Comments on: The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

rdone — Tue, 11 May 2004 19:58:03 -0800

The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships Just in time for "Troy Story", a lyrical evocation of the Iliad.

By: kablam

kablam — Tue, 11 May 2004 20:13:44 -0800

With gives modern science one of its most useful measurements, the milliHelen. That being the amount of beauty needed to launch a ship. sorry.

By: weston

weston — Tue, 11 May 2004 20:35:15 -0800

when you are Brad Pitt, you don't have to read the Iliad. You have other strengths. I wonder if this was persuasive to Mr. Pitt's literature and classics instructors. With gives modern science one of its most useful measurements, the milliHelen. That being the amount of beauty needed to launch a ship. Clearly, someone needs to contact HotOrNot right away and see if we can get them to switch to SI units.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 11 May 2004 20:38:51 -0800

'Anger' is the first word of Western literature. 'Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles' is the opening prayer of Homer's Iliad, but in the original Greek, the word mhˆnin, 'wrath' or 'anger', comes first, in the place of emphasis. The anger of Achilles is the central theme of our civilisation's first and most powerful epic.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 11 May 2004 20:40:37 -0800

The Bushiad.

By: trondant

trondant — Tue, 11 May 2004 20:56:12 -0800

torso-rubbers

By: Hildago

Hildago — Tue, 11 May 2004 21:56:57 -0800

No one uses similes so powerfully as Homer did. There are passages in the Iliad that make all prose seem prosaic One of my pet peeves is when people pretend Homer was a single, real person, who wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, and then use lines from an English translation to prove how much better a writer "he" was than any of these bungling modern hacks.

By: ttrendel

ttrendel — Tue, 11 May 2004 22:01:41 -0800

This is somewhat of an aside, but I took a few classical studies courses early in my college career and read the Iliad. In fact, I loved it so much that I read it 3 or 4 times. So many themes are at play that I was awestruck. My problem is that I sold the textbook back to the bookstore during a period of poverty and have not found another translation that I liked since. Anyone have any reccomendations of translations that they are particularly attached to?

By: muckster

muckster — Tue, 11 May 2004 22:08:34 -0800

I saw this movie six hours ago and I still have a raging headache from all the pointless sword whacking.

By: riviera

riviera — Wed, 12 May 2004 00:05:48 -0800

Retellings of Homer can be fun: for instance, Tony 'Baldrick' Robinson and Richard 'Four Weddings' Curtis's loose rendering, entitled 'Odysseus, The Greatest Hero Of Them All'. Robinson did an enthusiastic narration for kids' telly: the bits about Helen of Troy (who's now extremely fat, having been able to do nothing but eat cake during her sojourn in Troy) are especially funny.

By: eatitlive

eatitlive — Wed, 12 May 2004 00:34:19 -0800

Anyone have any recommendations of translations that they are particularly attached to? I'm partial to Robert Fitzgerald's verse translation. The language and imagery are bold and vivid. He captures something of the rhythm of Homeric Greek without a lot of stumbling over literal renderings of idiom. Lattimore and Fagles are good if you want to get the story down; Fitzgerald's what you want if you're looking for a hint of what the Greeks heard. ...pointless sword whacking. They would find a way to reduce it to that, wouldn't they. Tell me why all the actors have British accents. Shouldn't they sound more like the guys from the gyro stand? Opa!

By: taz

taz — Wed, 12 May 2004 02:09:01 -0800

I believe there was a real Helen, and that it would not have been at all unlikely that she actually was used as a pretext for war (assuming there really was a Trojan war, which I think there was), much in the same way that abstracts of justice, liberty, etc. are usually used to ramp up enthusiasm for wars of acquisition. At any rate, I have to admit that I still much prefer The Odyssey. Fundamentally, war epics are still war epics and I'm just an "adventure epic" sort of girl.

By: ttrendel

ttrendel — Wed, 12 May 2004 07:50:36 -0800

Thanks eatitlive. I'll check those out.

By: Postroad

Postroad — Wed, 12 May 2004 07:54:21 -0800

Oh! That Homer! I thought...

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Wed, 12 May 2004 08:32:19 -0800

D'oh!

By: andycoan

andycoan — Wed, 12 May 2004 09:07:51 -0800

A second for Fitzgerald's translations...definitely the best I've read.

By: costas

costas — Wed, 12 May 2004 09:23:39 -0800

Just a data point: as a Greek, in High School (11th grade actually) we all read and study the Iliad for an entire year in the original Homeric Greek. I gotta say that in the original as well the words and the prose are spectacular.

By: LittleMissCranky

LittleMissCranky — Wed, 12 May 2004 12:11:15 -0800

I second the Fitzgerald recommendation. I had to read the Iliad roughly 700 times when I did the whole classics thing in college, and I think that it's far and away the best. On preview: I guess I third it, actually.

By: riviera

riviera — Thu, 13 May 2004 17:04:57 -0800

I'm partial to Robert Fitzgerald's verse translation. And I'm partial to Christopher Logue's extraordinary rendering -- it's not a translation, explicitly not, as Logue doesn't have any Greek. But it reads like war.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Thu, 13 May 2004 23:59:56 -0800

How to find an actress who can launch a thousand ships.