Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son AchillesĪnd its devastation, which put pains thousand-fold upon the Achaians, This is evident in the first few lines where he writes, His line structure is stilted and strained, with some odd syntax and aesthetically jarring word choices. However I found his fidelity to be inconsistent and moreover I found him to be a poor writer. For a standard classroom study of Homer he is often the teacher’s favourite. But it's perhaps the closest approximation possible. Its not a true dactylic hexameter since that's all but impossible in English. His translation was ground-breaking in its day for not only being faithful to the language but for daring to match the metrical rhythm of Homer as well. The first and most frequently recommended translation is Lattimore (1951). I focused on recent versions because I find older translations to be distracting with their more archaic English style. I've been wondering which translation of the Iliad to buy and so spent some time looking into all of the main translations from the last 70 years, focusing on a direct comparison of the first 43 lines as an example of their work.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |