/lit/ - Literature

>>13714273
yeah this will be a great thread im sure

Peter Green is unironically the best

>>13714273
That's not possible women can't read books that are longer than 150 pages

>>13714273
why couldnt they enjoy him before

>>13714306
because they're women

>>13714306
According to Wilson, previous translations were too sexist and male-oriented.

>>13714306
because women are called whores in the original.

>>13714290
FUCK WOMEN

>>13714318
but homers work was written within the traditional patriarchal paradigm, you cant properly understand it other way
then you should make a critical annotated version, not fuck up and butcher the translation

post the passage about >muh refugees

>>13714290
Tits or gtfo

What was she implying here exactly? Why would a woman's mouth be dangerous?

>>13714411

Also, based Telemachus for making it work.

>The Oxford commentary mostly discusses the mechanics of hanging 12 women on 1 rope.

>>13714411
i reckon the anus is a womans most dangerous orifice. just think of all the bacteria in there you could get sick from.

Bump

>>13714411
>Why would a woman's mouth be dangerous?
It's the only part of a woman's body that's really capable of annoying a man since physically they're more or less harmless. If we could close our ears just like how we close our eyes, I doubt that we'd even have women's suffrage at this point.

>>13714390
relax m8
everyone knows how the Greeks treated women
1 feminist translation is not going to change anything

>reading translations

>Reading Homer in English
Trust me, the big scary female translators are the least of your concerns, brainlets.

>>13714879
>reading
you are supposed to have your grandpa tell it

>>13714273
Didnt a women wrote the Odyssey?

>>13714890
My grandpa is a monolingual ape

>>13714902
Shakespeare was a woman as well.

>>13714889
>Not reading it in 4 languages simultaneously.

Never gonna make it.

>>13714908
a gay woman

>>13714902
Most of /lit/ probably believes that Homer was one person.

>>13714926
he was actually too short guys in a tall guy costume.

>>13714867
Based

>>13714926

Come now, the clone theory has been thoroughly debunked.

>>13714273
she's anti-intellectual

>>13714395

>>13714976

>>13714991

>>13714991
>i really hope this translation of a book from 2500 years ago is a comment on UK politics

Maybe this well help you retards finally realize that translations should be treated as adaptations, not replacements.

>>13714976
This is the same passage but by Fagles, for the record.

>>13714991
Women were a mistake

>>13714976
>“Earlier translators are not as uncomfortable with the text as I am,” she explained to me, “and I like that I’m uncomfortable.” Part of her goal with the translation was to make readers uncomfortable too — with the fact that Odysseus owns slaves, and with the inequities in his marriage to Penelope. Making these aspects of the poem visible, rather than glossing over them, “makes it a more interesting text,” she said.

>>13714976
>Their boats can fly like wings or quick as thoughts.

>>13715059
>They know their ships go very fast

>>13714411
IT MEANS SHE CAN BITE down on your cock, real hard

>>13714867
Jesus. Women destroyed.

>>13715069
>Mr. Foreigner

>>13715079
>But you must walk in silence.

>Poseidon gave them this gift.

>>13714908
Shakespeare was a man, but his black maid wrote all of his shit

>>13714991
Th-that can't be a real tweet.

This year there will be two Nobel laureates in literature.

Who's gonna get it /lit/?

>>13714991

>>13715120
It's his year and that's all that matters

>>13715021
>>13714991
So what's the greek?

>>13715120
Is it me? Can I have one?

>>13714273
>Lattimore for a great close translation capturing the power and ferocity of the text
>Fagles for ease, clarity, and speed
>Pope for a wonderful interpretation by a fantastic poet

Nothing else is necessary.

>>13715214
Probably a load of bollocks.

Don't blame women. Emily Wilson's Odyssey may suck, but Caroline Alexander's Iliad is excellent. Came out around the same time, and it's very faithful. Alexander said her mantra while translating was "Trust Homer."

>>13715273
>Caroline Alexander
She is very good.

>>13714273
>Boats: the book

>>13715232
You forgot Chad Mandelbaum

They already did

>>13715071
moar

>>13714273
Let's compare her version with another iambic pentameter translation.

>Wilson's Odyssey

Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home.

>Mandelbaum's Odyssey

Muse, tell me of the man of many wiles,
the man who wandered many paths of exile
after he sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.
He saw the cities—mapped the minds—of many;
and on the sea, his spirit suffered every
adversity—to keep his life intact,
to bring his comrades back. In that last task,
he will was firm and fast, and yet he failed:
he could not save his comrades. Fools, they foiled
themselves: they ate the oxen of the Sun,
the herd of Hélios Hypérion;
the lord of light requited their transgression—
he took away the day of their return.

>>13715394
She sounds awful lmao

>>13714273
I enjoy the butthurt it causes here. In fact I love it.

>>13714976
Is this fucking real? I want to throw up

>>13715021
this is so much worse than wilson's.

>>13715200
literally what has he written to earn it?

>>13714976
We're all immigrants, sweetie

She's not bad thigh I prefer other translations

>>13715394
Mandelbaum's reads like pure shit, you fools.

>>13715755
what's your preferred translation?

>>13714397
Needs to be updated to replace "foreveralone" with "incel"

>>13714273
https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/a-coat-of-varnish/

>>13715759
this gets memed too much, but I mean it unironically: the original. all english translations fail to capture the original spirit and nuances of it in some fundamental, non-negligible way. it makes no sense to shit on wilson's interpretation just because she's a woman or because she chose to translate it politically (it's already a fucking political text), when all other english translations are inherently compromised in the first place by virtue of being translations.

>>13714425
>>The Oxford commentary mostly discusses the mechanics of hanging 12 women on 1 rope.

>>13714273
"Tell me muse about a complicated man."

>>13714996
women with cats smell weird

>>13715792
Wow. I feel kind of bad now. I think she literally might not understand literature.

>>13714870
>1 feminist translation is not going to change anything
Yes it is. Wilson's full translation is already in the Norton Anthology of World Literature and it's starting to become the standard in uni lit courses. I also have to read it for my class, but luckily, that class discussion will only be for one day, but still this sucks.

>>13714273
My bases 80 year old lady classics professor spent 15 minutes explaining how shit this translation was and how if we are going to read a translation we should be reading Lattimore, but of course, in her words, if you’re serious about any world literature you need to work towards reading it in the original language as soon as possible

>i have an mfa, I'm a writer!
Trash

>>13714959
> the clone theory
what? lmao

>>13715902
Holy shit, find something real to complain about dumbass.

>>13714273

>>13715999
see >>13714397

>translation good because woman

>>13716025
shut the fuck up.

>>13715273
I was nervous with Alexander's translation, because she was giving these rather shit interviews at the time about how the Iliad has something to teach us RE: toxic masculinity and so on, and it seemed like she doesn't understand the poem she translated, but the translation itself was very solid.

