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Comment by morelisp | Hacker News Reader

Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey is similar in goal (flowing English, modern imagery, "scrap[ing] away all the centuries of verbal and ideological buildup") though not quite the same tone - Greek theater isn't the Saxon tavern, after all.

https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/the-odyssey

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"Greek theater": the Iliad was never theatre.

I am not an expert in this area, but my understanding was that while the Iliad is not "Greek drama" per se, the job of the Greek rhapsode was considerably ritualized - i.e. theatrical - while Beowulf's origins are a little more mysterious, but comparable e.g. Icelandic sagas were definitely not so.

The opening invocations - to the muses vs. compatriots - point at very different contexts the stories pretend to be told in, even if that too was part of the fiction, now or then.

> "Rosy-fingered dawn, in this new version, takes on many minor variations. “When early Dawn revealed her rose-red hands.” “The early Dawn was born; her fingers bloomed.” My favorite rendering is “Soon Dawn appeared and touched the sky with roses.” It is so wonderfully delicate. It evokes, beautifully, the sky’s subtle changes at first light: how the colors phase in mildly, almost imperceptibly, the way a piece of white paper might blush if you rubbed it with a flower. And it is a perfect example of creative translation."

That's... Did the translator completely forget that was meant to be a euphemism? Dawn's rosey fingers is quite a nice imagery... But Dawn was conflated with Eos. And well, it's in the name.

I expect that the translator, being an expert user of multiple languages[1], was very aware of all the surface-level meanings of the language (and many others besides), and made many complex and well-thought-through compromises, as is always necessary when translating (not to mention regular writing).

1. To which I can personally attest, as I own emily wilson's odyssey—it is excellent.

If you want to understand where Homer comes from, the bardic traditions,and his cultural importance, I can highly recommend Adam Nicolson's "The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters". It is both really insightful and a cracking read.

(off topic, please help:

I'm still searching for sensus tactilis pre-dawn... I don't think it was in the Georgics, but it was from something awfully similar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24243550

    Xena: I wake up every morning, ere the dawn is rhododactylous
          Who needs to wait for daylight? I just work by _sensus tactilis_.

any ideas?)

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