/lit/ - Literature

>>15738213
Homophobic POS

>>15738213
FUCKING BASED.
/OURGUY/

>The one who's native language resembles the reader's the most is preferred over the one that does not
Shock and awe

>>15738253
Absolute idiot. Borges was a native English speaker, and an Anglophile at that. You idiot.

>>15738213
>Is there a truly epic moment in The Illiad? I don't think so.

>>15738253
Borges was closer to English than to Italian. His grandmother was English and he grew up reading English classics from his father's library. He read Dante with the help of a dictionary and when asked if he could understand spoken Italian he said he wouldn't. He's also a famous Anglophile.

>>15738258
>Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish-language
Bruh

>>15738259
Is there, though? Please do quote it.

>>15738285
you know that deep down ur wrong

>>15738285
>I posted the first few lines of his Wiki article, and no, I don't know anything else about his life

"People think life is a thing. I prefer reading."
Big Daddy Cyclopes

>>15738285
>Borges's own father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam (24 February 1874 – 14 February 1938)[9] was a lawyer, and wrote the novel El caudillo in 1921. Borges Haslam was born in Entre Ríos of Spanish, Portuguese, and English descent, the son of Francisco Borges Lafinur, a colonel, and Frances Ann Haslam, an Englishwoman. Borges Haslam grew up speaking English at home.
>At age nine, Jorge Luis Borges translated Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince into Spanish.
>Jorge Luis Borges was taught at home until the age of 11, was bilingual in Spanish and English, reading Shakespeare in the latter at the age of twelve. The family lived in a large house with an English library of over one thousand volumes; Borges would later remark that "if I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library."

>>15738288
The theological implications of Zeus speech in Book 8 of the Iliad

>>15738259
He's almost correct. In The Odyssey there are, but in the Iliad there's only one. The Iliad is a psychological work about a certain number of specific individuals. The national struggles are only mentioned as background. We are presented with a big picture (war, nine years) but only shown a small glimpse of it (main characters, a few days).

One exception: the catalogue of ships. This is the great epic moment of the Iliad, because it shows the full majesty of the voyage of the Greeks towards the war.

In Dante, Virgil, Camões, Milton and The Odyssey, however, I'd say that there are many epic moments, because in each case we are shown stories which fill the entire history: they contain the history.
Meanwhile, the Iliad *is contained* in the larger history of the Trojan war.

I am using Ezra Pound's definition of the epic: "a poem that contains history".

This is not a criticism of Homer. If he wanted to explore the entire war in just one poem, it would have become faulty. Camões did this with the discovery of India and the history of the Portuguese kingdom, and his poem suffers from a lack of psychological intensity, because each psychology is too small compared to the whole historical spirit. Then exception is Inês de Castro; likewise for Dido in Virgil's Aeneid and Milton's Satan - they are exceptions too, small islands on psychology in those immense historical oceans.

In Dante and the Odyssey the psychologies are as intense as in the Iliad, but the histories are much more personal and centralized, so it becomes possible to achieve a middle path.

>>15738334
>>15738288

>>15738363
Not an epic moment, but rather a speech of kingly dominance. You can find similar speeches in theater and in some lyric poetry.

But it all depends on what you mean by epic, no? I wish I knew Borges's definition.

That passage is epic in the common sense. Not sure that it would be epic in the Poundian sense, but then again both senses are legitimate.

Who's the translator, by the way? It's good, but I've read better ones.

>>15738398
Not him but I think it's Fagles. I recognize the typeface from my Penguin Odyssey and his use of "House of Death".

>>15738421
Lattimore and Fitzgerald are the best modern ones in English (my opinion).

>>15738351
Good post.

>>15738447
I really like Fitzgerald but I have never read Lattimore. Isn't his the supposed literal and dry translation?

Never read a translation of poetry into poetry.

>>15738466
Why not? Many cool things have came out that way. Like Pope's Iliad. But outside the big epics, I don't see it working, especially with lyric poetry.

>>15738285
t. has never read Borges in his life, found out about him on /lit/

>>15738253
>who's rather than whose
That's all you need to know to discard this eggplant's opinion.

>>15738458
It's not dry. Nor is it exactly literal, but seems to be closer to the original (I read almost no Greek, so can't really tell, but it has the repetitions, the strange phrases etc.)

Boccaccio > Dante