I’ve not listened to it myself, but I’ve heard good things about the audiobook version of Emily Wilson’s translation (which I’ve read and enjoyed). Claire Danes narrates it:
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On a similar but technically different note, I have read and enjoyed Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad, and heard good things about it’s audiobook (although I have not listened to it). It won several audiobook awards or something.
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While I also have not listened to the audiobooks (I’m sensing a pattern here!), Emily Wilson’s translation is a very good one. There’s a tendency in English translations of Ancient Greek and Latin texts to try to make them sound like Shakespeare; Wilson specifically avoids that, using iambic pentameter to give it some rhythm but otherwise being very straightforward and modern in her writing. And in my opinion it makes the core meaning come across better, without the words getting in the way.
Tell me about a complicated man,
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost.
This is how she starts off the poem. Compare against a couple other translations:
Tell me, Muse, of that man of many resources, who wandered far and wide.
Very literal, to the point of getting a bit bogged down in “many resources”.
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course.
More poetic, to the point of being flowery. (I do really like Fagles’ rendering though.)
The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound
The rhyme definitely makes it feel like poetry, but it’s starting to lose the literal meaning.
So I imagine a good reader could really make Wilson’s version feel epic without losing the thrust of the work. (Maybe I should go check out the audiobook from the library…)
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Oh, and a fun fact while we’re on the topic: writing existed and was known at the time of the events of the Iliad and Odyssey, and is actually mentioned once in the text. But the poems were composed after the Bronze Age Collapse, when writing was a lost technology. The poems were maintained entirely orally for centuries until writing was rediscovered and they were finally committed to papyrus. And they were maintained so faithfully, with the help of the poetic meter, that they’re a great source for reconstructing how Greek used to sound, centuries before it was written down!
For example, in Ancient Greek, when one word ends with a vowel and the next word starts with a vowel, you sort of slur them together—a bit like how “don’t you” becomes “doncha” in English, or “going to” becomes “gonna”. But there are a handful of words where this never happens in Homer, even though later authors do combine those vowels together, like ho anax “the king”. This is because it used to be ho wanax, with a consonant in between, and the Homeric tradition remembered that those words shouldn’t be combined, even after all the W’s were lost!
Another of those places where words never combine is in to epos “the epic”, which must once, long ago, have been to wepos “the wepic”. So I think that’s how we should refer to Homer’s dialect. (For some reason none of my professors agree.)
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This is a tangent, but here is a 16-minute documentary about reconstructing and performing ancient Greek music.
From the description:
Much of what we think of as ancient Greek poetry, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, was composed to be sung, frequently with the accompaniment of musical instruments. […] UK Classicist and classical musician Armand D’Angour has spent years endeavouring to stitch the mysterious sounds of ancient Greek music back together from large and small hints left behind. In 2017, his work culminated in a unique performance at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, intended to recreate the sounds of Greek music dating as far back as Homer’s era – roughly 700 BCE.
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I’ve actually got her Iliad slowly working its way up my to-read pile, so glad to hear it’s good too!
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I appreciate Mewtawer’s will of getting serious with Iliad and Odyssey, I suggest adding the third ancient Epic, the Æneid.
Back in middle school and HS (during the 80s), I have studied cover-to-cover (a book (called chapter today) every forthnight or two) one work a year of MS (in Italy, MS is three year), paralleled with an entire book of Dante’s Commedia, rinse and repeat, with more textual and critical analysis, during early HS (in Italy HS is five year), no wonder that the avg. middle-aged Italian is literally deep-rooted into the græco-roman root of the Western Civilisation…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio
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I recently finished Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin - it was sad but equally funny, very irreverent and relatable. It’s a fictionalized version of Miaojin’s early adulthood as a lesbian in late '80s-early '90s Taiwan. I want to pick up her other NYRB novel, Last Words from Montmartre, but I keep looking over at my shelves & find myself unable to justify buying more books…
I also recently read Percival Everett’s Dr. No, which I initially found too cute but ended up getting into. Read this one over the course of one afternoon-evening, both because I had to return it in short order to the friend from whom I’d borrowed it and because the story rolls along at a good pace. The book follows a mathematics professor who studies the concept of nothing & a self-described villain who seeks to steal nothing. The writing is clever and funny and just serious enough to justify the more intense elements of its plot. Some of the themes & tone reminded me of the movie “American Fiction,” which I learned was based on another book by the same author.
