The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

A number of members enjoy books in translation and often classics have multiple translators so I thought it would be useful to have a thread for recommending and discussing various translations.

I’ll start by asking for opinions on translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes.

I have compared The Odyssey translations by Robert Fagles and Emily Wilson, and (though it pains me to say it) I prefer the Fagles version, it’s more poetic to me. I have Fagles Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, and an Iliad translation by Caroline Alexander.

My copies of the plays of Sophocles, Aristophanes and Aeschylus are my dad’s 30 yr old Penguin editions, they’re yellowed and fragile so I need new editions.
The Aristophanes translations are by Alan Sommerstein.
The Aeschylus translations are by Philip Vellacott.
The Sophocles translations are by Paul Roche.

I tried to research on the internet, but wasn’t having much luck. If anyone has favorites or can point me to a good resource for comparing translations that would be great.

I tick the fan of translations box but not the classics one. A complete blank in my reading. I don’t even tend to like contemporary novels that reference them.

I would recommend Richmond Lattimore's The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer, both published by University of Chicago Press.

And The Aeneid in the newish Frederick Ahl translation by Oxford World Classics.

For Greek tragedy I'd also suggest the David Grene & Richmond Lattimore translations, again University of Chicago Press.

I like the Alan Sommerstein Aristophanes for Penguin - he manages to keep the humour intact in English which is rare.

Do you like Grene & Lattimore better than Sommerstein?

I read several paragraphs from the first few books of Fagles’ and Wilson’s Odyssey trans. and preferred Fagles. I read paragraph to paragraph comparisons of Fagles and Alexander and again preferred Fagles, but I will also get Lattimore translations. Thank you, Cindy.

I also have my dad’s old Classic Club editions translated by Samuel Butler.

On a personal note I’ve mentioned several times how much my sweet dad loved the Greeks; Aeschylus was his favorite playwright and The Odyssey his favorite book. The last year of his life when he had Lewy Body dementia (which mercifully does not rob people of their memories-they know everything they ever knew, they just don’t know how to put it all together) I would read The Odyssey to him at night. That was when I discovered how very readable these plays and epics really are and now, after Dad is gone, I’m reading and comparing translations. I wish I could share these different translations with him. He loved these works before the much lauded modern translations came out so I can only imagine how much more he would have enjoyed reading and comparing the new versions.

We discussed Greek tragedies before and someone recommended The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology. I don’t remember who suggested I get a copy, but thank you! It’s a great resource. It’s no longer in print so I just ordered a second copy on eBay so I always have it.

Paul wrote: "I tick the fan of translations box but not the classics one. A complete blank in my reading. I don’t even tend to like contemporary novels that reference them."

This thread doesn’t have to be only for classics, Philisti…I mean, Paul. :) For example:

Imre Kertész’ Fatelessness trans. by Tim Wilkinson is much better than Fateless trans. by Christopher Wilson and Katherina Wilson.

As a general rule I would say I dislike whichever translations of a book appear after the first one.

There are so many wonderful untranslated novels out there that I wish translation resource wouldn’t be wasted translating books that have already been translated.

The multiple translations of Dostoevsky being one obvious example - why?

Paul wrote: "As a general rule I would say I dislike whichever translations of a book appear after the first one.

There are so many wonderful untranslated novels out there that I wish translation resource wou..."

The Pevear and Volokhonsky translations of the Russians are more lyrical- they try to mimic the cadence of the original language. I’ve enjoyed their Dostoevskys, and I have The Master and Margarita, which I will reread with the P and V translation one of these days.

I agree that there are so many books that deserve a first translation, but those classics are more interesting when they’re easier to read.

Wndy-I preferred the Wilson and Alexander translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey- I read those last year, and the Fagles years ago.

P&V are classics of the issue with retranslation. Great publicity machine but tend to have rows with other translators on how superior their translations are to others when it is not clear they are. Their Doestevsky’s are good but there are others equally as good and some of their other forays have been less successful.

I may not have succeeded in banning long books from the Booker but I am pleased the International version bars retranslations.

Aw, that's a lovely memory, Wndy, of reading to your father. And yes, given that epic and drama were originally both oral forms, they benefit from reading aloud.

Paul wrote: "There are so many wonderful untranslated novels out there that I wish translation resource wouldn’t be wasted translating books that have already been translated.

The multiple translations of Dostoevsky being one obvious example - why?"

