The Odyssey – Alexander Pope translation (1725)

Alexander Pope is not chopped liver!

>When Alexander Pope's majestic translation of Homer's Odyssey appeared in 1726, his translation of the Iliad had already been acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal."

Wilson's translation doesn't sing. Yes, it's quite precise, but when translating poetry there's both the precision and the song of it.

The first one I read was Fitzgerald's translation. That was the one my father gave me. He studied classics at Cambridge and claims that none of the translations really capture the original, but Fitzgerald is closest. My Greek is rudimentary, but having looked through most of English translations, I definitely prefer Fitzgerald.

I got turned on to Emily Wilson's translation by this great episode of the Ezra Klein podcast with Madeleine Miller on myth, nostalgia, and how power corrupts, which I found really compelling: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/4/24/21233353/madeline-mil... Wilson's book is next in my pile!

If you're interested in enjoyable translations of Homer, I'd strongly recommend War Music by the British poet Chrisopher Logue. It's The Iliad, but he called it something like "a retelling" rather than "a translation" because it gave him more leeway. Unfortunately he died before he could finish it.

Another British poet Alice Oswald wrote an interesting version of the Iliad that tried to strip out the glamourisation of war and focus on the footsoldiers: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/09/alice-oswald-h...

I think the "cliched, British empire part of our culture" aspect talked about by Alice Oswald is why I love Logue's version so much - it becomes much more vivid in his retelling for me, somehow using a modern idiom to bring an ancient story alive.

I've read both the Iliad and Odyssey translated by Fagles, and although I can't compare it to Wilson's version I think they're reasonably approachable versions without any stuffiness, although not exactly exciting, as you say.

Not a translation, but I am absolutely in love with Madeline Miller's authentic retelling of Achilles and Circe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Miller

I've read a few translations, and while I appreciate Wilson's clarity, I honestly found it pretty boring. My wife and I read it aloud and, compared to Fagles (which is my favorite), the words she chose often seemed to lend no emotional energy to the story. I'm not trying to dismiss your opinion at all, but I'd really like to know what I'm missing.

I had three false starts with Fagles but just tore through Wilson’s translation. Her introduction is really good, too.

A fun postscript is Atwood’s “The Penelopiad.” It’s short and really entertaining.

“Let me add that meat was highly valued among us – the aristocracy ate lots of it, meat, meat, meat, and all they ever did was roast it: ours was not an age of haute cuisine. Oh, I forgot: there was also bread, flatbread that is, bread, bread, bread, and wine, wine, wine. We did have the odd fruit or vegetable, but you’ve probably never heard of these because no one put them into the songs much.”

This doesn't format on my mobile very well, but looks to be a good metalink to find this version, thanks for the tip. https://www.worldcat.org/title/odyssey/oclc/1010953135

Pimping my favorite translator of the Illiad, EV Rieu, though I guess I need to try Emily Wilson. I have his version of the Odyssey but haven't read it yet.

The Literature and History podcast has great coverage of the Illiad and Odyssey, and reads from Wilson in addition to Fagles, Rieu, and others. The podcast itself is exceptionally good if you are into the history behind the writing.

https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episodes/all-epis...

You, my friend, will love this. Emily performing all the books!

https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/odyssey-a-day

I'm not sure why the Wilson translation is that special.. There are many interesting and competant translations..

Lattimore, and Willam Cowper are excellent too.

Also there is Chapman too, mentioned in the memorable poem by Keats..

She is also working on The Iliad. I am very excited for it!

I read this out loud last summer on my porch.

It was joy. My neighbors still look at me funny, though.

I agree. It is first time I actually enjoyed old text. Plus the introduction into cultural and historical context is great. Plus, the threads about translation itself she wrote were interesting too.

Wow, that's fascinating. How the hell do we get that in the title.

Maybe we'll use his name as the label of the translation but without explicitly saying he translated it. That seems approximately what you described.

Joyce’s great novel has nothing except the most tenuous and inessential connection with the Odyssey, despite the title. Joyce removed the chapter titles that had referred to the Odyssey after the first edition, and said that he regretted ever having put them in there, because they had misled readers and critics into imagining parallels to the Greek story that did not exist. The main character does wander around, though.

> Who reads Homer in your country, and why?

In the US, pretty much everyone with a high school education reads at least some Homer in translation.

> I'm very curious what motivates people to learn dead languages and read books thousands years old.

You're conflating learning Ancient Greek with reading Homer, but most of us read Homer in translation. Having read at least a little Homer is very common in the United States, having learned Ancient Greek or Latin is more unusual.

The two obvious reasons for reading Homer: it's a good story, and it's foundational to our culture. I guess you could dive into what makes it a good enough story to keep it around for thousands of years, or why knowing anything about culture is important... you don't believe you're going to get an adequate explication of those matters in a short HN comment, do you?

Here are some personal data points from Australia and The Netherlands:

Australia:

* My high school in Melbourne had one class (15 people) learning Latin to year 12 level. Funnily enough, almost all of us also studied advanced math, and more than half were left-handed. By the end, we were reading the Aeneid, Catullus and Cicero.

