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a beautiful translation with a driving pace that pulls the reader forward from beginning to the end of the epic tale.
I read the Robert Fagles edition of the Iliad. It is still well written and is essential reading for a knowledge of ancient Greek mythology. The book has various gruesome descriptions of battles.
This book is very important. Unfortunately the story behind the fall of Troy is not given. I read it after reading the Robert Fitzgerald translation of "The Odyssey".
The book ends with the death of Hector. It was Alexander the Great's favorite book. The subject of the book is the Trojan War.
The sequel, "The Odyssey", gives brief references to the Trojan Horse and also references the death of Achilles (Odysseus meets him in the Underworld).The Iliad is really long and at times gets dull with the endless descriptions of infantrymen killing each other. The book addresses the sadness behind war.
This rings true for the entire piece. A tension between free will and determinism also lingers. And were the Iliad's characters real people writ large. Did Troy exist.
Bernard Knox's comprehensive introduction covers some of the debate about the story's historicity. And then there's Achilles, the blustering hero of the entire work. Some battle scenes are outright repulsive. The scheming and power hungry Gods of Olympus oversee it all. He even takes on the river Xanthus. They cause just as much trouble for each other as for the humans who bow to them (with some exceptions; Aphrodite gets lashed at by a bold mortal).
Or do humans act from pure willing. One can stop to appreciate the poetry and meter or simply read it straight through and follow the tumultuous narrative. In their world, fickle senseless fate strikes people down with savagery. What more could a modern sensibility want. It's no stuffy pedantic tale wheedling out platitudes, it paints a rather brutal picture of life's travails. Had this story occurred in our current age of information we would have all of the answers but none of the beguiling mystery that permeates the stories of our distant ancestors. For twenty books this seething and legendary mass broods over Agamemnon's taking of his favorite woman, Briseis. As with most complex heroes, morality remains somewhat ambiguous.
The Iliad proves that some things don't sour with age. Well, the Iliad has some of that too, but nothing explicit (Hera's rather amusing seduction of Zeus in Book 14 stands out). As a superhero, he's closer to the all too human Batman than to the inhuman Superman. And honor and love of homeland above all rules the day. Harsh reality, with some immortal magic mixed in, permeates the ancient, but still very modern, Iliad.Robert Fagles' facile translation makes for beyond brisk reading.
He's multidimensional, complex, admirable and sometimes repugnant. When Achilles finally takes to the battlefield the tension explodes into a furious bloodbath. Do the Gods predestine all. Sex. He embodies the Achean ethos as well as the moral framework for the entire poem. This long poem floods with violence, glory, agony, victory, sorrow and even wrenching gore.
Neither method will disappoint. No one knows the answer to such questions even today, but the Iliad showcases how the ancient Greek's framed such dilemmas. And that mood of mystery, struggle and fate surrounding the story and its wispy author, Homer, help keep the Iliad on numerous reading lists. The mystery only adds to the experience.
Though more than 2,500 years old the story, its archetypal characters and its poignant depiction of the flings of fortune can still mesmerize the modern attention span with its less than nanosecond tolerance. Of course other exegetical perspectives exist. Apart from serving up an amazing tale, the Iliad also serves as history, in it being one of the oldest extant tales. He's more than your average slashing berserker. The Iliad has both in droves.
Most importantly, he forgives and repents (admittedly with some immortal urging). All in all, this ancient epic tale reads, for the most part, like a thriller, accessible to the age of video games and YouTube. What did Helen of Troy, assuming she existed, look like and did she regret her abandonment of Menelaus as she claims throughout the tale. This single affront provides the soil for almost intolerable tension. Achilles sulks (in fact, he sulks more than he fights), he wails, he mourns.
Did the Trojan war occur. But what will always keep it coming back are the same thing that keeps all great books in print: a great story with unforgettable characters.
Amazon has cobbled together every review of every translation of the Iliad in their posession, and the book being reviewed is not even a translation at all, but is in the original greek (one must suppose - they never do come right out and say so, but glancing at the first page such appears to be the case).
