[ChrisW]

I came to this board wanting to ask for opinions on the best available English translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Metamorphoses, the Aeneid etc.
I saw the Great Translations thread, but this seems significantly different, since I'm not necessarily looking for an English translation of these works that is a great English poem, but just the best available (or maybe the best available modern translation.

When I became aware of Fagles's translations of Iliad and Odyssey, I thought them a great improvement over Lattimore -- at least in readability.
Now, on looking at Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey, I find it superior to Fagles' (much later) version from the point of view of an English reader (or at least THIS English reader).
But I see that there are those who object to Fitzgerald's liberties with the originals.

I'd be very interested to hear what others think -- especially those with more Greek and Latin than I have.

I just bought two translations of the Metamorphoses because I thought the second might be better -- but now each seems to have its faults.

It's hard to find really honest reviews that compare translations. Even Douglas Hofstadter's awful verse translation of Eugene Onegin got some nice reviews.

[Roger Slater]

By "best," do you mean from a scholarly point of view. For example, Lattimore translates the epithets in Homer consistently, but Fitzgerald didn't mind mixing them up (I'm told). And Lattimore was more literal. He might have a character say, "What was that which passed through the barrier of your teeth?" and Fitzgerald might translate the same line as "Huh?" Only a slight exaggeration.

If you're not looking for the translation that amounts to the best poem in English, then I suppose you want scholarly accuracy. That's the reverse of my approach, since I'm no scholar and only want to be dazzled by the poetry.

Apropos of nothing, I remember my high-school edition of the Iliad, translated by Lattimore. On the back was a blurb by Fitzgerald saying something like, "Such a great translation, no one will have any reason to attempt another translation into English for 100 years." A few years later, Fitzgerald had his own translation. Subsequent editions of the Lattimore no longer contained the Fitzgerald blurb, though I thought they might have been all the more eager to carry the blurb.

This sort of reminds me of the Kilmarten et al translation of Proust, which Richard Howard reviewed in the New York Times so favorably that he was positively bursting at the seams to come up with superlatives to express just how dazzlingly beautiful it was. He couldn't say enough nice things. Just a few years later, I heard him speak about translation and learned (a) he was working on his own Proust translation, and (b) the translation he had praised in the Times wasn't really good after all now that he had thought about it some more.

I read the Kilmarten version, by the way, and found it to be utterly dazzling. Whatever its limitations, I was absolutely swept away in euphoric rapturous appreciation of Proust's amazing genius....though Richard Howard would now have us believe that the translators got just about everything wrong on a word by word basis. But since the translators are not geniuses, and the books I read were obviously works of genius, the translators must have gotten something right.

[ChrisW]

I mean best all around -- the best trade-off of faithfulness to meaning and readability and beauty in English. I wouldn't require consistency on translating the formulaic epithets, but don't want an attractive but utterly faithless translation either. (By the way, I think a literal translation might actually be more faithless than a less literal translation. Someone who translates American slang literally into Greek is going to make nonsense of the work in question.)

On the Proust, I read the Kilmarten revision of Moncrieff and liked it a lot. Recently I've had a quick look at the Howard translation (I assume it's his). It sounds in some ways a little flatter than the Kilmarten version -- Proust being made to sound like everybody else. But that's a very quick first impression (and, of course, I can't read the original).

[A. E. Stallings]

Chris--a fascinating topic in itself. I hope Anthony Lombardy drops by--he is a classics professor and has probably taught some of these texts to general classes. I myself studied classics many and many a year ago (and still dabble in it), but that means I spent more time wrestling with the texts themselves and stodgy Victorian commentaries. I am fascinated with the problems of translation, though, being at work on one myself, and look at translations now with a new eye.

Regarding Homer, I am probably more familiar with the Lattimore, which I remember is readable and clear, though the Fitzgerald is also admirable. (Actually, I have this fantastic little volume called "Bluff your way in the Classics", which is a more serious reference book than its title lets one, which advises, under Homer, "you read Lattimore's translation of the Iliad and Fitzgerald's of the Odyssey.") I do find the re-hellenification of the names in F. a little distracting, even if they re-import some of that magnificent Greek strangeness. I have yet to read the Fagles, though I have ordered it, and await its arrival eagerly.

Ideally, the more translations you read, the better, if you cannot read the original (or even if you can, for that matter). Each good translation gets something particular about the original across which others don't, each has its own strengths. In a widely-translated work, such as the Homeric epics, there is not going to necessarily be a "best" translation. The more the merrier.

I'd also highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of Chapman's Iliad (of Keats' sonnet fame), from 1611--recently reissued with a new preface by Princeton. It is still an amazing text, with great zest and freshness, and I have been meaning to post a section under Great Translations. It is, of course, a fully-realized English poem in its own right. The advantage of Chapman's method over Pope's (besides, I think, a fundamental stylistic antipathy between Homeric times and the Age of Reason), is Chapman's choice of alexandrines--heptameter can more fully absorb the Greek hexameter--rather than a pared-down pentameter. Golding's wonderful Ovid, from roughly the same period, also employs fourteeners.

