Inquiring Minds Want to Know--Your Current Top-Ten Greatest Works of Literature?

A couple of times a year I make a list in my journal.  I ask myself the following question--

"If I had to list my top-ten greatest works of literature of all time right now, what would they be?"

Obviously, this list morphs and changes over time as I continue to discover and read books that are new to me.  Interestingly enough though, there are a couple of stalwart hangers-on that have continued to occupy spots on my list.  So, what's on my list at this particular moment?  Well, here 'tis--

The Iliad, by Homer
The Oresteia, by Aeschylus
Beowulf, by Anonymous
Complete Poems, John Keats
Villette, by Charlotte Bronte
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Complete Poems, Emily Dickinson
The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

Okay, there's my list.  I'll even share a little 'blurb' about each book telling you why it made my list, and why I hope you'll pick it up and give it a go sometime yourself.

The Iliad--More than three-thousand years old, these sixteen-thousand lines of poetry lyrically tell the greatest story ever told; and, at the same time, it is also quite possibly the greatest anti-war testament to be found in the canon of the world's greatest literature.  Spell-binding and compelling from start-to-finish, this epic poem by the itinerant bard, Homer, is a 'must-read' for any serious reader.  I highly recommend the translations of Robert Fagles (1990), Robert Fitzgerald (1974), and Richmond Lattimore (1951).  I am reading a translation by Stanley Lombardo (1997) that completely lends itself to the oral tradition of Homer, as Lombardo has created an interpretation that is meant to be recited aloud and listened to.  I have Stephen Mitchell's brand-new translation sitting on the shelf waiting for me too.  Stay tuned! 

The Oresteia--This trilogy of tragic plays by Aeschylus was first performed over 2,500 years ago in an outdoor amphitheater near Athens.  While it is something bordering on near-miraculous that it has survived nearly three millenia--the only surviving trilogy from antiquity--what is of even more import is what these plays say and what they document and may have set in motion for all of civilization.  These plays recount the grim and dark tragedy of the ancient Greek House of Atreus, and the shift from the "Code of Blood Vendetta, or Vengeance" to the "Rule of Law," introducing the new concept of a trial by jury and pronouncement of judgment and justice.  This is nothing short of monumental, and simply must be experienced.  I highly recommend the translations of The Oresteia by Robert Fagles (1977), Ted Hughes (1999), and Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian (2003), and while I've not yet read it, I hear that the translation by Peter Meineck (1997) is superb as well.

Beowulf--This was incredible!  Beowulf is an epic poem of nearly 3,200 lines that was first written down in old Anglo-Saxon--the 'Mother-Tongue' of English--about 1,300 years ago.  I have only read the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney's, translation (2000) and it is spare, sparse, and gritty, and is presented side-by-side with Anglo-Saxon original.  The plot of this elegiac poem was absolutely epic.  The horror of Grendel and his Dam was palpable; and the heroism of Beowulf and his spear-fellows timeless.  Finally, the ability to carefully study Heaney's translation, alliteration, and interpretation of the poem and then to be able to compare it to the old Anglo-Saxon bordered on surrealistic.

Complete Poems of John Keats--In my opinion, Keats was the "Bright Star" among all of the poets of the Ages.  I weep when I think of what the world lost when John Keats died of tuberculosis at the age of 26 on February 23, 1821, in Rome.  This poetic giant left humanity with a treasure of the likes of Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Lamia, Endymion, and The Fall of Hyperion, and a significant number of other breathtakingly beautiful poems .  It somehow comforts me to imagine Keats, even now, scribbling away in poetic fervor, in the "western halls of gold" with Apollo, his voice joined with that of the nine Muses, and "We listen here on earth:/The dying tones that fill the air,/And charm the ear of evening fair."  Read Keats, and prepare to be left breathless, but, oh, ever so alive!

Villette--My short letter to Miss Charlotte Bronte upon finishing my first reading of her profoundly powerful last novel, Villette:

'This novel, this Villette, like an arrow fletched fair, flew true, oh so true, and pierced your beating heart; and from that mortal wound poured the secrets of your soul, your inner-most being; laid bare for all to see.  The incalculable loss of your older sisters, then Branwell, your dearest Emily, and finally quiet little Anne.  This towering testament to loneliness, to sorrow, swept me, your Reader, relentlessly through the unimagined torrent of your human emotions—your grief, your fears, your reserved passion, your quiet grace, steadfast loyalty, and your resolute strength and faith.

