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/lit/ - Literature

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18687017 No.18687017 [Reply] [Original]

Fagles' translation of the Odyssey is so bad that I just threw the book against the wall in anger.

Does anyone know of a better translation?

>> No.18687030

>>18687017
I enjoyed it. Can someone that has read several different ones/read the original confirm whether or not his translation is that bad?

>> No.18687042
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18687042

>> No.18687045

>>18687017
I read Iliad by fagles and I liked it a lot but his translation of Odyssey was so bad I switched to lattimore and loved it.

>> No.18687054

>>18687017
>>18687045
What's bad about it?

>> No.18687059

is Penguin's version a good translation?
https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Penguin-Clothbound-Classics/dp/0141192445

>> No.18687061

Go with Lattimore or Fitzgerald or you might as well not read it in English. Other translations are garbo. Source: my opinion

>> No.18687067

>>18687059
Of course not

>> No.18687080

>>18687067
aww...
what about this version
https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Oxford-Classics-Hardback-Collection/dp/0199669104

>> No.18687083

>>18687017
Chapman's

>> No.18687084

>>18687045
Yes it's great

>> No.18687086

>>18687054
too simplistic and too many modern idioms

>> No.18687087

>>18687017
>translations

>> No.18687094

>>18687086
How is that bad?

>> No.18687195

>>18687017
Lattimore is the one

>> No.18687223

i forget bros, is it iliad:fitzgerald and odyssey:lattimore?

>> No.18687238

>>18687061
Lattimore is great for the Illiad but his Odyssey isnt that good imo. Fitzgerald does the best Odyssey

>> No.18687272

You lack the right to do that. First of all, if you were truly qualified to dismiss Fagles like that, then you would know of a better translation. Second, you probably don't know a lick of Greek beyond οι πολλοι, which you still don't comprehend because you don't even know the Greek alphabet, and if you did, it would be limited to the letters of your fraternity and the others on campus.

For any reasonable plebs who are uninitiated in the splendor of the Iliad and the Odyssey, I recommend the Lattimore translations.

>> No.18687712

I read Pope

>> No.18687721

>>18687712
you skip the parts translated by his minions?

>> No.18687763

>But now I cleared my mind of Circe's orders--
>cramping my style, urging me not to arm at all
How can anyone defend this?

>> No.18687765

>>18687721
No I read it all. From what I read online the two people who wrote a portion of the Odyssey were students of his when he was writing the Iliad too. Surely they knew what they were doing.
I didn't notice a drop in quality or anything. Only problem I had was the Latin names of the characters and Gods, I had to look up all the comparisons because I was not familiar with them all.

>> No.18687775

>>18687765
The heroic couplet of Dryden, underwent, in the earliest years after Dryden’s death, changes which, considering the natural tendencies of humanity, may be called inevitable. By his own almost inimitable combination of skill and strength, and by the mechanical devices of triplet and Alexandrine, Dryden himself had kept off the monotony which the regular stopped couplet invites. But the invitation was sure to be accepted by others; indeed, they might plead that they were only realising the ideal of the form. As Waller and others before Dryden, wittingly or unwittingly, had hit upon the other devices of sententious balance and a split in the individual lines, and of pendulum repetition in the couplets: so, after Dryden, first Garth and then Pope, no doubt with their eyes open, rediscovered these; and the extraordinary craftsmanship of Pope carried the form to its highest possible perfection. If—and it is difficult to see how the assertion can be denied—the doctrine expressed in various ways but best formulated by De Quincey that “nothing can go wrong by conforming to its own ideal’ be true, the couplet of Pope, in and by itself, is invulnerable and imperishable.
But it very soon appeared that a third adjective of the same class, which indicates almost a necessary quality of the highest poetic forms, could not be applied to it. It was not inimitable. The admitted difficulty, if not impossibility, of deciding, on internal evidence, as to the authorship of the books of The Odyssey translated by Pope himself, as compared with those done by Fenton and Broome, showed the danger; and the work of the rest of the century emphasised it. Men like Savage, Churchill and Cowper went back to Dryden, or tried a blend of Dryden and Pope; men like Johnson and Goldsmith newminted the Popian couplet, in the one case by massive strength, in the other by easy grace of thought and phrase and form. But the dangers of monotony and of convention remained; and, towards the end of the period, they were fatally illustrated in the dull insignificance of Hoole and the glittering frigidity of Darwin.

>> No.18687847

>>18687223
The complete opposite

>> No.18687900

>>18687775
Citation?

>> No.18687908

>>18687900
https://www.bartleby.com/217/

>> No.18687918

>>18687908
Thanks, fren.

>> No.18687929

Fagles Iliad is kino

>> No.18687935

How is Chapman? After reading Keats going on about it I want to try it

>> No.18687939

>>18687017
E.V.Rieu

>> No.18687942

>>18687935
It's the best

>> No.18687951

>>18687939
OP would hate that even more

>> No.18688072

Has anyone read Peter Green's Iliad and Odyssey? More interested in his Iliad though.