Sing, O Goddess, of our Fascination with the Iliad
November 7th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I’ve always found Homer to be a great read, both from a mythological perspective and that of great narrative writing. The Iliad is my favourite of his epics, which is generally considered, along with the Odyssey, to be among the great works of early storytelling in world literature. So many of the elements we consider crucial to good writing today were combined to astonishing effect in his original oral compositions and diverse writers have been learning from Homer for thousands of years. It seems each new generation of writers and readers are drawn back to these classics.
I just finished listening to the Guardian Books Podcast, in which our enduring fascination with the Iliad is discussed by authors and academics alike. The discussion itself is worth a listen, but so is the segment that deals with recent book releases of translations and interpretations of Homer’s masterpiece. I particularly like the reading given by Alice Oswald of one of her poems grounded directly in the Iliad from her new book Memorial. I’ve already placed it in a wish-list with hopes of reading it in its entirety in the next year or so.
If you feel inclined to have a listen to the podcast, you can find the link here.
The Wild Outdoors
July 25th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I’ve been away from the blog for the last week or so due to being on what amounts to summer vacation. I know as a secondary teacher I have most of the summer off, but this past week I set aside for a camping trip to Gros Morne National Park, quite possibly the most beautiful area in Newfoundland and Labrador. My wife and I usually go every couple of years, but have managed to go two years in a row now, making for plenty of camping fun. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a trip without bringing the labs, who love the place almost as much as we do.
Since arriving back home I’ve managed to translate two Latin poems (at least in the literal sense; I still have to make them into poems for English). I’m getting a lot out of this exercise, realizing that some of the translations of Horace I have read previously are quite different than the original text. Some translators have taken incredible liberties with the work, perhaps to make it more appealing to their contemporaries. This is, of course, different than actually translating a work incorrectly, which I have discovered can be the case. There are difficult passages in Horace, complete with nuance and subtlety that requires time to work through and I’m finding that it’s beneficial to refer to other translations to see how mine differ.
This all reminds me of what a Latin professor said to me one day about how lax the world of translating has become: he referred to a, then recent, translation of Homer commissioned by a publishing house where the translator didn’t even know Homeric Greek. Instead of translating from the original text, the work would be done from other English translations. To me this seems like a completely pointless exercise. How much of the original intent will be lost, especially if the quality of the English translations being used have not been assessed? Wild insanity.