Haha, but there are many, many ways of translating a book and no one translation can ever be definitive. Do you translate for accessibility and story-telling? Do you try to capture the rhythm and cadences of the original? What do you do with textual features such as puns and linguistic jokes? If you're translating poetry (as in the discussion above on Homer, Virgil, Sophocles etc.) do you turn it into prose? Or try to turn it into verse? What do you do when the metre in the original doesn't directly correlate with the available metres in the translation language? Do you do a word-for-word translation (essentially a crib for lazy students!)

I am currently reading Lucretius in a well-received modern translation but for some reason the translator (A.E. Stallings) has put it into rhyming verses (albeit with lots of runover lines) which is so weird as Latin never rhymes!

I do sympathise with the view that we'd like to see more untranslated works in English but as translation theory evolves so previous translations will be updated and revised.

An excellent example is the newest Penguin translations of Proust (the one where Lydia David translated the first vol.) as they've cut out all the 'floweriness' that wasn't in the original French but which became part of the English translation tradition from the Scott Moncrieff edition. So glad to see it go!

With the plays, your decision will probably be more dependent on tbe accompanying explanatory material/criticism than translation. The Penguins should be good. In our discussion of The Odyssey, Elizabeth Vandiver was mentioned. Her lectures on Greek Tragedy from Great Courses are recommended and on sale from Audible $10 at present. Also Aristotle's comments of tragedy from Poetics are important. Aristophanes is comedy and comedies lose their humor over time so I recommend seeing examples if possible. There might be something on Youtube. I'd read them separately along with Roman comedies for comparison.

Excellent point, RC, and I should have said that I look for the rhythmic flow and sense of high drama. Something about Fagles just flows for me, it’s poetic and the syntax is more formal, but these different translations are all exciting. They breath new life into classics as each translator focuses on different aspects of translations.

For instance if we all agreed with Paul and never bothered with new translations we would not have Emily Wilson correcting the male centric language in Fagles’. I like the sound of Fagles, but I intend to read Wilson’s as well. I’d rather read Helen refer to herself as, “…my face the cause that hounded them,” rather than, “shameless whore that I was,” or “bitch that I was,” which is what male translators came up with.

I read the Spark notes, Sam, so I have a better idea of exactly what to look for in each book, but I will check into Vandiver as well, thanks.

I mentioned her in our podcast thread, but Natalie Haynes podcasts are a lot of fun as well. She talks about these characters as if she knows them.

The more I read of Caroline Alexander’s translation of The Iliad the more I liked it so I’ve switched to mainly reading her and compare versions when the gods and goddesses speak or at moments of high drama. I’m surprised at how graphic the descriptions of mortal wounds are! Tarantino has nothing on Homer.

WndyJW wrote: "I’d rather read Helen refer to herself as, “…my face the cause that hounded them,” rather than, “shameless whore that I was,” or “bitch that I was,” which is what male translators came up with."

I can completely understand modern readers feeling this but I suspect 'bitch' is closer to the original Greek, in the literal sense of female dog.

Both the Iliad and Odyssey are strikingly ambivalent about Helen and in the Iliad, she's the closest figure to the bard/Homer as she weaves the story of the war, reflecting what the poem itself is doing. And, of course, she gets the last long speech. So I'd just suggest her representation is more complex than a simply misogynistic one.

I've just started reading Intimacies by Katie Kitamura where the narrator is a translator at The Hague, and came across this lovely image:

''... there were great chasms beneath words, between two or sometimes more languages, that could open up without warning. As interpreters it was our job to throw down planks across these gaps.'

On one of the podcasts that was recommended on that thread I was listening to Deborah Levy being interviewed and her pleasure of being translated. I can’t remember the exact phrase but the discussion referred to translation as liberating the underlying novel from the constraints of one particular language.

Oh, that's nice! A kind of ur-text that can be embodied differently in various languages.

Indeed

Dostoevsky is such a good example, Paul, of unnecessary translation mania. That's easy for me to say at least because I'm a huge Constance Garnett fan and think she's never been topped, for the way imo the cadence of her English prose feels most chronologically close Dostoevsky's era.

I adore so many of the translations of Inferno, though, and I love the way new translations sometimes come with incredible new illustrations. Like this one--the illustrations reprinted in Marcus Sanders's translation are reproductions of large paintings I love, by Sandow Birk: Dante's Inferno; Adapted by Marcus Sanders.

Also I'm very fond of almost every Beowulf translation I've read and they're all really different, in interesting ways.

