The Iliad
Fagles, Robert
0 f all books extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best." Thus begins George Chapman's "Preface to the Reader" in his 1616 translation of the Iliad. The publication of a new translation by...
...Fitzgerald) But grief came over Glaucus, hearing his comrade's call...
...Consider the passage in Book 19 where Achilles, having just received a set of armor from the gods, summons his men...
...in the judgment of Samuel Johnson, "His version may be said to have turned the English tongue...
...Fitzgerald's verses move quickly, like those of Homer, but his translation is too free and his diction a hodgepodge of archaisms and soldierly slang...
...By ten o'clock that same morning, Keats had delivered to his friend his now-famous sonnet, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," which tells of his astonishment at discovering the greatness of Homer, revealed to him only by this translation: Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne...
...Pope's Iliad (1715-1720) had an enormous impact on English literature...
...Indeed, one might almost say that Fagles's translation too easily answers to the ways we think today...
...You can do it in the Army...
...Fitzgerald) or: To be always best in battle and pre-eminent beyond all others (Lattimore) Fagles's rendition of this line, by adding the words "my boy," undercuts the loftiness of the sentiment, as though implying that only old fogeys could speak this way: "Always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head up high above the others...
...The story of Hector reveals the difficulty of pursuing glory while at the same time loving one's family...
...Fagles writes: "But brilliant Achilles strode along the surf...
...In 1816, the young John Keats stayed up till dawn with Charles Cowden Clarke, reading passages from Chapman's book...
...Lattimore) "Glaukos, old man, old war-dog . . ." (Fitzgerald) "Glaucusoh dear friend, dear fighter, soldier's soldier...
...Fagles) Second, Glaucus' reaction: But when he heard the voice a hard sorrow came upon Glaukos, and the heart was stirred within him, and he could not defend Sarpedon...
...When we ourselves look into Chap-man's Homer, with its unwieldy couplets, we may have some trouble understanding what all the fuss was about: Achilles' banefull wrath resound, 0 Goddess, that impos'd Infinite sorrows on the Greeks, and many brave souls los'd Susan Kristol is a classicist living in McLean, Virginia...
...Our country recruits soldiers with the slogan, "Be all that you can be...
...First, Sarpedon's address to his comrade Glaucus: "Dear Glaukos, you are a fighter among men...
...From breasts heroique...
...Similarly, when Achilles returns to the war, Fagles is equal to the drama of the occasion: A high stabbing cry and out in the front ranks he drove his plunging stallions...
...That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain...
...You, you dog-face...
...Reading a familiar masterpiece in a new translation can have impressive results...
...Bitch that I am, vicious, scheming—horror to freeze the heart...
...Both men choose a glorious death...
...Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore, Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore...
...Fagles, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton, and his collaborator, the classicist Bernard Knox, have made this volume user-friendly...
...Fagles is more faithful to the original text and more consistent in his diction than Fitzgerald, and metrically more readable than Lattimore...
...But, as English poetry has abandoned rhyme and meter, translators have tried other approaches to THE ILIAD Translated by Robert Fagles/Viking/683 pp...
...Lattimore translates the original Greek with almost word-for-word accuracy, but his lines are so ponderous that reading his book can seem a Herculean task...
...Such a series of lines so elaborately corrected, and so sweetly modulated, took possession of the publick ear...
...Fagles gives us a fast Iliad...
...The bat- tle scenes are exhilarating, the scenes between the gods delightfully frivolous, as when Zeus praises the "marvelous ankles" of one of his former mistresses, turning an ornamental epithet into an insult to his own wife...
...Lattimore) But bitter anguish at Sarpedon's voice had come to Glaukos, and his heart despaired because he had not helped his friend...
...Their recompense is that we are still reading about them today...
...But Chapman enabled Keats, who did not know Greek, to see the Iliad through a different lens from that of the polished couplets of Alexander Pope: Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing...
...Compare this with Lattimore's less exciting line: "But he, brilliant Achilles, walked along by the seashore...
...Fagles) In these two passages, Lattimore's version is best at reproducing the Greek text...
...In many places, however, Fagles provides a more vivid translation than his predecessors without being unfaithful to the Greek text...
...But the results are mixed...
...For example, in Books 6 and 11, warriors use identical language to describe the precepts of heroism given by fathers to sons...
...Lattimore's words are so faithful to the original that they verge on the unintelligible: He spoke, and shouting held on in the foremost his single-foot horses...
...Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken...
...The story of Achilles reveals the tension between the desire for glory and the possibility of friendship...
...This is undoubtedly the price we pay for Fagles's modern diction, diction that Fagles defends as "answering to the ways we read today...
...Modernity is uncomfortable with grandeur, and in this translation we may at times discern a modern democratic reluctance to acknowledge it...
...sent them far to that invisible cave That no light comforts...
...Two examples illustrate the differences...
...When we turn to the loftier speeches, the famous exchanges between warriors or family members, we feel keenly the lack of a grand style, a formal and weighty discourse...
...Fitzgerald combines lofty poetic diction with unconvincing slang ("old war-dog...
...The sentiment is true in a deeper sense for the fighters of the Iliad, for whom the battlefield was the place to win glory through the exercise of their heroic capacities...
...Given the imperfections of these two translations, Robert Fagles's attempt at a new Iliad is welcome...
...35 Susan Kristol THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991 35 convey the experience of reading Homer's epic...
...But something is missing...
...His heart was racing—what could he do to help him...
...To stand up bravely, always to fight in the front ranks of ilujan soldiers...
...The line might almost serve as the motto of aristocracy: to do none but great feats, to be distinguished above the rest...
...Proper names are Anglicized...
...In Hector's tender farewell to his wife: "I've learned it all too well...
...What a worthless, burnt-out coward I'd be called...
...Fitzgerald's attempt is even flatter: "And Prince Achilleus/passed along the surf-line...
...The publication of a new translation by Robert Fagles gives us an occasion to return to a poem whose portrayal of men at war some 3,000 years ago still has power to move us...
...Helpful features include a lengthy and informative introduction by Knox, maps, endnotes, and a guide to pronunciation...
...Fagles's words are simpler and more colloquial, but he adds the phrase "dear fighter" and makes the final clause into a question where there is none in the Greek...
...Each of these translations achieves one type of "faithfulness" to the original poem, but neither is completely satisfactory...
...And the invective is memorable: "Die and be damned for all I care...
...Fitzgerald's rendition is unexciting and marred by an awkward line division: And with a shout he drove his team of trim-hooved horses into the front line...
...T he reigning versions of the Iliad 1 in recent years have been those of Richmond Lattimore (1951) and poet/ journalist Robert Fitzgerald (1974...
...and their limbs to dogs and vultures gave...
Vol. 24 • March 1991 • No. 3
