The Aeneid
By Jeff Emanuel Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
With respect to Pejman's mention of Vergil's Aeneid, I am happy to report that Robert Fagles' translation is every bit as outstanding as his work on the Iliad was (I haven't read his Odyssey).
Fagles' strength is in finding an idiomatically familiar way to remain as true to the original Latin as possible (or Greek, in the case of Homer), and he does an outstanding job of that.
Read on . . .
The prose flows, with no forced couplets - which Dryden uses, (albeit very well, although others are not so fortunate in their result) - and the meter is left by the wayside, as well, in the interest of a true-to-the-original text.
Anybody who has translated dactyllic hexameter, complete with ellision, syncopation, and exceptional fifth-foot spondees can attest to the fact that crafting the original in the meter was an extremely skillful use of the original language (Latin, in this case), and the reproduction of meter usually ends up being mutually exclusive with accurate language in translation.
As Pejman rightly pointed out when we were recently discussing these translations, Dryden's Aeneid has lasted over 300 years, and has achieved both a status and a longevity unheard of before or since in a translation of a work. So, by all means, if you are a connoisseur of the Classics, pick up a copy of Dryden - but if you are also reading Vergil with an eye for content, very closely reproduced and with an exceptional level of readability, then I recommend that you do yourself a favor and pick up the Robert Fagles translation, as well.
Only in profession...
by Jeff Emanuel
...and when not writing about politics, sports, and other sordid affairs. :-)
I had no idea you were a fellow classicist! :)