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I had been reading the third book Robert Reed’s “The Great Ship” series, but… for the past few weeks I’ve been laying the book aside and reading posts here on this site (and asking questions as they arise while I create a Twine/Sugarcube sample game as a learning exercise).
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Shōgun by James Clavell.
What a journey of adventure and layer upon layer of intrigue.
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Currently reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany and Ethiopian Story by Heliodorus of Emesa.
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While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes. Set at the start of World War II, it’s a fascinating fictionalized account of the Polish resistance (although apparently very accurate).
I’ve just finished Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by George MacDonald. This is one of my excursions from the epic Journey to the West, which I can’t finish all in one go. Phantastes was a random present from a close friend, it literally just popped through my door one morning about two years ago. I found it utterly enchanting.
Published in 1858, it’s a sort of coming-of-age story about a young man who becomes lost in Fairy Land. He goes out in search of his ideal, but after many adventures and misadventures, ends up finding his humanity. I’ve been delving into pre-Tolkein fantasy and I have to say that this one really pulled me in. It’s a slow burn but well worth the effort. The book it reminded me most of was Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. It’s similarly dreamlike but ultimately much less dark. I was also reminded of Little, Big in places. Macdonald was a mentor figure to Lewis Carroll, and you can kind of see the lineage, but it also looks back to German Romanticism and traditional fairy tales. It’s an intensely visual book that is as much about setting as characters, and there are parts that would adapt well into parser fiction. If I had one criticism, it would be that the central character is something of an AFGNCAAP. He’s thrust into his adventures before we get a chance to learn who he was before, and he isn’t fleshed out much afterwards.The setting, however, is compelling. It takes a little while to get into, but I recommend it to anyone who fancies an unhurried wander through a Victorian fantasy world.
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Oh, neat. I’ve read The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel, and also At the Back of the North Wind, but those are all significantly later and I’ve never gotten around to Phantastes.
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My main book reads at the moment, as usual reading on my Kindle so I can have an utterly gargantuan font needed for my progressive neurological disease. I will soon be finishing Wheel of Time book 9 and starting Assassin’s Apprentice, which is this month’s read for my book club.
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Screenshot of a Kindle Paperwhite, black & white screen, showing 6 book covers. On the top row are Wheel of Time Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan, The Water Road narrowboat book by Paul Gogarty and Belladonna by Adalyn Grace. Below are The Haunted Trail collection of weird fiction in the British Library Tales of the Weird series, a collected Complete Sherlock Holmes, and Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. Progress percentages for the books include 72% through the Wheel of Time book, 25% through the canals book, 8% through Belladonna (only recently started), and 37% through Sherlock Holmes (nearing the end of “Memoirs”).
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Oh, I remember really liking Assassin’s Apprentice when I read it - it came out pre-GoT, curious how it lands now since it had slightly more grounded depictions of feudalism which felt fresh at the time but might be old hat now.
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Last night, I read “Criimes Against Mimesis”.
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Love the shout out (along with @JoshGrams ) for George MacDonald fantasy! I’m pretty sure I’ve read every scrap of his fantasy that I could find. I think if you found Phantastes compelling you would also find Lilith worth your time. @JoshGrams yes, you certainly should if you have interest… the titles you mentioned are more like children’s fantasy that adults can appreciate, but Phantastes and Lilith are straight adult-targeted. The Lost Princess (also known as The Wise Woman) is also a good one in the children’s category.
MacDonald was also a major influence on C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia series. I loved Narnia as a kid and didn’t discover MacDonald till adulthood.
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Yeah, I read MacDonald as a kid and thought “this feels kinda like C.S. Lewis” and then looked up and found the connection.
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Currently reading IF Theory Reader by Kevin Jackson-Mead et al.
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