Attending a Reading & Book-Signing with Stephen Mitchell and "The Iliad"

My wife, Susan, and I spent a lovely day in downtown Pasadena yesterday.  The weather was gorgeous with temperatures in the mid-60s.  Much of the afternoon was spent in Christmas shopping for our grandchildren in the many shops and stores along Colorado Boulevard.  As much fun as the shopping was (actually, it was kind of fun ;-), the high point of the day was attending a reading and book-signing at Vroman's Bookstore featuring Stephen Mitchell and his new translation of The Iliad.  It started at 6:00 p.m. and concluded about 7:30 p.m.  Counting Susan and I, there were probably 20 of us in attendance for the reading and discussion.

Photo by John D. Fellers

Mitchell started off with three readings from his translation.  His first reading was from Book 6 (Lines 394-502), and is the beautiful passage recounting the meeting between Hector and his wife, Andromache, and their little baby son, Astyanax.  This intimate marital interlude covers the full range of human emotion, including: love, grief, fear, sorrow, and even hope for the future for their little son.  Mitchell pointed out that what makes these 100 lines, or so, so extraordinarily amazing is that this poignant passage is about the enemy.  Homer is very careful to make his reader conscious of the fact that the cost of this war is a heavy burden for both Greek and Trojan, and that the Trojans are human beings with lives and loves just like the Greeks and even the readers themselves.

The second reading was an interesting choice, and came from Book 18 (Lines 455-597).  This section describes the god of Fire, Hephaestus, crafting the new shield for Achilles.  These nearly 150 lines are what Mitchell interestingly refers to as the "world's first movie", as the crippled blacksmith god lovingly tells the whole saga of human life in minute detail in the bronze, gold, tin, and silver as he fashions the shield.  To hear Mitchell read these lines aloud really brought home to me the poetic beauty of The Iliad, these lines, and especially the musicality of Mitchell's wonderful translation.

The final selection that Mitchell read was from Book 24 (Lines 458-522), and is arguably one of my favorite passages in the entire poem.  This scene describes the meeting between the Trojan king, Priam, and Achilles.  This occurs late at night when Priam comes to the Greek camp in an effort to ransom the corpse of his dead son, Hector.  These sixty-four lines are truly some of the most emotionally powerful lines in the history of poetry and document the state of grace that both men are finally able to attain whilst surrounded by the savagery and brutality of a war of absolute destruction.  I find myself shedding tears each and every time I read this section of the poem, and it was no different when listening to Stephen Mitchell reading it aloud to all us.  Even though these lines are loaded with the pathos of profound grief and no hope for the future of either man, there is the salvific quality of the two men--enemies in this war--being able to find the humanity in one another and reaching that state of grace together.  This is truly amazingly beautiful poetry.

Mitchell entertained questions and answers about his translation for half-an-hour, or so.  Even 'your's truly' piped up with a couple of questions.  I asked if he would tell us a bit more about the process he utilized in translating from the Greek text, and how he made decisions on not including sections of the text that were believed to have been added much, much later in the history of The Iliad.  I also asked Mitchell about his choice of the 'five-beat' meter that he used in constructing his English translation.  He talked about how other translations just didn't sound right to his ear, and that he wanted to see if he could come up with a meter and rhythm that could effectively tell Homer's story, but would still work poetically and musically in English.  It was his experience, and I believe to our long-term literary benefit, that his pentameter lines satisfy on both counts.

I must confess that even though I already had a copy of Mitchell's The Iliad sitting on my bookshelf at home, I purchased another and had Stephen Mitchell inscribe the title page to me.  It has become an instant treasure, and one that I hope to pass on someday to one of my children in the hope that they too will come to love this poem as much as I do.  Also, I will probably try and find some deserving soul to pass on my other copy of Mitchell's beautiful translation.  It seems to me that there's something fitting about sharing Homer with friends and family.