I felt guilty as I read, Miss Charlotte, looking over my shoulder at every pause; afraid that you should somehow find me picking the lock of your secret diary; spellbound as I turned the pages, one after the other, reading your most intimate, personal, and painful thoughts and the passionate feelings that poured forth onto the page. Intensely captivated by the dialog between your Passion and your Reason, the conversations between your Imagination and your Matter; but I read on. Until it simply became too much; I averted my eyes, and I wept.'

With each re-read, I find that this novel still affects me on a personal and an emotional level like no other work of fiction I've encountered to date.  Read Villette.

Middlemarch--At first blush, one has this sense of simply being immersed in a rather quiet and pastoral story, but there's really very much more going on here as one turns the pages.It is a story of rural England during the period of great reforms in politics, religion, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, and even transportation.  Mostly though, it is the story of human beings, and what it means to be human.

This is a stately, sedate, sophisticated, and complexly elegant novel.  It really does demand the reader's full dedication and attention as it is read too, much like I found when I read her last novel Daniel Deronda.  Boy, was it ever worth the extra effort though.  When I finished reading this novel, for the first time  earlier this fall, I realized that I had arrived at a point in my reading and comprehension that I finally understood what Virginia Woolf meant as she described Middlemarch as "...one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."

Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson--My description of Dickinson and her work that I used in an earlier blog post (here) is still pretty much spot-on.  Emily Dickinson, the 'Belle of Amherst,' may have been quiet and even painfully shy, but there was a nuclear reactor's worth of power contained within this woman's genius that was able, through her brilliant use of a few simple joined and arranged words, to create a body of work of nearly 1,800 poems that perfectly pulsate and throb with the essence of Life.  As a companion to Dickinson's The Complete Poems, I highly recommend Helen Vendler's Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (2010), in which she showcases Dickinson's "...startling imagination and the ingenuity of her linguistic invention."  All I can say is that Dickinson's poetry has resonated and stayed with me my entire life!

The Return of the Native--As many of you know, I love the novels and poetry of Thomas Hardy, and one of my very favorite Hardy novels is The Return of the Native.  The novel contains more than a superficial nod to the great choric scenes of the Greek tragedies, as well as the gatherings of commoners like many of Shakespeare's dramas.  The novel's primary characters are locked together in a tale of passion, drama, pathos, and tragedy where, in typical Hardyan fashion, only Fate, Chance, and Irony exert any control whatsoever.  Like a moth is drawn to a flame, the reader is inexorably drawn into the tale, and recognizes with growing horror that full release can only be attained through reaching and experiencing the novel's shocking climax.  The lyrical descriptions of the environment, the role of the humans in it, and the interactions between the characters quite reminds me of the great modern American novelist, Cormac McCarthy (the next author on my list!).  The Return of the Native is Hardy's Naturalism at its finest; and becomes an almost poetic homage to the interaction of the human species with one another as well as with the Earth Mother herself.

Blood Meridian--This ain't an easy book to read.  This is an uber-violent novel that paints a picture of the west like something done by Hieronymus Bosch.  I think Harold Bloom got it exactly right when he said,

"The violence is the book. The Judge [Holden] is the book, and the Judge is, short of Moby-Dick, the most monstrous apparition in all of American literature. The Judge is violence incarnate. The Judge stands for incessant warfare for its own sake."

All I can tell you is that I have read this novel several times, and each time I find myself somewhat ensorcelled, and in an almost evil or grimly terrifying sort of way, as I turn the pages.  It may be the bildungsroman of 'The Kid' and his adventures, but there is absolutely nothing nostalgic or romantic about the American West that McCarthy paints in this novel.  Somehow though, I think this novel is incredibly important, and only Cormac McCarthy could have written it.

