Many literary scholars and native speakers say it's better to read a work of literature in its original language than in translation. Of course, learning a new language can be strenuous, time-consuming, and above all intimidating, especially when it comes to Greek and Latin. "People often tell me they wanted to study Greek or Latin in school, but were told they weren't clever enough," Haynes says.
"There is this bizarre belief that you have to live up to the classics instead of the classics coming to you, and I wish we'd start to teach them in a more open way. Certainly, the moment Greek myth is having right now suggests there's a huge audience." Learning a little Greek will help you assess the quality of translations and better understand the practice's limitations more generally. This not only goes for word choice — like Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of the Odyssey interpreting the polytropos as "complicated" rather than "many-sided" or "resourceful," as previous translators had done — but also the structure of a text itself.
Many epic poems were written in hexameter, a poetic meter with six metrical feet, and their words were chosen and arranged based on length rather than sound. "The Greeks and Romans didn't rhyme, yet early translations were often in verse, which is just terrible," Haynes says. "Then again, it's quite hard to capture hexameter in English without it seeming sort of weirdly sing-songy." Modern translators tend to avoid verse, either recreating hexameter to the best of their ability or, as Wilson did, opting for iambic pentameter, the five-metrical-feet rhythm of Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Aside from getting acquainted with the Greek language, it also helps to learn a thing or two about ancient Greek history and culture. Although they communicate feelings and ideas that continue to resonate with readers, Greek myth and literature are also firmly rooted in a time and place very different from ours. One ancient custom is xenia or "guest-friendship." "The Greeks believed that a host should make their guests feel welcome, and that mistreating a guest was a crime on par with injuring one's own family," Haynes explains.
It's an important theme in both of Homer's epic poems. A less familiar concept is kleos or "glory." "In the time of oral tradition, before the adoption of writing, a Greek warrior's number one goal was to accomplish such remarkable things that bards would sing about them after their death," Haynes says. "That's why, when the Sirens try to seduce Odysseus, they tell him the most beguiling thing a man whose entire value system rests on fame can hear: 'Everyone knows your name.'" But as much as Homer's poems reflect fixtures of the ancient world, they also deconstruct and question them.
"When Odysseus meets Achilles in the underworld, the great hero of the Trojan War says he'd rather be tilling the fields as an indentured farmer than be king among the dead," Haynes adds. "It turns out that this pursuit for glory was a terrible idea, that it would have been better to have lived a long, unfamous life than to have died young." Many people have taken to the internet to complain about how modern adaptations diverge from the poem. Haynes urges anyone interested in exploring these ancient texts to keep in mind that "myth is never static." "There is no such thing as an 'original' version," she explains.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
