Re:The Odyssey – Alexander Pope translation (1725)
by kijin on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @11:13AM
(#24354024)
Yep, it can be a matter of taste and opinion. Wilson is certainly more accessible, and has a lower chance of making a high school student hate literature for life. :)
But when so much detail is lost, one begins to wonder if it should be called an "abridged edition", even if it preserves the number of lines.
Yeah, and neither am I, although I do have a BA in literature from a third-tier college, which probably doesn't give me much credibility here. Your opinion is pretty close to my own. The only thing I might disagree with you on is that I'm not as attached to the (mildly) archaic language. I think modern English can serve a mythic function; it just doesn't really work for me in Wilson's translation. By the way, if anyone wants to compare, here are three versions of that one line:
Pope
> Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d, Their manners noted, and their states survey’d.
Fagles
> Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds
Wilson
> and where he went, and who he met
(On this one, Pope is my favorite too.)
That being said: this is all literature! It's mostly a matter of taste and opinion. And if Wilson's writing helps anyone get something new out of the Odyssey, I'm all for it. I'm genuinely just curious what that is.