I’ve been really craving beautiful and poetic prose and I’ve found a few books that scratch that itch. Specifically, they’ve been the Hebrew Bible translated by Robert Alter, Beowulf translated by Gummere, and the Odyssey translated by Robert Fagles. While I’ve read these texts before, I imagine the translations I had were much more academically oriented, a kind of ‘rigorous’ translation that ended up forgoing the poetic nature of the works here.
For instance, here is a short snippet from Fagles’ translation:
> “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns / driven time and again off course, once he had plundered / the hallowed heights of Troy.”
Or take this example from Gummere’s translation:
> “Went he forth to find at fall of night that haughty house, and heed / wherever the Ring-Danes, outrevelled, to rest had gone. Found / within it the atheling band asleep after feasting and fearless of / sorrow, of human hardship. Unhallowed wight, grim and greedy, he / grasped betimes, wrathful, reckless, from resting-places, thirty / of the thanes, and thence he rushed fain of his fell spoil, faring / homeward, laden with slaughter, his lair to seek.”
Any recommendations?
by FoolishDog