/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18017070]

Anyone here who succeeded in reading The Illiad on dactylic hexameter? 1. How tf am I supposed to do that. 2. Did you manage to do it all in your head or did you read it out loud?

[Anonymous No.18017092]

Do you mean in the original Greek? Aren't there relatively few/rare English translations that actually attempt to render it in the original meter?

I know there are people who read/recite it in Greek and say it's quite beautiful. Clyde Pharr's book on Homeric Greek is a good start if you already know Attic decently well. It bills itself as a "you can start with this even if you don't know Greek!" thing but I didn't find that.

[Anonymous No.18017186]

>>18017092
The Swedish translation I have can be read that way at least, so that is why I am asking.

[Anonymous No.18017927]

>>18017070
>>18017186
Homer's dactylic hexameter is a meter whose principle is quantitative, which is common in ancient Greek and Latin poetry. In short, the organisational principle is focused on how long each syllable is, long or short, and how they're organised within a line. Modern languages can rarely build off that principle (even Latin had some problems when transposing the system from Greek, apparently), instead using the syllabic (predefined number of syllables) or accentual (predefined number of stresses) principles.
Most likely the Swedish translation uses some accentual imitation of the quantitative meter. Post a few verses, I don't know Swedish aside from imitating how it sounds in Bergman films, but I think I'll be able to tell how the meter works.