Unlike fucking Wilson's.

>>13716057
Find a husband

>>13715755
You're supposed to read it aloud and ham up the internal rhyme structure, you absolute pleb

>>13714379
no, whores and called whores in the original. though agreeably the word doesn't capture the exact sense.

>>13716057
Why do women shake with rage and emotion without a strong man to steady them?

>>13715902
No respectable Historian would refer to her translation if it's bad and messing with History. I've known professors who fucking loathe feminist translations and don't give a fuck and say it quite openly and guess what? They are the best. Now go to bed.

>>13715314
>>13715394
Oh you're serious, that's a real dude.

>>13715794
How long until I can enjoy it to some degree if I start from zero?

>>13716136

Plato knew

>>13716020

>>13716020
Why is this allowed?

>>13715394
>>13714976
>someone paid for this

>>13716020

>>13715394
she sounds like she's a teenage girl or something

>>13714306
Remember when Diomede bullied Aphrodite after cutting her hand and she ran away crying? This makes women seethe even though Aphrodite is supposed to be the prissy goddess while Athena is the only acceptable type of female character, instead of being a pair of contrasts.

>>13716106
>>13716136
worthless posts. you incel faggots are unironically why no one wants to associate with the classics anymore.

>>13716108
it still reads like fucking shit.

>>13716218
if you devote a couple of hours of serious, disciplined study once a day every day, within three months.

Katie’s got a new vid time to fap

https://youtu.be/wn2q9_89XPk

>>13716020

>>13715792
>at shockingly few points does one ever need to stop and think. There are no hard parts; no difficult lines or obscure notions; no aesthetic arrest either; very little that jumps out as unusual or different

>>13716407
exceptionally cringe poster

>>13717061
excpetionally weak (nonexistent) argument.

>>13717102
They will never give you a substantive argument. You're posting in an echo chamber for future mass shooters.

>>13716020
> problematic

> implying everyone women wouldn't sleep with Odyssey

what the fuck is this

>>13717102
Just like your ovaries.

>>13717121
I'm a man, loser.

>>13717293
That's even more pathetic.

>>13717293
Mantits or gtfo

>I wonder if I should read this woman author. Maybe it's time to change my mind about woman authors. This thread will surely convince me that women have something worthwhile to say.

>"incel cringe incel incel you're an incel don't like woman authors? incel. delete your twitter incel"

Think I'll go read some Fitzgerald instead.

>>13717309
no, it's much more pathetic to be so insecure about yourself that you have to subsribe to ideology that defines half of the fucking human population as inferior for no valid reason whatsoever.

>>13717321
>ctrl+f
"incel" appears 8 times in this thread not counting this post; one was a sexist faggot complaining about women calling sexists incels, one was me calling sexists incels, and the other six were all in your post, fucking idiot.

>>13717346
Fuck, you're right. The joke I was making, when taken literally and not interpreted for the actual thing it was satirizing in subtext, doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Only one terrible woman poster resorted to calling anyone who disagrees with her a virgin in this thread.

From this day forward, I won't hold to the position which is the humorlessly literal reading of a joke I was making, completely unrelated to said position, which I never held, because I was making a joke. Thank you for rebuking me. I learned a lot.

>one was me calling sexists incels
Here's the actual point being satirized by the joke, in case you were wondering. I know it's unrelated to the humorless, tone-deaf, literal reading of the joke you chose to take up instead, but just as an aside!

>>13715091
Is this a fact?

>>13717356
I got your 'joke' and it was shit, the point is what you claimed was happening in this thread isn't fucking happening. there are clearly several more of the sort of pathetic reactionary misogyny apologists whose defense you're retardedly coming to than there are people calling them out as the fucking idiots they are.

>>13717365
WE

>>13717356
>it's unrelated to the humorless, tone-deaf, literal reading of the joke
she should take up translating Homeric epic

Confirmed that The Iliad is the true Chad's preferred work from "Homer"

>>13714273
So does this translation just change all mention of whores into "sexual entrepreneurs" or something?

>>13717379
>scarequoting """"JOKE""" as if to say "Your so-called JOKE, if that's what it really WAS..."

A joke remains a joke even if it's a bad one. Scarequoting is incorrectly used here.

Women do this too often. It comes across as petulant, not condescending. When you're being dismissive of someone, you want to seem above them, not like you're emotionally lashing out at them. Subtle things like this out you as a female poster, which makes others lose respect for you pretty much immediately. Are you on your period?

>the point is what you claimed was happening in this thread isn't fucking happening
But you just said "I got your joke." You clearly didn't get the joke, or the post jokingly explaining how a joke works, if you're.. repeating the thing that the explanation just explained to you. So now you apparently didn't get the joke, you didn't get the explanation, but you're claiming to have gotten both. You really are a woman. I hope you're trolling.

>>13717329

DAILY REMINDER
Homer was a lesbian woman

>>13717587
Did he have big jugs?

>>13715394
To me it seems like Wilsons version omits many of the nuances of the text, it reads more like a contemporary novel than the original poetic verse

>>13714976
grexit

>>13715926
Based old granny has the lattimore version i also have the lattimore version

Is she unhinged?

>>13714976
>>13714991
neither of these are actually cringe. you're all reading too much into this
>>13715730
also this

>>13715792
>>13717606
>her poem is shorter than the original by a third.

>In almost every line some kind of nuance is shed. In many ways, her work should be counted as an abridgement of the Odyssey more than a translation per se.

>I have been severe, but I wish readers to have a sense of what Wilson is actually offering: an abridgement and simplification of the Odyssey, to a degree unusual among translations.

>For casual “Book of the Month Club” type consumer of print, Wilson’s may be the finest Odyssey ever produced.

>Her work rarely invites or rewards close reading, and it suppresses countless telling details, the sort of details students must encounter to draw intelligent conclusions.

>That Wilson should for ideological reasons resist any notion of fidelity in a translation is a loss. The harm it does to her Odyssey will be obvious to anyone who knows the Greek text well.

Though he praises her verse as breezy and having "velocity," and suggests that it might make a good introductory text for high school.

