Chapman seems even more goated.
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I haven’t read the Odyssey in full since Fagles in my early college years (I answered that I’d read it twice because I also read a translation I can’t remember in high school, though that wasn’t complete). It’d be fun to try a different translation, so I might do this.
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Even I’m not enough of a 
for this but I want to know how you feel about it if you go for this translation
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literally just had this discussion with The Nun at the bookstore
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ok the nun and i are down to read pope and wilson’s translations.
im still Lord Caregiver so im not posting so muhc but w/e
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tell the nun i said hi!!!
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I bought the Wilson after asking a friend who has opinions on things like this what his favorite translation is. I’ll start it after I finish reading this Yoko Ogawa novel. 
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disappointed no one has insisted that it be read in ancient greek
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This entire forum is full of enough ancient geeks as it is.
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Miiiight start this today.
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I have also opted for the Wilson version, looking forward to comparing notes!
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Pope’s introduction to the iliad features a pretty brutal takedown of chapman so I am real curious to see how often you’ll come away from the poem with something completely different from what the others have read
Chapman has taken the advantage of an immeasurable length of verse, notwithstanding which, there is scarce any paraphrase more loose and rambling than his. He has frequent interpolations of four or six lines; and I remember one in the thirteenth book of the Odyssey, ver. 312, where he has spun twenty verses out of two. He is often mistaken in so bold a manner, that one might think he deviated on purpose, if he did not in other places of his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. He appears to have had a strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author; insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the obvious sense to this end.
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Do you plan to watch the 2026 film The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan?
- Yes
- No
0
voters
I mean I’ll definitely download it someday
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I haven’t watched a nolan movie since memento I saw that shit and said fuck off forever
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I can think of few directors less suited to adapting the odyssey. Nolan’s chief fault (besides the worst ear for dialogue of any major director) is an utter lack of visual imagination. Every notable moment in his previous films has been a shabby borrowing from a better film. In movies where such borrowing was not evident, such as tenet, there is a total lack of diverting imagery such that its only impression upon my memories is of greige paint drying. Even a Canadian hack like denis villenueve understands that film is a visual medium (though denny’s chief fault is his absence of taste)
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I read a little from the beginning of Chapman’s and I wasimpressed by the audacity of including a translator’s introduction in verse.
I read Keats’ poem and I’m even more committed to reading this. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer | The Poetry Foundation
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The romantics had a view of homer I don’t agree with, that homer was raw, rough hewn and natural in his language, so they preferred translations that were raw and rough hewn because it matched their romanticist fancies
To quote an aritcle from the 90s about pope’s homer:
The Romantic age triggered reaction against Pope’s neo-classical techniques. Homer was considered a bard, close to nature, betrayed by the high pomp of England’s Augustan age. But there has been a rejection of that rejection. The formulaic devices of Homer served a highly ritualistic world, with typical scenes of strict protocol for sacrifice, prayer, combat, hospitality and oratory. Pope’s own formulas no longer look so un-Homeric.
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I’m expecting Chapman’s to be confusing, distracting, and over-indulgent. I’m paying that price because I’m also getting alliterative and musical verse that I can’t find elsewhere. I’m excited to go way off course, odysseus-like
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