Evanston: THE ILIAD
Evanston: THE ILIAD
Almost fifty years ago Dr. Carter asked his world literature class, as he had every preceding class for the preceding forty or fifty years, what THE ILIAD was about, though I doubt he ended his sentence with a preposition. And as always everyone, including me, said: The Trojan War. Which is wrong. Homer stated the subject of his poem in the very first line, translated below variously as the wrath, rage, or anger of Achilles.
I prefer wrath. Rage will do. Anger is much too weak.
I’ve just finished rereading the Lattimore translation. I last read Fagles. And I’ve downloaded Alexander Pope from the Project Gutenberg.
I don’t know which I prefer. Fagles is definitely the clearest. Sometimes Lattimore is more poetic. And Pope’s is remarkable and it rhymes.
As I have just learned, Pope is the third most quoted writer in the English language, after Shakespeare and Tennyson, and his translation, which appeared in six volumes between 1715 and 1720, was a commercial success that made him the first English poet who earned enough from his poetry to live on. However, one scholar wrote: “It’s a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.”
Here are the first lines from each translation.
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!
--Alexander Pope
Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
--Robert Fagles
Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation,which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.
--Richard Lattimore
And this from Book VI
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are pass'd away.
--Alexander Pope
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
--Robert Fagles
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
--Richard Lattimore
There is something to be said for learning Greek; but I’m still learning English.
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The photo above was taken, as was yesterday’s, at Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain.
Thursday, July 12, 2007