>>13715792
>>13717679
>In her translator’s note, she openly proclaims that she will not translate the Homeric epithets consistently, but rather has “chosen deliberately to interpret these epithets in several different ways
>not only does she consciously sacrifice ambiguity, but she jettisons the Homeric epithet, Homer’s most conspicuous stylistic peculiarity, which she derides in her arrogant translator’s note as “a mark of writerly laziness or unwillingness to acknowledge one’s own interpretive position, and can send a reader to sleep.”

this is very sad

>When Autolycus, the grandfather of Odysseus, is praised as “who surpassed all men in stealing and swearing oaths”—a celebrated juxtaposition, which gets lengthy treatment in the Republic—Wilson apparently finds the phrase too striking, and reduces it to “telling lies and stealing.” Now of course by implication many of those oaths must have been false. But the Greek word orkos means “oath,” not lie. But stealing and lying pair easily, while stealing and swearing oaths jar a bit, and so Wilson opts for the easier, less literal version. And this too is typical of her method. She makes it easy on the reader by making all the judgements herself, eliminating ambiguity wherever she sees fit.

jesus christ

>Wilson does not accept this; and indeed goes on to mock this idea of faithfulness in general, claiming that the whole concept of a “faithful” translation is “gendered.”

wht

>>13714411
Fuck english majors.
t. english major

>>13717701
Laertes, Odysseus’s father, exclaims (Wilson’s translation), “Ah, gods! A happy day for me! My son and grandson are arguing about how tough they are!”

This is a famous line, but here it would hardly seem to merit its fame—who cares about people “arguing about how tough they are”? The word here translated as “tough” just happens to be one of the central words of Hellenic thought: arete, “virtue” or “excellence,” that subject of so many subsequent philosophy lectures—whose learnability or unlearnability Plato made the subject of inquiry, and which Aristotle defined as a mean between two vices. The word can be used to mean something like “bravery,” but it is wildly broader and richer than “how tough one is” (there is a queen named Arete in the poem, but Wilson refrains from translating her as “Queen Tough”). The line was quoted over and over again in later days because it was considered the height of happiness for a man to have a son and grandson competing with each other to possess virtue or true excellence. This Wilson suppresses, as a thing irrelevant to contemporary idiom—“toughness” will have to serve in its place.

>>13717771
Many a reader has questioned how seriously we are to take the tales of Odysseus’s wanderings—of men turned to pigs and one-eyed giants—when in fact much of the rest of the poem (though hardly all) is fairly realistic. Wilson solves this problem for the reader by introducing the tale of his wanderings in the following way: “wily Odysseus, the lord of lies, answered.” “Lord of lies” is Wilson’s insertion, not reflected in the text, though presumably she is arguing that it is implied in the word polumetis, the most commonly used epithet for Odysseus, whose meaning “wily” or “of many devices” is already in her translation of the line. And while lying is well within the reach of a wily person, there still are some shades of nuance between “wiles” and “lies.”

>>13714299
is there no end to the green brothers?

>>13717779
>Giving Odysseus an epithet that is usually reserved in Western literature for Satan

>>13716407

What relevance does wanting or not wanting to associate with classics have to the issue at hand?

>>13717293

Defending women on Philosophical grounds is more, not less, absurd than defending them on sentimental ones.

>>13715755
Not wrong.
>>13716108
>You're supposed to read it aloud and ham up
Wow, delusions.

Wilson also lapses into bizarre circumlocutions around the story of the Cyclops. Homer describes Polyphemus, who eats six of Odysseus’s men raw, as “athemistos”—literally something like “without a sense of divine right or wrong,” but “lawless” usually does the job in English. Lack of respect for themis, true right and wrong, is posited by Homer’s contemporary Hesiod as the cause of all human evil. Wilson, however, decides in her introduction that the story of the Cyclops is really a story about colonialism (“the Polyphemus episode seems to meditate uneasily on the processes of colonization”), and hence it is her duty to resist any tendency to dehumanize the sixty-foot-tall, one-eyed, flesh-eating son of the sea-god. She translates athemistos as “maverick,” an offense not only against sensibility, but also against the aesthetics of her poem—the word leaps off the page, wildly inappropriate to Wilson’s typical register. Needless to say I just about fell over laughing. And huperphialos, which she is happy to render “insolent” and “arrogant” when it comes to the suitors, she changes to “highminded” for Polyphemus. The sight of drunk Polyphemus vomiting up wine and chunks of human flesh in his cave was not enough to get Wilson to shy away from calling him “highminded.” I suppose ideology is not dead. She also uses the odd circumlocution “the Cyclopic people” for the Greek plural Cyclopes, which also jars. The shame of all this is that it subverts her own thesis: she claims the passage has some relevance to colonization. It’s much easier for a student to see the resonance between this episode and Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the Law” if athemistos is translated “lawless.” But as I have said, it is very hard to do any kind of close reading of Homer using Wilson’s translation alone. It simply is not faithful enough.

>>13717701
>>13717771
>>13717779

>>13714302
>Fifty Shades of Grey
>514 pages
urm sweetie

>>13716314
That's the Iliad.

>>13715738
If Bob Dylan can receive a Nobel prize for literature, then anyone can do it.

>>13718007
>She translates athemistos as “maverick,”
I don't think that's quite the crime you think it is, but I would suggest that maverick is closer to lawless than maverick is to athemistos, so we maybe have some evidence there of working from other translations.

>>13714879
>reading The Odissey
>understanding The Odissey as a unified text
>not hearing it directly from the local poet as a barely-coherent assembly of stories he half remembers about a faggot who won't stop crying about muh Ithaca

>>13714273
5/10 would bang

>>13714976
>with twinkling eyes the goddess answered, "Mr. Foreigner,

>>13718042
kek

>>13714273
No one is forcing you to read it. You do not own Homer.

>>13718042
Has there ever been an effort to present either the Iliad or the Odyssey in its entirety on a stage, instruments and all?

>>13715214

>>13714273
Personally, I enjoy Arthur C. Clarke's translation.

>Odyssey
>cover features Minoan friezes
Fuck's sake

>>13718669
But can't you see that it's three strong, empowered γῠναῖkες who don't need no ἡμίθεος?

>>13718703
>>13718669
They’re supposed to be some of the babes Odysseus bangs, you twinks.

>>13715730
What the fuck? This one actually tries to convey what's actually written rather than alter it for whatever retarded reason

>>13718717
Sekhem?

>>13717606
There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll never get the true poetry of the text unless you read the original text.

>>13718002
A thinking man’s incel is still a fucking incel.

>>13718027
This didn’t answer the question.

>>13715232
Fitzgerald > Fagles and Lattimore

>>13714425
>The Oxford commentary mostly discusses the mechanics of hanging 12 women on 1 rope.

>>13714273
Cringe

>>13714411
She’s unironically correct and should take the Telemachuspill

>>13716020
This is why soibois should never be taught literature

>>13715394
>when a woman gets out of the kitchen

>>13718651
If the translation beneath is true to the Greek then I believe that is the only way this book ought to be published

>>13719274
Very problematic post.

>>13719274
Umm you know that misogyny doesn't belong in the 21st century, right?

>>13714867

>>13719274
There is no such thing as a translation being true to the original.

>>13715394
both of these suck lol

>>13717540
It gets rid of them because the word is legitimately not in the Greek text.