Here is a small sample--it is accurate (but not at all slavish--Chapman wields his poetic license here in the details), as well as vivid and entertaining. The spelling only throws you off at the beginning. This is definitely read-aloud stuff:

[A. E. Stallings]

from the opening:


Achilles' banefull wrath resound, O Goddesse, that impos'd
Infinite sorrowes on the Greekes, and many brave soules losd
From breasts Heroique--sent them farre, to that invisible cave
That no light comforts; and their lims to dogs and vultures gave.
To all which Jove's will gave effect; from whom first strife begunne
Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis' godlike Sonne.
What God gave Eris their command, and op't that fighting veine?
Jove's and Latona's Sonne, who, fir'd against the king of men
For contumelie showne his Priest, infectious sicknesse sent
To plague the armie, and to death, by troopes, the soldiers went.

I love "by troopes"!

The Chapman is also delightful for the margin notes--here he helpfully explains "Atrides, sirname of Agamemnon, being son to Atreus." and his personification "Eris, the Goddess of contention."

compare:
Lattimore

Fitzgerald

[Anthony Lombardy]

Chris, I think the proliferation of translations (or "versions", translations from translations) everyone has noticed is not so much a western as an anglo-american phenomenon. A partial explanation is economic: the vast, monolingual American undergraduate market, with its humanities majors and distribution requirements, drives the publishing industry. There is also the prestige in the last two generations of anglo-american or analytic philosophy. Anyone influenced by Russell, early Wittgenstein, or Quine will, at some level, have been impressed by the notion that truths are fundamentally mathematical, that there can be no logic of natural languages, whose surface features are so much detritus to be swept aside by the analytic rigor of the philosopher.
I recall a lecture Donald Davie gave in the eighties at Vanderbilt University in which he tried to find ways of differentiating between modern and post-modern poetry. The most useful differentia he could come up with was this: post-modern poetry is easy to translate, while modernist poetry is not. This struck me at the time, and still strikes me, as a very acute remark. Of course, classical authors are not post-modern. Each work is not something sui generis, free of the constraints of genre, form, and tradition, and ignorance of those elements which condition the literary work vitiate our understanding as surely as would ignorance of the language in which it was written. A third partial explanation: our criticism, in classical terms, is overwhelmingly qualitative; that is, we are cognizant in our criticism primarily of those qualities of a work which create an emotional response that is distinctive to literature. Longinus called this quality hupsos, sublimity. Qualitative criticism can seem relatively free of the necessity to reference the facts and relevance of genre or the society in which the functions of the genre are discharged. To that extent, it is the aspect of criticism that is congenial to our own eclectic cultural habits, by which we sample so many traditions.
Alicia is absolutely right about the value of different translations capturing different aspects of an original, and that no one is perfect. I still favor Fitzgerald's Odyssey, though it's true that he treats formulas in the manner of a literary poet, and as a devout member of the High Church of Oral Theory, I find this very disturbing. Still, my old teacher's version has so much else going for it that I will grant him that eccentricity.
I avoid translations of plays which advertise themselves as being written for "the living theatre" and any translation with a long translator's preface which in all earnestness urges on us the view that to be a "work of art" a translation must be "an exploration of the translator's soul."
My very selective recommendations, for what they're worth: For epic, Lattimore, Fagles, and Fitzgerald are all good, and I do like Fitzgerald's Aeneid. Lattimore and Fagles for Tragedy. Rolfe Humphries' Metamorphoses, but watch out for Charles Martin's, and I will be on the lookout for Len Krisak's Amores. And Arrowsmith's Petronius is wonderful.

[Len Krisak]

Yikes! Tony may be quite a while "on the lookout"
for my Amores, since the manuscript was just finished
Feb. 4 and hasn't even made its mendicant's way to
the publishers, hat in hand. Maybe no one will ever want it!

On that cheery note, I second Alicia and Tony on the
issue of principles.

On translations I like as poetry, Fitzgerald has it for
me all over Fagles, whose Iliad I have puzzled over, but
whose metrics I find invisible.

Golding and Pope, yes, even if Pope's soul is in another
place than Homer's.

I like very much, also, Alicia's Lucretius--what I've seen of it so far.

If you really want to stray from the High Church,
try A. D. Melville's Metamorphoses, then Charles
Martin's--which is due out any day now. They make
one hell of a contrast.

Best of luck with all of them!

[graywyvern]

i also am one who thinks the more translations you
read the better. (for a couple of my favorite books
--Patanjali's Yoga Sutras & Vergil's Aeneid--i have
at least a dozen each.) Vergil hasn't come up in this
discussion yet, so i will offer that Dryden's is not
very faithful by modern standards, but it's a good
English poem & moves right along. two others are worth
mentioning that might be overlooked: Frank Copley's,
because it's line-for-line & in conjunction with the
bilingual Loeb edition can help the semi-Latinist
student get closer to the original; & one that came
into our store awhile back (which may be totally
unavailable, consequently): an 1872 blank verse
version by C. P. Cranch, which actually shows rather
a good ear for cadence & vowel music.

[Tim Murphy]

Lattimore's attempt to imitate Homer's cadences completely fails for me, as does Fagle's chronic arhythmia, so for me it's Fitzgewrald, and I think his Aeniad is the best of the three. What litttle I've seen of Alicia's work-in-progress is dazzling, and Charles' Metamorphosis will set a new standard. I recently read Dryden's Aeniad for the first time and loved it, however far it strays.

[A. E. Stallings]

We're lucky here to have quite a few fine translators in our midst. I forgot to mention, for instance, Tim and Alan's "Beowulf". Perhaps they might post a taste of it?