Next on the reading list: The Iliad
Now I've finished the Old Testament, the Iliad comes next.
Wittering about translations...
Keats was so impressed with Chapman's verse translation of the Iliad that he wrote a sonnet:
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
The best book review ever?
Actually, Keats made a mistake. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the one to first see the Pacific from Darien. He'd mixed it up with Cortez' first sight of the Valley of Mexico (which Cortex subsequently plundered). When I tried reading Chapman's Homer, I felt like the wrong explorer looking into the wrong valley.* It's all so utterly incomprehensible, in a glorious kind of way. There's no way I could wade through all those apostrophes and archaic words.
Instead, I've been using Robert Fagles' readable, modern translation of the Iliad. I'd like to get a copy of Lattimore's verse translation for comparison. If only there were websites with all translations like there are for the Bible!.
-----
*"a peak in Darien" always makes me think of Swallows and Amazons. So I was probably looking at Coniston Water and not the Pacific at all.
Wittering about translations...
Keats was so impressed with Chapman's verse translation of the Iliad that he wrote a sonnet:
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
The best book review ever?
Actually, Keats made a mistake. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the one to first see the Pacific from Darien. He'd mixed it up with Cortez' first sight of the Valley of Mexico (which Cortex subsequently plundered). When I tried reading Chapman's Homer, I felt like the wrong explorer looking into the wrong valley.* It's all so utterly incomprehensible, in a glorious kind of way. There's no way I could wade through all those apostrophes and archaic words.
Instead, I've been using Robert Fagles' readable, modern translation of the Iliad. I'd like to get a copy of Lattimore's verse translation for comparison. If only there were websites with all translations like there are for the Bible!.
-----
*"a peak in Darien" always makes me think of Swallows and Amazons. So I was probably looking at Coniston Water and not the Pacific at all.