>>13719625

Stripping the Greek of its historical accretions is dangerous work since Greek words have so many implied meanings. Strip them of everything and you are left with something bare and sterile.

>>13719646

Are you replying to the right post?

When Fagles uses a word like whore or slut in his text, he's not translating a Greek word that means whore or slut. Usually, he's taking it as implied by the mood of the text, but it's not something being translated. Wilson's shit at an awful lot, but she's correct on that.

>>13714273
Do women honestly not see how bad this book makes them look? That the version for women is patently dumbed down from even the most pedestrian translations?

>>13719802
>he's not translating a Greek word that means whore or slut

Greek words mean a lot of things though. The word for man (ᾰ̓νήρ) is also the word for husband. When you say flute-girl (αὐλητρίς), you also mean prostitute. Many of these added meanings go way back. You can't distill words down to a single concept and demand that every added intimation be cast aside as later literary invention.

>>13719950
αὐλητρίς doesn't "also mean" prostitute, just because they were sometimes also used for sexual favors. That's like arguing that 'cucumber' is correctly translated into some other language's equivalent of 'dildo' just because people sometimes use it as a dildo. The word refers to people who perform on the flute, and, as it so happens, they used to fuck said people. What, are you gonna argue that παῖς is properly translated by 'sex-boy' because they used to fuck their thighs?

>>13719981
>What, are you gonna argue that παῖς is properly translated by 'sex-boy' because they used to fuck their thighs?

It would depend on the context of course, but I think that would be a perfectly valid translation should the surrounding text support it.

>>13719981
>>13719802
You are a good poster and have expressed this problem of translating ancient Greek really well. It's nice to see people that actually know shit posting.

>Odysseus, the lord of lies
>highminded Polyphemus
Why would you spend four years getting a degree in classics if you hate it?

>>13719550
a retard.

>>13719274
a reasonable man.

>>13719876
it's not "the version for women", it's a translation by a woman scholar, but if that distinction is mysterious to you then you're probably the kind of person for whom anything a woman does will "make women look bad".

>>13720221
what about this implies "hatred" of the classics? calling odysseus a liar is not a sign of hatred, it's a sign of having read and understood the text.

>>13714463
So you are not the rimjob kinda person?

y..you're just scared of powerful women in academia and politics!1!!

Yeah, I am actually. Just like how I'm scared of a BABY driving me around in a car.

>>13720975
odysseus bad

>>13720975
read the thread

>>13716020
Kill that little faggot

>>13715794
Why wouldn't I choose to shit on it for being political lmao.

"here is me injecting my politics into someone elses writing but NO NO NO, YOU CAN'T DISLIKE IT"

>>13716020

>>13721008
wow. get back to me when you grow out of the idea that being an uncritical fanboy of the title character is the only way to appraise the text.

>>13721014
I did. Your point?

>>13721021
completely ignored the point that the original text is already political. bringing that into account is not a fault of the translator, in fact its much better to do so than to ignore the nuances like most (white, male) translators have done historically. all translations will "inject" someone's particular spin on a text, and a good translator will at least be transparent about that.
I've already alluded to this before ITT, but if what you want is to read the Odyssey without taking in someone else's spin, you need to read the original text.

>>13721064
>I did
You clearly didn't

i like how she triggers chantards.

bunch of losers

>>13721072
so you don't have a point.

>>13721083
>I like bad literature
Well ok, I guess.
>>13721021
>For defense she offers the platitude “my translation is, like all translations, an entirely different text from the original poem.”
>I will pass on to Ms. Wilson a bit of personal advice: that if she feels this way, translation may be the wrong line of work for her.
>If Wilson desires to be a primary cultural figure, she will need to write her own material, and leave Homer out of it.

>>13721094
what makes you think you're a reliable judge of what constitutes "bad" literature anyway

>>13717356
Unironically an exquisite post, I look forward to reading the idiotic, tonally pendulous response from the poster you thrashed.

>>13717379
Absolutely hilarious, what a faggot.

>>13721154
you have abysmally low standards for "exquisite" content.

>>13715394
>He failed to keep them safe
vs
>In that last task,
he will was firm and fast, and yet he failed
you can just tell she hates her dad.

>>13717679
so that review is basically a long version of what OP said?

>>13721200
>>In that last task,
>he will was firm and fast, and yet he failed
how can anyone argue that this doesn't read like shit.

>>13717679
>Her work rarely invites or rewards close reading,
anyone who close reads a translation is a miserable fool.

>>13718007
>She also uses the odd circumlocution “the Cyclopic people” for the Greek plural Cyclopes

>>13721251
I'd say Wilson's compares favourably to Mandelbaum's on that passage. >>13715394
Is like peak shitty Mandelbaum though, awkward wording just to maintain the fucking meter for its own sake.

Also I'd say Wilson is not misinterpreting the text there, Odysseus is a trickster and to some degree an anti-hero, he's no superman.

>>13721283
>Odysseus is a trickster and to some degree an anti-hero, he's no superman.
this is completely true.

>>13714273
We all agree Wilson is bad but what about Fagles vs. Lattimore?

>>13721251
it does read like shit, i'm just pointing out how clear it is that the two translators are trying to portray the line in very different lights.

>>13721299
what about pope?

>>13718007
>also uses the odd circumlocution “the Cyclopic people” for the Greek plural Cyclopes

Kuklopes anthropoi appears in the Greek

>>13721307
What about him?

>>13721324
Actually, it might only be kuklopes andres that appears

>>13721004
this desu

>>13721004
wow this is actually the most retarded thing I've read on this board.

>>13721639
cope

>>13714976
kill all white women desu

>>13721004
>Just like how I'm scared of a BABY driving me around in a car.

>>13718007
Pls tell me you have expanded on these observations somewhere else, holy shit, its an interesting critique

>>13715046
>claiming to care about fictional slaves 3000+ years ago
So easy to tell when a person grew up with life set on easy mode

>>13715394
here are some more:

>fitzgerald

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy. He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all—
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the sun,
and he who moves all day through heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.

>lattimore

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.
Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of,
many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea,
struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.
Even so he could not save his companions, hard though
he strove to; they were destroyed by their own wild recklessness,
fools, who devoured the oxen of Helios, the Sun God,
and he took away the day of their homecoming. From some point
here, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak, and begin our story.

>fagles

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bringing his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will—sing for our time too.

which one do you all prefer?

>>13722665
>lattimore
lattimore

>>13722665
Fagles for me.

>>13722665
For me, its Fagles

I recommend Pope. No translation will give you Homer's poetry, so you might as well read Pope's.

>>13714390
Postmodernists don't care about history. It isn't entirely uncommon to find them suggesting that history itself - the act of maintaining a record of events and learning about it - is oppressive, and argue that we should divest entirely from the process of historical learning. When they aren't doing that, they're trying to argue that the entirety of it is wrong because of who presented it to us and/or trying to change it outright by removing or remaking things we already know.

