Armed, Queen, Daughter of Great Cronus', or Athene 'the Owl-Eyed Virgin Daughter of Zeus' more than once or twice in every book?And what can the uninstructed reader make of 'Alalcomenean Athene'?
>>25413270>is it necessary to translate the greek into english more than once or twice in every booki would say that yes, they should translate the greek.most editions have a glossary of names. also google exists
>>25411282>Why is it important to tell me the name of every character who is killed along with the name of his father and the city he is from?Because every single human being in the entire history of the human race has lived a life that had meaning and held value. Everyone is worth remembering.
>>25411282The people at the time would know who those guys were. It's like the Endgame moment where all the heroes show up to fight Thanos. A person hearing Homer name Sandilacus son of Dicksucckus from the town of Analfuckinus would go "Holy shit EVEN HE CAME!?" We just don't have that context. The fact we have the Iliad alone is impressive. I actually prefer the catalonging compare to the "And then he threw his spear and it pierced his heart and the light faded from his eyes and he died." repeated 10 times over on a single page.
>>25413277If the original was readable, the translation must be so also, or however good it may be as a construe, it is not a translation.>glossary/googleworth remembering he bought a translation, not a crib.
>>25413281lol no
>>25413298depressing that this sort of person manages to convince himself he has any real feeling for humanities.
>>25413313epithets are repeated a lot for metrical ease, one of the things that people use as evidence to point to the iliad and odyssey as oral poetry that was transcribed."swift footed achilles" is i think perfectly half a line of dactylic hexameter, other epithets are similar
>>25413335This is the standard accepted explanation. Should go without saying an English translation is not under the same constraint.
>>25411504You didn't read it.
>>25413115>For the first 5 to 6 chapters, I used ChatGPT until I got my bearings.Explain your process to us.
>>25413281No.
>>25413419You’re right and I never will. I don’t have to read it to know it’s subversive feminist slop. It’s like how I don’t have to eat shit to know it tastes bad. Reading it would be poisoning my own psyche, I won’t suffer having to carry that garbage around in the recesses of my mind just to prove what I already know.
>>25411282imagine getting filtered by verse lmao, just go and buy a prose translation if you really care enough
>>25413441>dno m8 just hate it xd
>Why is it important to tell me the name of every character who is killed along with the name of his father and the city he is from?Meter. Shit's a poem, bro.
>>25413450You know exactly why I and everyone else hate it. Cope and be obtuse all you want. I’ll never read that trash.
>>25413465feel free to elaborate (fair warning it might be slightly pushed back against).
>>25411282I think it has a bit of trying to evocate a feeling/thought that ordinary people also experienced love, loss, had jobs, dreams, fears, and transformations.The war directly terminates branches of multiple families, and affects the lives of ordinary people who aren’t even there. Collective memory is shaped both by the experiences of anonymous individuals and by the actions of the more well-known figures. It also tries to evoke a sense of melancholy and an awareness of the passage of time and mortality and the inevitability of death and the fact that everyone, important or not, gets influenced by the war. It’s inviting you to reflect on the importance of each human existence and on how everyone plays a part in shaping history, even without public recognition. By acknowledging and eternalizing anonymous individuals, it highlights how the oral and mythological tradition prior to it often overlooks them and invites the reader to reconsider the value of these lives in the construction of collective memory.
>>25413270have you ever practiced story telling out loud?memorized bits? improvised bits? have you felt the rhythm of you mind seamlessly making connections and rhymes and inventions?these are artifacts of another time, another consciousness. it would be an error to remove them.
>>25411282>This adds nothing to the storyThis juxtaposition is meant to highlight the brutalities of war. Believe it or not, the Iliad is not a story that glorifies and shows off how amazing and wonderful war and killing is. Homer recites these genealogical sections to showcase that there is a family left behind, that the men slain had a purpose and life outside of war, a family that they will not go back to, a father they will never see again, a herd of cattle never to tend to, a legacy they will never actualize. This is the wake of war.
