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/lit/ - Literature

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5870235 No.5870235 [Reply] [Original]

Should I buy >pic related or
"The Illiad" and "The Aenid" by Oxford Uni. Press and "The Odyssey" by Penguin since OUP doesn't have a verse translation ?

The Penguin Classic's versions don't seem to have as much notes as a pleb like me needs.
>pls respond; this will be my Christmas gift to myself
>muh materialism

>> No.5870300

got to go with fagles, don't you want that shit in verse?

>> No.5870306

does.... does the aenid really come in a box set with the iliad and the odyssey? :\

>> No.5870340

>>5870300
Oxford have The Illiad and Aenid in verse but no Odyssey in verse; that's why I haven't decided yet.

>> No.5870377

>>5870300
What meter is he using? I can't into scansion.

>> No.5870384

>>5870377
Blank verse.

>> No.5870415

>>5870384
Wait,

Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage, Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls Of heroes into Hades' dark, And left their bodies to rot as feasts For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done. Begin with the clash between Agamemnon— The Greek warlord—and godlike Achilles.

This is blank verse?

>> No.5870452

>>5870415
Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, so yes. It starts on a spondee, and there's some variation here and there for mimesis. Here's a quick scansion:

SING godDESS aCHILLes RAGE BLACK and MURDerOUS that COST the GREEKS inCALCuLAble PAIN, PITCHED COUNTless SOULS of HERos INto HADes DARK and LEFT their BODies to ROT as FEASTS for DOGS and BIRDS as ZUES WILL' was DONE. BeGIN with the CLASH beTWEEN aGAmemNON, the GREEK warLORD and GODLIKE aCHILLes

>> No.5870476

w/r/t the lack of notes and errata, the introductions by Knox are extensive and cover both major themes and minor details; after that, Fagles' renditions of Homer are pretty straightforward. I've only read Mandelbaum's Aeneid for a class, but Virgil is much more detailed and complex than Homer. If you're worried about not understanding, just pick up the two Homers - which are incredible reads by themselves - give them a shot, and pick up the Aeneid later if you still want to.

>> No.5870496

Welp, prose is shit, but Fagles is not a very good verse translation compared to Lattimore or Merrill.

I'd just by Merrill's translations of Homer, and Oliver Crane's translation of the Aeneid.

>> No.5870563

>>5870452
you're finding lots of stresses where they don't exist

>> No.5870921

well OP I've read the Odyssey by Fagles and am reading his translation of the Iliad now and they're both very exciting and entertaining so I think you'll find them satisfying. But admittedly I haven't read any others, so there could be betters out there

>> No.5870933

>>5870452
"mem" is the stressed syllable in Agamemnon, and "war" is the stressed syllable in "warlord".

Anyhow, Fagles sucks either way.

>> No.5870946
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5870946

>>5870921
http://www.press.umich.edu/17212/odyssey/?s=look_inside

>> No.5872418

How are the notes in Fagles's editions though? I saw (comparing the Illiad) Oxford's has like 40 pages. Penguin's like 20

>> No.5872438

NOOOOO!!! Fagles sucks...

Seriously, I just finished the Aeneid (exact one pictured) by Fagles and the Odyssey this week. I've read several other translations, but I read his first, and it almost put me off the works. His translations always try and tone down the violence/sexism to try and make it more acceptable to modern day. If you want a translator that really captures the essence, I'd go with Stephen Mitchell's Odyssey and Iliad. Both blank verse, and he doesn't try and fuck around with it. He has worked for Penguin books as well.

>> No.5872444

And neither have much notes. But just get notes online from other sources. There is plenty of good online stuff, dont choose a translation just because of the notes.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/iliad/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4jk5kavy4

>> No.5872447

Is there anyone here who has read Merrill and doesn't think he's by far the best translation?

>> No.5872448

>>5870235
Ordered that version of the Iliad for myself for Christmass as well. Gonna dim the lights a bit, get some candles going, some 4 hour epic music mix for ambient sound, and just recite that motherfucker in the most grande voice I can think of in my head.

>> No.5872452

>>5870452
Isn't the epics supposed to be in dactylic hexameter? There's just too much brain-rot on this board...