Of course, I couldn't walk out of one of the Los Angeles area's finest independent bookstores without buying some other books!  I bought myself a beautiful edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems (the Folger Shakespeare Library edition, and annotated as well).  I also bought an edition of Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream (the Royal Shakespeare Company edition published by The Modern Library).  All in all, a perfectly lovely day and evening!


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Review: "The Iliad" by Homer, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Maybe Stephen Mitchell answers the question of "Why we should read the Iliad?" best in the 'Introduction' to his new translation of this epic poem--

We return to the Iliad because it is one of the monuments of our own magnificence.  Its poetry lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful, and it shows us how vast and serene the mind can be even when it contemplates the horrors of war.

Frankly, I'm not sure that I've ever before encountered such an eloquent or concise description of the relevance and true value of this great literary work to Humankind.

Some might say, "Do we really need another translation of the Iliad?"  I think the pertinent response to the question should be, "If the new translation advances our appreciation for Homer and deepens our understanding of the story he was attempting to tell and its impact on our lives today--then bring it on!"  This is, in my opinion, precisely what Stephen Mitchell has done with his new translation of The Iliad.

Mitchell's translation is based upon a re-working of the original Greek text by the scholar, Martin L. West.  West identified sections in the text that he classified as "probable interpolations by other rhapsodes" that were spliced into the poem over the decades and centuries after it was written down.  A "rhapsode" is the term for the classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry, i.e., kind of like a bard of the middle ages, and they were apparently common in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., and perhaps even earlier.  West and other scholars believe that what happened was that as the poem was recounted, time and time again, modifications and adaptations were made, and that some of these were ultimately transcribed and included in the Greek text that has been handed down over the ages.  That this likely occurred is not particularly surprising to me, given that the Homeric tradition really was an oral tradition.  Stories told over time and by different story-tellers are quite likely to end up being somewhat different.

So, based upon West's work, Mitchell decided to omit these interpolated sections from his translation.  This has resulted in a translation that excludes something like 1,200-1,300 lines from a poem of approximately 16,000 lines, or just under ten-percent! The most noticeable deletion is Book 10 ("The Doloneia") which recounts the night-time raid by Odysseus and Diomedes into the Trojan camp.  The great majority of scholars confidently acknowledge that Book 10 was a later addition to the poem.  About his translation, Mitchell says--

I am under no illusion that I have translated the original text of the Iliad, as written or dictated by the anonymous poet called Homer--just the most intelligent attempt we have at getting back to an original, and a text that I could use as the basis for the most intense possible poetic experience in English.

Personally, I think Mitchell has succeeded in creating a beautifully spare, but powerfully compelling poem that seems to sing to the reader as though it had been originally composed in English.

Mitchell has generally utilized an iambic five-beat line as his meter.  In contrast with the earlier translations of Lattimore (six-beat), or Fagles (six- or seven-beat lines), Mitchell's poetry seems rhythmically cleaner and more lyrical.  In many respects, I think that what Mitchell has achieved is somewhat akin to the translation of Stanley Lombardo that endeavors to restore the Iliad to its proper place in the oral tradition.  In other words, Mitchell's translation, like Lombardo's, begs to be read aloud.  I am not saying that Mitchell's translation is better than those of Fagles, Lattimore, or Fitzgerald.  No, I am simply saying that it is noticeably different, and that I believe that this will aesthetically appeal to some readers.  Toward this end, I am going to provide an example by comparing a passage from the translation by Robert Fagles (1990), and then the same passage from Mitchell's translation, and you can be the judge of which you prefer.  The section I have selected is from the latter portion of Book 24, the last book of the Iliad, and describes the return to Troy of Priam as he accompanies the body of his slain son, Hector.  First, the Fagles' translation--

"Once they reached the ford where the river runs clear,
the strong, whirling Xanthus sprung of immortal Zeus,
Hermes went his way to the steep heights of Olympus
as Dawn flung out her golden robe across the earth,
and the two men, weeping, groaning, drove the team
toward Troy and the mules brought on the body.
No one saw them at first, neither man nor woman,
none before Cassandra, golden as goddess Aphrodite.
She had climbed to Pergamus heights and from that point
she saw her beloved father swaying tall in the chariot,
flanked by the herald, whose cry could rouse the city.
And Cassandra saw him too...
drawn by the mules and stretched out on his bier.
She screamed and her scream rang out through all Troy:
"Come, look down, you men of Troy, you Trojan women!
Behold Hector now--if you ever once rejoiced
to see him striding home, home alive from battle!
He was the greatest joy of Troy and all our people!"

