I Guess This Constitutes Praise...

At the beginning of January, in the bookshop of Terminal 2 at San Francisco airport, I looked for a translation of the Iliad – not that I really expected to find one. But there were ten: one succinct W.H.D. Rouse prose translation and one Robert Graves, in prose and song, both in paperback; two blank verse Robert Fagles in solid covers; one rhythmic Richmond Lattimore with a lengthy new introduction; and three hardback copies of the new Stephen Mitchell translation, with refulgent golden shields on the cover and several endorsements on the back, of which the most arresting is by Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget: ‘The poetry rocks and has a macho cast to it, like rap music.’
The Fitzgerald translation is my favorite. If you want to do yourself a favor, though, don't buy it as a book. The Iliad is oral poetry, and you will do far better to hear it aloud.

1 comment:

E Hines said...

The Iliad is oral poetry, and you will do far better to hear it aloud.

Absolutely. I'm not much on poetry at all, and the repetitious nature of "Homer's" epics is deadly dull when read (never mind that the repetition and the poetic rhythms were a mnemonic for the ancients), but when I heard my college prof sing/chant the Iliad in my Attic Greek class, it was music.

Eric Hines