Having slogged through 17 books of various disembowelings, woundings, and generally gory, bloody deaths, interspersed with random sex scenes, we reach the scene where the Nereids come rushing up to Achilles to comfort him after Patroclus' death.
We're listening to the Derek Jacobi reading from the Fagles translation. Thalia is following in Fagles, I'm following in a translation by Ian Johnston I found free on the internet. And my translation names the Nereids by their typical Greek names, names such as Actaia, Limnoreia, Melite, Iaera, etc. etc. But Fagles? Fagles translates the names. To names like Glitter and Glimmer and Sparkler. They sound like a bunch of My Little Ponies.
The incongruity is stunning.
1 comment:
So which do you think has more drama, the Bible or the Iliad? Human nature hasn't changed to much, huh?
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