Advice on Reading Homer in Translation
(talesoftimesforgotten.com)71 points by Khaine 2 months ago
71 points by Khaine 2 months ago
I found it interesting, but I think that Weil is trying to yoke together the Greek epics and Christianity, both of which were profoundly important to her, but which really aren't compatible at the level she wants.
NYRB brought out a small volume containing Weil's essay and also Rachel Bespaloff's essays on Homer. I think Bespaloff gives a better picture. And Herman Broch's afterword is worth reading.
> ...failing everything else, there is always a god handy to advise him to be unreasonable.
Even after a change of pantheon, the same pattern recurs: "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius."
> How soon this will happen is another question.
On the greek calends?
I think there's enough mental barrier's to deciding to read The Iliad and The Odyssey without a learned professor adding more. If I'd read this article first I would have never bothered attempting to read either. That would have been a great personal tragedy.
> I would recommend... reading a plot summary or abridged retelling of the epic you are planning to read before you begin.
Terrible advice for a potential reader. I'm not a student and don't need assigned pre-work.
I struggle with reading poetry, always have for whatever reason, and I suspect I'm not the only one. I'd tell anyone who was intimidated to read Samuel Butler’s prose version and to heck with anyone who's worried about whatever may be lost in translation.
The stories are wonderful. They're transporting. I've rarely felt so completely consumed by another world. I read The Aeneid when I was done because I wanted to keep that feeling alive.
Try a few different translations - go to the library or download sample chapters from amazon. Decide what works best for you. Read them purely for pleasure because they are wonderful.
>Terrible advice for a potential reader.
Your quotation left out the context of that advice which explains the reasoning. The paragraph before it states:
>, I would recommend familiarizing oneself with the main characters and the basic outline of the story. This may sound like strange advice, since readers of contemporary fiction are often accustomed to avoiding “spoilers,” but developing prior knowledge of the characters and story actually brings one closer to the experience of ancient audiences, who, as I have said, would have already known the broad outlines of the myths the epics tell before they went to a performance of them.
A rough analogy would be today's audiences already being familiar with comic superhero characters and stories like Superman, Wonder Woman, etc in DC Comics, or Spiderman, etc in the Marvel Universe -- before watching any of the movies about them. Sure, there might be a few in the audience who are totally oblivious to the background of the Superman mythology before the movie starts but for the most part, everybody is familiar with Clark Kent, kryptonite, and so on. (Cue up the famous Jay Leno skit of asking random people in the street, "what is the chemical composition of salt?", and they don't know to answer "sodium-chloride" ... but when he then asks "what's the name of the rock that hurts Superman?" and they immediately say "Oh, that's kryptonite!")
The idea is to bring that level of cultural knowledge into the reader's brain before reading Iliad/Odyssey.
I read the Illiad in high school, but as far as I remember it was mostly just lists of so-and-so from such-and-such fought this other guy.
Spoiler alert for thousand year old book: Then the hero gets killed by the invincible brat and dragged around the city a bunch of times (Hector, he’s obviously the hero, normal guy defending his home against a bunch of jumped up god-empowered jerks, trying to prevent this silly Paris/Everybody else spat from inflicting itself on everybody else).
Sad story.
If it were a modern book we wouldn't talk about it in terms of story, we'd talk about it in terms of world building. A world where gods and goddesses exists and directly influence humanity. A world with great heroes and kings and warriors and battles. A world where everyone is pretty flawed and its frankly pretty hilarious - Achilles pouting and kicking his heels is one of the funniest plots in western literature.
Any story anywhere can be stripped to 'x does y and then z'.
This is a great run-down and mirrors my experience of reading Fagles, Fitzgerald and Wilson.
My favourite though is Christopher Logue's version of the Iliad called War Music - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Music_(poem). It was controversial because he didn't know ancient Greek and based his version on other translations, as well as taking liberties with the text and introducing anachronisms (one of my favourite lines is about the "camera" panning across the armies in front of Troy). It's the only version I've read where I could clearly hear the characters talk in my head - it was a bit like reading a play at points.
Just finished re-reading Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey a few weeks ago.
If you haven't read the Odyssey before, I think her translation is accessible enough to just jump right in.
My favorite part of the story is how central luck is to everything.
The characters constantly accept the role of luck in what they do, and the potential of landing on the wrong side of it.
Few modern stories give luck and randomness such prominence, and downplay our own ability to entirely control outcomes.
Wouldn't the modern equivalent be scientific materialists who believe it is determined by luck? The ancient greeks believed that fate and consequence were determined by divine act, but not necessarily decided by them. You could after all find yourself a pawn in a power struggle between gods, or by being favored by one be used as a weapon against them by a rival or enemy. This is a really different conception of divine interference than what modern abrahamic religious people believe.
The abrahamic religions all more or less believe god is benevolent and acting in our best interest within the constraint of allowing us also to act freely. This seems fairly different both from what ancient greeks believed about fate and modern secular beliefs about luck and coincidence.
The secular belief of luck is that nobody is determining anything: no gods, no divine providence, etc. So, completely unrelated to the Greek beliefs.
