Word: iliad
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...Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad, translated by Robert Graves. A charming prose-and-verse Iliad, in which the customary flavor of chalk dust is replaced by sharp-tasting satire...
...Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad, translated by Robert Graves. The most charming translation in English since Pope's of the classic poem, interpreted by Graves as satirical entertainment...
What has been overlooked by most classicists as well as by the grammarians of ancient Greece. Translator Graves theorizes, is that the Iliad was meant to be entertainment, not solemn tragedy. In Graves's view, the poem is a satirical work in which Homer lampooned the princelings at whose courts he recited, while pretending to hymn the heroes of the past. In this view, Agamemnon, leader of the Achaeans, is the prize buffoon. And when Hector, the Trojan leader, offers to stake the whole war on a single combat, the Greeks respond at first with resounding silence. Then Menelaus...
...even Agamemnon is transformed for a few lines into a ferocious slaughterer of Trojans. Homer found this a necessary dodge, Graves believes, because powerful men in the poet's time considered themselves descendants of Troy's besiegers. While Homer composed in verse, presumably because it made the Iliad easier for court singers to memorize. Graves uses a combination of jogging, rhymed verse-for invocations, hymns and similes-and clear, unornamented, semicolloquial prose. His opening invocation suggests the rhymed couplets of Alexander Pope's Iliad: Sing, MOUNTAIN GODDESS, sing
...Trojans, remarks that Hera protects the Greeks as if they were her own bastards, she replies pertly: "Revered Son of Cronus, what a thing to say!" Cartoonist Ronald Searle's illustrations wittily support Graves's wry treatment of the Olympians. Whether or not Graves's Iliad will endure as a satire, it is certainly the most charming translation in English since Pope's, and may also be the best. At the end of his preface, Graves promises to pour a libation of red wine "to Homer's shade, imploring pardon for the many small liberties...