The Iliad (trans. Wilson)

[cimorene]

I'm enjoying the Iliad in some ways and it's boring or uncomfortable in others, but it's overall just really surprising!

I've never read any translations of the Greek sources of myths, but I've had a lifelong interest in mythology and folklore and went through one of those phases aged about 10-12 where I was kind of a Greek mythology weeaboo and reread Edith Hamilton (mostly) all the time and uh, announced to my parents that I was going to be a worshipper of Athena and made a shrine for her in my bedroom. Not a very good shrine, tbh. I was already obviously pretty ADHD then so I never got around to learning or doing all the stuff I wanted to in that area before outgrowing it. My point is just that I know the latter-day summaries of events pretty well, and have for a long time. So maybe it's a little bit surprising that the Iliad is so unlike my subconscious expectations.

• I'm not surprised that Emily Wilson's translation is readable and engaging compared with quotes and reputations of older translations, because that's why I wanted to read it. But it is still nice and refreshing.



• It's not like I didn't know about the status of women and slaves in Mycenaean Greek civilization. I've read novels where it was a plot point many times, aside from the more theoretical knowledge. But after Wilson's introductory essay, which was fantastic, I'm finding that it has my attention constantly. Thinking about the fundamental structure of the society and culture, the institutionalized warfare and raiding, and how gender roles and human rights and suffering are connected.



• The presentation and characterization of the gods, and how they interact with the human characters, is fascinating and colorful. I think this style must have influenced the original Clash of the Titans, but it's distinct and more interesting. For example, the way the gods talk about the sacrifices they receive, and the way they appear to humans as other humans (sometimes the humans realize who it really is, sometimes not) but also as themselves, the way they negotiate amongst themselves, the way they treat events like a video game they're playing. Also the way they move through space (instantaneously, usually, but not always: and they run or fly or jump but they also have chariots, apparently for fun), and the way their powers are described and compared.



• Listening to this whole thing would take forever, and Wilson labored hard enough just to get this iambic pentameter, but I do think a sort of shorter summary in actually rhyming ballad style, sung to accompaniment, would be really fun. Like a sort of Weird Al meets Movies in Fifteen Minutes style thing.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I really need to read this.

[cimorene]

I haven't actually read a very large proportion of it yet, but so far I would recommend it, definitely! But perhaps more importantly, it seems like everyone recommends her translations.

[phosfate]

So bye bye that Mycenaean guy...

[cimorene]

YES

[viggorlijah]

Ian mckkellen has done audiobooks of both using the fagles translation. I can share them w you and recommend them highly, but Wilson’s is the better translation I think. The Iliad is brutal though and so soaked in grief and rage.

[cimorene]

I think an audiobook of this would be easier in a few respects, although usually that isn't the case since it takes so much longer to listen than to read! But the Iliad is so long and so much of it is, well, tragic, that I find it hard to imagine the extra time involved in listening to it...

[buddleia]

I loved her Odyssey (the Claire Danes audiobook is wonderful) and bought the Iliad as soon as it came out but it’s been sitting waiting for me to read the actual book for a while. Her introductory essay is excellent and along with Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls and, tangentially, Bret Devereux’s series on Sparta, I’ve had a bit of a perspective cosh to the head, possibly similar to yours, and I need a run up to the rest.

[cimorene]

I have read some other articles along the same lines as that Devereaux series but I hadn't seen it before. Fascinating! Now that I google that book I remember I've seen a recommendation before, but it sounded perhaps too tough for me to read. I am intrigued, though. Maybe I'll want to read it after the Iliad.

[buddleia]

It is VERY tough but Barker walks the line very well to make it readable for me at least. And I enjoy the deep dives on BD’s Itsacoup blog for stuff like textile production but the Sparta stuff was, uh, eye-opening.

[which_chick]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a shorter, lighter... rhymed couplet version of something. I adore rhymed couplets (but know nothing about ballad format) and if you wanted someone to help with that project...

Look. A long time ago, for reasons I cannot clearly articulate at this time, I rewrote more than half of A Midsummer Night's Dream using characters from the anime Gundam Wing, in rhymed couplets, some of which are better than they have any right to be. It's here. I'd have to read the Iliad, but I've been meaning to do that anyway, like it's seriously On My Winter To-Do List.

[cimorene]

lol. Well, if you have the talent for rhyming couplets, why not use your talents for good?

By ballad format I guess I just meant the sort of recognizable structure of Western European folk music ballads, the way they tell stories in rhyming verse. I don't think there's a definitional constraint on the rhyme or meter patterns or anything like that.