WHAT DO YOU get from reading Homer in Greek? As a start, you get what no translation can offer you: the thing itself. Writing in general, and poetry in particular, is, at its most basic level, a matter of word choice. It’s impossible to say you truly know a work that you have read only in translation because you don’t know the actual words that the author chose to write.
Friday, November 13, 2015
The real deal …
… Greek Life — Partisan. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Hmm. Taking the old "20 lines of Homer" was one's evening task would set one at say five or six weeks for the average book of the Iliad, three or four for The Odyssey. That would be the best part of three years for The Iliad and the best part of two for The Odyssey. I suppose that students and persons of leisure can take Homer in larger doses.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is quite possible to say that someone doesn't know a work that he has read in its original language, though it is unlikely that he will say it himself.