/lit/ - Literature

Wine-dark sea might be the best descriptive I've ever encountered.

I started with fitzgerald for homer and mandelbaum for virgil but i'm planning to read pope's translation of homer and dryden's translation of virgil when I decide to reread them.

>>18475569
This actually has an interesting tie to color theory and how some think that the color blue is a modern development. Most books from this era never describe thing as being blue and most modern languages don't have a root word for it.

>>18476900
>the color blue is a modern development
how could this be

>>18476900
>>18476906
They were describing an object's properties, not colour. For example yellow or bright green meant wet and fresh, a great indicator for blood. When the sky is bronze that doesn't mean the sky has this colour, but rather it reflects light just like a bronze shield.

>>18475562
Every time I think about it, just the fact that the Iliad exists at all is truly amazing for me. You would think that some story over 3000 years old would just seem infantile to us or incomprehensible. Yet for the most part their struggles are still our struggles, and just the form and style of the poetry are still astoundingly beautiful. Fuck people saying the moon landings were fake, if I didn’t know any better I would say it’s far more unbelievable to me that a text from then would still read so well in modern day, when even something that’s just 300 years old seems old and dated already

>>18475562
Boring.

I read fagles 8 years ago, what should I read now?

>>18477133
Filtered by the ship list

>>18476906
Possibly evolution or just one of those notions we were all given. Blue appears almost nowhere in nature, and we all think the sky is blue, but is it? A study had shown that child that wasn't told what color the sky was had a hard time answering. Just food for thought.

>>18476999
While you are probably 100 percent correct, it's still fascinating that all of recorded antiquity never recorded the color blue.

>>18477259
Don’t know about you mate but my wine is dark and blue.

>>18476900
That's just a meme that's been debunked

>>18477058
I find the fact that the Iliad exists fascinating too, but that it's good? That's not surprising at all. People didn't change much in 3000 years and Homer was a genius with deep insight into the human nature. The fact that you find 300 year old texts dated shows you either read bad books or you got filtered.

>>18477351
Maybe your statement would be taken more seriously if you didn't talk like a fucking 14 year old edge lord.

>>18477179
No, it's just boring.

>>18477058
this. it's amazing

>>18476906
it's a cultural thing how you divide the visible spectrum into colors. in some east asian languages, like vietnamese for example, blue and green are considered to be the same color, that is, you're gonna use the same word to describe the color of the sky and that of foliage. it doesn't mean they don't see the difference. it just means for them they are shades of a same color. i've also heard that some amazonian tribes have a shitton of different names for different shades of green and they don't even consider them to be the same color. but for you it's all green.

>>18477058
>You would think that some story over 3000 years old would just seem infantile to us
No I wouldn't because I'm not thick as fuck

>>18477530
You got it wrong mate. Vietnamese don't consider green and blue as the same color. There are words for them both.

>>18475562
But you must not call it Homer.

>>18477399
Ok retard

>>18477534
This lmao. That poster is a pseud he thinks books written 300 years ago are outdated

>>18477252
Your sky isn’t blue? I was looking at it yesterday and it’s blue on a cloudless day unless it’s storming or something

>>18476900
what color do they call the sky back then?

>>18477351
The Japanese didn't have a word for green. They considered green to be a shade of blue. Hence why "Aomori" means blue forest.

>>18477821
It was probably just considered to be the default color, kinda how we see white today. Back then white would be pretty rare except for snow, while blue would be omnipresent (water and sky)

>>18477759
>Your sky isn’t blue?
Nah. I double checked and it's not blue.

Imagining a youthful, sassy Athena sitting on Zeus’ lap, barefoot, wearing a tunic, no underwear beneath, her legs appearing from the tunic’s slit — he of course has no underwear beneath his tunic either, as she sits on his crouch. Then she says: Daddy you’re not going to let the Achaeans lose the war are you? Then she whispers into his ears: I’m your little girl… that always made me diamonds.

>>18477252
>we all think the sky is blue, but is it?
what, yes of course it is

>>18477841
>bluescreen
Welcome to the rice-fields mother fucker.

Do goddesses secrete ambrosia through their vagina?

>>18477058
How is that surprising exactly?
Humans were just as smart then than they are now (maybe even more)
You're the kind of guy to reject argumentums ad antiquitatem for the sole reason that people are supposedly better/smarter nowadays?
That's some retarded shit

>>18476900
This is like the latest bicameral mind theory. Basically unfalsifiable wild ass claim that's interesting and makes you think about things but you'd be retarded to actually believe.