If it was a simple as recognizing that secondary sources are fucking useless, that'd be fine. Ironically, though, these idiots are suggesting that the history of white men arguing that women and darkies couldn't tell history correctly should be addressed by saying that white men can't tell history correctly and replacing it with versions that are biased towards women and darkies.
Because the solution is obviously to be the same kind of jackass, but in the opposite direction.

>>13720975
Anon looked to be pointing to how Wilson added an epithet not present in the Greek to criticize Odysseus, while intentionally using the most positive possible translation of the word hubris to make Polyphemus look better. But also, as pointed out in the excerpts from that critical review above, there's a difference between using wiles, which sometimes means using lies, and just being a liar.

That doesn't look like any good kind of understanding of the text.

>>13721064
>completely ignored the point that the original text is already political. bringing that into account is not a fault of the translator, in fact its much better to do so than to ignore the nuances like most (white, male) translators have done historically. all translations will "inject" someone's particular spin on a text, and a good translator will at least be transparent about that.
>I've already alluded to this before ITT, but if what you want is to read the Odyssey without taking in someone else's spin, you need to read the original text.
Sure, but there's a difference between, say, acknowledging what's political in the text, and inserting bullshit about colonialism in the cyclops episode. And it's funny, because, arguably, there is something about colonialism in Homer. But it's in the fucking Iliad, and has to do with the fucking siege of Troy.

>>13714273

>>13721299
Fagles can be fun to read, but Lattimore is infinitely more accurate, and, unlike Fagles, his lines don't wander everywhere such that you can't even consistently check them against the Greek.

>>13722318
It's an excerpt from https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/a-coat-of-varnish/ which was posted earlier in the thread.

>>13715999
If you don't understand why hijacking history and the educational institutions is doomsday level of shit your too dumb for /lit/ and probably even to dumb for /pol/ and thats not a good thing

>>13717293
Ah, a trans. I've heard of your kind.

>>13718007
holy shit, this absolutely smacks of the particular brand insecurity typical to an old white male academic-type furiously threatened by the advancement of a new, insightful woman in his field. he's shaking in his goddamn boots, and he makes it so transparent it's utterly pathetic.

>>13719981
Fuck dude, it's pretty obvious Homer is using some flowery language here. ἑταίρα doesn't mean cumdump either, but you know that's what he means when he uses it.

>>13722665
Lattimore's is the most faithful to the original text and there's really not much else that matters.

>>13722803
your entire post is an embittered strawman against "postmodernists" when I frankly have no clue who or what you're talking about. get some sense dude.

>>13722805
There is nothing to gain from clutching one's pearls over someone calling Odysseus a liar aside from the ridiculous notion that he must be portrayed as some sort of flawless heroic archetype; that's not true to the text at all. He's just a man, and sometimes he uses exceptional wiles and sometimes he just outright lies and sometimes he does both at the same, it's ridiculous to get hung up on someone pointing that out.

>>13714411
I got a gf, gave really lousies bj's, my cock use to end in pain and she never got better
Maybe she's referencing such kind of women

>>13723587
it's not "obvious" at all, you mental teenager.

>>13723143
that's literally not happening. all you're doing is signaling to others how threatened and insecure you feel, how frightened of emily wilson for god knows what trumped-up reason.

>>13723207
ah, a retard. likewise.

>>13723615
Yeah, sorry. I meant it was obvious to everyone who isn't a turbo brainlet.

>>13723574
>...old white male...
Opinion discarded.

>>13723623
Literally not what the Liddell-Scott Ancient Greek lexicon says, where it *just means flute-girl*.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=au%29lhtri%2Fs&la=greek&can=au%29lhtri%2Fs0#lexicon

All shitposting and arguing aside, can we all take a moment to share in some mirth over the fact that a WOMAN FINALLY TRANSLATED THE ODYSSEY!!! MY GOD!!! IT'S A CULTURAL REVOLUTION!!!! and it was fucking terrible? Obviously it's terrible. It's an embarrassment. And the pathetic yellow press flocked to praise it as practically better than Homer's original because a vagina happened to have written it. Let's just take a minute to really enjoy how funny that is.

It reveals so many things. First, it reveals that all these Yale and Oxford graduate "journalists" are complete and utter fucking retards. Probably half of them are simply so stupid and tasteless that they really do think it's a good rendition of Homer. That's despite them all having expensive educations from ritzy liberal arts colleges. Their parents probably dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on those educations, literally. Not just on their tuition either, but on subsidizing their whole masturbatory puerile "I'm a junior intellectual, I'm taking Classics 101 and blogging about counter-cultural activism" hipster lifestyles while they roleplayed, to themselves as much to their parents, that they were becoming well-cultured. All that money was worthless and accomplished nothing. And the other half of the journalists are simply shills, who will say anything they're paid to say or that their boss or ideology dictates. Again, likely after getting a "humanistic" education for a significant fraction of a million dollars.

Then think of the people who read these op-eds. First of all, they don't read Homer. They probably don't even know who Homer is or why all this would matter in the first place, even if it WEREN'T all astroturf yellow journalism. And now a few of them might force themselves to read a literally childlike, literally bowdlerized edition of Homer because the rich intelligentsia told them to. The rich intelligentsia who also doesn't know how to read Homer.

I'm genuinely happy we all get to experience this hell together.

>>13723587
Homer doesn't have to use flowery language when he uses αὐλητρίς, because he's pretty explicit that the flute-girls are sleeping with the suitors. The entire point is that the female servants whose job is to entertain the court are busier entertaining the suitors.

And it's fine that ἑταίρα means courtesan or sexual companion, because that meaning accrued to the word by euphemism, whereas αὐλητρίς is still fucking "flute-girl" and not "slut". That flute-girls may be sluts is different then whether that's a proper translation of the word. Christ, no one's arguing that words don't mean a bunch of things, but when flute-girls are described as being sexual entertainers, *they're described as being sexual entertainers*.

>>13723765
Wew it's almost like an excessively literal translation doesn't correctly convey the proper contextual meaning of a word.

>>13723574
Give me one instance of her being insightful without>>13723574
annihilating whichever passage she is writing

>>13723808
>>13723623
Oh look, an anon who thinks wiktionary trumps the Tufts Perseus library.

>>13723808
It's a good thing I didn't argue that point then, isn't it?

