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War Music: Homer and His Iliad

literaryreview.co.uk

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Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#11

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

War Music is the name of an incomplete modern translation of the Iliad by Christopher Logue.

It is without doubt one of the best poetic works of the past 100 years.

"Achilles saw his armour in that instant

And its ominous radiance flooded his heart.

Bright pads with toggles crossed behind the knees,

Bodice of fitted tungsten, pliable straps;

His shield as round and rich as moons in spring;

His sword's haft parked between sheaves of grey obsidian

From which a lucid blade stood out, leaf-shaped, adorned

With running spirals.

And for his head a welded cortex; yes,

Though it is noon, the helmet screams against the light;

Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen

Across three thousand years."

The Caroline Alexander translation is much more "correct," but lacks Logue's spark of vitality and originality.

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#12

Post by fsloth »

jsmith99 wrote: post #6
fsloth wrote: post #2

I can warmly recommend the new Iliad translation by Caroline Alexander as audiobook. Suberb! I understand the new translation by Emily Wilson (whose Odyssey was excellent) should be good as well. The new translations really bring these old poems to life, and listening to them is at least for me the best way to consume them.

These are good, but to really bring them to life I recommend Christopher Logue, whose version doesn't even pretend to be a translation. There are some nice excerpts in his obituary in The Economist https://archive.ph/eaCKf

Oh, brilliant, I definetly need to get a hold of Logues translation. Thanks!

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#14

Post by mistercheph »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #7
fsloth wrote: post #2

I can warmly recommend the new Iliad translation by Caroline Alexander as audiobook. Suberb! I understand the new translation by Emily Wilson (whose Odyssey was excellent) should be good as well. The new translations really bring these old poems to life, and listening to them is at least for me the best way to consume them.

I disagree about Emily Wilson's Odissey. She translated the first line of the poem as "Tell me about a complicated man". She almost went with "Tell me about a straying husband". Neither complicated nor straying husband appear in the original text. Pope's description (The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d...) is closer to the epithets we are taught at school (ricco d'astuzie or dal multiforme ingegno). πολύτροπος…

C’mon, Pope clearly has the worst parse of πολύτροπος which I will remind you is “many paths”, Wilson takes this as a metaphor internal and external, many roads traveled, many roads within, not perfect, but it’s good. And Pope reads it like who he is, a Latinate schoolboy, and it’s beautiful but he carries so much of himself into that line.

In one reading, πολύτροπος is turn in the Odyssey away from past stories, Odysseus as psychological composite, the previous song in the cycle is about μῆνιν and its manifestation as the hero Achilles, the traditional, singular hero.

If you want to see this shift between the composite and the singular in poetics discussed, read Aristophanes’ Frogs.

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#15

Post by thecyborganizer »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #7
fsloth wrote: post #2

I can warmly recommend the new Iliad translation by Caroline Alexander as audiobook. Suberb! I understand the new translation by Emily Wilson (whose Odyssey was excellent) should be good as well. The new translations really bring these old poems to life, and listening to them is at least for me the best way to consume them.

I disagree about Emily Wilson's Odissey. She translated the first line of the poem as "Tell me about a complicated man". She almost went with "Tell me about a straying husband". Neither complicated nor straying husband appear in the original text. Pope's description (The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d...) is closer to the epithets we are taught at school (ricco d'astuzie or dal multiforme ingegno). πολύτροπος…

Wilson discusses her choices in the translation of that first line in great detail in this interview for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/magazine/the-first-woman-...

You're welcome to disagree, but I find her choices fascinating, and I loved her translation. (I read the Fagles translation in school and liked that one as well.)

