Why isn't Homer quoted more? He's one of the greatest poets of all time, but you'd have to take your pants off to remember a quote from him. You can roll Shakespeare or Milton or the Bible off your tongue, but why's it so hard to quote Homer?

It’s just capeshit. Not literary

>>24467795 (OP)
Because every other line is some genealogy bit or random description. Get that shit translation away from btw and never post it again.

>>24467795 (OP)
The ancients quoted him all the time.

Maybe because it isn't written in English retard. The other authors wrote in English and bible has KJV.

>>24467795 (OP)
Who even quotes people? Quoting is so retarded. Get your own words retard.

"Gulp, Achilles is right behind me isnt he?"

>>24467809
Why'd we stop?

>>24467804
You should read Her Odyssey and Her Iliad. It's not even Homer's.

>>24467831
Is that a real comic by xkdcd or whatever? lmao

>>24467804
>>24467831
qrd on why it's so bad?

>>24467795 (OP)
>Two lambs, devoted by your country's rite,
>To earth a sable, to the sun a white,
I thought this was a metaphor

>>24468076
I think she turned a debate between two characters to have a rhyme pattern to resemble a rap battle.

>>24467831
why not post the complete comic?

>>24467796
This

>>24467796
There would be no Dante without it

>>24467814
This. Non-english authors don't quote Shakespeare or Milton either.

>>24467795 (OP)
It's only recently that Homer has stopped being regularly quoted as education in Greek declines. Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible (KJV) are all in English and therefore easily quotable by English speakers. There is no definitive Homer translation in English (I vote Pope but he's not read enough).
The entire epic tradition, and I would argue much of the lyric tradition, is built on Homer, so that must count for something. Don't let anyone tell you that he's not quoted for lack of worthy quotes.

>>24468825
Pope knew practically no Greek.

>>24468849
The level of Greek in Western Europe at the time was far below Latin, so I should have specified both Latin and Greek. Still, he had a Greek tutor and definitely knew more Greek than either of us.

>Tell me about a complicated man.
>Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
>when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
>and where he went, and who he met, the pain
>he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
>he worked to save his life and bring his men
>back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
>they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
>kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
>tell the old story for our modern times. 10

Original by William Cullen Bryant.
>Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
>Who, having overthrown the sacred town
>Of Ilium, wandered far and visited
>The capitals of many nations, learned
>The customs of their dwellers, and endured
>Great suffering on the deep: his life was oft
>In peril, as he labored to bring back
>His comrades to their homes. He saved them not,
>Though earnestly he strove; they perished all,
>Through their own folly; for they banqueted,
>Madmen! upon the oxen of the Sun—
>The all-o’erlooking Sun, who cut them off
>From their return. O goddess, virgin-child
>Of Jove, relate some part of this to me.

>>24468148
Dante never read Homer

>>24468897
He used poorly-paid hacks to help him complete his Odyssey. He turned the Iliad into an English 18th century poem full of 18th century ideas of decency and proper behaviour and cutting out some of the more unpleasant things.

>>24468464
Germans quote Shakespeare though

>you'd have to take your pants off to remember a quote from him
im high right now what the fuck does this mean

>>24469123
OP here. I was drunk when I wrote it.

>>24467795 (OP)
Mightn't part of it be because there's no standard translation? Shakespeare and Milton were originally written in English, and for the Bible the KJV was basically universal in the English-speaking world for a long time, but there was never any single translation of Homer that was overwhelmingly the most popular.

>>24467838
Yes.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2837:_Odyssey

>>24468084
Hot take: Homer has more in common with rap than with much of what's published as "poetry" today in English. Namely, both have a strong sense of rhythm and form, and both are fundamentally oral in nature. (Homer was recited orally before he was ever written down, remember.)

>>24469579
In the sense that a man is more like an ape than like an ass

>>24469583
I'd argue that even compared to, say, 19th-century English verse, the common aspect of orality is very important. Part of why Homer sometimes seems long-winded on the page is because he wasn't composed for the page.

>>24469589
>Part of why Homer sometimes seems long-winded on the page is because he wasn't composed for the page.
Nah, Milton and other literate epicists are long-winded too. It's essential to epic poetry.

>>24469592
Because they're imitating a style that originated in oral recitation!

>>24469599
No, they're doing what the form demands. The origin has nothing to do with it.

>>24468464
obviously just one example but gogol quoted hamlet once or twice in dead souls (unless guerney was taking a lot of artistic liberty here)

I quote Homer often but alas nobody around me speaks ancient Greek so I'm forced to translate and in so doing lose much of the pith

I've seen people quote Keats' reaction to Chapman's translation of Homer.

>>24469831
That's not the same

>>24467795 (OP)
Burn these editions, bring out your Chapman tomes. Read NO other.

He was quoted back when educated people knew Greek. But now no one knows Greek, so he's not quoted. Quoting a translation is so humiliating even midwits stray from it.

>>24470313
>Quoting a translation is so humiliating even midwits stray from it.
>implying

>>24470329
The Bible, especially the KJV, has become so ingrained into English that one cannot separate the two. Just like how one can't separate Dante from Italian.

>>24470329
The Bible was translated into Aramaic and Hebrew and Greek from KJV1611.

>>24467825
Can only quote so much until you run out of quotes

>>24468464
The Japs quote him more than one would expect

>>24469831
>>24470287
Someone should write On First Looking into Wilson's Homer

>>24467795 (OP)
Anglocentrism?

