20190209

Sat 09 Feb 2019 09:05:28 AM EST Slept from eleven-thirty to seven without waking. High of twenty-five and sunny today. Goal: - Grocery No. - Ikea?? No. It would have been a good day for Ikea, but the Iliad distracted me. - Pick a translation of the Iliad to read Done? Surprisingly, I'm inclined to Rieu. Compared various Iliad translations. - Alexander. Somewhat better than average, but not the highest accuracy or poetry. Readable. - Fagles. Poor attention to accuracy and poetics. Readable but uninspiring. - Fitzgerald. Poor attention to accuracy (to the point of invention) and poetics. Fervent, striving to stir the reader, but hit-and-miss. - Lang. Perhaps the best public domain translation. Prose. Good attention to poetics. Readable but riddled with archaic diction and spelling. - Lattimore. Highly accurate. Good attention to poetics. Somewhat stilted or awkward in places. - Lombardo. Readable, but colloquial almost to the point of being distracting. Lacking attention to accuracy and poetics. - Mitchell. Devoid of accuracy and poetics. Concisely readable. - Rieu. Surprisingly accurate and poetic for a prose translation. Readable too. Reminds me of a modernized Lang. A tossup between Lattimore and Rieu. Lattimore is slightly more accurate than Rieu, but Rieu is more fluid. Of public domain translations, Andrew Lang's stands out as both poetic and accurate; with slight modernizations (spelling) it would be a serviceable read. Vacuumed. Watched The Magnificent Ambersons on Netflix, which I haven't seen in long enough that I didn't remember it at all. I like how it sets up its argument of "everyone hoped for George's comeuppance", like "this is the story of Achilles' wrath". The aunt's a well-drawn character. I feel sorry for her. George's comeuppance feels thin, though — happenstance rather than the result of his own shortcomings. I'm given to understand that Ambersons, like so many of Wells' films, was butchered by the studio. I tried my hand a translating a few lines (albeit only in free verse). Interesting and difficult. Lines 43–52 from Book 1. ``` Chryses spoke that prayer, and Phoebos Apollo heard, and from Olympus bounded down the peaks, heart racing, shouldering a bow and covered quiver — 45 the arrows drummed his shoulders as the god raced, but he landed like the fall of night. He planted himself far from the ships, and among them loosed an arrow. (A fearful thrum rumbled from the silver bow.) He got their mules first, then their swift dogs, 50 then, finally, targeted the men themselves (he always hit) to stoke the pyres with their corded bodies. ``` - Some translators omit the "spoke" of "spoke in prayer", but this mirrors the second part of the line: Chryses speaks, Apollo hears. - The "angry" in the second line (angry heart) mirrors the word in line five (angry steps). (Confirmed in the Greek: χωόμενος and χωομένοιο.) "Wrath" might be the closest English, though it's a verb. Enraged? Incensed? Ah, the present participle, so "heart raging"? Pounding, pounding heart and pounding footfalls? - The second sentence must have a sense of dramatic downward motion, almost a plummeting. - A repetition of "shoulders" that seems a little odd, like something lost in translation. I feel like there might perhaps be a mirroring Apollo himself bouncing down the giant steps of the mountains with the force of those steps transmitted to his shoulders, bouncing the arrows in his quiver. Not sure. - "ἀμφηρεφέα"? Hooded, covered, inlaid? What's the deal with the quiver? - Although Apollo's coming down seems violent, it ends with night fall, which we usually think of as peaceful. Is he literally descending the mountains as the sun sets? He is god of the sun, so is that what Homer's bringing in here — that Apollo's falling from the Heavens like the sun falls when it sets? Maybe his descent is thunderous but his arrival is stealthy? - The word for what happens to the arrows in their quiver — rattle, clang, clash, whatever — must echo in the sound of the fired bow. "Thrum" is good for a bow string, but not so much for arrows. Maybe "thwack"? ἔκλαγξαν and κλαγγὴ are not exactly the same but closely related. The noun "κλαγγὴ" is almost exactly "clang", and ἔκλαγξαν is a verb form of the same root word? Quaver? http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dkla%2Fzw This can mean a variety of sounds. Since music is one of Apollo's domains, I'm tempted to make the sounds musical, even to reverse myself and make the two instances of the word relate to two different musical sounds. - "ἀργούς"?? Swift dogs? Lazy dogs? "Circling" doesn't seem right; where did that come from? https://www.etymonline.com/word/Argo#etymonline_v_16983 Swift or flashing, I guess. - This is all sound and movement. Translating those ten lines took the better part of the day. And I could spend another day knocking them into something more like poetry. Servings: grains 0/6, fruit 2/4, vegetables 3/4, dairy 0/2, meat 2/3, nuts 0/0.5 Breakfast: banana, carrots, coffee, tomato, two eggs Lunch: apple, celery Afternoon snack: a Guinness Dinner: pizza 124/76

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