(Fagles, Book 24, Lines 813-830)

And now the same passage from Mitchell's translation--

"And when they came to the ford of the swirling Xanthus,
Hermes left them and went to Olympus, as dawn
was spreading its saffron glow over all the earth.
With groaning and lamentation they drove the horses
on toward Troy, and the mule cart carried the body.
No one saw them at first, neither man nor woman.
But Cassandra, who was as lovely as Aphrodite,
from the top of Pergamus caught sight of her father
coming to Troy in the chariot...then the herald...
and then she saw him, on a pallet inside the mule cart.
She let out a scream and shouted to the whole city,
'Come and see Hector, you men and women of Troy,
if you ever were glad to see him return from the war,
so great a joy he was to our city and people.'"

(Mitchell, Book 24, Lines 686-699)

Personally, I think Mitchell's crafting of those lines is the more poetic--at any rate, it is poetry that has been structurally organized that very much appeals to me on an emotional and intellectual level.  For example, Fagles describes the coming dawn of the morning with--

Dawn flung out her golden robe across the earth

which, while a wonderful metaphor, is perhaps a bit formal and somewhat abstract.  In contrast, Mitchell keeps it simple and natural with--

as dawn was spreading its saffron glow over all the earth.

Now that is a sunrise that I can see in my mind's eye--the 'saffron-colored' low angled light of the rising sun.  This makes me think of beautiful sunrises that I've actually seen, and then I realize that this beautiful early morning light is actually illuminating and coloring a scene of profound sadness and grief--a father bringing his dead son home.  That is the power of great poetry, in my humble opinion.

In conclusion, this was a powerful and very impressive interpretation, and one that I look forward to carefully reading again and doing more side-by-side comparisons with the other translations that I own and cherish.  For me, I guess what it comes down to is that I'm not sure that there is any such thing as a bad translation of The Iliad, it is just that some are better than others.  Stephen Mitchell's translation is one of the better ones. It gets a solid five stars from me, and I highly recommend reading it.

By the bye, I am going to attend a reading and book-signing featuring Stephen Mitchell being held at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California on November 5th.  I'm very excited to hear more about his experiences with The Iliad over the past few years.  I may even have to buy another copy just to have one signed just for me! ;-)

Bonus Feature

If you're looking for some interesting and well-written fiction to follow your reading of Homer's The Iliad, I might suggest the following--

Helen of Troy by Margaret George (Viking, 2006) tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Helen of Sparta who leaves her husband, Menelaus, and runs off with Paris to Troy.  George does a wonderful job of placing her reader in the Bronze Age of the Greeks and Trojans, and an even better job of creating and exploring the personalities of the various characters involved in the war. An easy and fun read.

Perhaps an even better written and more interesting novel is Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley (Simon and Schuster, 1987).  This is a decidedly intriguing and feminist perspective of the Trojan Prophetess, Kassandra (Cassandra).  Kassandra has always fascinated me, with her story in Greek mythology, and later treatment by the great dramatists, Aeschylus and Euripides.  Bradley expertly continues telling her story masterfully in Firebrand.

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"The Iliad" Redux--Which Translation?

I know, I know, you're probably getting mighty tired of my postings on The Iliad by now.  I'm almost done, I promise.  I only have one major translation left to read, and I'm not getting to it until early next week while I'm on a three-day business trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Having said that though, I thought I'd spend some time putting together a posting that compares and contrasts the translations that I have read, and also provide some suggestions for some pleasurable side reading.  This information may prove useful to readers who want to tackle Homer's epic poem, and are wondering which translation to read.  It may also be interesting to those who've read The Iliad and are considering reading a different translation at some point in time.  I am going to list the translations that I've read organized by date of translation and/or publication.

Richmond Lattimore (1951)--

This is, of the modern translations, probably the most classical, formal, and elegant rendition.  Lattimore uses what he calls a "free six-beat line" in his verse translation of Homer's dactylic hexameter verse of the original Greek.  Based upon all that I've read about these translations, Lattimore was ruthlessly faithful to the Greek spellings of places and names, and utilization of the formal epithets (e.g., "grey-eyed" for Athena, or "father of gods" for Zeus, etc.) when describing the cast-of-characters.  It is colorful and incredibly descriptive stuff to read.  If you love Homer, and specifically The Iliad, Lattimore's poetic interpretation is one that you should eventually read.  It is the 'Elder Big Brother' of modern 20th century Iliads.

Robert Fitzgerald (1974)--

Fitzgerald's translation reads easier, in my opinion, than Lattimore's.  This is a qualitative statement on my part, and is probably more a function of the kind of reader that I am these days.  Fitzgerald also doesn't include all of the repetition that the original Greek text has, as this is really a relict of The Iliad's oral tradition.  Fitzgerald chose blank verse as the meter for his translation, and it really does seem to correspond better to the dactylic hexameter of the Greek than using English hexameter or rhymed verse.  While Fitzgerald's blank verse reads very, very well, it still manages to sound traditional and is not flamboyant at all--it is simply good poetry.  I have to say that 'at the end of the day' I really enjoyed the Fitzgerald translation.


Robert Fagles (1990)--

The translation of The Iliad by Robert Fagles was the first one that I read cover-to-cover, and it really was a life-altering experience, and the beginning of my love-affair with Homer and all-things 'Iliadic'.  Fagles believed in the performance-driven aspects of The Iliad, and he did his very best to emphasize this element with his translation.  Fagles did a terrific job at translating the Greek into his lines of verse that maintain a lyrical and rhythmic five or six beats per line while maintaining a very sensible and readable text.  As I read his translation I found myself completely caught up in the beauty of the mythology, and fully able to experience the pathos, drama, and tragedy of this great story.  I have to say that by the time I was finished with this translation, my overall reading experience was something approaching the sublime.  I guess I'll probably always be partial to Fagles' translation as 'it was my first'.  Finally, I should note that the Introduction to the Fagles translation was written by Bernard Knox and is simply magnificent in its own right and a 'must-read' for any reader of Homer and The Iliad.

Stanley Lombardo (1997)--

Lombardo's translation was fun to read!  Apparently, Lombardo is very interested in restoring the oral tradition associated with people experiencing Homer and The Iliad and The Odyssey.  His translations very much lend themselves to being read aloud and hearing (and even feeling) the lyricism and rhythms of the words and verse.  In fact, it is my understanding that Lombardo does performances of various books of The Iliad on the stage for audiences (would I ever love to attend one of these!).  Frankly, Lombardo's translation begs to be read aloud and shared with others.  Trust me, it works in a similar fashion for the reader reading it alone too--it is a performance on every page!

I also really liked how Lombardo inset and italicized the similes in the poem (and there's gobs of 'em).  It makes it so much easier for the reader to relate each simile to section of the poem it applies to.  It was really quite clever (and makes it ever so much easier when reading aloud).  Lombardo is a firm believer that The Iliad is a living poem (after all, it has been translated into English approximately 150 times since the 17th century!), and that "living poetry means living speech".  I completely agree.  For new readers, or readers who might be unsure of whether they'd like The Iliad, this might be a great translation to start with.  If you're an Iliad junkie, like me, you ought to read it too.  Lombardo's translation is powerful and relevant.

Stephen Mitchell (2011)--

Stay tuned!  I do plan to provide a review of Mitchell's new translation (October 2011) some time in the next couple of weeks.  I have it sitting on the TBR shelf right now, and I plan on starting it early next week while on my business trip.  Apparently, Mitchell has utilized a relatively recent reworking of the Greek text by the scholar, Martin West.  If you're interested in this new translation by Stephen Mitchell, you can read about it in an earlier posting of mine here.  I'm pretty excited to read this and compare and contrast it with the other versions I've read.  It should be really interesting.