Cold Mountain--With this novel I have come full circle with my list and return to Homer, if you will.  I completely agree with the widely held opinion that Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is the American Odyssey. This is an extraordinarily beautifully written novel that tells the story of Inman, a Confederate soldier, who is physically and psychologically worn out from the horrific combat of the American Civil War, and undertakes a trek back to his home in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.  Frazier's ability to connect the reader with Inman, the people he encounters, and the environment through which he travels is amazing, and it is accomplished through some of the most poetic and lyrical prose I've read in a long, long time.  Simply put, this is just a gorgeous novel to read, and it fully deserved the National Book Award for Fiction that it received in 1997.

Well, there it is.  My current list of my top-ten favorite works of literature, and why I chose them.  Have you read any, or all, of these books?  If so, what did you think of them?  Also, the bibliophile (and 'list-maker') in me is very interested in your top-ten list.  I'd love for you to leave me a comment with the list of your top-ten favorite great books.

The Challenge--What Translation to Choose and Read?

These days I'm reading a lot of great literature that was not originally written in English, and as I really don't speak or read any other language other than English, choosing a good translation would seem to be a very important step if I'm to fully experience these novels, plays, or poems.  Until a few years ago, I never really gave much thought to what translator or translation that I was reading.  I just purchased a copy of the book and started reading.  For the past few years I've maintained my on-line library on both Goodreads and Shelfari, and I've begun encountering a lot of information about literary translators and various translations of the books that I've read, I'm reading, or want to read.  Intuitively, at least to me, it would seem to make sense that a translation that is well-done and presented in a such a fashion as to make the author's work relevant can only improve the overall experience we readers can then have with the author and his/her book.  Consequently, I thought that it might be fun, and maybe even useful, to share with all of you my thoughts and observations about the various translations of some of the foreign language works I've read.  I'd also like to hear from you about translators and translations that you've encountered and liked or disliked.  So, let's get started--

I'm going to start in Russia with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  I first read Anna Karenina some 25+ years ago, about the time Masterpiece Theater was running a multi-part adaptation on television.  I was house-sitting for friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I just got completely lost in the novel over several weeks.  The translation that I read was by Constance Garnett (1861-1946), and I loved the book.  I followed that up several years later with my first reading of Tolstoy's War and Peace, also a Garnett translation.  In 2005, I ran across an article in The New Yorker that opened up my eyes to the value of a solid translation and the enormous amount of work involved in translating a great work of literature.  This article was entitled "The Translation Wars" and tells the story of how the husband and wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have tackled the translation of many of the great Russian novels into English (if you're interested, I've provided a link to the article here).  I've since read the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations of Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and have their translation of The Brothers Karamazov sitting on my to-be-read shelf.  I very highly recommend their translations of Tolstoy. Are Pevear/Volokhonsky translations better than the Garnett translations?  Far be it from me to adequately critique or judge one versus the other, but I do know that having read both translations, I can say that I personally prefer the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations--they just felt a little 'earthier' and more Russian.

Okay, let's move on to Beowulf.  I had tried reading this epic, book-length, poem several times over the course of my life and failed miserably, usually only getting a few pages into it before chucking it.  Whilst visiting my younger brother a few years ago, I encountered a battered copy of Seamus Heaney's translation (2001) of this poem on his bookshelf.  My brother raved about it.  I bought a copy, and the rest is as they say, "History!"  This started my love affair with all things Heaney.  Beowulf was incredible! First of all, the story was told in the spare, sparse, and gritty language of Heaney's bilingual translation of the Anglo-Saxon original that is something like 1,000 years old. Second, the plot of this elegiac poem was absolutely epic. The horror of Grendel and his Dam was palpable; and the heroism of Beowulf and his spear-fellows timeless. Finally, the ability to carefully study Heaney's translation, alliteration, and interpretation and then compare it to the Anglo-Saxon was almost surrealistic. It was an amazing experience to have the ability to look at and study the root language of modern English.  As a side-note, when you finished reading the Heaney translation, go out and find yourself a copy of the late John Gardner's slim volume entitled, Grendel (1971).  This existential little book tells the tale from the 'monster's' point of view, and is profoundly thought-provoking on many levels.

