![]() ![]() ![]() If you remove it, you create a baffle to that clear speech. Nobody would deny the power of Homer's verse, but what good is power misapplied? Poems - especially old poems, most especially long old poems - lean heavily on context in order to speak to later ages they never imagined in their own time context is the air their readers breathe while they're admiring the sights. ![]() If you produce a translation of Homer without notes, you run the risk of watching your readers simply wander off in a fog of gods and demi-gods, baffled as to which local river god goes where. Purists might say 'the poem - any poem - should be able to stand on its own, to speak clearly without the crutch of notes' - but such purists are seldom translators. There is an astonishment, a certain mad arrogance (or even madder humility) in presenting an English translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to a 21st Century audience without any accompanying notes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |