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4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Chapman walks Homer up on stage Aug 29, 2007
By Jemima McFarland
Chapman was a poet-playwright caught in one of history's greatest creative explosions. Imagine: Chapman got to walk Homer onto the stage of Elizabethan literature.
Used to rendering scenes, getting action and nuance across by hook and by crook, yet thrilled by his poet and his task, Chapman calls on his lucky stars with every line--wild, woolly, and wonderful. Here's Achilles going berserk in the ILIAD:
"....The silver-gulfed deep
Received them with a mighty cry: the billows vast and steep
Roared at their armors, which the shores did round about resound
This way and that they swam, and shrieked, as in the gulfs they drown'd.
And as in fired fields locusts rise, as the unwearied blaze
Plies still their rising, till in swarms al lrush as in amaze
(For 'scape) into some neighbor floor: so th'Achillean stroke
Here drave the foe: their gulfy flood with men and horse did choke."
The ODYSSEY is in pentameter, at which Chapman is a great athlete. Here is Calypso, letting Odysseus go:
"O y'are a shrewd one, and so habited
In taking heed, thou knowst not what it is
To be unwary, nor use words amiss.
How hast thou charmed me, were I ne'er so sly!"
Direct, salient, brilliant--I stand charmed. Keats still applies.
7 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Classic Done Right Jan 02, 2002
I've always wanted to read the Odyssey, but could never get into it...that's the problem with reading books in translation; if you get a bad translation, the book sucks. But Chapman does a wonderful job with Homer...this is about as beautifully poetic as you can get. The other great thing about this is that it's written in iambic pentameter, (although the Illiad is done with the fourteen syllable line,) the meter that Shakespeare used for his plays. If you're into Elizabethan writing at all, this is a great book for you.
8 of 14 found the following review helpful:
Dear Mr. Smith Dec 22, 2001
By No DRM
My review of the book is just to correct Kent Smith's shockingly ignorant statement. Wouldn't one's confusion over a word's meaning necessitate the turning to the glossary? Why rely on obtrusive footnotes? Why not let your ignorance of Chapman's extraordinary, polyglot, maddeningly-diverse vocabulary be the guide?My advice is the same I'd give to a child: if you don't know a word LOOK IT UP. Advice you don't need to be "an academic num-num"--although I am an academic--to think of, nor heed. I might also suggest looking in the Oxford English Dictionary--created by academic num nums, but accessible to such enlighteded common readers as Mr. Smith--it has many of Chapman's neologisms--to save Mr. Smith the trouble of looking up this extraordinarily difficult phrase, it means "new words," from Greek NEOS "new" and LOGOS "word" (Isn't erudition, however minor, fun and useful, Mr. Smith?--and is quite exciting in the bargain. By the way, this edition of Chapman is by far the best I have seen; Chapman's translation is also highly recommended.
2 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Dear Kent Smith Dec 22, 2001
My review of the book is just to correct Kent Smith's shockingly ignorant statement. Wouldn't one's confusion over a word's meaning necessitate the turning to the glossary? Why rely on obtrusive footnotes? Why not let your ignorance of Chapman's extraordinary, polyglot, maddeningly-diverse vocabulary be the guide? My advice is the same I'd give to a child: if you don't know a word LOOK IT UP. Advice you don't need to be "an academic num-num"--although I am an academic--to think of, nor heed. I might also suggest looking in the Oxford English Dictionary--created by academic num nums, but accessible to such enlighteded common readers as Mr. Smith--it has many of Chapman's neologisms--to save Mr. Smith the trouble of looking up this extraordinarily difficult phrase, it means "new words," from Greek NEOS "new" and LOGOS "word" (Isn't erudition, however minor, fun and useful, Mr. Smith?--and is quite exciting in the bargain. By the way, this edition of Chapman is by far the best I have seen; Chapman's translation is also highly recommended.
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