/lit/ - Literature

What's your favorite epic poem, /lit/?

>>20314815
Counterpoint: there is no other type of poetry that can match the epics, and there has been no meaningful epic poetry written in the past few decades.

Regular meter is immensely powerful and so much of modern poetry has forgotten it. Meter isn't some restriction or straitjacket. Meter is a tool, an istrument, that you use to help convey the meaning of what you are saying in the poem.

This is even true in narrative poetry. What would the Iliad be without dactylic hexameter? What would the Commedia be without terza rima? What would Paradise Lost be without its blank verse? The regular meter becomes the thing that gives the story so much of its power. Stories told in verse are of a different nature than stories told in prose. They just feel different, and they have a different, grander sort of sense in the way they hit the mind. This is why the epics are so highly regarded, even above modern novels. Epics are just a different beast.

All right, /lit/, it's time to settle things once and for all. What is the best Homer translation? Who does the best job translating the Iliad and the Odyssey?

>inb4 >reading translations

I have a lot of shit to do these days I don't have time to learn to read ancient Greek.

>>19340884
This. Read the Iliad. The Fagles translation is the most accessible.

Everybody knows about the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost. What are some other great epic poems, ones that are less well-known?

>>18808708
This just increases my belief that it needs a comeback. I'm fucking tired of these idiots in Iowa or New York dictating what poetry "ought" to be. All the poetry they like fucking sucks. I want to go back to poetry that sparkles and crackles with energy and life. Poetry that's filled with joy, love, sorrow, hatred, horror, wrath, and glory. Poetry that's alive again.

Wait a minute, Achilles isn't ALL that impressive. Sure he's a demigod so he's strong and fast and durable, but he's not the only one on either the side of the Achaeans or the Trojans. Also, most of the other heroes, like Diomedes and Odysseus, get help from the gods in battle, which makes them roughly as useful in a fight as Achilles.

Achilles is literally only so important because he pitches a fit to Thetis and then she pitches a fit to Zeus. The only reason the Trojans get so close to victory is because Zeus allows it, entirely because Thetis wants to make her son feel important. Achilles' actual skill as a warrior has nothing to do with it!

Honestly if you go back and look at a ton of European men from the 19th century, when you get to see their basic figures it's not the prettiest of sights. Sure, almost none of them were obese hogs, not like today. But a lot of them were kind of skinnyfat, lacking any real muscle definition and most of them having a bit of a paunch. This was especially the case with poor citydwellers, who worked indoors and had to subsist on poor food and minimal sunlight.

Basically I think Nietzsche has a point here in the context of his time. Men weren't fat back then but they weren't really beautiful, either. I'd go so far as to say that the percentage of physicall attractive men has actually increased up to our own day, insofar as health care and nutrition have proliferated among the broader population. Sure, there's tons of fat fucks these days, but back in the day most of those fatasses would have been the skinnyfat paunchy guys I was talking about before. Not really an improvement, aesthetically. Meanwhile the percentage of men who are trying to shape and sculpt their bodies aesthetically is probably higher than it's ever been, with the possible exception of Greece in the Ancient World.

>>18445352
Serves those fat old fucks right, they'll both die and be forgotten within five years of their deaths.

>b-but they're rich

You can't take it with you. Money is left behind the instant you die, but if you create a great work of art, your name will still be remembered a thousand years from now, or even longer. There is no price too great to pay for immortality.

Start with Homer.

Start with the Iliad.

Does anyone write long, narrative poems any more? I mean epics, and things that are like epics but aren't as long. Stuff like Homer and Dante, obviously, but also something like "Lamia" by Keats.

Or, I'm sure people still write them. But do they get published? Does anyone read them?

>this thread
>somehow thinking that Homer, Dante, and Milton are "childish and juvenile"

Which is the best translation of the Iliad if you want to really enjoy the battle scenes? I haven't read the Iliad in years, but I remember getting a kick out of how gripping the battles between characters were. Diomedes' rampage where he kills a bunch of people and wounds two gods was particularly fun, as I recall.

The translation I read was Fagles, but is there a better translation in terms of making the poem gripping and exciting to read?

>>11661013
There's way too much American and 20th Century literature on this stupid list. Where's Cervantes? Where's Borges? Fuck, where's HOMER? Peterson is trying to turn manchildren into men and he forgot about the Iliad? Pathetic.

>>11421406
Oh yes because Achilles was a pseud, that's right.

>>11012529
Literally read the Iliad. The manliest poem ever written.

This is going to be random as hell, but: does anyone know of any places that actively publish narrative poetry? Idylls, epics, ballads, that sort of thing. In print or online, I don't care. I've been searching around and found a few potential journals, but I thought I'd ask /lit/, hoping you all will know more than I do.

Has there been any worthwhile epic poetry written in the last 100 years?

>>9779126
That's comforting to hear, and to a certain degree bolsters my point. But what about an epic poem itself? There's a part of me that feels it's a genre waiting to be reborn. As I said, a poem is inherently less dense and difficult than a prose work. You can power through the Iliad or Paradise Lost in a way you can't with a novel. I say you CAN power through it, if you want; and that very ability to power through it may simultaneously encourage a reader to take it slower, to stop at a point that strikes them and meditate on it for a while. And isn't that the point of literature? Isn't the point to arrest the reader, to make them think? Isn't the goal to generate an experience of transcendence for the reader in their daily life? So I think there's a door ajar, as it were, for the narrative poem to stride back into contemporary literature. Fuck, there are "prose poems" nowadays that get halfway there, awful though they are. A poem that's poetic, and yet tells a story, seems to me something that might have a rebirth in the modern world.

>>9683802
I guess so, I guess the one thing I may be asking is if there's a better meter to write epics in in English than iambic pentameter. Obviously in Latin and Greek, dactylic hexameter is THE meter you write epic poems in, both from pure convention and because it just sounds "epic." Is iambic pentameter that "epic-sounding" meter in English?

What are your /lit/ related ambitions?

Whether as a reader or a writer, what do you hope to have achieved by the time you're old?

Would the subject of virtue be a good one for /fitlit/ to discuss? Since it does seem to have both a physical and a mental component. Do you strive to be virtuous? What do you believe being virtuous means?

>>9058282
This is why we need to listen to Plato and Aristotle when they talk about aristocracy. "Rule by the best." Why is that such a radical idea?