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Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2000 13:32:56 -0400
From: Anne Mahoney <mahoa@bu.edu>
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To: classics@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Iliad & Odyssey
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julien f villeneuve wrote:
> Following the recent threads about the spoken word translations of
> Homer's works, I was simply wondering about the listmembers opinions
> concerning the best _written_ translations, both in prose and verse
> format, of these two chef d'oeuvres.

I've recently discovered Michael Reck's Iliad, which I like as a first version
for undergrads who've never read the epic before.  It is pretty accurate, though
Reck sacrifices the formulaic language so he can fit one line of Greek into one
of English.  In classes, I get around this problem by having them look at some
passages in other translations, and by having them look up characters and their
epithets in Perseus.  The advantage of Reck's version for this purpose is that
it's quite readable:  it moves along at a good clip, just as Homer's Greek
does.  Yet it doesn't feel "dumbed down" as some modern translations do. 
Diction is fairly plain, not especially American (understandably, as I belive
Reck was British, though I couldn't swear to that), not colloquial, not overly
elevated.  Meter is iambic pentameter -- yes, really, not a "loose 5-beat line,"
or any other approximation.  (And, BTW, Reck does start with the phrase "maniac
rage" that Dimitrius Rue mentions.)

What I like to read myself, though, is Christopher Logue's War Music.  We could
argue all day long about whether this is a translation or not;  his subtitle
calls it "an *account* of books 1-4 and 16-19" (emphasis mine).  It's a
re-telling, though it picks up many details from the Greek and uses them to good
account, not necessarily in the places where they appear in the Iliad.  It's
very readable free verse -- there is a sense of rhythm to it, and it can be read
aloud effectively.  

Neither of these translators did an Odyssey, to my knowledge.

--Anne Mahoney
Perseus Project
.