Bonus Material--

If you read The Iliad, any of the translations referenced above, or others, I also strongly recommend that you consider picking up the following books.  I think they'll add significantly to your overall experience with Homer and his epic poem.

The Odyssey--Obviously, if you've read The Iliad, you probably ought to go ahead and read The Odyssey.  All of the translators referenced above have translations of The Odyssey, with exception of Stephen Mitchell, and he's working on his rendition even as I write.

Ransom--This little book by Australian writer, David Malouf, is seriously one of the most gorgeous works of fiction I've ever encountered.  It focuses and expands upon events occurring in the last three or four books of The Iliad.  It is hauntingly beautiful and powerful prose that borders on poetic for much of the time.  If you're interested in Malouf's novel, you can check out my review here.

War Music, All Day Permanent Red, and Cold Calls--These little books of poetry by British poet, Christopher Logue, are his retelling of significant portions of The Iliad and are not to be missed.  Once you've read The Iliad, dip into War Music and prepare to be 'gobsmacked' up side the head!  If you're interested in Logue's poetry, have a look at my posting here.

The War That Killed Achilles--This non-fiction book by Caroline Alexander (2009) is superb, and places Homer's epic poem in historical context.  It is just over 200 pages, and is extremely well written.  I am so glad that I read this as it really shed a lot of light on the events associated with the Trojan War, as well as the psychology of the major players.

A Brief Iliadic Glossary--

Some interesting words and definitions that I've encountered during my reads:

androktasia = combat death description (these abound within The Iliad)

aristeia = display of martial prowess (e.g., Book 5 is the aristeia of Diomedes)

eris = refers to 'strife between heroes' (mortal or immortal)

teichoskopia = viewing from the walls (refers to Helen and Priam up on the walls of Troy looking down on the Greek commanders)

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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.


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News Flash: A New "Iliad" is Coming Soon!

"Hello!  My name is Chris, and I am addicted to Homer." 

I have made it my business over the past couple of years to find and read copies of all of the major translations of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey.  While I very much love the elegant and classy translations by Richmond Lattimore (The Iliad, 1951; The Odyssey, 1965), I'd have to say that my current favorites are those by the late Robert Fagles (The Iliad, 1990; The Odyssey, 1996).  In my opinion, the Fagles translations are eminently readable and enthralling, and it is my understanding that he did a truly masterful job of adapting the original meaning of the Greek into the idiom of Modern English.  Well, at any rate, it sure works for me!

Anyway, I've just recently become aware of a new translation of Homer's The Iliad by Stephen Mitchell that is being released on October 11, 2011, published by Free Press.  From the reviews I've managed to find and read, Mitchell is well qualified and up to the task of giving the world this new translation of The Iliad.  In fact, a publication release I found on-line may provide a bit of the back-story of why Mitchell felt compelled to tackle his own translation of this epic poem--

"Mitchell’s Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West, whose edition of the original Greek identifies many passages that were added after the Iliad was first written down, to the detriment of the music and the story. Omitting these hundreds of interpolated lines restores a dramatically sharper, leaner text. In addition, Mitchell’s illuminating introduction opens the epic still further to our understanding and appreciation."

Well, I for one, can't wait to get my grubby little paws on a brand-spanking-new hardcover edition of this book and dive in and form my own opinion.  I'm also seriously contemplating picking up my well-read copy of Fagles' translation and giving it a reread over the next couple of weeks, just so I'll have something to compare and contrast.

Finally, I've just found out that Stephen Mitchell is coming to the independent bookseller, Vroman's Bookstore, in Pasadena on Saturday, November 5th at 4:00 p.m., for a book-signing and discussion of his new translation of The Iliad.  Yup, you guessed it, I'll be there.  Wouldn't miss it for the world!