January Meme: Hooked on Translations

[selenak]

cahn asked me: What Classics works (to be read in English translation) would you recommend to hook someone who doesn't know anything about it? (Aside from the Illiad/Odyssey/Aeneid -- but would also be open to interesting translations of those!) (And especially for someone who preferred the Aeneid to the Illiad and Odyssey?)

With the caveat that different things work for different people, and also my knowledge of good English translation is limited because I read most of those works in German (and/or had to translate them in school, like Cicero's speeches against Catilina and Sallust's work about the conspiracy), here are some recs I would go with. Note that they aren't literal translations but poetic ones, much like the Faust translation by Howart Brenton I recced to cahn where he had someone do the literal prose translation for him first so he could be sure about the literal meaning and then put it into verse. They're also by terrific poets, which means when you read these works in English, you get something of the visceral excitement and beauty of the originals, not a sense of dutiful bland dictionary (or worse, bowlderized) rendition.

1.) Ted Hughes: Tales from Ovid (i.e. a selection from Ovid's Metamorphoses). Praise, quotes and explanations why I think that's an awesome book to read here.

2.) Ted Hughes: Alkestis by Euripides. The last thing he ever published, shortly before his death, with a theme of personal relevance. Hughes and Euripides were as good a match as Hughes & Ovid. More praise and quotes here.

3.) Roz Kaveney: Catullus. Lots of well deserved praise and buying link here.

Now as I said elsewhere, I've been hearing good things about Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, so it's definitely on my to read list, but I haven't gotten the chance to yet. And with Cicero's letters and speeches, Suetonius, Plutarch, Herodotus etc. I don't know any English translations, since, see above, I read them in German (or in Cicero's case translated some of the speeches in school and read the rest in German).

The other days

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm glad she asked you rather than me this question, because it is not one I can help with, not even a little bit. :)

like Cicero's speeches against Catilina and Sallust's work about the conspiracy

How sensible! We had to read Sallust's Bellum Catilinae and Cicero's Pro Caelio in one of my courses, and in the Cicero-only course, the De Senectute and excerpts from the Verrine orations. I.e. all totally unrelated. I remember protesting to my professor that obviously we should have been reading Cicero against Catilina! But like I said, there was a distinct desire to not teach us history in a useful way: every work was a piece of literature that needed to be encountered without any context.

I hope to remedy this someday. :)

[cahn]

:D I had no idea that Ted Hughes did these translations, actually! (I feel kind of like -- perhaps just because Plath was American and Hughes was English, -- Hughes is relatively not well known over here. I mean, he's known, I found him as a poet as an adult, but when I was in high school I'd read a bunch of Plath and only knew Hughes as Plath's husband.) (eta: Wow, it's not just me! I just looked up Hughes in the local library; our library isn't the best, but... well, Plath has 23 hits to Hughes' 15, and almost all of Hughes' seem to be his books for children; only a couple of books of adult poetry, and none of his translations. They do have Bate's recent biography, though.)

They're also by terrific poets, which means when you read these works in English, you get something of the visceral excitement and beauty of the originals, not a sense of dutiful bland dictionary (or worse, bowlderized) rendition.

YESSSSS. The only thing prose translations are good for are when I'm trying to read in the original and I really do want to know what the thing says exactly. (Which is... rare for poetry :P ) (eta: well, okay, also useful when I'm comparing a free poetry translation to the original :PP) I want to know why people wanted to read the original!

(Also, again, <33333 to the Faust translation :D )

[redfiona99]

My version of Plutarch's lives are both translated by Robin Waterfield, and I really like them. My Christmas treat for me was his translation of Herodotus, because I have a Victorian translation which may be the finest cure for insomnia ever invented.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Unrelated question! (Except for being related to reading recommendations.) I might be in the market for a new German book soon, if all goes well. Heinz Schilling's Charles V: one of your posts said it could be dry but was historically solid. How dry is dry? Will I feel the need to do a lot of skimming (which I can't yet do in German)? Is it mostly the historical facts, or is there a lot of academic analysis? How does it compare to Stollberg-Rilinger?

My question comes down to how well the text is going to sustain my interest if I can only read 25 pages per hour and have to grapple with every sentence.