Robert fagles odyssey how to#

Whatever Homer describes, however homely, however factual, it always comes out poetry. He has a wonderful energy and momentum, and more than that, Homer has a metric in him that is terrific, whether he's describing the building of a raft, or the hitching up of a wagon, or the look of a bow, or the flight of an arrow. Homer is not only paratactic, he's wonderfully forthright, and direct. ' Hemingway mastered this art, as you know. His favorite way of joining elements in a sentence is by 'and' and 'and' and 'and. Homeric Greek is paratactic it sets things side by side by side. We don't want to subject an ancient poem to what might be called 'the betrayal of prose.' We want it to be in some kind of comparable verse, comparable to the great Greek original, and I think it's through that effort to turn Homer into poetry that we stand a chance of coming close to Matthew Arnold's great counters that Homer is 'simple, direct, swift, and, above all, noble.' I think that there's much in that, and it may very well be that Homer is becoming more of an American thing, even than an English thing, these days. We tend to like our Homer in verse, and I think that may tend to explain why American Homer-American translations, in fact-are with us. The English tend to like their Homer, as they take it, 'straight,' meaning in prose. Robert Fagles on American Translations of Homer And the fact that he pulled it off with such eloquence and such elegance is really a wonderful statement not only about his spirit, but about the spirit of poetry. When he came to do the The Aeneid., I knew him well and we met regularly, and at the very beginning he said he really had to get his Latin back first and I found that really astonishing, that first he would get his Latin back and then embark upon such a gigantic, daunting task. When Alexander Pope translated The Iliad and The Odyssey, he had a crew of clerks working for him, basically, translating and he was doing the finished versions. I think it's hard to comprehend what a huge task Robert Fagles set himself in translating The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. Jenkinson.The following transcript is an excerpt from a December 6, 2007, interview. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. You can find Clay's publications on our website, along with a list of his favorite books on Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and other topics. You can learn more about Clay's cultural tours and retreats at /tours. Support the show by joining the 1776 Club or by donating to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Inc.

Robert fagles odyssey how to#

But Maybe They Shouldn't,' How to Clone a Mammoth by Beth Shapiro, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley RobinsonДЇind this episode, along with recommended reading, on the blog. Mentioned on this episode: NPR: 'Scientists Say They Could Bring Back Woolly Mammoths. The Language of Cottonwoods is out now through Koehler Books. You can order Clay's new book at Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble, or by contacting your independent bookstore. Also discussed is the changing influence written history has on us. As it turns out, Nicandri and Jenkinson have an equal fascination. Clay Jenkinson and David Nicandri discuss Thomas JeffersonвЂ™s fascination with the mammoth, and his hope that Lewis and Clark would find living specimens.