The Iliad: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Homer (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: October 11, 2011

TOLSTOY CALLED THE ILIAD A miracle; Goethe said that it always thrust him into a state of astonishment. Homer’s story is thrilling, and his Greek is perhaps the most beautiful poetry ever sung or written. But until now, even the best English translations haven’t been able to re-create the energy and simplicity, the speed, grace, and pulsing rhythm of the original.

In Stephen Mitchell’s Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful.

Mitchell’s Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West, whose edition of the original Greek identifies many passages that were added after the Iliad was first written down, to the detriment of the music and the story. Omitting these hundreds of interpolated lines restores a dramatically sharper, leaner text. In addition, Mitchell’s illuminating introduction opens the epic still further to our understanding and appreciation.

Now, thanks to Stephen Mitchell’s scholarship and the power of his language, the Iliad’s ancient story comes to moving, vivid new life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The verse is well-forged and clean-limbed, and achieves a powerful simplicity. Mitchell has re-energised the Iliad for a new generation.” —The Sunday Telegraph (London)

“A daring new version of the epic poem.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Mitchell’s Iliad is slimmer and leaner than anything we have seen before.... His strong five-beat rhythm is arguably the best yet in English.” —The New Yorker

About the Author

Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make old classics thrillingly new. His many books include the bestselling Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, The Gospel According to Jesus, The Book of Job, Bhagavad Gita, and The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. His website is StephenMitchellBooks.com.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books; Reprint edition (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439163375
• ISBN-13: 978-1439163375
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #358,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives.

He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems.

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#31 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#31 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 126 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lap of The Gods October 27, 2011

By michael mcgreevy

Format:Hardcover

First, this is not a screenplay for the movie, "Troy." Nor is it a "book" about the Trojan War. This is a translation of a written version of (approximately) 3,000 year old oral poem composed by an obscure and anonymous Greek poet about the men and women involved in a siege around the city of Troy (in current west Turkey). It begins with a quarrel between the Greek leader, Agamemnon, and one of his captains, Achilles, and ends with the Trojan leader, Priam, begging for his son's, Hector, dead body from that same captain. In between these scenes is bloody and heroic battle presented ironically in a package of breathtakingly beautiful poetry.

This is probably not the greatest war poem ever written, but it surely is the greatest anti-war poem ever written. When you complete it on the one hand you will be drained, exhausted and feeling like you were there in the midst of the battle. At the same time you will be exhilarated that you now know what a masterpiece is.

Up until the publication of this translation, the translation by Robert Fagles, a professor at Princeton University, has been considered by many to be the best of several available.

With several translations available to the English-speaking reader, it is difficult to make a choice. Some would say that this latest translation by Stephen Mitchell further burdens the reader's choices. I would argue that rather than burden, it lightens the load. Here is why I think so.

The translator is experienced in making older texts come to life. Among them are "Gilgamesh" at the "Tao Te Ching."
This translation is more contemporary having been published in 2011 versus the venerable translation of Robert Fagles at 1990.
Mitchell's translation is shorter.... The Fagles edition translates all 24 books of the poem in over 600 pages. The more economically Mitchell takes only 400 "sharper and leaner" pages. Mr. Mitchell accomplishes his whittling of Homer by accepting the view of an internationally known British scholar and classicist, Professor Martin L. West, regarding "probable interpolations by rhapsodies, spliced into it during the decades or centuries after it was (first) written." For the latter, Mitchell eliminated these interpolations as well as with other passages which he considered not authentic to the original.
Mitchell also eliminated the fixed epithets repeated ad nauseam in Homer such as "flashing-helmeted Hector" or "single-footed horses." For Mitchell, these features distract in the English translation from the main subject of the line.
Both contain Pronouncing Glossaries.

So with the above in mind, what translation should you choose? Surely not by length alone. Your objective should to find a translation in which you will find joy in reading and learning. To choose you must compare translations.

To assist you, here is one of my favorite passages. It is a portion of the poem (Book 7, Line 270-286 in Fagles; Lines 225-232 in Mitchell) where Hector taunts Ajax as they prepare for battle. I have included first the translation of Fagles and then Mitchell for you to compare.

Flagles:

"A flash of his helmet as rangy Hector shook his head:
`Ajax, royal son of Telamon, captain of armies,
Don't toy with me like a puny, weak-kneed boy
Or a woman never trained in works of war!
War--I know it well, and the butchery of men.
Well I know, shift to the left, shift to the right
My tough tanned shield. That's what the real drill,
Defensive fighting means to me, I know it all, how to charge in the rush of plunging horses-
I know how to stand and fight to the finish,
Twist and lunge in the War-god's deadly dance.

On guard!

Big and bluff as you are, I've no desire to hit you
Sniping in on the sly-
I'd strike you out in the open, strike you now!"

Mitchell:

"Hector stepped up and answered, `Achaean, don't try
To frighten me like some untested boy
Or a woman who doesn't know the first thing about warfare.
I know about fighting. I know how to kill a man;
I know how to swing my shield to the right or left;
I know how to charge straight into the frenzy of chariots
Attacking or fleeing in terror; and I know how
To step in the deadly dance of hand-to-hand combat.
On guard now; seeing the man that you are, I won't
Sneak a shot, but will openly cut you down."

Difficult choice, eh? Note that from Mitchell is not only more economic it is more focused on the action. To me, it reads more like modern day fiction. Fagles, although longer, seems richer and although I am not a poet, it comes across to me as a more beautiful expression of feeling with a poetic style and rhythm.

Your choice?

"It lies in the lap of the gods." (Book 17) Read more ›

76 of 84 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars An abridged Iliad - good enough poetry, but hardly "The" Iliad November 30, 2011

By Christopher H. Hodgkin

Format:Hardcover

I love the Iliad. Over the past fifty years I have read it in many different translations. And there are many to choose from; a list of complete translations of the Iliad includes more than 70 versions. [...]

