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 have no idea what you are talking about and I would like to!

It will be so very, very much fun. :D :D :D

Doesn't have to be today or even this year.

At least as far as I'm involved (aka when Selena will tell you things, I don't know), it will be after I learn to read German and possibly French, although I'm getting pessimistic about having the patience to do French first. :P I'm getting close with German, though: it's super exciting to me that felis found a book and the same week I had read and reported on one (short) chapter!

[cahn]

:) Well, we've started the Old Testament at church and it looks like the readings are about two chapters a week (eta: I'm reading them in French, which I'd mentioned to mildred at some point but I forget whether it was in salon or not), which is not of course up to your level but at least I'll be getting consistent small doses! (NT readings will be longer, but that's not until next year.)

[mildred_of_midgard]

It was in my DW, not in salon.

Yay for French practice! Maybe that will help motivate me when the time comes. :)

which is not of course up to your level

Well, right now my level of practice is 0 French, so you're ahead of me. :P