* Why did I pick Latin? Well, at my school, two foreign languages were compulsory for years 7-10, and optional for years 11 and 12. In year 7 and 8, everyone had to do Latin, and either French or German. In year 9, around half switched from Latin to Mandarin.

* Two of my friends also did Ancient Greek. They were taught by the school headmaster, who was a Classics scholar.

* That year, in the whole state of Victoria, the total number of year 12 students taking Latin and Ancient Greek were 70 and 6 respectively.

* At university, my engineering school required us to take one subject in a non-technical faculty. I chose Ancient Greek, to complement my Latin from high school. That class had around 60 students. 2/3 of them were of Greek descent and already spoke modern Greek.

* The only Greek word I remember now is κῠβερνήτης (helmsman). You may recognise it as Kubernetes :)

Netherlands:

* My partner, who is Dutch, studied Latin at high school there.

* His school was a "gymnasium", a category of very academic high schools which traditionally taught Latin and Greek. Check out [1] for the background to these gymnasium schools in the Netherlands and various countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnasium_(school)

My American education touched on the Greeks and the Romans, and we did read the Odyssey; however, as I recall, we quickly jumped to late-Medieval (post-Norman-conquest) England. I always wondered what was in England before these medieval kings and queens. I began learning about the Norman conquest, the Viking invasion, the Anglo-Saxons, the Roman invasion and Romanization of England, the native Celts and so on. Then I began to inquire about those people; what were their homelands like, how did they arrive in their homelands, how were their languages interrelated, and so on. The etymology in particular fascinates me (and I highly recommend the podcast "The History of English"), notably how one language family spread throughout most of Eurasia (from Britain in the North-West to India and Western China in the East). I also highly recommend Jean Manco's books (https://www.amazon.com/Jean-Manco/e/B0034P5S3C?ref=sr_ntt_sr...) as her histories incorporate the latest information from many fields including history, archaeology, and the rapidly evolving field of ancient genetics. I haven't read many ancient texts yet, but I really want to if only to get a sense for how ancient people saw themselves and their world. Some day...

In Greece it is of course mandatory reading in junior high-school but not in ancient Greek. There are other ancient Greek texts though which are mandatory reading and learning ancient Greek is mandatory as well.

I love reading classics because there are still so many mysteries. It's not like we've figured everything out!

Here is a project I'm involved in to help support people learning classical languages:

https://alpheios.net/

I'd love to know what you think.

In France less than 4% of high school students learn Latin or ancient Greek, 3 hours weekly. Only one high school out of four has a teacher available for one of these languages. It has strongly receded over the last decade.

The schools follow a chronological program which means youngsters will study Antiquity while in middle school and recent centuries while in high school. Those who specialize in humanities will also go back in time while in high school. So I suppose a large majority of students reaching eighteen have absolutely no memory of reading or studying Homer.

I've enjoyed very much reading Homer. I found the Odyssey very moving and beautiful — not all translations are equals, I read two and you should find the one that suits you. Another obvious pleasure with reading classical works is the myriad of references to them in our culture. Apart from this, I like traveling in space and time through these texts. For example, the Iliad is very different from the Odyssey, and it looked older to me; at a times were gods were among people and human heroes could fight them, like Gilgamesh insulting Ishtar or Jacob wrestling with Yahve. In the Odyssey, the main gods have retreated from the world, and the focus is on human torments and fabulous encounters.

Sweden has certainly produced an immense amount of classical scholarship and saw a lot of Latin teaching. I think that the decline in classical studies is due to the drastic social changes of the mid 20th-century that completely changed Swedish society and education. But if you just visit a university library, you’ll find plenty of evidence for the tradition that existed up to the first several decades of the last century.

I was fortunate to have gone to a good high school at a time when the family was poor. It offered Latin and Greek (I don’t recall if it was ancient or not) intro courses. I don’t believe the HS offers that any more and those teachers were old then and now retired or dead.

Unfortunately as many a Highschool student are wont to do, I sadly ignored the opportunity to learn as it would help my curiosity now.

> Can anyone care to elaborate the situation where you live? I'm very curious what motivates people to learn dead languages and read books thousands years old.

I'd guess religion is one driver. My impression of Sweden is that it's not a terribly religious country, so interest in languages like Latin or Koine Greek might be less compared to countries where religion has a deeper hold like the US.

It could also simply be a question of population size: more people suggests more people might share those interests.

It might also have to do with foreign language learning. I don't know about Sweden, but my impression of the Netherlands is that they teach foreign languages very early (e.g., my Dutch professors all sounded mostly American). It may be that if you have early language learning, the barrier to entry is lowered for subsequent languages.

In the US. I took Latin in high school and translated classics like Ovid and Catullus. I wouldn't be surprised if Latin was less popular now even though it's only been a few years. It seems like the feeling is that so few Americans who have been here a few generations speak a second language that it's a waste to learn a dead language.

I will say that having to use Latin conjugation really improved my English grammar and understanding of sentence structure. I don't know if this is a typical effect of studying a second language from an outsider perspective (instead of just going by what sounds right in your native language) or if the simplicity of an older root language like Latin helped.