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#16

Post by Red_Tarsius »

neaden wrote: post #10
Red_Tarsius wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about Emily Wilson's Odissey. She translated the first line of the poem as "Tell me about a complicated man". She almost went with "Tell me about a straying husband". Neither complicated nor straying husband appear in the original text. Pope's description (The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d...) is closer to the epithets we are taught at school (ricco d'astuzie or dal multiforme ingegno). πολύτροπος…

This complaint seems odd. First complicated is obviously not in the original text, it's in Greek. I guess what you mean is "No words I would translate as complicated are in the text" but then your complaint just becomes a tautology. Saying Pope's version from the 1700s is more like what you were taught in school is similar, it's probably the version you or your teachers read so it shaped what you were taught. Essenti…

It's not really a matter of opinion when everything is lost in translation. I know it can be hard to understand without a basic intro to ancient Greek, but it's like translating a reference to the "Titanic" with "some boat, I dunno".

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#17

Post by anavette »

jsmith99 wrote: post #6
fsloth wrote: post #2

I can warmly recommend the new Iliad translation by Caroline Alexander as audiobook. Suberb! I understand the new translation by Emily Wilson (whose Odyssey was excellent) should be good as well. The new translations really bring these old poems to life, and listening to them is at least for me the best way to consume them.

These are good, but to really bring them to life I recommend Christopher Logue, whose version doesn't even pretend to be a translation. There are some nice excerpts in his obituary in The Economist https://archive.ph/eaCKf

Came here to recommend this. You can find a longer excerpt here: https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/HomerTranslation/LogueW...

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#18

Post by acyou »

If I understand correctly, I am writing a review of a review of a book about the Iliad.

But we can only read so many books. If we had to choose, would we just read a translation of the original Iliad instead of a book about it? This is why we should be thankful for a physical bookshelf, it allows us to skip these steps and just pick up the book.

I don't think we need to be too concerned with the particular translation of the Iliad, I think the older the better as long as one can still properly read it. I think a certain amount of reading into the poem is required regardless.

To be more precise, this book would do all of the reading into the poem that I want to do. I want to read into it myself and draw my own conclusions! (To the extent that it's possible).

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#19

Post by brmgb »

neaden wrote: post #10
Red_Tarsius wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about Emily Wilson's Odissey. She translated the first line of the poem as "Tell me about a complicated man". She almost went with "Tell me about a straying husband". Neither complicated nor straying husband appear in the original text. Pope's description (The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d...) is closer to the epithets we are taught at school (ricco d'astuzie or dal multiforme ingegno). πολύτροπος…

This complaint seems odd. First complicated is obviously not in the original text, it's in Greek. I guess what you mean is "No words I would translate as complicated are in the text" but then your complaint just becomes a tautology. Saying Pope's version from the 1700s is more like what you were taught in school is similar, it's probably the version you or your teachers read so it shaped what you were taught. Essenti…

The complaint - which I definetely share by the way - is that for all the critical acclaim it got, Emily Wilson's translation strays so far from the actual text, it is not really a translation anymore and is actually closer to being a new text inspired by the Odyssey. That's fine if that's what you are looking for but it doesn't make for a great translation.

The πολύτροπος thing is a complete red herring by the way. Her translation is questionnable but remains within the bound of what I would expect from a modern translator. I am more annoyed by everything she drops in the rest of the poem. Remarkably and annoyingly, the coverage when her translation was released spend far more time dwelling on her gender than on her actual work.

Re: War Music: Homer and His Iliad

#20

Post by nerdponx »

jstanley wrote: post #9
nerdponx wrote: post #4

> Homer had visited windy Troy on a clear day when distant Samothrace was visible … I like to think he had walked south, like Chryses, beside the shore of the booming sea This passage sounds a lot like the writing style of the ancient classics. I assume the reviewer chose it on purpose for that reason. I don't know that I need to read this book, but I appreciate that apparently it's a work of passion and enthusiasm.

Thankfully the original work is now out of copyright, and there is an English translation here: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Ilhome.php

I was talking about the book being reviewed, which seems to be an analysis of the Iliad by Robin Lane Fox, rather than the Iliad itself.
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