Translation is an art I hadn’t given much though to before I joined M&G, but it is fascinating. It can ruin a story or it can create a better version, like the oft-referred to anecdote of Gabriel Garcia Marquez crediting Rabassa with writing a better One Hundred Years of Solitude in his translation.

With multiple translations serious lovers of Greek/Roman classics for example can, as RC pointed out, read for the humor, or the rhythm, or correct translations of words. These new translations would have given my dad a whole new course of study of his beloved classics.

Paul, I think you should get some copies of these Greek classics to have on hand so when you find yourself waiting for a novel to arrive you can dip into these works. They are far more exciting then I thought they would be and I regret that I didn’t develop this interest many years ago.

What was the book about translating you read a few years ago, Paul? Was it a Fitzcarraldo white book?

lark wrote: "Dostoevsky is such a good example, Paul, of unnecessary translation mania. That's easy for me to say at least because I'm a huge Constance Garnett fan and think she's never been topped, for the way..."

Lark, did you like the latest Beowulf? By Mairia Dahvana Headley? I have it but haven't got to it yet. The contemporary liberties taken with the translation may be hard for me to accept.

I forgot to ask why you think bitch would be what Homer intended, RC? I heard Natalie Haynes say that dog had an unfavorable connotation in Ancient Greece, is that why you think bitch is a better translation? Not that I’m making any assumptions about Haynes’ expertise one way or the other, she’s just very entertaining.

I’m focusing on Greek classics, the gods, goddesses, heroes, and stories this year. Next year I’ll turn to Norse Myths, and study the various translations of Beowulf. Is there a translation you like best, Sam?

Has anyone read or had a peek at Neil Gaimon’s Norse Mythology? My grandsons loved Thor Ragnarok so I got the book thinking I could learn some more about the characters.

Wndy, I'm not sure if you have ever come across An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, because the story about reading to your father reminded me so much of that. Daniel Mendelsohn's ageing father joins the grad class he teaches on The Odyssey. A beautiful memoire and some interesting observations on the work - also my favourite book.
On translations, I grew up with the same yellowing penguins but have recently enjoyed more modern translations by Oxford University Press - Medea by Collier and Machemer from 2005 was very good.
And then there is Anne Carson - both for translations and new versions - The Bakkhai is one example. I love what she does with these old gems, breathing new and unexpected life into them.

I haven’t read Mendelsohn’s book, but I’ve heard him interviewed, if it’s your favorite book it must be worth reading, so I’ll get it.

I’ve made a list of the Greek & Roman classics and now I’ll start noting suggested translations so thank you to ever who has offered suggestions!

For some reason, the Homeric Hymns
(I cite this version just as the first on Goodreads), after being neglected for most of the twentieth century, have come in for a spate of translations since the 1970s: I haven't kept up with all of them, although I've reviewed several.

The Hymns aren't by Homer, of course: but they are in the same meter as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Thucydides thought that one, in which the poet is referred to as blind, was in fact by Homer -- whoever he/she was.

They are in part mythological, in part invocations of particular deities, and the shorter ones, at least, may once have served as openers for recitations of longer poems, and not just the Homeric canon, but other hexameter epics.

There are thirty-odd poems, of various lengths -- at least one is probably an amalgamation of two, and the final "Hymn" to Hosts is sometimes omitted.

At the moment, I can endorse, in no particular order except that offered by Goodreads. the Penguin translation above, plus:

The Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns
The Goodreads link goes to a nineteenth-century translation: the correct one for the cover can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Homeric-Hymns-...

The Homeric Hymns (on which I corresponded with the translator over some printing errors),
Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer .

The last of these is a bit expensive, but it has an up-to-date Greek text and a lot of stuff that can't be found elsewhere.

I've left out a couple I couldn't find on Goodreads......

Sam wrote: "Lark, did you like the latest Beowulf? By Mairia Dahvana Headley? .."

I haven't gotten to my review yet but I adored this translation. The introduction is so interesting and so smart. So respectful of the original poem and so open about the impossibility of translating it truthfully, whatever "truthfully" may mean. I've heard Headley interviewed where she makes a point of saying that the same OE noun is used for Beowulf and Grendel's mother--but Tolkien translates the Beowulf instances as "HERO" and the instances where the same word is used for Grendel's mom as "HAG" or something like that. That's interesting.

She's as interested in the attention to alliteration in the original poetics as Seamus Heaney was, but with completely different choices. So for example on page 2 she writes the highly alliterative:

...so the Life-Lord, that almighty Big Boss, birthed then an Earth-shaker.

compared with Heaney's safer:

..so the Lord of Life, the glorious Almighty, made this man renowned....

