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War Music: Homer and His Iliad
- fsloth 3y agoI can warmly recommend the new Iliad translation by Caroline Alexander as audiobook. Suberb! I understand the new translation by Emily Wilson (whose Odyssey was excellent) should be good as well. The new translations really bring these old poems to life, and listening to them is at least for me the best way to consume them.
- qohen 3y agoThanks for the recommendations, fsloth. For anyone interested in this, I found a couple of excerpts of Caroline Alexander's Iliad translation[0] that were published in The Guardian as well as an article by Emily Wilson (the Odyssey translator also mentioned above) about the engagement of female scholars and translators with the classics[1]. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/09/new-translation-of-the-iliad-by-caroline-alexander-extract https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/09/new-translatio... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/07/women-classics-translation-female-scholars-translators https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/07/women-classics...
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- jsmith99 3y agoThese are good, but to really bring them to life I recommend Christopher Logue, whose version doesn't even pretend to be a translation. There are some nice excerpts in his obituary in The Economist https://archive.ph/eaCKf https://archive.ph/eaCKf
- jaycharliebee 3y agoI heartily recommend Logue's adaptation too! I'm not a regular poetry reader, nor a reader of the classics but his version really opened my mind to those worlds. I enjoy writers like Samuel Beckett and the weirder, darker end of sci-fi/fantasy (e.g. B. Catling's The Voorh), and Logue's War Music really just seemed to fit right into my taste.
- fsloth 3y agoOh, brilliant, I definetly need to get a hold of Logues translation. Thanks!
- anavette 3y agoCame here to recommend this. You can find a longer excerpt here: https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/HomerTranslation/LogueWarMusicIliad16.pdf https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/HomerTranslation/LogueW...
- Red_Tarsius 3y agoI disagree about Emily Wilson's Odissey. She translated the first line of the poem as "Tell me about a complicated man". She almost went with "Tell me about a straying husband". Neither complicated nor straying husband appear in the original text. Pope's description (The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d...) is closer to the epithets we are taught at school (ricco d'astuzie or dal multiforme ingegno). πολύτροπος means resourceful, of many skills, well-travelled. That's the first line and complicated tells us nothing about the protagonist. Everyone can be complicated, but only Odysseus is πολύτροπον. It's a quality of character few people possess. Original comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25525457#25531307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25525457#25531307
- neaden 3y agoThis complaint seems odd. First complicated is obviously not in the original text, it's in Greek. I guess what you mean is "No words I would translate as complicated are in the text" but then your complaint just becomes a tautology. Saying Pope's version from the 1700s is more like what you were taught in school is similar, it's probably the version you or your teachers read so it shaped what you were taught. Essentially this comes down to saying it's different, but that doesn't make it bad.
- Red_Tarsius 3y agoIt's not really a matter of opinion when everything is lost in translation. I know it can be hard to understand without a basic intro to ancient Greek, but it's like translating a reference to the "Titanic" with "some boat, I dunno".
- brmgb 3y agoThe complaint - which I definetely share by the way - is that for all the critical acclaim it got, Emily Wilson's translation strays so far from the actual text, it is not really a translation anymore and is actually closer to being a new text inspired by the Odyssey. That's fine if that's what you are looking for but it doesn't make for a great translation. The πολύτροπος thing is a complete red herring by the way. Her translation is questionnable but remains within the bound of what I would expect from a modern translator. I am more annoyed by everything she drops in the rest of the poem. Remarkably and annoyingly, the coverage when her translation was released spend far more time dwelling on her gender than on her actual work.
- nerdponx 3y ago> Homer had visited windy Troy on a clear day when distant Samothrace was visible … I like to think he had walked south, like Chryses, beside the shore of the booming sea This passage sounds a lot like the writing style of the ancient classics. I assume the reviewer chose it on purpose for that reason. I don't know that I need to read this book, but I appreciate that apparently it's a work of passion and enthusiasm.
- jstanley 3y agoThankfully the original work is now out of copyright, and there is an English translation here: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Ilhome.php https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Ilhome.php
- nerdponx 3y agoI was talking about the book being reviewed, which seems to be an analysis of the Iliad by Robin Lane Fox, rather than the Iliad itself.
- dendodge 3y ago> Thankfully the original work is now out of copyright Seeing someone explicitly assert the copyright status of a text pushing 3 millennia old is somehow very amusing to me
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoWar Music is the name of an incomplete modern translation of the Iliad by Christopher Logue. It is without doubt one of the best poetic works of the past 100 years. "Achilles saw his armour in that instant And its ominous radiance flooded his heart. Bright pads with toggles crossed behind the knees, Bodice of fitted tungsten, pliable straps; His shield as round and rich as moons in spring; His sword's haft parked between sheaves of grey obsidian From which a lucid blade stood out, leaf-shaped, adorned With running spirals. And for his head a welded cortex; yes, Though it is noon, the helmet screams against the light; Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen Across three thousand years." The Caroline Alexander translation is much more "correct," but lacks Logue's spark of vitality and originality.
- akkartik 3y agoWho's Achilles looking at in this passage?
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoThe scene: Achilles, having just about finished mourning Patroclus, and having agreed to fight once again on behalf of the Achaeans, wakes alone on the morning of battle. I'll give you the pages just before and after that part. Here: https://docdro.id/puR412w https://docdro.id/puR412w
- akkartik 3y agoThanks! I'll be reading it and the other links in this thread while I wait for my copy in the mail.
- hdivider 3y agoTitle reminds me of this true masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI0mkt6Z3I0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI0mkt6Z3I0
- acyou 3y agoIf I understand correctly, I am writing a review of a review of a book about the Iliad. But we can only read so many books. If we had to choose, would we just read a translation of the original Iliad instead of a book about it? This is why we should be thankful for a physical bookshelf, it allows us to skip these steps and just pick up the book. I don't think we need to be too concerned with the particular translation of the Iliad, I think the older the better as long as one can still properly read it. I think a certain amount of reading into the poem is required regardless. To be more precise, this book would do all of the reading into the poem that I want to do. I want to read into it myself and draw my own conclusions! (To the extent that it's possible).
- nerdponx 3y agoI don't think there's anything wrong with people writing down their own thoughts about great works of literature like the Iliad. What I really do appreciate are the people who review such writings-down so that I can make an informed decision about whether their thoughts are worth my time to read. In this case, I imagine that any book analyzing the Iliad is intended for readers who have already themselves read the Iliad at least once.
- zwieback 3y agoOne of my coworkers went to Reed where they insisted on students reading the Lattimore translation of the Iliad, so I gave it a try as well. Once I got over the weirdness of the pseudo-Greek language I really liked it. Now it sounds like I should maybe give Logue a try, even though I've been declaring that Lattimore is the only true translation (never having read any other ones).
- dendodge 3y agoWait for Emily Wilson (due at the end of September). Her Odyssey is easily among the great classical translations.
- paulette449 3y agoThe book's author, Robin Lane Fox, is father of Martha Lane Fox [1], co-founder of LastMinute.com [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Lane_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Lane_Fox