I started reading Dryden's Aeneid, mal4mac. It's in rhymed iambic pentameter and so far quite entertaining with Juno getting hot and bothered.
I started reading Dryden's Aeneid, mal4mac. It's in rhymed iambic pentameter and so far quite entertaining with Juno getting hot and bothered.
I'll hold my hand up and say I like the Fagles translation. Fagles as a translator is consistently very good, though his Aeneid does have some problems. For one thing, his Virgil sounds and feels a lot like his Homer. Also, Fagles seems to like these elegant, phrases over Virgil's Latin which was written in this somewhat clunky high style. There is supposed to be a friction to Virgil's poem, and there just isn't in Fagles' translation of it. Still, Fagles is good if you want a reasonably accurate translation of the poem, and I still use it whenever I teach The Aeneid, which isn't often, sadly.
About it being propaganda - well, that's one interpretation of it. I can't say it's the one I would agree with, as the tone is really the deciding factor in that sense. And since there is still scholarly debate on that very subject still, it's more than reasonable to assume that that is intentional. The Aeneid should not really be compared against Homer, Homer and Virgil were doing different things, and in terms of nearly everything Homer would obviously win out.
'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'
so there are variations of understanding with regards to Aeneid?Originally Posted by mal4mac
how does one feel about a script/piece that has multiple understanding and none has not one common ground with all of them?
the translations in other words are agreed to differ?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
Although I've read both of Homer's classics (with a struggle!) I've never been able to read a few pages of Virgil without thinking, "some other time, maybe". (I've just done it again!)
"The general reader... in Latin literature... may be as rare as the ivory-billed woodpecker" - David Ross
I have read but understood I could not conquer I won?
there is a difference between wanting to reread for clarification and wanting to reread because one could not the first time.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
I guess the over-riding issue I have with The Aeneid, is that everything Virgil did with it, Homer just flat out did it better, imo. I can see the historic relevance of it in setting up an epic history for the Romans, but the poem just feels flat to me. I would not go so far as to call it bad, especially because of the way it fleshes out the sack of Troy and the Trojan horse. I remember when reading The Iliad and The Odyssey I kept wondering why their was not significant mention or elaboration of the Trojan horse, which is so intertwined with the whole story. The Aeneid provides this vital piece and imo, completes The Iliad by showing us the sack of Troy and what happened to the survivors.
I'm not sure if the differing translations so much change the story, as change the feel of the story. I initially said the Robert Fitzgerald or Allen Mandelbaum translations might be better picks for The Aeneid, because they use a longer, more flowery or eloquent style than Robert Fagles, imo. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my Fagles translations of Homer. He prioritized force, speed, and clarity, while using a somewhat colloquial style with moments of great eloquence. It gives his translations of these works a down-to-earth feel while retaining the epic qualities. I feel that this style was similarly used for The Aeneid and it just doesn't quite work the same way. The colloquialisms used for Homer do not translate well to Virgil.
Another thing that really, really stood out to me, were the similes. In The Iliad and The Odyssey they were ALWAYS, for me, highly effective in generating great visualizations, but some reason in The Aeneid they seemed to distract me from the story. I cannot really explain it better than that.
That is the thing though. Fagles is best for the Greek poets, and their rapid, direct, and constant style. He misses their long, long lines, but that's not such a huge problem for me. His translation style was just not suited to the more verbally complex and tonally ambiguous Virgil. I do understand what you mean, Vota, Virgil is no match for Homer - but ... who was? That seems an unfair benchmark considering Homer set the stage on which pretty much it not actually all western fiction is played on.
Virgil was known for his eclogue, bucolic writings about the simple, rustic, Roman farm - and yet wrote this epic poem that even reuses lines from his pastoral poem The Georgics, whereas Homer belongs to the tradition of the oral story teller, and almost certainly had centuries of refinement to back him up, if he existed at all. With Virgil it was essentially an all new poem with an old story behind it, and it was a poem that apparently was never finished too. Comparing Virgil's epic to the Homeric epics is perfectly understandable, I guess, but it is also rather unfair I think.