One thing that's true for me is that much of what I love about the Iliad and Beowulf and Inferno is that, although I can't read any of the originals, I've read so many translations that they all shimmer together in my brain when I read a new one and the effect is outrageously satisfying and literary.

The best example of this literary satisfaction is the deep pleasure I got from reading both Ransom by David Malouf, which gains its power the more you've read of Iliads, and All Day Permanent Red: The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad Rewritten by Christopher Logue, outrageously good but only if you've sunk yourself into the Iliad (in translation or not) a few million times.

Neither of these authors can read the original.

Does the last one listed, Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer contain include the material in The Homeric Hymns, Ian?

Not to take the thread over completely but I love Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses by Ted Hughes.

Ransom is one of my favorite books, it’s beautifully written and moving.

WndyJW wrote: "What was the book about translating you read a few years ago, Paul? Was it a Fitzcarraldo white book?"

This Little Art by Kate Briggs - a rather patronising review of which by Ben Moser caused quite a fuss (see elsewhere on M&G)

Kate Briggs is one of the 3 judges of this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize so I am hoping for some great translated books on the longlist

WndyJW wrote: "Does the last one listed, Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer contain include the material in The Homeric Hymns, Ian?"

This is a recent bilingual Loeb Classical Library replacement for an old (c. 1914) edition from the original series, in which the Homeric Hymns were lumped together with Hesiod, and some fragments of other hexameter epics.

The new LCL book contains the complete Homeric Hymns, including some material that wasn't available for the previous edition (even the revised printings), plus the fragments of some other works that were attributed to Homer in antiquity, but aren't part of the Epic Cycle (that's in another volume), plus the ancient biographies of Homer: everything but the Hymns have long been hard to find, if available in English at all.

Whether it is worth the extra money depends on how curious you are about other, mainly comic, pseudo-Homeric poems and what amount to "celebrity biographies" based on pure imagination. If you know some Greek, of course, it is probably a good investment, like the other Greek LCL volumes. (There is also a Latin set, in red covers instead of green.)

lark wrote: "Not to take the thread over completely but I love Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses by Ted Hughes."

This is what this thread is for, Lark! We’ve discussed the classics and translations previously, but I don’t remember where, so I wanted, I hope not selfishly, a thread we can all refer to when reading classics or any work that has multiple translations.

That’s the book I was thinking of, Paul. Thanks.

How do we feel about Anne Carson? I actually adore her, but her translations are hit and miss. For example Grief lessons was fantastic whereas the Bakkhai I can‘t almost read.

In any ways, her Autobiography of Red is just a must read for anyone interested in Myths, even when it is a new interpretation.

But also Christa Wolf‘s Cassandra is an incredible book which has a little companion book of essays explaining how it the myth ties into DDR Germany and politics.

Cristiano wrote: "How do we feel about Anne Carson? I actually adore her, but her translations are hit and miss. For example Grief lessons was fantastic whereas the Bakkhai I can‘t almost read.

In any ways, her Au..."

Thanks Christiano - my opinion is that Anne Carson can do no wrong, even with Bakkhai. I love the way she plays with the myths.
Thank you for the reminder about Christa Wolf - my copy of Cassandra has been sitting (unread) on my shelves for too long. And I had forgotten the four essays that go with the title story.
I have a copy of her Medea which is a more recent retelling and excellent.

I've been staring at Anne Carson's Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides ever since I bought it in February, afraid to open it, partly from intimidation and partly because I want it to be as good as Antigonick and I'll feel bad if it isn't.

Autobiography of Red is I think the only Carson I’ve read and I’m apparently one of the few who disliked it. I have no objection to her writing ability but I hated how Geryon was imagined as a pathetic modern teenage boy mooning over the cruel jock Hercules (“can’t you stop crying and just fuck”.. ugh). Didn’t work for me at all.

WndyJW wrote: "I forgot to ask why you think bitch would be what Homer intended, RC? I heard Natalie Haynes say that dog had an unfavorable connotation in Ancient Greece, is that why you think bitch is a better t..."

In answer to your question on my favorite Beowulf translation, I first have to echo Roman Clodia thoughts that no translation is perfect and different translations offer different satisfactions. Then I echo Lark in liking having multiple translations blending and morphing in my mind, so for classics, I rarely read a work without reading another alongside for immediate comparison.

But, my favorite translation is often related to whoever was popular when I was first taught the work by a good professor, so my favorite Beowulf was the Chickering translation with dual page Old English and modern translation text. Beowulf

Lark thanks for the response on the Headley translation.