In college, I of course read Lattimore, which at the time was (and indeed still is) the gold standard for scholarship. A few years later, I re-read it in the translation of Pope, initially a struggle, but once I got into the flow of it and of his somewhat archaic language, around the middle of book 2, magnificent. I have read most of the major modern translations as they came out. Robert Fitzgerald (I really like this translation and chose it to reread for a book discussion group a few years ago). Ian Johnson (an online translation, good for content and to my ear much as I think the original singers would have sounded, who as we know didn't repeat the poem word-for-word from memory but built it each time from stock phrases and filling in the gaps as they went, but not as smooth poetically as some other translations). Lombardo (I read about four books and skimmed the rest, finding his translation jarringly modernized with contemporary language and references that in my view seriously degraded the nobility of the original). Fagles (much celebrated, and enjoyable enough but not in my view as true to the feel of Homer as Lattimore and Fitzgerald). I have dipped into various other translations as they were available on line or as I visited university libraries that had these more obscure translations: Chapman, of course, because of Keats; Butler; and various others.

With more than 70 translations of the Iliad available, do we really need another one? The answer is that this isn't really another Iliad as we know it.... This is, instead, an abridgement of the full Iliad based on the highly controversial work of Martin West, who claimed to have identified and excised substantial parts of the standard text which he argued were not in the original version, whatever that was, but were later additions. West's work has been well discussed both in scholarly circles and in a very accessible review in the November 7, 2011 edition of the New Yorker.

Mitchell's translation has been praised as fast moving, modern, highly accessible. From my reading of the first three books (as long as I could spend in the bookstore reading it) this is a fair comment, though I frankly don't find it any particular improvement over Fitzgerald or Fagles.

But my primary complaint is that it is deceptive in purporting to the first time or occasional reader to be "The Iliad," when in fact it is, when compared with every other translation available, an abridgment of the Iliad. There is nothing on the covers of the book to suggest to one who finds it in the bookstore or on line that this is not the same Iliad that every English student and past reader of the Iliad has known. There is nothing to suggest that substantial portions of what has for centuries been accepted as the Iliad are totally missing. There is nothing to suggest that a student who chooses this translation to read for a course in Homer will be missing substantial portions of the text that other students will be reading (and that the professor will presumably expect the students to have read and be prepared to discuss).

If a reader or purchaser is aware that this is an abridgment and that they will not be getting the full Iliad, and chooses to read it anyhow, that's fine. It is a perfectly acceptable translation, though in my view not any better than several other choices. But for the work to claim to be the Iliad when it simply is not is, I believe, deceptive and dishonest and cheats the reader who wants to read the same Iliad that his parents, his grandparents, and everyone who has read it before Mitchell has known and loved.

If you have not yet read the Iliad, skip this translation and get one of the quality translations of the full work -- my own recommendations are Lattimore, Fitzgerald, or Fagles. If you already know the Iliad and are interested in knowing what West and Mitchell have stripped from the standard text, then go ahead and read this abridgment and see whether you think they have improved the work or not. But don't buy this is you want to read the Iliad. Because it isn't. Read more ›

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Readable translation, but... November 14, 2011

By stephen liem

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

There are 2 ways to comment on Stephen Mitchell's new translation of Homer's Iliad. One, is to comment on the technical aspect of his translation; and, two, is to comment on the readability of his translation in ordinary English language (by the way, this is one of the main points that Mitchel is making: that his translation is more contemporary and captures the current way that we use the English language).

First, on the technical aspect of the translation. I will not say too much here since I am not a Homeric scholar and I am sure that there are many other experts out there who will debate this point. Nevertheless, it will be useful to give a background on how Mitchel came about translating this. His translation is based on Martin L West's edition of Homer's Iliad. It should be noted that West's edition is controversial because he made a distinction between "original" text as written by the author of Iliad ("Homer"), and subsequent additions to that original text. West has stipped away all text that are not "original" by his own standard and criteria. As a result, the entire Book X, for example, has been banished, and so have many lines, and phrases that are deemed "additonal". As I mentioned before, Micthel's translation also left out those "additional" text that are not "original". I can imagine that scholars can and undoubtedbly will, debate what is "original", and what is "addition" for a very long time. (By the way, Daniel Mandelshon in The New Yorker magazine Nov 7 2011, has a review of this book that explains just how silly the definition of "original" versus "addition" can be. Highly recommended to read.)

Second, now, on to the readability of his translation.... Here, I was somewhat disappointed to discover that Mitchel's translation add nothing new to the readability of Homer's Iliad that has been done by other contemporary translators, notably Stanley Lombardo. In other words, if you are looking for a contemporary translation with readable and common English, Lombardo's work will do just fine. In fact Lombardo's translation adds something new with how he structured the similes, which in Iliad are everywhere. Of course if you are looking for poetic beauty, Fagles' translation is still the book to read.

Here is a comparison between Fagles, Lombardo and Mitchel:

- Fagles (Book 19, 254):
"You talk of food?
I have no taste for food - what I really crave
is slaughter and blood and the choking groan of men!"

- Lombardo (Book 19, 225):
"Nothing matters to me now
but killing, and blood, and men in agony."

- Mitchell (Book 19, 215):
"I cannot think about eating. All I can think of
is slaugther and bloodshed and the loud groans of the dying."

From a poetic perspective, Fagles is more dramatic ("crave", "choking"), but from readability perspective, Lombardo's is fine enough. Thus, I find Mitchel's translation sits in somewhere between Fagles and Lombardo: not as poetic as Fagles, but, not as innovative as Lombardo's either. Read more ›