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Speak to me of your favourite Homer books

The new Emily Wilson translation has hit the shelves. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/emily-wilson-iliad…

I rather like the newish Oxford one by Anthony Verity. Pope I didn't get far with. Fagles you can get into if you're in the right mood. Adam Nicolson's book the Mighty Dead connects us with the bronze age.

I remember being in a meeting of the joint consultative committee for literae humaniores in about 1997/8 and one of the trendier dons suggested that reading some of the texts in English was acceptable (not for the literature papers obviously but maybe philosophy or history).  let’s just say that idea wasn’t floated again.

Anyway, You can’t possibly appreciate Homer unless you read it in the original obviously.
 

 

Clubbers, I would respectfully suggest the same conversation might now take a different turn.  Allow me to commend Rodney Merrill's Iliad.  It is beautifully lyrical. Rather a lovely thing to hear being read aloud whilst hitting the whisky.

I read the Iliad in the Stanley Lombardo translation, largely because I love how the publisher, Hackett, used a photo of D-Day Normandy landing as the cover.

Hackett published a series of Greek works with the same gimmick: Odyssey's cover is a photo of the moon landing; Oresteia is a photo of JFK waving to a crowd (I don't think they're pushing for a conspiracy theory of Jackie's involvement); Oedipus is a photo of Nixon in the White House ...

Pope if I have to read a translation.

I like what Christopher Logue did with bits of it, though of course it isn't a translation.  Even less a translation is Walcott's Omeros which I also rate.

Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.

"Clubbers, I would respectfully suggest the same conversation might now take a different turn.  Allow me to commend Rodney Merrill's Iliad.  It is beautifully lyrical. Rather a lovely thing to hear being read aloud whilst hitting the whisky."

 

REPORTED

The only one I've read cover to cover was E.V. Rieu's.  At that impressionable age the descriptions of graphic violence and "Briseis of the lovely cheeks" were pure catnip.  More kids (lads anyway) would be keener on the classics if they got it into their heads that a lot of it was like 300 but on steroids.  

I went to Natalie Haynes book event for Divine Might recently and I have an intellectual crush. She didn't read anything, just talked in incredible and entertaining detail. Honestly one of the smartest things I've witnessed, left in awe.

Saw two spice junkies fighting on the way home so a mixed bag of an evening.

There's a Penguin version of the E V Rieu has been revised by his son André. Regrettably there are some who would turn their noses up at his popular re-interpretations of the classics. 

+1 for Adam Nicolson, fabulous book

An Odyssey Daniel Mendelsohn - Classics lecturer's father takes his course on the Odyssey, leads to him revisiting both the poem and their relationship - a much, much better book than I can make it sound

Circe Madeline Miller - the best, IMHO, of the recent feminist takes

There's also a fabulous abridged audio version of the Fagles Iliad with Derek Jacobi - think only available physically rather than download. 

Just read the Robin Lane Fox Homer and His Iliad - one for the real Homer nerds perhaps, bit heavy going. 

'a remarkable achievement... This wonderful book reads as grippingly as any thriller' proclaims Tom Holland Spectator from the front cover.

'original, daring and arguably life enhancing... Sweeping narrative flourish worthy of a cinematographet. 

Perhaps I should give it another go. 

Martin Hammond's translations are almost word for word.  Rieu's is close to a paraphrase.

 

having Helen explain to Priam who each person is TEN YEARS INTO THE FRIGGIN' WAR gets my goat.

Your word of the day: teichoscopia.

supposed to be about Vergil and she just crapped on about Disney films.

That would have made me furious too actually, all very bluestocking where I saw her, in a University with much of the audience from classics dept.

 

Lane Fox and Wilson’s new books were reviewed in the TLS last week and I nearly bought both on the back of that as I know nothing about Homer but there’s so much in the tbr piles it’s just not funny. 

Mine is from the Bristol Classical Press. The glue on the spine's a bit iffy. Some enterprising chap must have got hold of a Greek typewriter on his holidays. 

D'oh!

My favourite donuts

If you want to do something, do it half-arsed. That's the American Way!

My ex-President Neighbours: George HW Bush and Gerald R. Ford

Secrets of The Stonecutters Society

 

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