>>13723808
uhh, you kinda have to click on those LSJ or Middle Liddell links to see the lexical entries

>>13723849
That second image is literally taken from the Tufts Perseus Library lmao

>>13723827
But in one way her translation is remarkably faithful, and the result is very striking. She insists on calling all the slaves mentioned in the poem “slaves”—gone are terms like “servants” or “handmaids.” Instantly you see just how many there are in the poem: even minor Greek principalities before the dawn of history were based on slave labor. Even our English word family, considered by some the fundamental unit of civilization, means firstly a collection of slaves (famuli in Latin). A translator’s eschewal of euphemism gives the reader new eyes. And Laertes’s decision to forswear his cushy life as a master, leave Ithaca, and live like a slave in the country also stands out as remarkable, though Homer does no more than mention the fact of it. Here Wilson shows the virtue of faithful translation: the closer one draws to Homer’s poem, the more remarkable and interesting it seems.

>>13723858
Which (for reasons I cannot fathom) was described as "an excessively literal translation", it's an anon going "wookee wookee, wiktionary say this! Acksewel wespected sources BAD too WITERAL!".

Not only is that not even true, it's also a fucking dictionary.

>>13723850
>It's a good thing I didn't argue that point
You don't even have a point. You're just upset that flute girl can be correctly translated as whore.

>>13723876
According to *WIKTIONARY*

>>13723885
And a fuck load of translators*

>>13723889
>why yes I am a translationist of the most ancient Greckos. This is Sparta afterall.

>>13723898
*dabs on your flute girl*

>>13723901
"I'll have none of that now."

>>13714299
yeah fleetwood mac went to shit when he left

>>13722803
>muh postmodernist bogeyman

>>13714955
Kek

>>13716020

>>13714425
Scholars used to be based, more so than the general population even.
How did academia turn into ground zero for touchy feelings and negative testosterone levels? Inb4 joos.

>>13723595
>>13723953
He's right tho.

>>13716407
have kids

>>13720960
>>13721639
>>13721083
>>13723574
>>13723850
>>13723953
Dilate

>>13723953
Yeah, most complaints about post-modernism, are actually just complaints about modernism who don't understand what modernism is. But, they attack post-modernism, because modernism is their world-view; if they attacked modernism without a supporting ideology, they would fall into post-modernism. By attacking post-modernism, they maintain the illusion of a conservative modernism, as though such a thing could ever exist.

>>13723849
>>13723808
>>13723855
How do none of you understand euphemisms?

>>13724866
Why are you begging the question?

>>13718651
this is so much better lmao

>>13724631
If this that version that snuck in femnist snark and changed/omitted key parts of the characters to make it fit into the contemporary narrative. I agree with you. If not fuck off.

This is why we need islam. I want to whip that witch with a leather belt.

>Translation
Yeah right.

Everyone that can't read the classics in greek deserves that feminised translation are the only ones that are available. Filthy.

>>13724874
OP loves playing the flute, but I'm sure you prefer the oboe.

>>13721004
That's actually the best analogy I've found when it comes to women in position of power and intellectual influence. Good job anon.

>>13723574
>HE'S LITERALLY SHAKING RN
you're literally projecting
>>13723603
All this arguing from bad faith, all this strawmanning, all just to defend a critically panned translation because it was written by a womyn

>>13725825
>All this arguing from bad faith
I disagree. You are arguing from bad faith. >>13720221 is a little hyperbolic, little melodramatic. Clutching at pearls is fair.

>>13723603
There's no being butthurt over Odysseus not being portrayed as flawless, he's obviously not, and his actions get his men killed a lot of the time. But, again, there's a difference between being a trickster and a mere liar. If anything, Wilson's being a pearl-clutcher by having to forcefully make him look as grotesque as possible for the moral leanings of her and her modern audience, whereas the Greeks, while looked at him as someone who could sometimes be resourceful with his wiles, and sometimes untrustworthy and hubristic. But Wilson doesn't bother acknowledging the former, while she overemphasizes the latter.

>>13723768
this post is absolutely dripping with insecure mediocrity.

>>13725825
>a critically panned translation
blatantly incorrect.

>>13725908
>as grotesque as possible
calling him a liar isn't doing this. everyone lies.

>>13724841
>>13723859
these are excellent posts and no one will attempt to argue them because they're all blown the fuck out.

>>13726330
The latter is from a critical review that shits on her for translating hubris as highminded, the plural of cyclops as cyclopic people, arete as tough, and so on. Look at how that excerpt starts: "But in one way her translation is remarkably faithful", i.e., there are ways in which it's not.

>>13726324
>calling him a liar isn't doing this. everyone lies.
From the review excepted all over the thread:

"When Autolycus, the grandfather of Odysseus, is praised as “who surpassed all men in stealing and swearing oaths”—a celebrated juxtaposition, which gets lengthy treatment in the Republic—Wilson apparently finds the phrase too striking, and reduces it to “telling lies and stealing.” Now of course by implication many of those oaths must have been false. But the Greek word orkosmeans “oath,” not lie. But stealing and lying pair easily, while stealing and swearing oaths jar a bit, and so Wilson opts for the easier, less literal version. And this too is typical of her method. She makes it easy on the reader by making all the judgements herself, eliminating ambiguity wherever she sees fit.

Many a reader has questioned how seriously we are to take the tales of Odysseus’s wanderings—of men turned to pigs and one-eyed giants—when in fact much of the rest of the poem (though hardly all) is fairly realistic. Wilson solves this problem for the reader by introducing the tale of his wanderings in the following way: “wily Odysseus, the lord of lies, answered.” “Lord of lies” is Wilson’s insertion, not reflected in the text, though presumably she is arguing that it is implied in the word polumetis, the most commonly used epithet for Odysseus, whose meaning “wily” or “of many devices” is already in her translation of the line. And while lying is well within the reach of a wily person, there still are some shades of nuance between “wiles” and “lies.”"

Considering that she translates athemistos as maverick, and hubris as highminded, both for the cyclops, the point is that she's certainly translating with a moralising tone.

>>13726508
>The latter is from a critical review that shits on her for translating hubris as highminded, the plural of cyclops as cyclopic people, arete as tough, and so on. Look at how that excerpt starts: "But in one way her translation is remarkably faithful", i.e., there are ways in which it's not.
It doesn't shit on her, it praises her mostly, and then mildly criticises her.

>>13726516
Genius, said Goethe, reveals itself under conditions of constraint; great minds gather strength from limitation, be it the keys of a well-tempered clavier or the interlocking rhymes of terza rima. And genius is certainly one of the first words that comes to mind when reading Emily Wilson’s clean-lined, compulsively readable translation of the Odyssey, one of the most interesting versions of the epic ever produced in English.