>> No.5872463

>>5872418
The notes are okay for the Aenied by Fagles. My copy has 4 sections.
1 Translators Post Script, basically 10 pages talking about how and why he translated it the way he did, and why it may differ from others.
2 A few lineage diagrams on the houses (but that would all be easily found online).
3 Two pages of suggested reading.
4 Translators Post script (basically a line by line, here is what I thought about translating it two, here is why I decided not to.)
5 About 50 pages of Pronunciation Glossary for the names.
There is a 40 pages introduction including a map of Mediterranean by Bernard Knox which is pretty much pointless.

Also the Fagles ones are always available online. Dunno why but people like his translation http://www.stt.org/document.doc?id=1112

>> No.5872469

>>5872452
English doesn't really accommodate dactylic hexameter very well, all there have been some translations in it, Merrill's being the most prominent among them.

>> No.5872473

>>5872469
Well of course, but to scansion by blank-verse is just too fucked anyway.

>> No.5872489

I've only been recommended George Chapman's renditions. Admittedly I've only asked one person and I doubt he was an expert.

>> No.5872575

>>5872463
I meant important notes.

>> No.5872853

>>5872489
Pope is good too. I prefer Chapman myself.

>> No.5873069

The Odyssey- Robert Fitzgerald or Rodney Merrill
The Iliad- Richard Lattimore or Anthony Verity (or Merrill again)
The Aeneid- Allen Mandelbaum

If you like Elizabethan stuff, read Chapman.

>> No.5873080

>>5870377
It does sound like iambic. It sounds like there are a lot of x - - x. Id think it's some sort of fusion

>> No.5873093

>>5870933

The scansion was pretty off the cuff, but you can see there's an iambic framework there at least.

>> No.5873159

btw
What about The Divine Comedy ?
Penguin or Oggsford

>> No.5873642

>>5873159
Anthony Esolen or Allen Mandelbaum

>> No.5873746

I've read all the Fagles. They are dry as fuck. Get Alexander Pope! Otherwise, get Samuel Butler, because you need to stop fooling yourself into thinking that the verse is important. Unless you read the shit in Greek, it's only there to create motion - and poorly formed motion at that.

>> No.5873792

>>5872469
This.
Even if you stuck to the short and long syllable the hexameter is too long for the movement required for an epic poem. A syntactical issue with English dactyl would be that the Stressed, unstressed, unstressed, becomes like an iambic meter with a revolving trochee. It becomes monotonous and causes the reader to feel like he has been driving over tiny speed bumps for so long that he's gotten used to it.

>> No.5873802

>>5873792
Anapest would be more appropriate than Trochee. My apologies.

>> No.5874251

>>5873792
Dactylic hexameter permits use of spondees, though, which Merrill certainly utilizes.

>> No.5874252

>>5873159

Hollander

>> No.5874271

>>5870452
it's GODdess not godDESS

Alexander Pope. His translation is vibrant.

>> No.5874273

>>5873159
Penguin. Based Musa.

>> No.5874283

>>5874271
>it's GODdess not godDESS
No, it's not. You sound like you have downs if you stress it that way.

>> No.5874290

>>5874283
Well, I just looked at Dryden's Aeneid and he has it as GODdess

>> No.5874298

>>5870235
POPE
O
P
E

>> No.5874309 [DELETED] 

>>5874290
So? That's not the natural stress just because he stressed it that way.

>>5870946
Merrill also stresses it godDESS

>> No.5874330

Is verse translation really better than prose? I just don't see how verse can translate when the subtle meaning and feeling of words are so completely different. At least prose gives you more freedom to convey the meaning and feel of the original, even if you lose the rhythm of it. But it's not like prose can't have it's own rhythm, except prose rhythm is much more flexible than verse and so more readily translatable.

I dunno, it's a legit question I have. It's not like I have anything against verse translations, but is it really fair to automatically put them above prose translations?

>> No.5874361

>>5874330
They aren't automatically above prose. I'd but the Loeb prose by Murray above most verse translations. However, at the end, let's remember that we're talking about a song....so if you're translating a song into another language and then say the tune isn't what counts because you want to get the nuance fo the lyrics, you're kind of missing a lot.

Thankfully, in the end it doesn't matter, because Merrill's translation is the best no matter how you look at it. He goes to great lengths to convey subtlety and nuance, which is really impossible to properly do in English, but he does it better than anyone else, he manages to remain literally faithful while at the same time conveying the nuance, very tricky. Plus he's in Homeric verse.

>> No.5876098

this is in verse?