As for modern religious people, everyone has a different version of what their god can do or not. Theologians may spend their whole lives trying to support one version of another.
Not luck, but the Μοίραι, the Fates, the most powerful deities in Greek mythology, whose will not even Zeus could change.
If Wilson is translating them as "luck", she's done you and all her readers a disservice, but I get a feeling that's just one of many. Popular as her translations might be, and despite the glowing review int he article it seems she is taking great liberties with the content of the epics and presenting it through a strongly distorting modern lens [1].
Source: I'm Greek, grew up in Greece, went to school in Greece and you betcha we studied the Iliad and the Odyssey (in absolutely abominable modern Greek translations) in high school. I read them back and forth multiple times and drew stick figure cartoons on the margins, usually of Corinthian-helmeted warriors disemboweling each other. a.k.a. The Iliad.
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[1] Apparently:
> If you haven't read the Odyssey before, I think her translation is accessible enough to just jump right in.
I keep checking, but it is continuously checked out at my local library :D One day I'll get lucky. (Yes, I know about holds; I don't like them; I don't like the sense of obligation, and I enjoy the hunt; yes, it's a quirk.)
Sounds like a TTRPG Live Play.
"such and such would narratively be the best thing to do here"
"natural one"
"well fuck"
> our culture has trained us to take rhyme less seriously
As I was reading this, I realized compositions with metric and rhyme are a good way of decreasing the chances of someone altering them.
I'm thinking about the times before the printing press. Times when people copied books by hand, sometimes altering stuff during the process. I imagine altering a composition that has strict form is much harder than altering free text. Can't just insert or remove words freely (metric would change), can't just exchange a word by some other unrelated word (rhyme would change). Someone wanting to modify such works would need to be more than copyists.
> our culture has trained us to take rhyme less seriously
I was surprised to learn this about Anglo culture (that rhyme is associated with childishness), as in Hungarian poetry all serious works (up to, say, the mid-20th century) are in rhyme. Sad and serious or happy and joking, rhyme is just expected. In fact, if something doesn't rhyme, then the average Hungarian would say it can't by definition be poetry (even if they know about "free" poems).
> I would recommend... reading a plot summary or abridged retelling of the epic you are planning to read before you begin.
Hard disagree. Maybe that way is wise if you're cramming for a test, but the experience of reading any book (or watching any movie) is richer if you go into it first on your own terms. Otherwise you're inevitably shaded by the secondary source.
I read the Butler translations without knowing much more than Zeus and it was a delight.
The ancient greeks when listening to Homer, would be quite familiar with the story already, having heard the stories over and over since they were children, and very few of them probably ever experienced the story from "the beginning', but rather heard snatches of it here and there from story tellers, and in fact, the story is optimized for _retelling_, rather than _telling_, and presumes the audience is familiar with the characters and events.
You're right. Still, if anyone were to ask for my opinion I'd tell them that you only ever get one "first read", and that might as well be the book itself. If you can't make heads or tails of it (in this case that'll be rare), then sure, look at some secondary sources.
Even if you don't struggle, the secondary sources are great to read through after the fact. Stuff that'll help you get even more out of it on a second reading.
Thinking abo
I'm fairly familiar with the Greek gods, but the problem I've had with reading the Illiad is that it is not at all obvious why this is written. With The Odyssey it's clear: he's trying to get home. But everyone in the Illiad seems to do stupid things for unclear reasons and I just loose interest. I think I would be helped out a lot by finding some summary of the themes the poem is talking about. So I think it's good advice.
Similarly, I'm currently reading through the Poetic Edda. I thought I had a decent grasp of Norse mythology, but I am clearly missing references left and right. (I know, because they are footnoted) I think reading the Prose Edda with its background first would probably have been helpful.
A good translation makes or breaks a book.
If you're going to read a foreign book, always research the translation first.
IIRC, the primary copy of Les Misérables (the one with the nice cover) is the public domain translation from 100 years ago, vs. the two more recent excellent Penguin translations (1982, 2015).
It's only superficially relevant here, but I love the poem, so I'll share it anyway:
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, John Keats
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.Some related links:
- Emily Wilson insights on some of her translations: https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/emilyrcwilson-scholia
- Compare a few passages from the Odyssey: https://www.exodusbooks.com/odyssey-comparisons.aspx
- "The Homeric version", by J.L. Borges: https://gwern.net/doc/borges/1932-borges-thehomericversions....
I can't say how it compares to other translations, but A. S. Kline's translations of both are available for free online and, I found, easy and fun to read: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Odhome.php.
"Some version of the Iliad most likely became relatively fixed by around the second quarter of the seventh century BCE and a version of the Odyssey by the middle of the same century."
So I suspect this is a clever literary sort of joke, I appreciated it as such. But I was not exactly sure and wanted to talk about it. The two time periods are the same right?
I wonder what surviving ancient physical texts the modern translations are based on. Also, the Iliad and Odyssey were prominant books in ancient Greece so there may have been different editions and revisions then. How do you know which one you're looking at and what it represents?