Now, let's go further back in time and look at the translations of the itinerant bard and poet, Homer, and two of the great literary works of humankind--The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Apparently, these two Homeric epics may have been first transcribed in Greek in the 8th Century BCE.  Prior to that I have to believe that traveling bards and storytellers around the Mediterranean region would have adapted and told elements of these tales in the villages and towns they visited (i.e., an oral form of translation).   From the perspective of translation and adaptation into English it even gets crazier.  Go on-line, or to your public library, and you'll see that these epic poems have been translated by just about anyone with a passing classical education.  If you look at the Wikipedia entry for "English Translations of Homer" there are, from the 16th century on, nearly 120 different translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Some of the more prominent translations include those done by George Chapman (1611-15), Alexander Pope (1715), Richmond Lattimore (1951, and 1965), Robert Fitzgerald (1961, and 1974), and Robert Fagles (1990, and 1996) .  

I have read the translations by both Lattimore and Fagles, and have the Fitzgerald translation coming to me even as I write this.  I would have to say that my favorite, so far, is the Fagles translation.  It was just magical and the poem seemed alive with richness in a contemporary framework that I could readily understand. Fagles' translation is quite lyrical and loosely maintains a meter of five- and six-beats per line throughout. I encourage you to read it aloud, it just rolls off of the tongue, and becomes even more enchanting.  I also enjoyed the older translation by Richmond Lattimore.  It is elegant and feels more classical.  Again, I am certainly not qualified to judge the quality of one translation versus another, but I am able to judge my responses to each, and I would say that I related better to Fagles' translation.  Finally, I have recently become aware of a brand new translation that is being released in early October 2011, by Stephen Mitchell.  For more on the new Mitchell translation of The Iliad see my blog posting of September 21st.  I guarantee that I will certainly review Mitchell's translation of The Iliad as soon as I am done reading it. [And doesn't it just have the coolest dust-cover artwork?]

I have quite a robust collection of ancient Greek tragedies.  I think have at least one copy of all of the plays by the Greek classicists.  I have several translations of my favorites.  For example, I have four different translations of Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia (Thomson, Lattimore, Fagles, and Ted Hughes), with the Fagles and Hughes translations being my favorites.  The Fagles translation is probably the most faithful to the original Greek (and the Introduction by W.B. Stanford is worth the 'price-of-admission' alone), but the Hughes translation and/or adaptation is even more poetic and emotionally powerful.

Another ancient Greek playwright that I adore is Sophocles, and I have several wonderful translations of his plays.  For the three Theban plays (i.e., Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) it is hard to beat the relatively recent translations by Robert Fagles.  Although, I have to say that the translations of Antigone by Seamus Heaney (The Burial at Thebes, 2005) and Diane Rayor (Antigone, 2011) are beyond sublime.  I also just finished reading a new translation of all seven of Sophocles' plays by Robert Bagg and James Scully, and their Antigone was hard-hitting as well.  I very much enjoyed their translations of Aias (Ajax) and Women of Trakhis too.  I have posted a more in-depth review of the Bagg/Scully translation collaboration here if you're interested.

Finally, I am in the midst of re-reading Victor Hugo's monumental novel, Les Miserables for the first time in some 20 years or so.  I read the Fahnestock/MacAfee translation (1987) shortly after it came out and loved it.  During the big Les Mis craze, I saw several musical adaptations on the stage and a television movie or two as well.  I received a lovely gift certificate for Barnes and Noble for my birthday (or Christmas?) and decided to splurge and buy myself the hardcover Modern Library edition of Julie Rose's new translation of Les Miserables.  I am only about one-quarter of the way through this massive tome, but I am loving and savoring every word.  I had forgotten how much I love this story, and how Hugo lays bare the soul of his characters, and I think Julie Rose has very capably preserved this aspect.  Again, I promise to post a comprehensive review of her translation when I am finished.


Well, have I definitively answered the question, "Which translation is the best?"  Heck no!  I am not even going down that road, as I'm sure that each of us has our own opinions and 'tried-and-true' favorites.  All I've tried to do with this posting is convey the notion that for many of these great works that we read that, in some cases, the translation selected and read can mean the difference between a memorable experience, or one that ends up being just 'ho-hum.'  Please, please take my recommendations with a grain of salt and recognize that these translations are ones that I personally enjoyed and appreciated.  I'm sure that you may have your favorite translations, and for equally valid reasons at that.  I'd love to hear from you about the translators and translations of books and poetry that you've encountered and that have made a positive impression on you.


***