/lit/ - Literature

Nice work, OP. What book are you on specifically? And who's your favorite character?

Wow u don't say op. What a discovery you've made!

>>22409673
Fuck of stop projecting your insecure need to be perceived as unique on others.
>>22409659
Book 14, it’s hard to say, Odysseus is an obvious pick just for how badass he is, I just got done reading the scene where Agamemnon suggests going back and Odysseus tells him what for. I also really like Hector as an antagonist.

>>22409698
Read Hippias Minor if you want early literary criticism of Homer. It makes a pro-Odysseus argument against a detractor who thinks him wicked.

>>22409656
Based. Every time Athena is mentioned my heart starts beating abnormally.

>>22409698
Damn homie, Hector is in this? That's nuts ese

>>22409656
>translated by FAGles

>>22410243
>>translated by FAGful

>>22409656
>translated

>>22409656
I fucking love when Diomedes beats the ever loving shit out of everybody

>>22409951
yeah

>>22409698
Hector might be an antagonist but he's a pretty good guy, especially when compared to acheans. Best character for sure.

>>22410243
>>22410286
Fagles as a slightly watered-down Lattimore is the second-best of the major translations.

>>22409656
>it's just like my capeshit!
αυτοκτόνα βλήμα

>>22410345
this lol

>>22411125
So let me summarize everything:
poetic translations:
-Pope: the hardest, but most poetic
-Fitzgerald: easier and closer to the original (?)

less poetic, but still in verse:
-Fagles: very easy to read and modern

But where does Lattimore fit in? Amazon won't show me the text

>>22409656
"Men soonest weary of battle, where the sword
The bloodiest harvest reaps; the lightest crop
Of slaughter is where Jove inclines the scale,
Dispenser, at his will, of human wars."
If that held true at Homer's time, then men have now become something other than men, but they have become beast.
https://pastebin.com/P3rVFrue

Diomedes is beyond based, but I really didn't like how Hector just ran like a bitch and then got killed nearly instantly. I expected it to be more like the movie desu.

Best part of the book is the final line:

ODYSSEUS WILL RETURN

>>22411308
Its the best part actually and makes it seem realistic also Priam seeing Achilles racing to the walls and pulling his hair was pure kino

>>22409656
anyone else see an anime in my inner eye when they read this?

>>22411125
Fagles is superior to lattimore who is overated

>>22411254
Imagine not reading William Cullen Bryant, Alexander Pope, Thomas Hobbes, or George Chapman. Imagine reading any translation published after 1900.

>>22411254
>>22412957
On Translating Homer - Matthew Arnold

https://web.archive.org/web/20151208135658/http://www.victorianprose.org/texts/Arnold/Works/on_translating_homer.pdf

Tl;dr- Alexander Pope is completely different from the original but most beautiful. Avoid.

Chapman is closer to the original meaning and stylistically but he isn't as beautiful.

He also talks about a bunch of other minor translators no one gives a shit about today but still worth a read.

>>22409656
Literally capeshit. “Literature” is such a joke.

>>22412972
>Literally capeshit. “Literature” is such a joke.

why would you want to read any translation other than the absolute closest to the original?
you might as well read a random fanfic if you want a translation with less fidelity

>>22412985
Pope's definitely has literary and stylistic merit to itself despite how completely original it is. It just isn't Homer is all.

>>22412991
wasn't pope a money grubber who had other people to half of his odyssey.

>>22412993
Probably. That doesn't detract from the work itself. Homer wasn't even real. It was a bunch of different writers from between the bronze and Iron ages whose work was compiled into a coherent poem.

>>22412996
who came up with the name homer?

>>22412997
Probably some dude.

>>22412996
homer was a real person and an inspired writer you rootless degenerate modern

>>22413002
Some Books of the Iliad make reference to iron age implements (ie arrows being common) while others are rooted in the Bronze age. There have been many studies on this. The Iliad was likely a much smaller book and gradually a bunch of other books were added much later and Homer/ Aristarchus of Samothrace compiled it if either even existed.

>>22412972
>my favorite superhero movie?
>the iliad

>>22413004
thank you, perhaps i submit. homer as compiler is okay for me.

>>22413004
>searching for tiny details like references to iron age implements to prove homer's anachronistic authorship
>meanwhile the entire story takes place during the trojan war, prior to the greek dark ages
kek

>imagine needing a translation and not learning ancient greek to learn the iliad
All of you are brainlets and I am the ubermensch.

>>22413011
It is actually a theory that the core story (Achilles vs Hector) existed in roughly 8 books at some point in the Bronze age and pretty much everything else was added much later in the iron age. Penguin classics is really pedestrian, I know but their intro has a whole essay on how scholars figured this out. I wish I could give you a better source than that.

>>22413011
During the iron age, arrows became expendable whereas in the Bronze age, you would go to the body and retrieve the arrow as that was hard to come by. The fact that such and such guy doesnt retrieve his arrows is part of why they gave that specific book a later creation date. Obviously, the people who figure this all out put a lot of effort into interpreting it but that is their basic argument.

>>22413018
>>22413025
my point is that you don't have to look for tiny details to prove that it takes place before homer's time, because the entire war occurred before homer's time
it's like looking at a cap attached to the top of a water bottle and saying "hmm i think this might belong to a water bottle..."
i'm just giving you too much shit now, my apologies, iliadchad

>>22411254
Rodney Merrill beats them all

>>22413115
No, my point was that it mixes cutural customs of different eras proving it was likely written at different times by different people. I am sorry for not speciying that.

>>22413115
Character retrieves arrow he fired = this was likely written in the Bronze age as arrows wer expensive

character leaves arrow = this was likely written in iron age

>>22412957
based

>>22411308
To be fair anon, there is literally no world where it didn't go like that because Achilles was a fucking nigh-invincible demigod and Hector wasn't.
Achilles was punished for desecrating the body in the end, at least.

alright, I'm gonna read Pope first, then Bryant. I don't really care that he "interpreted" (filled in some areas), his style is simply superior to the rest. Bryant will be the second, because his style is also great, but doesn't add shit.
Thanks for the input gentlemen.
(might actually read Lattimore if I decide I want to read Greek plays, he also seems pretty good, just not as good as the above two)

>>22412399
LMAOOOOO

I have plans to read this next year.

>>22412399
Omg just like marvel

>>22413515
Lattimore is less artistic but is the most semantically close to Homeric Greek. Once I got to the point where I could translate Greek poetry, it amazed me how close he cleaves to the original text. You can't replicate all the associative meaning from the original, but Lattimore is pretty standard for academic first-timers for a reason.