Wilson’s work is notable for its poetic constraints. As long as there is a Google, her name will now be linked with the number 12110: she has limited herself to 12110 verses in her translation, because there are 12110 verses in the original; and while Wilson blends lines here and there, in general this is a line-by-line translation. As if this were not constraint enough, Wilson’s version is in tight iambic pentameter, and while she allows herself some lines of eleven or even twelve syllables, and the occasional trochee (especially in the first foot, in keeping with the best English custom), it is the most rigorously iambic translation in a century. And more than that—it is one of the very best verse translations ever completed in English—of any book. It has surely been a long time since we have had a poet so entirely comfortable with iambic pentameter to produce meter so flawless an English speaker would hardly even notice he was speaking in verse:

No no, my lord! Please do not make me go!
Let me stay here! You cannot bring them back,
and you will not return here if you try.
Hurry, we must escape with these men here!
We have a chance to save our lives!

Wilson goes on in verse like this for 12110 lines, all of it elegant, all of it so readable you find yourself sailing from one book to another. Here Odysseus’s men arrive at the house of Circe:

They shouted out to her. She came at once,
opened the shining doors, and asked them in.
So thinking nothing of it, in they went.
Eurylochus alone remained outside,
suspecting trickery. She led them in,
sat them on chairs, and blended them a potion
of barley, cheese, and golden honey, mixed
with Pramnian wine. She added potent drugs
to make them totally forget their home.
They took and drank the mixture. Then she struck them,
using her magic wand, and penned them in
the pigsty. They were turned to pigs in body
and voice and hair; their minds remained the same.

The above passage is indicative of Wilson’s style, which remains remarkably consistent throughout the whole: simple, direct narrative; strong metrical regularity, with occasional hypermetric lines which never mar the effect; rapid motion and a feeling of complete naturalness. For any lover of traditional English verse, Wilson is the most pleasant news we have had since Robert Frost. Gone is the amorphous “six-beat line,” gone is the verse which ends when the writer decides to hit return. Frost said that poetry without meter was playing tennis without a net: Wilson reads like a Wimbledon champion.

>>13726508
>>13726516
>>13726533
That's how it opens. https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/a-coat-of-varnish/

>>13726516
It mildly praises her for readability and attempting a verse translation, and then precedes to spend the rest of the review criticizing her choices. After four paragraphs and two excerpts, we get:

"So delightful is Wilson’s verse, and so easy is it to read, that one gets through quite a number of pages before the vague sense that something is wrong begins to settle in."

"And yet in Wilson’s translation the passage seems reduced, deficient somehow, so trite as to be unnoticeable..."

"The idea is there, but all the lingering emphasis in the original has been smoothed away. This, too, unfortunately, is typical of the whole. I have said that Wilson’s translation reads easily, and it does, like a modern novel: at shockingly few points does one ever need to stop and think. There are no hard parts; no difficult lines or obscure notions; no aesthetic arrest either; very little that jumps out as unusual or different. Wilson has set out, as she openly confesses, to produce an Odyssey in a “contemporary Anglophone speech,” and this results in quite a bit of conceptual pruning."

"This is a famous line, but here it would hardly seem to merit its fame..."

"But nuance is not what Wilson does, anywhere in this translation."

"A reader can get through Wilson’s translation without ever learning by experience what a Homeric epithet is."

"The Odyssey consists of 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter, with lines between thirteen and seventeen syllables and averaging about fifteen. Wilson also has 12,110 lines, but her line averages ten syllables. And this is the reason why her work reads so much more quickly than any other version: her poem is shorter than the original by a third. This is felt everywhere, first of all as an increase in the poem’s velocity—which I appreciate—and second as a kind of stripping away of everything but the book’s plot—which I felt with increasing distress as I proceeded."

"Unfortunately, besides the constraints of space Wilson must have felt, she seems at times specifically bent on reductionistic simplification."

"One need not even be much inclined to philosophy (is there really no distinction between “evil deeds” and “criminal behavior”?) to find this kind of treatment of Telemachus shamefully simplistic. It is not justified by the Greek text."

"I have been severe, but I wish readers to have a sense of what Wilson is actually offering: an abridgement and simplification of the Odyssey, to a degree unusual among translations."

"I am less convinced of Wilson’s usefulness in universities. Her work rarely invites or rewards close reading, and it suppresses countless telling details, the sort of details students must encounter to draw intelligent conclusions."

Etc.

>>13726548
"Wilson, however, decides in her introduction that the story of the Cyclops is really a story about colonialism (“the Polyphemus episode seems to meditate uneasily on the processes of colonization”), and hence it is her duty to resist any tendency to dehumanize the sixty-foot-tall, one-eyed, flesh-eating son of the sea-god. She translates athemistos as “maverick,” an offense not only against sensibility, but also against the aesthetics of her poem—the word leaps off the page, wildly inappropriate to Wilson’s typical register. Needless to say I just about fell over laughing. And huperphialos, which she is happy to render “insolent” and “arrogant” when it comes to the suitors, she changes to “highminded” for Polyphemus. The sight of drunk Polyphemus vomiting up wine and chunks of human flesh in his cave was not enough to get Wilson to shy away from calling him “highminded.” I suppose ideology is not dead."

>>13726552
Just go for the conclusion brainlet:
All in all, Wilson’s work reminds me of a friend who painted a houseful of antique furniture a thick, beachy white. The result was airy and beautiful and utterly modern and fashionable: the interior could have been in a magazine for interior design. It was all lovely, unless you knew the beautiful, distinctive old grains of the oak, the mahogany, the cherry, and the walnut that were buried under the obscuring antiseptic modernism. Perhaps the next owner will take pleasure in stripping it all back down to the wood; but having known how much work that is, I cannot help but feel that a good coat of varnish, that would reveal the grain rather than blot it out, would have been a better choice for all involved.

Pretty positive.

>>13726572
That literally suggests the opposite. Wilson's translation is the paint put over the wood, attractive, but not as attractive as the old wood itself. The reviewer's preference is that varnish would have been used instead.

"I cannot help but feel that a good coat of varnish, that would reveal the grain rather than blot it out, would have been a better choice for all involved."

He's saying she blots it out.

>>13726584
>but not as attractive as the old wood itself.
So that's him reading it in the original fucking ancient Greek dingbat.
>>13726584
>"I cannot help but feel that a good coat of varnish, that would reveal the grain rather than blot it out, would have been a better choice for all involved."
He likes Loeb, he's a known Loeb lover. He also says that stripping it back is difficult, I'm pretty sure he's overextending his metaphor there but the point made at the start is that the choice of rhyme and meter and meaning is a matter of compromises, to really find that balance is hard.

>>13726607
>So that's him reading it in the original fucking ancient Greek dingbat.
To which he, again, says that it would've been better had she done a translation that actually brought out Homer's Greek. His entire review is a masterclass in how to criticize someone's book while not looking unhinged. All of his positives are at the very beginning and very end, and the largest part of the review, the whole middle, is substantial criticism of her aims and choices.

How do you not pick up on any of this? That her translation can be fun to read if it were treated as just a thing to read, but is terrible as a translation of Homer?

