Which Is The Best Of The Translations Of The Iliad (And Which Is The Best One For The Odyssey)

edited 2020-05-08 23:25:10 in General Media
Personally, I'm currently losing my mind over how good Lord Derby's blank verse translation is.

I know it's not one of the Fitzgerald-Fagles-Lattimore trinity, and I know it's not Alexander Pope's masterpiece, but other than using the Roman names for the gods and translating Athena's Homeric Epithet as "Blue-eyed" instead of "Grey-eyed", "Bright-eyed", "Moon-eyed", "Owl-eyed", or any one of the other possibilities that doesn't make me do a double-take every time I see it because "Gray-eyed Athena" is what I'm used to from Riordan's work and CRUD I REVEALED MYSELF-

-escapes to wallow in not-sophisticated shame and read the Derby translation-

Comments

  • My dreams exceed my real life
    The whole plot of the Illiad could have been solved if they'd looked Achilles square in the eyes and said "Hey, look, Achilles are you the commander of the Myrmidons



    Or the MyrmiDON'Ts?????????????"
  • not the ones I read that's for sure
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    EXe9UWIUEAEicEK
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    the Greek gods were kind of assholes
  • edited 2020-05-10 03:30:06
    i've read a book published by some christian fundamentalists up in pensacola

    it made a big point about how the Greek gods are false gods that people made up and just behave based on their crazy whims

    unlike the Christian God, who is clearly good and clearly never was an asshole to anyone just to make a point



    edit: i dunno whether i should not have made this post
  • Glenn, I think you're underestimating the bizarre cruelty of the Greek gods.

    They're the kind of guys who will, if you disrespect them, make it so your next rational moment is the one where you realize you're holding your son's severed head and you were the one who tore it off.

    They're the kind of guys whose response to "This girl loves me, but I don't love her anymore" is "Darn, that makes me sad that she's unhappy, I'll turn her into a flower so she can look at my unattainable beauty all day because flowers being sad doesn't make me sad".

    The time of the Titans was a golden age for humanity, a time when locks didn't exist because the idea of theft hadn't occurred to mortals yet, and the mortals and the Titans lived as equals in a world where it was always spring (This isn't to say that the Titans weren't horrible to their siblings the Cyclopes or their siblings the Hecatoncheires, but for man it was a golden age).
  • edited 2020-05-12 00:17:29
    heh, perhaps
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    Ali_Roz said:

    Glenn, I think you're underestimating the bizarre cruelty of the Greek gods.


    They're the kind of guys who will, if you disrespect them, make it so your next rational moment is the one where you realize you're holding your son's severed head and you were the one who tore it off.

    They're the kind of guys whose response to "This girl loves me, but I don't love her anymore" is "Darn, that makes me sad that she's unhappy, I'll turn her into a flower so she can look at my unattainable beauty all day because flowers being sad doesn't make me sad".

    The time of the Titans was a golden age for humanity, a time when locks didn't exist because the idea of theft hadn't occurred to mortals yet, and the mortals and the Titans lived as equals in a world where it was always spring (This isn't to say that the Titans weren't horrible to their siblings the Cyclopes or their siblings the Hecatoncheires, but for man it was a golden age).
    Clearly they never saw that one scene in Brave Little Toaster 
  • the odyssey: allen mandelbaum
  • edited 2020-05-12 02:22:08
    Obā-san said:

    the odyssey: allen mandelbaum


    That name sounds familiar, but I can't remember why.

    Did he do any other works, poems, or translations?

    <blockquote rel="planet Jane">have you tried Lord Dee's</blockquote>

    <br/>

    I haven't heard of it, and I can't seem to find any other references to it on the internet.  Does Lord Dee have a first name?
  • Touch the cow. Do it now.
    James Joyce
  • he did a translation of The Metamorphoses that has made me cry a lot, he is good, also Dante, ect
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