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Title: The Iliad by Homer, Richmond Lattimore, Anthony Quayle ISBN: 0-694-51700-3 Publisher: HarperAudio Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (43 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Translation
Comment: So, everyone knows the story of the Iliad. We're all familiar with the Greeks and the Trojans and the horse and lines written about it with regard to "Who is he to Hecuba?" I've been reading different translations of it since grade school. What sets this one apart?
Richmond Lattimore, a Dartmouth College Alum, goes to great lengths to preserve the original language and tries to keep the story in poetic form while translating the Greek as literally as possible. This is seen on simpler levels, i.e. the use of non-anglicized name (Aias instead of Ajax) but pervades the entire book on a larger level. This keeps the awe which the tale conveys entact, and even makes it quite powerful, without going over the top and being silly, like the translations of certain professors at Princeton.
Rating: 3
Summary: Lattimore's Iliad: admirable, but too close to prose.
Comment: Richmond Lattimore tries to give his translation the feel of "Greek-ness" by keeping the "k" in proper names instead of Latinizing them to "c" (and "ai" instead of "ae"), by using "but" where Homer does instead of "and," and by observing many of Homer's formulaic techniques. So one feels closer to the Greek original when reading Lattimore than one does with other translations.
But are we really closer? Actually, that's not the question we should ask, because it's quite impossible to duplicate Homer's Greek, to be faithful both to the music and to the sense. Alexander Pope understood this and instead gave us a great poet translating another great poet-- the best we can ask for.
Richmond Lattimore is not a great poet and his language is rather tame compared to that of Homer. Lattimore can be admired for not bogging down the work with Shakespearean or Miltonic language, for freeing Homer from archaisms and pseudo-poetic triteness, but the pulse he has chosen for each line is off: he "approximates" dactylic hexameter by allowing six stresses to fall rather at random across the lengthy string of words. This causes the pulse to be very faint, hardly discernible from prose. So when it's all said and done, Lattimore still reads like a novel, and Homer is not a novel.
This safe translation beats Fagles and other recent versions and is probably the most recommendable to first-time readers. Yet I still prefer A.T. Murray's prose in the Loeb edition because it is just as musical in many ways as Lattimore's verse. For a truly poetic experience, try to find Alexander Pope's translation, edited by Steven Shankman for Penguin Classics.
Rating: 5
Summary: Accurate, inspired translation
Comment: Most are already familiar with the wartorn story of Homer's Iliad, so my only commentary is on this particular translation: it is, by merits of its flow and its close approximation of the original's hexameter, the best ever made into the English language. Lattimore does not attempt to make this 3,000 year-old epic into a flowery sonnet, a Shakespearian drama, or a willfully noble tale--instead, he goes to great lengths to preserve the feeling and the connotation of Homer's story, rendering it in highly readable, fast-paced verse that allows the reader to grasp the melodic and repetitive nature of the Greek. He consistently preserves every flavorful epithet, and thus convey the Iliad's power as closely as one can in translation. I would go so far as to say that this translation outstrips that of couplet extraordinaire Alexander Pope, for the latter's is not Homer, but rather a distant interpretation; unlike Lattimore's, it tries to make the Iliad into what it is not. For a clear picture of the original story of the Trojan War, by all means read the Lattimore version.
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Title: The Odyssey of Homer (Perennial Classics) by Richmond Lattimore ISBN: 0060931957 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Companion to the Iliad: Based on the Translation by Richmond Lattimore by Malcolm M. Willcock ISBN: 0226898555 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1976 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Aeneid (Vintage Classics) by ROBERT FITZGERALD ISBN: 0679729526 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: The Odyssey by Robert Fitzgerald ISBN: 0374525749 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: 05 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Aeschylus I: Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides) by Aeschylus ISBN: 0226307786 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1983 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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