2024 the best translation of the iliad review

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The great war epic of Western literature, translated by acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles, and featured in the Netflix series The OA

A Penguin Classic
 
Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.
 
Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer’s poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad’s mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls “an astonishing performance.”

This Penguin Classics Deluxe edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

9780140275360

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140275363
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (January 1, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 704 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140275360
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140275360
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1330L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.9 inches
Reviewer: Greg Taylor
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: On the world in one book and Fagles over Lombardo
Review: I have several points to make in this review. The first is to explain why I recommend the Fagles translation over that of Lombardo. The choice of translation is at one and the same time easy, personal and fraught with consequence.It is easy because all the translations that I am familiar with (Fitzgerald, Fagles and Lombardo) are excellent and have their own excellencies. It is personal because because I believe it is largely a matter of individual aesthetic. But it is fraught with consequence.Let me explain that last part. In Homeric Moments, Eva Braan points out the passage in Book 18 when Achilles first talks to Thetis after hearing that Patrocles has been killed by Hector. Fagles (p. 470, Line 96) translates the line as "I've lost him". Lombardo parses the line as "And I killed him" (Lombardo, p. 357, Line 86). Braan suggests that the alternate to lost should be "destroyed" (Braan, p. 11). This crux epitomizes my loss at not knowing Greek and having to read translations. I lose out on those moments, those flashes of shifting insight that knowing that the word I am reading can imply loss, guilt and transgression all at the same time.Knowing that there are trade-offs of insight to win or lose on the choice of a translation, I recommend you read several. Pick a main translation. And at the moments of consequence in the story, consult the others. Lombardo is flat out better at making Book 2(the catalogue of ships) not only readable but purposeful. Homer in that one chapter is giving all the islands, all the kingdoms and cities of Greece a place in the national epic of the country. He is giving everyone in Greece a hero to look back on as their own.But in general I find Lombardo to be, for lack of a better term, coarser. And, I think it has a lot to do with his methodology. I read his intro as saying that he works his translation out over the coarse of time by performing it (fair enough since we are reading Homer, the singer of epics). But, as a result of those readings perhaps, his translation has passages that are real clunkers.For example, I laughed out loud when I read this:"Well let me tell you something. I guaranteeThat if I ever catch you running on at the mouth againAs you were just now, my name isn't Odysseus..." (Lombardo, p.28, Line 279-281)I read those line and what I see is young Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones not Odysseus.Compare Fagles:"I tell you this, so help me it's the truth:If I catch you again, blithering on this way,let Odysseus' head be wrenched off his shoulders" (Fagles, p. 108, Line 301-303).That line count is also an issue- Lombardo's methodology leads him to leave out words, phrasesand lines because they are unneccessary to performance. I can't go with that.I could go on but I think you see my argument. To sum up: I don't read/speak a bit of Greek. My ear when reading aloud leads me to prefer the Fagles translation but the Lombardo is a valuable adjunct to that reading. Since both translations are also interpretations, to read them both is to probably get a little closer to Homer.And, by the way, both contain useful introductions although I think Knox's intro to Fagles' translation is better than Murnaghan's to Lombardo's translation.Finally, why should you care? I have hinted at it in my review title and my remark on the catalogue of ships. Homer's poetic style reveals so much more than an epic on force or whatever the critical summation de jour is. He creates a world. Not just a world at war but through his similes a world of crafts, work, weddings, births, murders, kinships, friendships, of gods, of monsters, of countries and of history. Toward the end of the book, the God Hephaestus creates for Achilles a new shield. Homer describes in detail the working on the shield, the two cities, one at war, one at peace and the whole universe that surrounds them. It is the perfect simile for the effect of Homer's poem as a whole.The other reason you should read this book is the central conflict between Hector and Achilles. Both men are doomed and know it. Both are aware that the success of their side is dependent on them.Achilles is the more god-like but Hector is the better man, the more humane human being. You should care about reading about these two because in their conflict, they are tracing out what is was for the men of ancient Greece to live and to die. And their story continues to carry the weight of the ways that they faced their fate down to our own time.Which brings me to my final reason for preferring Fagles over Lombardo. Brando in The Wild Ones was a marvel. There is nothing wrong at all with Brando from The Wild Ones. Brando from On the Waterfront was even better. But Brando is not Hector, he is not Achilles, he is not Odysseus or Diomedes or Great Ajax. To my ears, all too often Lombardo give us Brando. Fagles gives us the Greeks. At least, to my ears and my soul. Try the two of them out and let me know how you feel. And if anyone wants to argue the merits of different translations in the comments, have at me.

