Classics Salon!
Dec. 3rd, 2025 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnSo yeah, anyone who has been around this DW for more than a very little while has known that we had a salon in which we discussed Frederick the Great in particular and 18th-century Enlightenment figures in general.
But nooooow we are going to have a Classics salon!
My Classics background is, er, well, I guess my Classics history is pretty much on par with or somewhat worse than my general non-US historical background (read: I know almost nothing, with some random pockets of slight layman knowledge), and my Classics literary background is signficantly worse than my general literary background (no real reason, it's not like I had a vendetta against it or anything, I think I just didn't happen to have a good entry point). I've read the Odyssey last year and the Aeneid reasonably recently, and the Iliad not so reasonably recently (perhaps this will be the impetus for me to check out the Wilson translation), and Ted Hughes' translation of selected Metamorphoses.
Please feel free to tell me what books I really ought to be looking at next! (I believe there has been some discussion of Plutarch?) Feel free to wax eloquent about your favorite translations, whether it's something I've already read or not! Also please free to tell me any of your favorite Classics history you want, because I probably don't know it :)
(This is not supposed to be just formildred_of_midgard and selenak, although of course I expect them to be prime contributors. I know that many of you, probably all of you, know a lot about Classics that I don't know, so please inform me! Tell me your favorite things! :D )
But nooooow we are going to have a Classics salon!
My Classics background is, er, well, I guess my Classics history is pretty much on par with or somewhat worse than my general non-US historical background (read: I know almost nothing, with some random pockets of slight layman knowledge), and my Classics literary background is signficantly worse than my general literary background (no real reason, it's not like I had a vendetta against it or anything, I think I just didn't happen to have a good entry point). I've read the Odyssey last year and the Aeneid reasonably recently, and the Iliad not so reasonably recently (perhaps this will be the impetus for me to check out the Wilson translation), and Ted Hughes' translation of selected Metamorphoses.
Please feel free to tell me what books I really ought to be looking at next! (I believe there has been some discussion of Plutarch?) Feel free to wax eloquent about your favorite translations, whether it's something I've already read or not! Also please free to tell me any of your favorite Classics history you want, because I probably don't know it :)
(This is not supposed to be just for
mildred_of_midgard and selenak, although of course I expect them to be prime contributors. I know that many of you, probably all of you, know a lot about Classics that I don't know, so please inform me! Tell me your favorite things! :D )
no subject
Date: 2025-12-08 12:28 am (UTC)I guess it makes perfect sense that there's a lot of repetition and stage direction -- sort of the same idea (though a much smaller instance) as musical/opera acting having very big visual gestures in a way that sometimes doesn't quite work in the new digital age of also doing proshoots with closeups :D Oh wow, the 24" marionettes really bring home the scale of it!
Oh, I see the point of having to retranslate for modern language rhythm -- that makes so much sense! though I'd never thought about it that way before. On the other hand, I am not going to be performing these, and I have read and enjoyed enough literature from the past century that I think your father's translations could work well for me. I think I might be able to find one. I'll see. (...you are talking to the person who fell shatteringly for Dante through Dorothy Sayers' translation, though I read that a quarter-century ago, and I suppose language has had another quarter-century to evolve in that time, and I've found at least one other translation I like better in that time as well...) In any case, your comment gave me the impetus to spend some time poking around at what translations were available, so thank you for that!
Also, your description of Euripides sounds awesome -- I love this in all my media :D