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> IANALC (I am not a literary critic) Yeah, and neither am I, although I do have a BA in literature from a third-tier college, which probably doesn't give me m
by veridies 6y ago
> IANALC (I am not a literary critic)
Yeah, and neither am I, although I do have a BA in literature from a third-tier college, which probably doesn't give me much credibility here. Your opinion is pretty close to my own. The only thing I might disagree with you on is that I'm not as attached to the (mildly) archaic language. I think modern English can serve a mythic function; it just doesn't really work for me in Wilson's translation. By the way, if anyone wants to compare, here are three versions of that one line:
Pope
> Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d, Their manners noted, and their states survey’d.
Fagles
> Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds
Wilson
> and where he went, and who he met
(On this one, Pope is my favorite too.)
That being said: this is all literature! It's mostly a matter of taste and opinion. And if Wilson's writing helps anyone get something new out of the Odyssey, I'm all for it. I'm genuinely just curious what that is.
- kijin 6y agoYep, it can be a matter of taste and opinion. Wilson is certainly more accessible, and has a lower chance of making a high school student hate literature for life. :) But when so much detail is lost, one begins to wonder if it should be called an "abridged edition", even if it preserves the number of lines.
- adamsea 6y agoYeah I didn’t get the impression that anything here is abridged. There’s a big difference between that and a translators work for something like The Odyssey.