>> No.5876134

>>5870235
>"The Illiad" and "The Aenid" by Oxford Uni. Press and "The Odyssey" by Penguin

op, are you silly
are we supposed to google what translations they used or we are supposed to weight the quality of translations on the reputation of the publishers

>> No.5876146

>>5874361
>we're talking about a song
This anon gets it. You should absolutely be reading a verse translation. I like Lattimore for Homer and Mandelbaum for Virgil. /lit/izens have been talking a lot about Merrill's Homer lately. I've not read it, but from excerpts I've seen posted it seems like another solid choice.

>> No.5876159

>>5872438
Mitchell's Iliad is by far the least faithful of the various popular versions available today.

>> No.5876195

>>5876159
I avoid Mitchell like the plague. He literally "translates" books out of languages he doesn't even speak, so I'm not sure when I can trust him at all.

>The rage of Achilles–sing it now, goddess, sing through me

That should be enough to turn you off. He repeats the word 'sing'. He invokes the word 'now'. No mention of Peleus. And most egregious, in Mitchell's version, the poet directly mentions himself in the invocation of the muse. It's like he's never even seen the Greek and just cobbled this shit together from reading other translations. Well, considering he has a history of doing exactly that (see below), you've got to wonder.

Source: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mitchell.html

>London: I understand you don't speak any Chinese.

>Mitchell: That’s right, I don't speak or read a word of Chinese. I would never have dared to do it if I hadn't felt a deep connection to Lao-tzu.

>London: You've published some thirty books since the Tao Te Ching came out, so I don't think anyone would doubt your qualifications today. But at the time people probably wondered what you were doing translating Chinese when you didn’t speak the language.

>Mitchell: Absolutely. But, you know, I had a really clear sense of what was more important that linguistics or scholarship. I used to call it my umbilical connection with Lao-tzu because I had gone through what at that time was 13 years of very intensive Zen training. So I had a sense that there was something really important being missed.

>> No.5876205

I like the cover on Lattimore the most, is it a good translation?

>> No.5876211

>>5876159
>>5876195
Mitchell relied on the research of a scholar who wanted to separate later additions, so there are whole fragments in the original Greek not in his version. He also removed most epithets because he felt that didn't add anything to translation. Also, Book 10 was entirely excised.

>> No.5876214

>>5876195
>I used to call it my umbilical connection with Lao-tzu because I had gone through what at that time was 13 years of very intensive Zen training.

b-but tao te ching isn't even a buddhist book

also how dare you criticize his homer translation he has an umbilical connection to homer from many years of very intensive muse invoking

>> No.5876500

ATTN: /lit/

The best translations of the stated books are as follows (thank me later)

Iliad - Pope
Odyssey - Chapman
Aeneid - Dryden

>> No.5876526
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5876526

>reading translations

>> No.5876538

>>5872452
In greek for fucks sake, the greek language is not the same as the english language and therefore dactylic hexameter is pretty much impossible to translate for english language.

>> No.5876547

>tfw I ask for The Illiad for Christmas
>my pleb tier aunt and uncle get me a book thats about 40 pages and has pictures

I know the real thing was probably the biggest book you've ever seen in your retarded lives, but yes, I was going to read that.

>> No.5876582

>>5876526
what a fugly piece of shit

>> No.5876735

>>5876526
Can't waste my time learning a language nobody speaks.

>> No.5876744

The Fagles Aeneid sucks.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Aeneid-Vintage-Classics-Virgil/dp/0679729526

Buy this.

>> No.5876760

>>5876547
lol, did this really happen? How old were you?

>> No.5876767

>>5876744
Nobody has done better than Dryden. I haven't read Fagles but I read the first couple lines of Fitzgerald's and could barely contain my disgust.

>> No.5876776

>>5876735
>I don't want to be able to read one of the greatest books ever written in it's original language because muh socializing.

Ftfy

>> No.5876801

>>5876767
But Dryden's is unfaithful to the heroic form.

Yes, it's "good." But it's Dryden's own creation. It's whimsical, dainty, and pretty. The reason why it relies so heavily on anastrophe is because its verse is completely foreign to the original intent of the piece. It doesn't carry the same somber tone that the Fitzgerald translation revels in.

If you can't appreciate the Fitzgerald translation, I am sorry for you.

Same goes for the Pope translations of the Greek epics.

>> No.5876811
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5876811

>>5876735
>I am a raging pleb and proud of it

>> No.5877542

>>5876526
You're not going to be eager to read Homer in Greek until you've read good translation like Merrill or Lattimore..

Or Pope or Chapman :^)