Sam wrote: "Lark thanks for the response on the Headley translation. ..."

I loved Chickering's translation too, Sam, although I imagine I'd love it more with a good professor to guide me through it. It's certainly the best (only?) translation that gives a solid sense of the poetics of the original poem.

Whenever waxing on about my love of Beowulf I can't help but mention Benjamin Bagby who has been performing it for decades--who knows how authentically but I'm a convert--best way I know to hear this poem--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WcIK...

or if you only want a taste of it, here is an excerpt, at an emotional focal point of the poem, from a performance many years earlier:

https://www.bagbybeowulf.com/video/in...

Every time I listen, I wish I was a baritone.

I must get Chritina Wolf’s Medea!
I’ve heard a few things over the last year that were far more compassionate to Medusa pointing out that Athena (the poster woman for complicity in patriarchy) punished Medusa after Poseidon raped her by turning her lovely hair into snakes. I’d like a new Medusa story. Not a contemporary Medusa, but an Ancient Greek setting that is empathetic to Medusa and makes Poseidon and Athene the villains.

Rachel Cusk also translated (adapted) Euripides‘ Medea. Very keen on that! Has anyone read it? Worth it?

lark wrote: "she makes a point of saying that the same OE noun is used for Beowulf and Grendel's mother--but Tolkien translates the Beowulf instances as "HERO" and the instances where the same word is used for Grendel's mom as "HAG" or something like that. That's interesting.
. ..."

The word in question probably wasn't translated "Hag," because it doesn't appear in Tolkien's translation of Beowulf: at least a digital search of the Kindle version couldn't find it there. It is used three times in "Sellic Spell," which is a short story Tolkien wrote to illustrate what the Beowulf folktale might have been like before the character was taken up into heroic legend.

He also rendered the story into Old English -- in fact the modern English version of "Sellic Spell" may have been translated from the OE version. I haven't tried to identify the Old-English word in question, and see if he used it in more than one sense.

(This is possible without deviating from the literal meaning: some Old English words had double, and sometimes opposite, meanings. E.g., the same word could mean "an exile," one expelled from his home, and in that sense seems to have rise to Modern English "wretch," but it also could designate a lone champion, and can be translated "hero.")

I read The Oresteian Trilogy yesterday and loved it. I enjoyed Colm Toibin’s novel, The House of Names, but he left out The Eumenides, the play in which Orestes and Apollo, and the Furies take their case to Athene to decide if Orestes’ crime of killing his mother is justified since it was to avenge her murder of Agamemnon. It’s brilliant!

Sam Leith on the Spectator Books podcast (one of my favorite podcasts) interviewed Maria Dahvana Headley about her Beowulf translation, here:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/m...

I enjoyed their conversation! She reads a little from her translation but most of their conversation is about the poem itself and her views on translation.

WndyJW wrote: "I forgot to ask why you think bitch would be what Homer intended, RC? I heard Natalie Haynes say that dog had an unfavorable connotation in Ancient Greece, is that why you think bitch is a better translation?"

Sorry, Wndy, for the long delay in replying but yes, dogs are associated with Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, magic and spells in Ancient Greek culture - and Hecate is sometimes addressed as the black dog.

Also Hecuba from the Iliad cycle gets turned into a dog, a symbol of her ravening anger and desire for revenge. And then there's Scylla from the Odyssey who is a woman from the torso up but a circle of dogs from her waist down - a symbol of her monstrous nature.

Helen in the Odyssey is associated with drugs and spells when Odysseus' son, Telemachus, goes to visit her in Sparta where she's back at home with Meneleus.

But that term 'bitch' is used by Helen of herself, it's not the narrator calling her that. Homer is actually very sympathetic towards Helen, as I've remarked before.

I also liked Headley's Beowulf, and think she does a tremendous job of making it thrilling again, and putting the rhythm and alliteration back in. I'm less sure about it being billed as a 'feminist translation', and some of the 'Bro!' exclamations seem to bind narrator and audience as male recipients which did make me questions where as women we're located in the transactions between poet, bard, and characters.

lark wrote: "Sam Leith on the Spectator Books podcast (one of my favorite podcasts) interviewed Maria Dahvana Headley about her Beowulf translation, here:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/m......"

Thanks Lark for all the great links.

Thank you, Roman Clodia, and thanks for the links, Lark!

Is anyone familiar with these: Purgatorio and Inferno? I haven’t read even a page of The Inferno.