Last edited by Poetaster; 05-17-2014 at 04:08 PM.
'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'
Do either of you have comparative examples from each of the translators to illustrate their strengths or weaknesses?
Here are two renderings of the same scene.
The Fagles translation:
The Fitzgerald translation:Then Juno in all her power, filled with pity
for Dido's agonizing death, her labor long and hard,
sped Iris down from Olympus to release her spirit
wrestling now in a deathlock with her limbs.
Since she was dying a death not fated or deserved,
no, tormented, before her day, in a blaze of passion--
Prosperina had yet to pluck a golden lock from her head
and commit her life to the Styx and the dark world below.
So Iris, glistening dew, comes skimming down from the sky
on gilded wings, trailing showers of iridescence shimmering
into the sun, and hovering over Dido's head, declares:
"So commanded, I take this lock as a sacred gift
to the God of Death, and I release you from your body."
With that, she cut the lock with her hand and all at once
the warmth slipped away, the life dissolved in the winds
... Almighty Juno,
Filled with pity for this long ordeal
And difficult passage, now sent Iris down
Out of Olympus to set free
The wrestling spirit from the body's hold.
For since she died, not at her fated span
Nor as she merited, but before her time
Enflamed and driven mad, Proserpina
Had not yet plucked from her the golden hair,
Delivering her to Orcus of the Styx.
So humid Iris through bright heaven flew
On saffron-yellow wings, and in her train
A thousand hues shimmered before the sun.
At Dido's head she came to rest.
"This token
Sacred to Dis I bear away as bidden
And free you from your body."
Saying this,
She cut a lock of hair. Along with it
Her body's warmth fell into dissolution,
And out into the winds her life withdrew.
'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'
which of the two do you prefer?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
Of the two of them? I first read the Fagles, so I'm naturally inclined to go with that, though the merits of the Fitzgerald translation are great indeed. Here is the original:
Tum Iuno omnipotens, longum miserata dolorem
difficilisque obitus, Irim demisit Olympo,
quae luctantem animam nexosque resolveret artus.
Nam quia nec fato, merita nec morte peribat,
sed misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore,
nondum illi flavum Proserpina vertice crinem
abstulerat, Stygioque caput damnaverat Orco.
Ergo Iris croceis per caelum roscida pennis,
mille trahens varios adverso sole colores,
devolat, et supra caput adstitit: "Hunc ego Diti
sacrum iussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo."
Sic ait, et dextra crinem secat: omnis et una
dilapsus calor, atque in ventos vita recessit.
'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'
Here's how Dryden translates that:
Then Juno, grieving that she should sustain
A death so ling'ring, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of lab'ring nature, and dissolve her life.
For since she died, not doom'd by Heav'n's decree,
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plung'd her in despair,
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.
Downward the various goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colors from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover's head,
And said: "I thus devote thee to the dead.
This off'ring to th' infernal gods I bear."
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:
The struggling soul was loos'd, and life dissolv'd in air.
Virgil. The Aeneid (Kindle Locations 1405-1410).
Reading the last few posts have just reminded me how much I enjoyed reading parts The Aeneid at school. Book 4 was definitely my favourite
What about David West? Why not prose? Being, mostly, a novel reader, I find these long narrative poems rather hard going:
"Unlike his immediate predecessors Robert Fitzgerald and CH Sisson, West believed that prose suited his task better than verse, since “I know of nobody at the end of our century who reads long narrative poems in English, and I want the Aeneid to be read.” In order not to interrupt the flow, he avoided using footnotes or a glossary . Scholarly “furniture”, he felt, would only distract the eye and diminish the vitality of the text."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...avid-West.html
I just read the first few pages in Amazon "Look Inside" and, for me, West seems a lot more accessible than Fitzgerald. I read Rieu's versions of Homer's epics after finding Fagles hard going. Maybe I should go with prose for Virgil as well.
If you take the Fitzgerald translation and pretend the line breaks aren't there, couldn't you read it as prose?
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