#'impious acts and exemplary lives'? 'of the ties that bind'?

[finelythreadedsky]

i'm fundamentally opposed to book titles in translations of ancient epics ('beguilement on mount ida,' 'a hero's son awakens,' 'the olive tree bed,' 'camilla's finest hour,' 'juno served by a fury') bc it just seems like too much to me to presume you know what single thing the book is really about, but christopher logue is allowed to do it

#i have the collected volume but just bought the husbands (books 3-4) and yeah. he's right. that IS what books 3 and 4 are about #fitzgerald does call iliad 3 'dueling for a haunted lady' which is cool but the rest of his book titles suck #iliad 18 isn't 'the shield of achilles' and aeneid 8 isn't 'the shield of aeneas' there's a LOT more going on in both #even aeneid 5 isn't just REALLY about the funeral games (bc its also about the first punic war) #and all the more so with the homeric epics whose book divisions were not intentional and who had no author to focus on a single thing at on #titles are useful indicators of what the translator thinks the book is really about and what they think everything else is supporting tho #like does the translator think the embassy to evander is central and the shield a supporting detail or vice versa? #(aeneid translators are 50/50 on whether book 8 should be titled based on the shield or based on evander and the arcadians btw) #and like. does odyssey 4 take its title from menelaus' tale or helen's tale or do you call it 'the king and queen of sparta' or something #its really funny when translators try to do book titles with the metamorphoses though #'impious acts and exemplary lives'? 'of the ties that bind'? #those tell me nothing about what's even in the book let alone what the translator thinks the most important part is #(this is a not small part of the reason i have not gotten the new stephanie carter translation. #efforts to divide epic neatly even into the book divisions used by the author rub me the wrong way. #going beyond that and presuming to be able to say where one story ends and another begins... it's not for me) #mine