7/8: The Iliad Hardcover – September 26, 2023 by Homer (Author), Emily Wilson (Translator)

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 9 December 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

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7/8: The Iliad Hardcover – September 26, 2023 by Homer (Author), Emily Wilson (Translator)
https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer/dp/1324001801

When Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017―revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was “fresh, unpretentious and lean” (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)―critics lauded it as “a revelation” (Susan Chira, New York Times) and “a cultural landmark” (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer’s other great epic―the most revered war poem of all time.
The Iliad roars with the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts of victors, the fury and grief of loss, and the anguished cries of dying men. It sings, too, of the sublime magnitude of the world―the fierce beauty of nature and the gods’ grand schemes beyond the ken of mortals. In Wilson’s hands, this thrilling, magical, and often horrifying tale now gallops at a pace befitting its legendary battle scenes, in crisp but resonant language that evokes the poem’s deep pathos and reveals palpably real, even “complicated,” characters―both human and divine.
The culmination of a decade of intense engagement with antiquity’s most surpassingly beautiful and emotionally complex poetry, Wilson’s Iliad now gives us a complete Homer for our generation.5 maps

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm John Bachelor with the very generous Professor Emily Wilson at the University of Pennsylvania.
0:10.0	Her new work is The Iliad by Homer. And we've been approaching this scene for some moments now,
0:18.5	Petroclus. The Boone companion of Achilles son of Polyus and at some point the conviction is brought to Achilles
0:31.6	his son of Polyus's camp, that he must enter the battle because the Greeks
0:36.6	are losing.
0:38.1	And the Greeks have built a rampard and a moat, and Hector, the great fighter of Troy penetrates the wall and they're trying to
0:48.7	burn the ships and if the ships are destroyed the understanding is the Greeks can't go home again.
0:53.8	They will be defeated.
0:55.4	So Achilles is persuaded that while he will not enter the battlefield,
1:01.8	Petroclusus had planted in his mind earlier in the drama that he can wear.
1:07.0	Thank you. That he can wear Achilles's armor and fool people. They'll think he is Achilles, professor. Is that the idea?
1:15.0	Yes, at least initially the Trojans will think Achilles has come back to battle and the
1:19.7	concept is that that will frighten them enough that they'll be routed and
1:23.7	start turning back towards Troy and at least the fleet won't be burnt and there
1:27.4	might still be a chance for the Greeks to have a nostril so I'm coming.
1:30.3	Kie's warns him what does he tell him he says drive Hector from the ships but then turn around don't push on right to the city because that's not a good idea for you to do that by yourself without me. Turn around and come back to the
1:43.8	come back to our hut, don't keep pushing on driving Hector back to Troy. But of
1:50.2	course Petrovtus has so much in common with Achilles, including the desire for honor and the enormous skill in massacre that every great-homeric hero has, and he doesn't want to turn. When it's time to turn turn he doesn't. Yes the artistry of having
2:05.4	Achilles speak like that warning him. You knew exactly what you just had the
2:10.0	foreshadowing of the end. Absolutely, yes. We've known the whole time Patroclus is going to the
2:13.2	foreshadowing of the end.
2:12.2	Absolutely, yes.
	...

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