People have spent their whole lives on the “Homeric question,” but basically Homer is well preserved and overall the variations are minor. In particular, as far as can be determined from quotations in Plato, the Homer we have is basically the same as the one that Plato had.
This stands true for almost any native, comprehensive early education language. Try to read Emil Cioran in French, and let me know if his aphorismes truly mean what you think they do, in their English or even Romanian (post him "departing" the latter, when writing) translations.
Peter Green's translations of Homer are excellent but ommitted from this roundup:
https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-New-Translation-Peter-Green/dp/...
I like what Alfred North Whitehead said about translation in "The Place of Classics in Education". Punchline is at the end.
...
I have often noticed that, if in an assembly of great scholars the topic of translations be introduced, they function as to their emotions and sentiments in exactly the same way as do decent people in the presence of a nasty sex-problem. A mathematician has no scholastic respectability to lose, so I will face the question.
It follows from the whole line of thought which I have been developing, that an exact appreciation of the meanings of Latin words, of the ways in which ideas are connected in grammatical constructions, and of the whole hang of a Latin sentence with its distribution of emphasis, forms the very backbone of the merits which I ascribe to the study of Latin. Accordingly any woolly vagueness of teaching, slurring over the niceties of language defeats the whole ideal which I have set before you. The use of a translation to enable the pupils to get away from the Latin as quickly as possible, or to avoid the stretch of mind in grappling with construction, is erroneous. Exactness, definiteness, and independent power of analysis are among the main prizes of the whole study.
But we are still confronted with the inexorable problem of pace, and with the short four or five years of the whole course. Every poem is meant to be read within certain limits of time. The contrasts, and the images, and the transition of moods must correspond with the sway of rhythms in the human spirit. These have their periods, which refuse to be stretched beyond certain limits. You may take the noblest poetry in the world, and, if you stumble through it at snail’s pace, it collapses from a work of art into a rubbish heap. Think of the child’s mind as he pores over his work: he reads “‘as when,” then follows a pause with a reference to the dictionary, then he goes on-‘“an eagle,” then another reference to the dictionary, followed by a period of wonderment over the construction, and so on, and so on. Is that going to help him to the vision of Rome? Surely, surely, common sense dictates that you procure the best literary translation you can, the one which best preserves the charm and vigour of the original, and that you read it aloud at the right pace, and append such comments as will elucidate the comprehension. The attack on the Latin will then be fortified by the sense that it enshrines a living work of art.
But someone objects that a translation is woefully inferior to the original. Of course it is, that is why the boy has to master the Latin original. When the original has been mastered, it can be given its proper pace. I plead for an initial sense of the unity of the whole, to be given by a translation at the right pace, and for a final appreciation of the full value of the whole to be given by the original at the right pace.
Ah, the old "if you do not spent your time, effort an interest where I have chosen to spend them, then you are an inferior human being to me."
Everyone judges people who do less about subject X, Y, Z to be criminal, lazy slob, and everyone doing more to be inflexible annoying zealots.
Woe those who are not me and do things differently, for they are worthless.
"Learning Ancient Greek, however, is an immensely challenging endeavor that requires many years of effortful study and practice and it is even more challenging (bordering on impossible) to do on one’s own without a teacher."
It is a lot of work. I would point out, though, that not everyone who went through the English public schools or the American St. Grottlesex world was really a wizard. Yet given enough encouragement (often delivered with a stick, to be sure, at least in England) quite a few of them learned Ancient Greek.
I will take a moment to recommend NYRB's slim volume War and the Iliad. I think that Rachel Bespaloff's essays are outstanding, and an infinitely more qualified judge, Robert Fitzgerald, though so also.
> ...quite a few of them learned Ancient Greek
The english phrase "it's all greek to me" has very different connotations depending upon if either (a) one knows no one who knows any greek, or (b) one had some greek in school, and even if one never did well oneself, one knows others with some facility in the language; in the latter case it implies "may look incomprehensible, but can be mastered with some effort".
If you'd like to give the Iliad a go in the original Greek you can try https://iliad.rocks
Enjoy this audio version with meter, rhythm, and fully reconstructed pronunciation including pitch accent and digammas! https://hypotactic.com/my-reading-of-homer-work-in-progress/
wow, maybe it's just that I have as little greek as gaelic, but Homer's mad flow gave me the same vibes as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sf0htzbMKk&t=34s (composed ~2750 years later, and to be honest, these lads are not exactly under the aegis of Athena Glaukopis — if anyone's, Dionysus Acratophorus)
Yes! Many of the responses here are intellectual, missing something more earthy. In particular, hearing Lombardo reading from his translation of the Iliad [0] stirred me deeply. For sure I'm going to find a print of his version.
Advice for anyone reading the Iliad: read Simone Weil's essay "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force" first [1]. The essay was a profound experience on its own for me, in a way that came as a great relief in a world which seemed to lack all moral gravity. (Note, it was written in 1945.)
And it conveys better than anything why the epic was composed, why it survived to be written down (the Bronze Age Collapse and a whole dark age separated the era of the Trojan War from the era of Homer!) and why people have been reading it for almost three thousand years.
[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/simone-weil-the-ilia...