>The Odyssey is about Mycenaean Greeks
>cover art is from Minoan Crete

>>24468909
I hate this iambic verse with 4-letter words. Even putting aside the meme translation, it just reads conversational and anti-grandiose, as if deliberately killing the magnificence.
Ukrainian translation is written in anapaest, perhaps I'm too used to its sound.
This piece by Bryant is nice.

>>24470400
Much have I travelled in the realms of /lit/,
And many goodly threads and (you)'s have led;
Round many posts original have I read,
Where anons' praise of Homer have been writ:
Oft of one wide-spread meme did I admit,
Of Wilson's Odyssey and Iliad;
Yet never did I know of what they said,
Till I heard Wilson speak out piss and shit.
Then felt I like some watcher of scat porn,
When a new turd descends from out her hole;
Or like stout Cortéz, sailing from the morn,
In midst of the Pacific, whose diet whole
From spicy Mexican cuisine was born,
Sat constipated on the toilet bowl.

>>24470400
Much have I travelled in the realms of /lit/,
And many goodly threads and (you)'s have led;
Round many posts original have I read,
Where anons' praise of Homer have been writ:
Oft of one wide-spread meme did I admit,
Of Wilson's Odyssey and Iliad;
Yet never did I know of what they said,
Till I heard Wilson speak out piss and shit.
Then felt I like some watcher of scat porn,
When a new turd descends from out her hole;
Or like stout Cortéz, sailing from the morn,
In midst of the Pacific, whose diet whole
From spicy Mexican cuisine was born,
Sat diarrheal on the toilet bowl.

>>24470459
Magnificent

>>24469607
NTA but I can’t wrap my head round how anyone could think this. The form itself is shaped by its origins.
>doing what the form demands
as if the form were some disembodied deity whispering in Milton’s ear? The form is what it is because of where it came from.

>>24468937
There would be no Aeneid without Iliad

>>24470287
Not even Pope?

>>24469579
Homer has even more in common with cowboy songs. Some classics have a similar, but much shorter epic structure like quickly summarizing the story before even starting to tell it.

>>24467825
>Cultural shift and decay; pop culture has surpassed classic works

>>24467825
Brandon Sanderson writes more eloquently

>>24468909
William Cullen Bryant is not the "original"

>>24470747
>The form itself is shaped by its origins.
Man originated from monkey. Are humans defined by monkeys, then?
>as if the form were some disembodied deity whispering in Milton’s ear?
Yes. Sing, heavenly Muse.

>>24467831
what's the joke

>>24471482
yeah but there is original and original because in this case there is translation and translation

>>24467795 (OP)
Ancient Greek does not translate well into English, and none of the poetic translations are good. The best English translation is a prose translation by Andrew Lang and it's not very easy to read still. It's better to either read a Latin translation or learn homeric greek.

>>24471685
What language holds the best translations of Homer? I'm genuinely curious, even though I only speak my native language and English and an esl

>>24471821
Polish alexandrine by F.X. Dmochowski. Tremendously influential on a generation of Romantic-era poets.

>>24471821
German, Russian, French, Italian, modern Greek.

>>24467796
That's like saying most literary fiction is just soapopera slop. You can reduce any literature to its plot to make it sound silly.

>>24470431
Wouldn't the most obvious choice be to translate in dactyls, as the original is?

>>24471600
You indeed cannot make sense of humans as creatures while ignoring the fact that they are great apes and of common blood with the other great apes, even if they have their distinctions as well.

>>24467814
People quote Dostoevsky all the time and he wrote in Russian.

>>24471821
German has the Voss translation

>>24472616
Yes you can. I know lots about human nature, I know nothing about orangutans.

>>24467795 (OP)
There are like 283837484838292 different translations. How would you quote it?

>>24473075
Quote the best one

>>24473075
Whatever one you like best. Are you autistic?

>>24472613
>translate in dactyls, as the original is
it actually is dactyl (long short short), I should've double checked the name for this meter. Russian translations are also in dactyl.
I love the hard empasis on first syllable and pause in the middle of each line, it adds a lot of weight and importance.
Sophocles is translated to Ukrainian in amphibrach (short long short, don't know if original is the same), and sounds less pompous/grandiose, but more musical, which is fitting for conversational theatre plays.

Disyllables (iamb) sound less epic (Pope and Wilson). Pope's translation is pretty good as a work of poetry, AABB rhyme scheme sometimes gives it an entirely different mood, but other times allows it to be quite epic.
I have been reading book 6 of Iliad to my mom just a few days ago, decided to check it out in English. This part – the most memorable and emotional in Diomedes-Glaucus exchange – feels completely flat in all English translations except Pope.
>‘What, or from whence I am, or who my sire’
>(Replied the Chief), ‘can Tydeus’ son inquire?
>Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
>Now green in youth, now with’ring on the ground:
>Another race the foll’wing spring supplies,
>They fall successive, and successive rise;
>So generations in their course decay,
>So flourish these, when those are past away.

>>24471821
Impossible to tell without knowing at least 5 languages.
For me the native Ukrainian translation is the best. Russian is just as good, but reading in native lang is unparalleled.
>>24472015
This 1800 Polish translation seems fairly similar, and is even rhymed. I don't know any Polish, but can read and understand most of it, especially a familiar text like the Iliad.

Would like to check Belorussian, they finally translated Iliad last year, heh. The language is very similar to Ukrainian, would probably understand it without issues.

All English ones are awkward and rather unpoetic. Except Pope, but he basically wrote his own poem based on Iliad.