Carrol (time I started using a salutation in messages):

I must disagree with you.  German is closer to English than Greek is.  In
Greek, the difference in the language itself is a yard and a half at least.
If you read German you know how different a great German poet is when
translated.  The difference in Greek is far greater.

And Aeschylus is closer to Homer than he is to Plato.  Plato is the
demolition of poetry, purple as his prose is.  Aeschylus is the
re-establishment of it.  You might have said Euripides.

I agree that Pope's poem is wonderful (sometimes pretty, but generally
fairly grotesque and funny), and think Bentley (if it WAS Bentley: it's only
attributed to him) could have criticized any translation thus, though I
remember the words to be "but you must not call it Homer", which has a
somewhat different nuance.

Don't know about breaking new ground in scholarship (and couldn't care
less), but my joy in reading a poet such as Homer or Pound (and I put them
in the same breath without hesitation) is the vortex (lol) of sound,
expression, grammar, and sense. Or something like that. I'm proof that
someone can limp along on half a brain and still find enjoyment in poetry.
Someone should inform the mass media.

Dirk Johnson
Assistant Vice President
Zions First National Bank
(and why not a signature, too?)

-----Original Message-----
From: Carrol Cox [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2001 6:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: In Praise of Achilles, was Re: how hermetic?

charles moyer wrote:
>
>
>     Hahem, did Pound know a little Latin and less Greek himself? Not to
> unstuff any Popinjays.
>
> Charles Moyer

I remember a coffee-shop conversation with Frank Copley of the
University of Michigan over 40 years ago. His comment on Canto I was
that Pound Out-Homered Homer. And Copley certainly could read the Greek.

Re translations vs originals. The advantage of the reader of the
original is thinner in relationship to Homer than (say) to Goethe or an
18th century Japanese novel. In the latter two cases the process of
learning the language is also a deep exploration into the whole social
and cultural context of the original. But when one reads Homer, when one
masters the language in which the poems are composed, the context one
absorbs is -- Homer, period. The gap between Homer and and Aeschylus or
Plato is in some ways more absolute than the gap between them and us.
Try to imagine, in the world of the Odyssey, one of the participants in
a banquet suddenly saying, "What does it mean to be a King?" "What makes
a just King?" "What is your definition of Justice?" We and Plato share a
world that is utterly foreign to Homer.

One does not write scholarly articles breaking new ground in Homer
without knowing the language, but I would think that even bad
translations of Homer might fit into

  And they want to know what we talked about?
        "_de litteris et de armis, praestantibusque ingeniis,_
  Both of ancient times and our own; books, arms,
  And men of unusual genius,
  Both of ancient times and our own, in short the usual subjects
  Of conversation between intelligent men."
                        Canto XI

Bentley to Pope: "A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but it is not Homer."

One could reverse it: "It is not Homer, Mr. Pope, but it is a wonderful
poem."

Carrol