>>18477869
t. color blind

>>18475562
Pope isn't really a translation: it's more its own poem.
But its beautiful.

Shit thread, but bumped

>>18479476
>maybe even more
Even a XXth century female cashier has more grip on reality than Aristotle.

>>18477821
Reading the iliad now, Homer calls it bronze once but i assumed he was describing a sunset

>>18475562
Pope's is absolutely great. I like his and Lattimore's the most, for different reasons, but of the many many versions it seems rather difficult to go really wrong and produce an unsatisfactory work, although as to their merit as translations idk. Chapman Cowper Bryant etc etc all nice to read

I was filtered by this translation, I never read poetry, only philosophy, should I read a more normie-friendly one first before reading Pope's?

>>18481176
yeah. here is Pope against Fagles whose is considered quite normie-friendly to my knowledge
>The wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring
Of all the Grecian woes, O Goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain,
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore:
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!
Fagles:
>Rage— Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies
carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving.toward its end.
Begin. Muse, when the two first broke and
clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

>>18481215
fucked up the formatting but the unpretentious nature of the latter is clear.

>>18481176

Read Fagles then Pope but if you've never read it at all before I'd try a less poetic translation for the narrative. Sure it's less in the spirit of it but I found it helped me appreciate the more poetic translations more.

>>18481176
I recommend reading pope as a poem about the Illiad like i stated >>18480077, read a translation first and then read pope's version, else you will be lost.

>>18475562
>It's... Beautiful
It is anon, it is

My favourite passage:
Iliad, book VI, verse 128
"What, or from whence I am, or who my sire,"
Replied the chief, "can Tydeus' son inquire?
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those are past away.

>not reading lattimore’s translation
NGMI

>>18481439
>not reading as many translations as you can

>>18481435
I like the part when Hector’s wife says he is her dad and her mom it makes me giggle lol

>>18481145
>Homer calls it bronze once but i assumed he was describing a sunset
Nah it's just that blue wasn't invented yet.

>>18481435
>So flourish these, when those are past away.
When will the boomers die bros.

>>18477896
She was born from his head, therefore lust doesn't affect her.

>>18476900
In Japanese if I remember right blue things are often called green

>>18481563
緑 midori means only green
青 ao means blue or green

>>18481546
She’s a tease then, huh?

>>18476906
>hurf durf homer couldnt see blue cuz he was blind XD
Ignore these retards. Proto-Indo-European described colors in four ways:
>Blood
Reds. Everything I say from here doesn't apply to reds, reds are special.
>Light
>Dark
>Bright
To make a color that isn't a red you take some kind of thing and add light, dark, or bright to it. So Homer says that the sea is "wine-dark", but we could just as well say that something is "wine-light". Rather than creating a name to describe a specific wavelength of light it's a completely alternative way of describing how things look (accounting for shades, tones, etc). Snow-light, snow-dark, and snow-bright are three entirely different descriptions even though they could all be used to describe what we might call "white". But what KIND of white? White with the sun hitting it, and the fabric sparkling? Or a dull, matted white, cast over with shadow? Perhaps the white of a cloud, that almost burns the eye?

As Indo-European languages moved away from this method, they developed the "color name as descriptor of wavelength of light" model. It wasn't an all-in thing, however; it didn't happen all at once. The idea of things like "periwinkle blue" comes from this practice, by the way ("blue like periwinkle" implies that "blue" isn't immediately understood; "blue" is a manner of being, not a hard and fast fact).

Ok so can we get a definitive answer on whether Lattimore or Fagles is the better option?

>>18475562
>quip after every blow
Capeshit of the acient Greece

>>18481587
Do you know if midori is a newer sign/word?

>>18481516
You are an ignorant faggot that can't enjoy these beautiful words.

>>18481449
kek, that is in the same book VI, verse 135.

Yet while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee:
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all
Once more will perish, if my Hector fall!
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share;
Oh, prove a husband's and a father's care!
That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy
Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy:
Thou from this tower defend the important post:
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host;
That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven;
Let others in the field their arms employ;
But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy!"

>>18475562
Original Greek = Chapman > Pope > Samuel Butler >> Hobbes > Arthur Sanders Way > Fitzgerald > Lattimore > Fagles > E.V. Rieu >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Emily Wilson

>>18475562
for Pound, best English translation of Homer is Chapman.
I'll try that.

>>18475569
I prefer melvilles description, it doesn't involve colour at all

>>18483407
Maybe I'll read it someday

let it live