Taiwan and The Odyssey

[sophia_sol]

I have RETURNED FROM TAIWAN. Er. I forgot to mention that's where I was going, didn't I. So. I was in Taiwan! And now I've returned! It was fun!

And that means now I get to go look at how long my f/rlist's gotten and weep. And also attack all the comments I've been meaning to respond to....

In other news, I just read The Odyssey for the first time ever. And it's, like, good or something. Shocker! I enjoyed the heck out of most of it, and spent a bunch of the first part happily shipping Telemachus/Athena-in-Mentor's-body (what, they totally have a mutual appreciation society going on), until in the second half it becomes more clear that really Athena just thinks Odysseus is totally awesome and forgets all about Telemachus to lavish her attention on Odysseus.

(I also shipped Odysseus/what's-his-face-the-swineherd a little bit. Another mutual appreciation society!)

Reading it, I ended up being rather surprised by some things about it, in which I had false expectations from my impressions from popular culture. The story was presented all inside out and backwards from how I was expecting. Silly me, I thought it was going to be ALL focusing on Odysseus, and that it was going to be relatively chronological. Nope! But I am OKAY WITH THAT. I kind of think Telemachus is awesome. Also I was fascinated that Odysseus gets home like halfway through the book. And the entire second half is him dealing with the issues of the unwanted suitors! The way that popular culture carries on about the Awesome Adventures Of Odysseus' Travels, you'd never guess. Years and years of travels take up one half the book, and a few days of doing stuff the entire second half. I THINK I CAN GUESS WHAT THE AUTHOR THOUGHT WAS MORE IMPORTANT. Hint: it's not the same thing we do.

Also the ending is really kind of weird. Oh look, there's going to be a battle between Odysseus' folks and the families of the dead suitors! Things are all gearing up! Things are tense and dramatic! Athena steps out and is like, "um, no" and then it all just ends? NOT VERY CONCLUSATORY. Or at least, the pacing feels all messed up to me.

In other news, I really like the rhythm of the language in the Odyssey. I got really caught up in it, and really loved it. Even though it does lots of things that are frowned on in modern composition, it works.

Also I love the sensation of being immersed in another cultures mores and values like that. The absolute importance placed on the proper treatment of guests, for example. Fascinating!

And now I think I have to read the Iliad, because -- actual slashtasticness that I hardly need to read into at all! Unlike the Odyssey where I kept on finding places TO read slash into it, but it would require actual effort to make arguments for the slash. Unlike Achilles/Patrocles.

Except that I'm kind of bored, mostly, by books that go on and on about war. I was bored in the warmongering bits of the Odyssey already, and there are a LOT fewer than there are in a book that's, well, all ABOUT war. So.

(actually what I am reading now is Wuthering Heights. It was kind of an abrupt brainshift to go straight from Odyssey to Wuthering Heights. They are very different from each other!)

sentientcitizen can attest that it is pretty hilarious the way, if you get me started about The Odyssey, I will swing wildly back and forth between earnest-academic and squeeful-fan in my expressions of enjoyment. I GO BOTH WAYS, OKAY. Except that I think this post ended up being more of the latter than the former? It wouldn't take much to get me nattering academically though, I think!

Comments

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

I read the Fagles translation! It was very good. No, I'm not one of those intimidating people who actually read Greek -- I WISH I was, but I'm not. I am, alas, monolingual with a few pitiful bits of knowledge about French and German only.

(CANTERBURY TALES. So awesome! I totally need to read the whole thing, at some point. But speaking of reading it out loud in the original, there was a dude in a West Civ class of mine once who knew all the rules of proper pronunciation of Middle English, and had the opening of the Canterbury Tales memorized, and it was so fascinating to listen to him recite it. It sounded like a totally foreign language, even though on the page it's half-comprehensible!)

(Also, you can read ELVISH? Awesome!)

Oh, hey, that is AWESOME that you used to play Trojan War as a kid! I was certainly a huge fan of greek myths as a kid, and read up a lot about them in bowdlerized versions, so I was pretty familiar already with a lot of the bits of the story from The Odyssey, but yeah, the real thing is DEFINITELY awesomer.

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

Oh, my Middle English pronunciation is ABYSMAL. I can do just enough of it to get the rhythm somewhere near even. Mostly I just sort of modernize / Scotticize / Germanize the words and revel in the word order being right. (You can TELL sometimes when a translator has hit a line like "who them hath holpen when that they were seke" and has tried to modernize the word order. It murders the rhythm entirely.) Even with the way I mangle it, though, I can tell that it's so much more incredibly beautiful and pointed than any translation could be.

'Also, you can read ELVISH? Awesome!'

The alphabet only, and a few dozen of the words (transliterated). I can read the LOTR and Silm maps for name-meaning pretty accurately, and translate the "A Elbereth Gilthoniel" and "Namarië" from memory - and I made up my username from cobbled-together bits - but I can't really do conjugations and such.

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I do love the word order thing! It's beautiful.

That's still very cool, that you know as much Elvish as that.