Entry tags:
January Meme: Hooked on Translations
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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
no subject
You also read poetry on your own, not for a class :P, and I'm clear on the fact that you are way, *way* more into literature than I am. Mind you, if I was the only one in my class struggling, I'd write it off as my brain and a perfectly valid teaching method, but if I was the only one scraping a pass and everyone else was failing and hating every minute of reading and refusing to read *except* for class...pedagogy problem.
But don't you still want spoilers for things like Ash (I thought I had remembered something along those lines) or am I totally remembering incorrectly?
Ah, yes, but different reason. Basically, getting the big picture first or generally approachings non-linearly makes things easier for me, so I want it in cases of
a) Difficult material.
b) Material I'm less motivated to read.
Fiction falls under "less motivated" these days. My brain started being veeeery reluctant to engage with new fiction around 2010. So spoilers these days make it possible for me to go from "not even going to read" to "will read" with fiction. That wasn't really a thing before 2010, because I was motivated to read fiction.
For new fiction that I'm really enjoying, which is really rare, I'm perfectly capable of linearly reading without spoilers, such as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I discovered in 2016. I was loving every page, and I didn't need it to be made easier to motivate me.
Whereas the two things that really brought it home to me that a non-linear approach works a MILLION times better for me were: abstract algebra in college, and a molecular chemistry textbook I was reading on my own several years ago. Aka difficult things where I *really* needed it made easier. In both cases, I banged my head in vain against trying to internalize concepts, and it became immediately obvious and effortless once I got to the chapter where I saw how the concepts were *used*.
That's when I learned not to bother banging my head against something (and taking notes is a way of banging my head) until I've seen whether I can internalize it effortlessly by just continuing to read. That's why I won't take notes until the second readthrough: it slows me down and I don't know what to take notes *on* until I've seen how and whether it's used.
I get enough intrinsic enjoyment from novels...With history I don't necessarily get that intrinsic enjoyment
Whereas I am the exact opposite! I don't get intrinsic enjoyment from novels, and I suspect a great deal of my desire to read novels every waking moment of my life as a child and teenager (and even early 20s) was because I was *learning* from them. Once I got to the point where far, far more nonfiction was accessible to me, and to the point where my vocabulary, reading speed, and understanding of how the world works were advanced enough that I learn very little from reading fiction, I think that's when and why my motivation to read fiction dropped off.
The payoff of amount I learn is way higher in nonfiction than fiction, so I'm willing to put in the effort to read 10-20 books on 1720s diplomacy and sort out what happened from the confusion in my head. But give me an easy-to-read novel like The Queen's Thief, and odds are I'm like, "I would rather be studying Greek and learning more about *actual* ancient Greece, then I would feel rewarded at the end."
I'm willing to go along with being confused while I don't understand what's going on
Whereas, as you know, I am not willing to be confused, not even a little bit. It's fine if I don't know what's going on up front, like with Piranesi (which I read without spoilers), but I can't be actively *confused* about what's going on. But note that the *only* reason I made it past page 1 of that book was trusting the author; I wouldn't have given it a second thought if it was by someone I didn't have reason to trust. In that case, I would have wanted spoilers. (I might try The Queen's Thief someday again with spoilers, but not right now.)
I'm imagining the AU where I was invested in the War of the Spanish Succession, and came to salon after each installment and capslocked at you guys about WHAT JUST HAPPENED AND WILL THIS SHOW UP IN CANON LATER.
Ha! We won't tell you, you'll have to wait to find out! But please tell us what you think of Marlborough's decision to mix cavalry and infantry units. Once you've done that, we'll tell you why you're wrong.
While we're here,
After several years of guessing and being corrected, I will have learned to analyze literature,
no subject
(In fact, I think this was a theme -- I had more than my fair share of good, sometimes great teachers, but the ones who were not good were generally not good in the way where they just didn't seem to do very much, so I guess passively rather than actively pedagogically bad? Like my US history teacher who just sometimes didn't come to class and told us to write outlines of our history book chapters which as far as we know she never looked at.)
The payoff of amount I learn is way higher in nonfiction than fiction
Yeah, I tend to retain a lot more from fiction. Like, a month after having read them both at approximately the same time, I am retaining a lot more about Jemmy and Charles from The King's Touch than I am about the queens in A Game of Queens. But that of course is also a function of not knowing very much history :)
I wouldn't have given it a second thought if it was by someone I didn't have reason to trust.
I mean... that's fair, and approximately how I feel about TV/movies at this point (although I still like them/consume them more than you do fiction).
After several years of guessing and being corrected
...Oh man, this phrasing hit a bell in my head: this is the Rozetta Stone style of learning languages! Aka the program that made my kid think she was terrible at languages, even though she had done perfectly well in a more conventional classroom before that.
(Although in a social, non-academic context I do like guessing about what's going to happen next in media, which I've always been wildly bad at and which is entertaining to those around me. When I read Prisoner of Azkaban in grad school, I'd read about a chapter every day and then entertain the friend who had lent me the book by each afternoon describing my current theories about what was going on while we walked home. He laughed pretty hard at me, because I was not right even a little bit :) But I never -- I almost wrote I fortunately never had to do that in school, but I suppose it would be rather more accurate to say that I was never any good at waiting however long they expected me to wait to read the whole thing. They probably did expect me to guess what happened next, but I couldn't!)