And, I think it has a lot to do with his methodology. I guaranteeThat if I ever catch you running on at the mouth againAs you were just now, my name isn't Odysseus." (Lombardo, p.28, Line 279-281)I read those line and what I see is young Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones not Odysseus.Compare Fagles:"I tell you this, so help me it's the truth:If I catch you again, blithering on this way,let Odysseus' head be wrenched off his shoulders" (Fagles, p. Both men are doomed and know it. 357, Line 86). He is giving everyone in Greece a hero to look back on as their own.But in general I find Lombardo to be, for lack of a better term, coarser.
Lombardo is flat out better at making Book 2(the catalogue of ships) not only readable but purposeful. I lose out on those moments, those flashes of shifting insight that knowing that the word I am reading can imply loss, guilt and transgression all at the same time.Knowing that there are trade-offs of insight to win or lose on the choice of a translation, I recommend you read several. At least, to my ears and my soul. Lombardo parses the line as "And I killed him" (Lombardo, p. But it is fraught with consequence.Let me explain that last part. This crux epitomizes my loss at not knowing Greek and having to read translations.
It is personal because because I believe it is largely a matter of individual aesthetic. 11). There is nothing wrong at all with Brando from The Wild Ones. And their story continues to carry the weight of the ways that they faced their fate down to our own time.Which brings me to my final reason for preferring Fagles over Lombardo.
Pick a main translation. Fagles gives us the Greeks. Braan suggests that the alternate to lost should be "destroyed" (Braan, p. Toward the end of the book, the God Hephaestus creates for Achilles a new shield. Fagles (p. He creates a world. I have several points to make in this review.
But Brando is not Hector, he is not Achilles, he is not Odysseus or Diomedes or Great Ajax. It is the perfect simile for the effect of Homer's poem as a whole.The other reason you should read this book is the central conflict between Hector and Achilles. Not just a world at war but through his similes a world of crafts, work, weddings, births, murders, kinships, friendships, of gods, of monsters, of countries and of history. Homer describes in detail the working on the shield, the two cities, one at war, one at peace and the whole universe that surrounds them. I have hinted at it in my review title and my remark on the catalogue of ships.
But, as a result of those readings perhaps, his translation has passages that are real clunkers.For example, I laughed out loud when I read this:"Well let me tell you something. And at the moments of consequence in the story, consult the others. In Homeric Moments, Eva Braan points out the passage in Book 18 when Achilles first talks to Thetis after hearing that Patrocles has been killed by Hector. Homer's poetic style reveals so much more than an epic on force or whatever the critical summation de jour is. The choice of translation is at one and the same time easy, personal and fraught with consequence.It is easy because all the translations that I am familiar with (Fitzgerald, Fagles and Lombardo) are excellent and have their own excellencies. Since both translations are also interpretations, to read them both is to probably get a little closer to Homer.And, by the way, both contain useful introductions although I think Knox's intro to Fagles' translation is better than Murnaghan's to Lombardo's translation.Finally, why should you care. Homer in that one chapter is giving all the islands, all the kingdoms and cities of Greece a place in the national epic of the country.
I can't go with that.I could go on but I think you see my argument. Brando in The Wild Ones was a marvel. The first is to explain why I recommend the Fagles translation over that of Lombardo. Both are aware that the success of their side is dependent on them.Achilles is the more god-like but Hector is the better man, the more humane human being. You should care about reading about these two because in their conflict, they are tracing out what is was for the men of ancient Greece to live and to die. My ear when reading aloud leads me to prefer the Fagles translation but the Lombardo is a valuable adjunct to that reading. And if anyone wants to argue the merits of different translations in the comments, have at me. To sum up: I don't read/speak a bit of Greek.
470, Line 96) translates the line as "I've lost him". To my ears, all too often Lombardo give us Brando. I read his intro as saying that he works his translation out over the coarse of time by performing it (fair enough since we are reading Homer, the singer of epics). 108, Line 301-303).That line count is also an issue- Lombardo's methodology leads him to leave out words, phrasesand lines because they are unneccessary to performance. Brando from On the Waterfront was even better. Try the two of them out and let me know how you feel.
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