listened to the new yorker podcast this morning about a new translation of the illiad. it talked about how it was assumed, until C18, that homer was a guy, an ancient master to be revered or reviled.
then, in C19, he became a cultural symbol, not a man. as biblical studies progressed and people realized that god himself probably didn’t write the bible himself, scholars applied the idea to other ancient texts. ‘homer’ is just a name given to a work written by many people over time, because come on, how could one guy write and remember a poem this long? well there are hints and repetitions that helped orators recite the poem from memory, and in this way it was learned and re-learned and edited along the way.
and now m.l. west, a british scholar, has doubled back. he claims that there is a “primal text” for the iliad, one which was actually written by a man named homer, and then of course revised over the years, as english translator stephen mitchell has done. mitchell is a very prolific translator whose translations always err on the side of modernization. his translation of the tao te ching is the one i’m always coming back to.
of course the main issues in translation are here: reproduce meter and rhythm in a fresh way, in the target language? or stay true, keep it epic, in-depth, digestible only with a spoonful of history and some analytical bitters, after the meal, to wash it down?