>>13726607
>>13726630
Hell, the last positive paragraph, where he says "Here Wilson shows the virtue of faithful translation: the closer one draws to Homer’s poem, the more remarkable and interesting it seems," is saying that her translation is best when it works against her complaint about the faithfulness or fidelity of the translator.

>>13726630
>How do you not pick up on any of this?
Who says anyone is not picking up on the shit sandwich? That is not an insight. However, you are overly focusing on the critical parts (which frankly are not that critical) while ignoring the very high praise.
>That her translation can be fun to read if it were treated as just a thing to read, but is terrible as a translation of Homer?
I don't like it, but it was universally praised and it's way better than Mandelbaum. That's somewhat the nature of the classics circles that reviewed it, but it's by no means a bad translation, it's fine. There is no really good translation of Homer unfortunately.

>>13726630
It's so scathing and critical that I started to feel bad for her by the end.
>possibly appropriate for high school
>Oprah Book-of-the-Month-tier
>obscuring
>antiseptic
>abridgement
>bizarre

>>13726656
What article are you reading?
Ctrl+f is not getting me matches there.

>>13726656

Every one of these is a fatal dagger stab to the gut delivered with a kindly smile.

>>13726656

>It may well be that a future generation of lovers of Shakespeare will cut their teeth on Wilson’s pentameters in their high school or even middle school classes.

>For young readers, and the casual “Book of the Month Club” type consumer of print, Wilson’s may be the finest Odyssey ever produced.

>It was all lovely, unless you knew the beautiful, distinctive old grains of the oak, the mahogany, the cherry, and the walnut that were buried under the obscuring antiseptic modernism.

>as a kind of stripping away of everything but the book’s plot—which I felt with increasing distress as I proceeded. In almost every line some kind of nuance is shed. In many ways, her work should be counted as an abridgement of the Odyssey more than a translation per se.

>lapses into bizarre circumlocutions

https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/a-coat-of-varnish/

etc.

>>13714955
i don't trust like that

>>13726650
>However, you are overly focusing on the critical parts (which frankly are not that critical) while ignoring the very high praise.
His praise is that it's one of the best verse translations of anything, and his criticisms amount to qualifying that praise by admitting it's tantamount to a beach read that has no value for close study or even as an experience of Homer's poetry.

>That's somewhat the nature of the classics circles that reviewed it, but it's by no means a bad translation, it's fine.
Actually, I agree. I don't care if people want to read Wilson's translation. Scholars have had huge hangups in the past over those by Fagles and Lombardo. But the praise it's received is often tied explicitly to the fact that the translator is a woman, which ought be beside the point (Alexander's IIiad got some attention for this as well, but to her credit, she didn't wear it anywhere near how Wilson regularly does), and it's being touted as being more accurate, both by her numerous positive reviewers, and by herself, than those of male translators (especially Fagles and Lombardo), when her translation, as a translation, clearly falls short of dozens of others, including newer ones that tend to be closer to FItzgerald or Lattimore.

>>13715394
The first version by Wilson actually strikes me as more elegant, not as coarse, since it shows stronger allegiance to the paradigm of iambic pentameter (the second version fails to adhere to it already by the second line of the excerpt you posted). Without comparing to the original greek version however, judgment can only stay incomplete

>>13720947
A retard

>>13718663
based

>>13717392
WUZ

>>13727361
KANGS

>>13727361
KANGS

>>13714411
>What better way to stop a woman's most threatening orifice, her mouth?
Muh dick

Test

>>13726638
There's another way to read that comment as biting irony. He's saying that others who were more faithful in their translations produced more remarkable and interesting translations, unlike hers which was not as faithful and therefore not as remarkable or interesting.

>>13718727
>Fagles
>actually tries to convey what's actually written
lmao, Fagles certainly is the ultimate pleb filter.

>>13716020
which one of you faggots did this?

>>13727599
This is true.

>>13727598
Not really. This is a bit of a "huh?" comment tbph.

>>13726730
>Scholars have had huge hangups in the past over those by Fagles and Lombardo. But the praise it's received is often tied explicitly to the fact that the translator is a woman, which ought be beside the point (Alexander's IIiad got some attention for this as well, but to her credit, she didn't wear it anywhere near how Wilson regularly does), and it's being touted as being more accurate, both by her numerous positive reviewers, and by herself, than those of male translators (especially Fagles and Lombardo), when her translation, as a translation, clearly falls short of dozens of others, including newer ones that tend to be closer to FItzgerald or Lattimore.
I'd say it's more that they'd praise almost anything that brings attention to classics, funding and relevancy and all that stuff that keeps and makes academic jobs is total shit rn. I'm not a massive fan of Latin Harry Potter, I can see it's usefulness to some degree but I feel it also brings its own problems, I imagine Kuhner loves that shit though, he's all over that natural Latin or whatever it's called movement. I think you're taking a step too far here too, there is a dire need for texts appropriate for middle and high schoolers, Joyce somewhat famously grew up with a kid's version of Homer, we have nothing like that anymore. Mandelbaum's was sort of meant to be like that but he fucked it up quite frankly.

I think you and a bunch of others itt are severely underestimating how shit it all is and the need for engagement etc etc.

>that has no value for close study or even as an experience of Homer's poetry.
I think you've gone a little too far, but I'm predominantly in agreement with the post.
>I used to produce similar translations of key passages in Thucydides and Plutarch and Plato for my high school students.
So he clearly doesn't feel that it has no value, every translation has its place and none is going to be like a Swiss Army knife. Or maybe there is, I mean a Swiss Army knife is more really shit at a lot of different tasks, but I digress. It works for people at a stage where they can't quite engage with the original text properly, very important work.

Are there people that genuinely believe that her being a woman had nothing to do with the praise her translation received?

>>13716020
which one of you faggots did this?>>13726656
pretty based if you ask me

>>13727626
>This is a bit of a "huh?" comment tbph.
Then you clearly didn't pick up on the veiled irony. It's clear as day, especially when he says her version is an "abridgement and simplification of the Odyssey, to a degree unusual among translations".

The reason why he put it at the end of a paragraph praising her choice of the use of slaves instead of euphemisms was him hiding it so as not to draw attention to it. It's clear from the rest of the review that he doesn't feel that her translation could be called "faithful" by any stretch of the imagination, so it makes no sense that he would use that word in a supposed reference to Wilson's work.

>>13727628
Most normies are incapable of processing that idea.

I used to think, okay, maybe normies are blind or bad at noticing things. But we all have the same cognitive equipment, right? If I point something out to them, they HAVE to notice it, right? Turns out normies can stare directly at something and not "get" it. They are also really good at being dismissive and condescending of anything they don't want to see, and anyone who is trying to show it to them.

>>13714273
Is there a mario oddyssey reference?