The Iliad: Translated by Robert Fagles by Homer, Bernard Knox

Notes From Your Bookseller The Trojan War has fascinated audiences across a millenia, and we've got The Iliad to thank for that. Told in beautiful verse preserved by this translation by Robert Fagles, it brings new, energizing life to an already timeless story. The great war epic of Western literature, translated by acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles, and featured in the Netflix series The OA A Penguin Classic Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer's timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace. Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer's poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad's mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls an astonishing performance. This Penguin Classics Deluxe edition also features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. 9780140275360 Editorial Reviews Fitzgerald has solved virtually every problem that has plagued translators of Homer. The narrative runs, the dialogue speaks, the military action is clear, and the repetitive epithets become useful text rather than exotic relics. -Atlantic Monthly Fitzgerald's swift rhythms, bright images, and superb English make Homer live as never before...This is for every reader in our time and possibly for all time.-Library Journal [Fitzgerald's Odyssey and Iliad] open up once more the unique greatness of Homer's art at the level above the formula; yet at the same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric verse at the level of the line and the phrase. -The Yale Review What an age can read in Homer, what its translators can manage to say in his presence, is one gauge of its morale, one index to its system of exultations and reticences. The supple, the iridescent, the ironic, these modes are among our strengths, and among Mr. Fitzgerald's. -National Review With an Introduction by Gregory Nagy - From the Publisher A thousand watchfires were burning upon the plain,/ and around each, fifty men sat in the glow of the firelight,/ and the horses stood alongside the chariots, munching/ white barley and oats, and waited for dawn to arise. Stephen Mitchell's translations of Gilgamesh, Genesis, Job, and the Tao de Ching have established him as a preeminent translator of ancient as well as modern texts. His new rendering of one of the pillars of Western literature reconfirms that reputation. As one writer previously noted, his translations sing with the clarity and vigor of their originals. - A tour de force, Alexander . . . We can see from what [Alexander] has done that a fine translation may well be the most elegant and revealing form of commentary. - New York Review of Books Penetrating . . . reflecting her own skills [Alexander] provides her own translation of an entire chapter . . . a real bonus for the reader, comparing favorably with Lattimore and Fagles. - Boston Globe Spirited and provocative . . . a nobly bold even rousing venture . . . it would be hard to find a faster, livelier, more compact introduction to such a great range of recent Iliadic explorations. - New York Times This new verse translation is not by a poet but a classicist. Verity (former master, Dulwich Coll.), who has translated Pindar's odes, offers a new critical translation--e.g, he brackets passages that are weakly attested--working from the 1996 Greek edition of H. van Thiel. Verity hews as close as he can to Homer's diction in his translation of idiom, epithets, and imagery. Thus his implicit audience is the serious student of literature interested in the specifics of Homer's language. In addition, Verity seeks to make his metrical line correspond to the Greek line, to the extent that English permits. The results are very accurate but make for somewhat ponderous reading. VERDICT Recommended for the student seeking a solid scholarly translation. For a more satisfying read, however, one should turn to Stephen Mitchell, reviewed above, or the work of Robert Fagles.--T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah - Library Journal Robert Fagles's vigorous, celebrated translation of THE ILIAD receives a lively and engaging reading from renowned actor Derek Jacobi in this abridged production of Homer's classic. Set near the end of the Trojan War, the story is less a battlefield drama than a grand-scale, ancient soap opera in which a trifling contest among the gods has wrought the devastating ten-year siege of Troy and stirred all of the most familiar and primal human passions-love, jealousy, hatred, honor, loyalty, betrayal-among a large and convincingly human cast. Jacobi's characterizations are superb; the main players are distinct and clearly drawn-from Achilles, in his famous snit, to diffident Paris, heroic Hector, and the meddlesome gods themselves. M.G. AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine - FEB/MAR 07 - AudioFile