Hard to say. I read Homer when in college in Robert Fitzgerald's translation. After college, I learned a little bit of classical Greek, then worked my way through Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek, which takes one through Book I of the Iliad, then later worked through the Odyssey and the Iliad.

My impression is that a fair number of people who went through liberal arts programs in college have read Homer in translation. But I've never taken a poll.

A classics professor I know says that all her department's graduates have job offers, because Latin has made a modest comeback. One child on my street attends a Latin charter school.

Howdy neighbor!

Here in Denmark, at the turn of the century, I took a 'classics' class in our equivalent to high school.

A bit of Plato and Socrates, a bit of ancient Greek / Roman architecture (different types of columns?), a smidgen of archeology review.

I imagine it was some kind of condensed and simplified remnant of the broad set of classics courses that would have been compulsory in 'high school' before the democratization of secondary education here (i.e. ~50 years ago our 'high school' was mostly populated by future academics and the children of the upper-middle classes).

In my Russian school back in Lithuania we had a very limited course covering classic literature as a part of a bigger generic literature course: I remember reading Odyssey, Iliad, etc

My colleague from Austria had a course in Latin back in school, and he mentioned that he read /Commentarii de Bello Gallico/ in the original language.

Oh, and I study Ancient Egyptian right now. Not too many - none - people support me in this endeavor. But in general it feels that in UK it is relatively easy to find people interested in those things.

I studied Latin to Ordinary Grade and (Classical) Greek to Higher Grade at school in Glasgow decades ago. This included reading, in Greek, Odyssey 9 and Iliad 6. Other set texts included works by Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Euripides. Latin and Greek are still taught at the school.

I have the Loeb Classical Library version of the Odyssey, which has the Greek on one side and a prose English translation on the other.

Hungary, Europe. Homer is standard in high school (Odyssey and Illiad) along with Sophocles (Antigone and Oedipus Rex). And there are more obviously too

>Who reads Homer in your country, and why?

In México, both Homer works are standard readings in high school. Latin and Greek authors are well known in academia here.

Hi, also from Sweden. Yes, in högstadiet/high school I think it is rare to offer classical Greek or Latin. Even Italian is rare. But there are definitely Latin and Greek courses at universities. I studied 7,5 points of Latin last semester. I know Uppsala University offers a 30 point course. I'd recommend looking at antagning.se, if you want to make it more than a fun side project :-)

> When I talk to friends in the US, the UK and the Netherlands on the other hand, Greek and the classical Greek works (including Homer, of course) seems to be much more popular and also part of normal young adult education.

In the US they are all read in translation unless you are in a classical studies University program, which is an area few pursue, or attend an old elite private primary or secondary school.

In the US, knowledge of Latin and ancient Greek is about as rare as what you describe in Sweden. It might be taught at a few private schools but it is definitely not mainstream. However, the Odyssey (in English translation) is commonly read in schools.

+1 on feeling the connection to history.

You will like Sappho(if you haven’t read it already).

If we just had a good translation of the Aeneid. Fitzgerald's is okay. CS Lewis's book one is wonderful. But Virgil's poetry carries the Latin in a way that the subject matter really struggles to do without.

I am, however, incredibly happy that we have Clive James's translation of the Divine Comedy.

The Great Conversation, as it's sometimes called.

An Iliad trailer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301605

(unliked, but no one had any specific complaints about any of the characterisations... And I'm still curious about the downthread sensus tactilus, if anyone has any pointers.)

The introduction to the Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad has a fascinating, and more up-to-date, essay about the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey---the so called "Homeric Question."

More evidence, from archeological digs and from the text itself, has come to light and I think there is less skepticism these days in general.

Note that was written in the 19th century and does not reflect anything like the current state of affairs.

When my boy was tweening by reading and rereading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, I enjoyed reading them too.

The Iliad actually covers only a small part of the Trojan war. There's a whole corpus of ancient literature that treats various aspects of the war. The famed Trojan Horse incident happens between the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey and is mentioned in the latter but the most complete accounting is in Virgil's Aeneid.

You should not be reading the Illiad to check a box. My advice is to approach it as a serious historical work and engage it with a mindset of trying to understand a culture that is very distant while providing clues of similarity to modern life.

As an example, the boring part in the beginning is the names of ships and tribes enlisted to sail to Troy. What I am thinking while reading these parts is why this list was so important and the sheer complexity of organizing all of it. You are talking about months if not years worth of preparation and yet it's reduced to this almost data-like catalog where you can get the sense that the message is: "We have a lot of friends... and we are coming."

And this isn't to say that you should hold it as Truth. What I am saying is that this work had a profound cultural impact over the course of hundreds of years similar to the The Bible today. It will take work to enjoy it and you should only approach it if reading literature of this kind is of interest to you in general.

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking if anyone actually likes reading the Iliad. I can't speak for others, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. It vividly paints the horror and the glory and beauty of war.

Read a bit further every night. If you don't get into it, then stop. Maybe find something else you vibe better with from the foreign country that is the past.

Μάσκα ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος?

1725

https://barrelroombooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/1725O...

The discussion here is great. Cheer up.