no subject
Yeah, I tend to retain a lot more from fiction. Like, a month after having read them both at approximately the same time, I am retaining a lot more about Jemmy and Charles from The King's Touch than I am about the queens in A Game of Queens. But that of course is also a function of not knowing very much history :)
I'm in the middle: I used to remember much more from fiction than from non-fiction during my first 20 years of life, but once I started to do research in earnest, this changed, and now it's even - though I retain less from dull sources of either variety. :)
Btw, am glad to hear Charles and Jemmy remained with you, as I'm curious about your take on the novel, the relationship etc.!
no subject
Whereas I am perfectly capable of hating a book if I don't understand it and I'm supposed to have Deep Thoughts about it, and my GPA is riding on my ability to convince my teacher/professor I have Deep Thoughts. :)
However, what seems to have been different from your experience is that we were not told we were wrong about anything;
Our essays would come back in a sea of red ink! I still remember my draft of a 5 paragraph essay in which the 3 middle paragraphs were entirely scratched out by the teacher and the first and last were heavily annotated. This shows you I was trying to do something that I didn't know how to do, not even a little bit, because I had never seen it done!
I learned to write literary criticism when I, gasp, started reading literary criticism.
passively rather than actively pedagogically bad? Like my US history teacher who just sometimes didn't come to class and told us to write outlines of our history book chapters which as far as we know she never looked at.)
Omg. I had one math teacher who phoned it in as best she could, but even she never did that! All my teachers were at least *trying*. Wow.
The flip side of all that trying is that they were constantly frustrated and we were constantly stressed.
Yeah, I tend to retain a lot more from fiction. Like, a month after having read them both at approximately the same time, I am retaining a lot more about Jemmy and Charles from The King's Touch than I am about the queens in A Game of Queens. But that of course is also a function of not knowing very much history :)
Exactly! Like Selena, I remembered *way* more from fiction until I was about 20. That's why I read historical fiction avidly as a teenager! But now that I can read nonfiction and follow along, the information per page is a whole lot denser, and thus I have a more rewarding experience and thus my brain is willing to put in the effort.
To our gracious hostess, writer of much historical fiction outside of Fritz and siblings that I have not read: it's not you, it's me.
I will say that tying what I'm reading to a fanfic, even one I'm almost certainly never going to write, helps with long-term retention. There's a reason I'm still focused on plotting my fix-it fic: I remember far more of the nonfiction I worked into my abandoned novel twenty years ago than the nonfiction I just read without using.
...Oh man, this phrasing hit a bell in my head: this is the Rozetta Stone style of learning languages
Oh right, I remember that! Ugh. I'm glad you found her a way of learning that worked better for her!
Although in a social, non-academic context I do like guessing about what's going to happen next in media
Oh, that's fine, I have no problem with that. See below.
Ironically, I'm also fine with guessing what a German word means, because I know it's okay if I'm wrong, because I'm learning the language. This is the exact thing we weren't allowed to do in language studies: we had to know every word in every sentence perfectly before we could move on to the next sentence...which is the exact wrong way to learn a language. *headdesk*
Being wrong was also not okay in literature: it meant red ink and a lower grade, which meant risking scholarship money, etc. (My parents were sure as hell not paying for my college, so my ability to go and then to stay was riding on my GPA in high school and then in college.) Which is why I was perfectly capable of hating a book that was stressing me out this much.
He laughed pretty hard at me, because I was not right even a little bit :)
Lol, that's funny!
They probably did expect me to guess what happened next, but I couldn't!
Oh, sorry, I wasn't clear. We weren't ever expected to guess what happened next. We were expected to guess how to do literary criticism, and how to write an essay on literary criticism, without ever having seen it done. Not knowing what happens next was only a small part of the problem (basically it made it even harder to follow a work that was over our heads and to develop insights as we went). Even once we'd finished what we were reading, or if it was a short story that we read in one go, we still didn't know how to do literary criticism at the level we were expected to.
(It wasn't that hard once I had READ SOME LITERARY CRITICISM, omg. Ditto how I learned to write an academic article. Not in grad school, when I was expected to write and publish academic articles and revise according to advisor and peer reviewer feedback, but afterward, when I was an independent scholar doing research projects that involved reading a bunch of other people's work. Suddenly all the things my profs had been trying to get me to do made sense, because as a consumer of academic articles, I now understood the reader's needs and could judge for myself how well I was meeting them. Previously, I had been writing as a student whose need was to please the professor or peer reviewer, and a lot of guessing was involved. It's very backwards, making us producers before consumers.)
A perfect example of the kind of thing we were expected to do is in Lois Duncan's YA novel Killing Mr. Griffin, about a bunch of high school students who kill their English teacher because they are fed up with exactly this:
"Mechanics okay," Griffin had written on one paper [that got a C]. "You have a grasp of grammar and punctuation, but the writing itself is shallow. There's nothing to it. Don't parrot back my lectures. Get under the surface. Tell me something about Hamlet I don't already know."
"Something he doesn't know!" David had exclaimed in frustration when that paper was returned to him. "He's supposed to be the expert. I'm just a student."
This was us! We were expected to have Deep Original Thoughts about literature and to articulate them in a scholarly manner, without a) understanding the works we were reading, b) having ever seen what literary scholarship looked like. By guessing. And being corrected. And guessing some more. And being corrected. I learned how to fake it for the grade, until I actually encountered examples in the wild and then started to *understand* how it all worked.
This is the exact equivalent of me asking you to analyze military tactics when all you've encountered is one description of a battle and you have never actually studied military tactics and you possibly never wanted to, and even if you did, also aren't invested in the War of the Spanish Succession and would rather be studying a different war. (A key part of me learning to do literary criticism was when I started doing it on works I wanted to read and think about, like the Aeneid, and not the stuff I was assigned, which I would never in a million years have read on my own and was bored by).