Reviewer: Tom Marking
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The earliest and greatest war story
Review: There are probably at most a few hundred people in the world with the knowledge and competence to critique Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad into English. First, one would have to be fluent in Greek and in particular the ancient dialects of Greek that Homer used to compose his poem. Since I am not in this exalted category of people I will have no comment on the translation. My interests lie more in the poem itself, its possible historicity, and other issues. Although I had read the Iliad long ago in college I had forgotten much. My recent foray to read it again had more to do with certain claims that Julian Jaynes made in his book "On the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" which is an old classic of psychological literature from the 1970's. According to Jaynes the characters in the Iliad show no sign of modern consciousness but rather they are the playthings of the gods who issue commands which must be obeyed. Indeed, according to Jaynes' theory the gods are auditory hallucinations in people's heads and so we see Athena telling Achilles not to smite Agamemnon. After rereading the Iliad I don't find Jaynes' theory to be compelling. There are signs of human consciousness everywhere with both humans and gods judging and making decisions according to the best data they have available. So the characters seem to have an entirely modern consciousness as far as I can tell. Indeed, in Book 5 the Greek hero Diomedes attacks two of the gods in person (Aphrodite and Aries) and even wounds them. That certainly doesn't fit the bicameral mind theory.So putting Jaynes' theory aside, the next big issue is why it is the Trojan War which is the historical event that Homer chooses to write about. From the archaeological record we know that the greatest historical event between Troy being attacked and Homer was the Bronze Age collapse which resulted in the complete destruction of the Mycenaean civilization. So why is that not the theme of the poem? Why not an invasion of barbaric Sea Peoples attacking the Achaean defenders who valiantly fight to defend their cities in a losing cause against superior numbers? Perhaps that topic was too raw emotionally to deal with and so Homer chose a more remote war in which the Greeks were victorious. There may be an echo of the Bronze Age collapse when Hera says to Zeus that he can destroy the three cities she loves the most which are Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta. Perhaps Homer's audience knows that these cities have indeed been sacked. Or perhaps Troy itself becomes the poetical equivalent of the entire Bronze Age Greek civilization which is doomed to die. We can probably never know for sure why the Trojan War was picked as the topic.Another anomaly that the forward to the book points out is that the Iliad was likely first written down between 725 and 675 BCE not long after the Greeks adopted the alphabet from the Phoenicians. It is thus one of the first pieces of Greek literature to be written using the new writing system since Linear B had been long forgotten. We usually don't expect a masterpiece to be the first thing written, but rather several short stumbling efforts leading up to further sophistication and then the masterpiece. That is not the historical record of the Iliad. The masterpiece comes first with almost complete preservation and then we only have fragments of other Greek poems from the 7th century. So the history of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey is indeed very peculiar and is not what we would expect from a Greece just recovering from a Dark Age lasting three centuries. Perhaps that is because of the genius of some individual named Homer or it has some other unknown cause, but we should rejoice that we have such an excellent and long piece of Greek literature from such an early age.There are still plenty of mysteries regarding the Iliad and its author. Each generation can find its own particular enjoyment in these poems.A few other comments are in order concerning historicity. Book 2 of the Iliad concerns the catalog of ships and how many came from various places in Achaea (Greece) and who their commanders were. So we see Agamemnon commanded 100 ships from Mycenae which was the biggest contingent. On the Trojan side it says that the allies of Troy speak a thousand different tongues and they come from all over Asia Minor. This matches the historical record of Asia Minor in the 13th century BCE which was dominated by the Hittite Empire in the center but with many satellite kingdoms surrounding it, each with its own language. There is some speculation that the language of Troy (called Wilusa by the Hittites) was Luwian, not Greek. And there would have been as much religious diversity as linguistic diversity although the poem does not show this. So the catalog of ships has always struck scholars as peculiar as a literary form unless it has some historical basis. It seems that most of the places listed in Achaea as sending ships were actual Bronze Age settlements so the catalog of ships may be historical.Also, strewn throughout the Iliad are hundreds of combat sequences which go like this. A, son of B whose father was C killed D, son of E whose father was F. And for the most part A, B, C, D, E, and F are never mentioned again in the poem. These numerous examples seem to have no purpose in furthering the plot. They seem to be filler material that could have been left out. So why include them? They seem to be very specific in terms of who killed whom and what genealogy each person had. Since this filler material does not advance the plot at all it would seem that the only reason this material is included is because it is historical or at least Homer thinks it is. Now, whether this material dates from the actual Trojan War of the mid 13th century BCE or from the later Iron Age is anyone's guess. My overall opinion is that the Iliad is probably much more historical than we generally think although events may have been moved in time to suit the poet's whimsy.

Reviewer: Ismael
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Excelente libro, se ve muy bien y el contenido ya saben que es fabuloso.

Reviewer: Michael Jones
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: What can I say, this poem has lived through the ages, just fantastic. There are points reading this that I felt at was at the walls of Troy. This version is well translated and printed with good fonts. I mean Homer of course I would recommend reading this.

Reviewer: Roy Gentry
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A pleasure to look at and hold, an absolute delight to read. A treasure to pass down to future generations.

Reviewer: Jon Howes
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Not a bad version.I'd like to find a copy where Hector kills the insufferable git Achilles mind.Hector gets such a bad press and he is, apart from possibly Patroclus, the only real hero in the book, the chap who overcomes his fear to face his worst nightmare. OK so he get's killed but heroism is facing and overcoming fear not being an unstoppable murderous thug in impenetrable armour who has numerous hissy fits.

Reviewer: samyak sambit mohapatra
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is the recommended version.