/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22980764]

This is spot on how the poem is. It is incredibly arid at parts and difficult to plod through.

[Anonymous No.22980783]

>>22980764
Authentic cultural products do often present some friction for the reader, especially if you're beyond a certain remove from the intended audience. If you develop a deep and serious interest in culture you will probably begin to take these sorts of things as markers of authenticity. Artificial, too-perfect, made-to-order products get old pretty fast. There's a reason Virgil isn't discussed with the same reverence as Homer.

[Anonymous No.22980802]

Try getting past the first two books before complaining

[Anonymous No.22980884]

>picks a barely mid translation when Lattimore & Lombardo's exist
>skibbiddy toilet grade objections

[Anonymous No.22981070]

>>22980764
>Enemy is killed
>Suddenly now talking about his origin story
Wow, so the Iliad is like my shonen animes?

[Anonymous No.22981080]

>>22980884
Fagles is literally the most accurate to the earliest existing texts though.

I dont need to read some flowery Italian faggots doing their Disney remaster of Homer

[Anonymous No.22981141]

>>22980884
It’s not the translation, nigga. This shit is in all the translations. It’s what Homer wrote!

[Anonymous No.22981195]

I actually enjoyed the formulaic repetitions in the Illiad and missed them when I read the Odyssey.

Maybe it's autism.

[Anonymous No.22981208]

filtered

[Anonymous No.22981632]

>>22981070
Yes

[Anonymous No.22981639]

>>22981070
>I will kill uou if you are a man but not if you are a god. Tell me your entire backstory.
>>I am bla bla bla of bla bla. My forefather brought a message to the king of Lycia telling the guy to murder him because he was dumb as hell but then he got the upper hand and btfo a bunch of tasks and did shit so then he won and became friends for life
>wow, that’s cool. We should trade armor. Here, take my bronze armor and I will take your iron
>>>Homer/ the narrator: Yeah, he wasn’t the brightest man around so he traded his armor worth 100 cows for armor worth 10 cows

[Anonymous No.22981644]

>>22980764
This book was written before introspective consciousness developed in men which is why it has no interior narration and only descriptions of events which is why it's so boring

[Anonymous No.22981652]

>>22980764
If you read a shitty translation, sure. Fagles translation is garbage, very lazy. Cowper's is the only acceptable English translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Cowpers translation the battles are extremely lucid and picturesque, bordering on the sublime

[Anonymous No.22981657]

>>22980884
>lattimore
he's like the definition of mid. Read Cowper. Lattimore and Fagles butcher the Iliad and Odyssey.

[Anonymous No.22981660]

>>22981657
Lattimore is only popular because he’s public domain so you can pick up his books for like four dollars at the book section in the supermarket.

[Anonymous No.22981802]

>>22981652
You mean this?
He, foremost far, a Trojan slew, the son
Of Phradmon, Ageläus; as he turn’d
His steeds to flight, him turning with his spear
Through back and bosom Diomede transpierced.295
And with loud clangor of his arms he fell.
Then, royal Agamemnon pass’d the trench
And Menelaus; either Ajax, then,
Clad with fresh prowess both; them follow’d, next,
Idomeneus, with his heroic friend300
In battle dread as homicidal Mars,
Meriones; Evæmon’s son renown’d
Succeeded, bold Eurypylus; and ninth
Teucer, wide-straining his impatient bow.
He under covert fought of the broad shield305
Of Telamonian Ajax; Ajax high
Upraised his shield; the hero from beneath
Took aim, and whom his arrow struck, he fell;
Then close as to his mother’s side a child
For safety creeps, Teucer to Ajax’ side310
Retired, and Ajax shielded him again.

[Anonymous No.22981805]

>>22981652
Or this?
He said, and from the nerve another shaft345
Impatient sent at Hector; but it flew
Devious, and brave Gorgythion struck instead.
Him beautiful Castianira, brought
By Priam from Æsyma, nymph of form
Celestial, to the King of Ilium bore.350
As in the garden, with the weight surcharged
Of its own fruit, and drench’d by vernal rains
The poppy falls oblique, so he his head
Hung languid, by his helmet’s weight depress’d.[14]
Then Teucer yet an arrow from the nerve355
Dispatch’d at Hector, with impatience fired
To pierce him; but again his weapon err’d
Turn’d by Apollo, and the bosom struck
Of Archeptolemus, his rapid steeds
To battle urging, Hector’s charioteer.360
He fell, his fiery coursers at the sound
Recoil’d, and lifeless where he fell he lay.
Deep sorrow for his charioteer the mind
O’erwhelm’d of Hector, yet he left the slain,
And seeing his own brother nigh at hand,365
Cebriones, him summon’d to the reins,
Who with alacrity that charge received.

[Anonymous No.22982609]

Pope chads rise up

[Anonymous No.22982629]

Yeah, the battle scenes are literally like the fight scenes in action movies (or Marvel of you prefer), it's the same shit repeated over and over and over again.

[Anonymous No.22982696]

That's why you read Pope.

Regardless, I found the battle scenes to be one of the best parts, I was surprised at how Homer depicts death despite this being a bronze age poem. Everything is so vain because at the end of the day you'll get your brain smashed by a Trojan, it's sort of has a Ecclesiastes energy. I have read a lot of Bronze Age texts so maybe that helped me appreciate it better.

[Anonymous No.22984372]

>>22980764
it's really not that difficult to get through. the parts that are like your OP pic aren't that long and are usually broken up by other stuff happening. I say this as someone with a very low attention span for boring books. I often quit books if i'm not hooked after the first chapter, even if they're shilled as classics, or western canon esssentials, etc. For example I hate all of dostoevsky's books and refuse to read more than 100 pages of them. I hate brothers karamazov and feel like it's the most boring slog of useless shit i've ever touched. complain about that shit instead.

[Anonymous No.22984713]

>>22984372
What? How could you not love random characters wandering into your book to exposit their misery and the glory of god for letting them be miserable? It's as if you have no taste at all.

[Anonymous No.22984729]

I like the parts where Achilles or Diomedes or Hector or Patroclus come upon some guy who's clearly not a match for them and you feel their terror come through the poetry, even in translation. You must imagine that they're shitting their pants because they know they're about to die.

[Anonymous No.22984795]

>>22981802
>>22981805
OP btfo, this proper translation is a completely different experience as promised

[Anonymous No.22985208]

>>22981644
>This book was written before introspective consciousness developed in men
nigga, are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.22985211]

>>22985208
hownew.ru

[Anonymous No.22985980]

>>22985208
It’s from the “Bicameral mind” a book and theory by some guy who thinks ancient people didn’t have internal monologue until language was constructed. It is really bizarre nonsense and only a halfwit would believe that is the case.

[Anonymous No.22986004]

I probably would’ve went nuts for this if I was an Ancient Greek though.

[Anonymous No.22986011]

>>22980764
It is exactly like that and I love it.

[Anonymous No.22986111]

>>22986011
I like it too. I was just being overly argumentative as a roundabout way of fomenting discussion. I actually love the Iliad.