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kayeofswords's review
5.0
I picked up this book while browsing around in a London bookstore and never regretted the extra weight in my suitcase. The rendering is just exceptional, and while other versions may contain much more true-to-text translations, this one is the most poetic and most suited to recitation that I have found. Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns just come alive on the page. It's definitely among one of the best books I picked up during my sixth months abroad.
atticmoth's review against another edition
informative
sad
slow-paced
2.0
This was really not good, save for the Homeric Hymn to Demeter which is maybe one of my favorite poems now. It was so good I read it a few times and if not for that I would have put this book as 1 star. I'm interested in reading other translations of Demeter but the story was a very heartbreaking tale of female rage, so like my favorite genre lol.
The rest of this was profoundly boring. The rest of the homeric hymns require way too much context to be enjoyable, Works and Days is literally just a farming manual (highlights of this one are when he keeps calling his brother an idiot) and Theogony... more like the-agony am I right? lol it was painfully boring, and on top of everything really misogynist. Like yeah I know it's Ancient Greece I know that's to be expected but the only other Greek poetry I've read is Sappho so you can imagine it's extremely different.
I'm not one to complain about translations but this was really dry. I guess it's impressive that it's written in verse, but there was so little context I was lost the whole time through. Usually I think books have too many footnotes--here there were far too few for a layperson like me to enjoy this translation.
The rest of this was profoundly boring. The rest of the homeric hymns require way too much context to be enjoyable, Works and Days is literally just a farming manual (highlights of this one are when he keeps calling his brother an idiot) and Theogony... more like the-agony am I right? lol it was painfully boring, and on top of everything really misogynist. Like yeah I know it's Ancient Greece I know that's to be expected but the only other Greek poetry I've read is Sappho so you can imagine it's extremely different.
I'm not one to complain about translations but this was really dry. I guess it's impressive that it's written in verse, but there was so little context I was lost the whole time through. Usually I think books have too many footnotes--here there were far too few for a layperson like me to enjoy this translation.
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