Meh. I don't get what all the fuss is about

Meh. I don't get what all the fuss is about.

Perhaps in Homeric Greek it's beautiful, but I cannot judge that. In translation it comes across as just a silly long-winded tale about a folk hero. It's kind of like reading a poem about Elvis getting drafted.

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books.google.com/books?id=gHQYblVo9WgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
youtube.com/watch?v=aofPdMbXzUQ
thegreatcourses.com/courses/iliad-of-homer.html
torrentproject.se/7089acf6ca7bb744fb516d051f1ecd3735668ce8/TTC-Iliad-of-Homer-torrent.html
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The poem is as to Einstein's proof of special relativity as your glossing of its surface content for meaning is to a math-illiterate's glossing of Einstein's math for its meaning

>I don't get what all the fuss is about. Just looks like a bunch of symbols to me.

Learn math and come back

One thing to remember is that it wasn't meant to be read as a book but instead was part of recited oral tradition.

What are your fav books?

>Meh. I don't get what all the fuss is about.

I'm guessing by your talk you're female.

>I don't get what all the fuss is about.

You're female

Save some time. People here will call you pleb.

Go read what some famous critics wrote about it: books.google.com/books?id=gHQYblVo9WgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

>approaching popular works because of "the fuss" of it

I was more surprised by the brevity of some of its most famous passages. Sylia and Charybdis, the sirens, the cyclops---each no more than a page to a page and half long.

I don't think the poem reads quite that well in translation to a modern audience, but it's not exactly bad or boring either. There are far far far far worse ways to spend a week.

The only part that really made me shiver like I was reading something like The Second Comming or The Wasteland was the Sylia and Charybdis section, and again, that's like a page long.

and this is supposed to improve my reading experience how..?

seriously, I'm not even against reading "boring" works for various reasons but in the case of Iliad and Odyssey, they're so goddamn boring that I'm at the point where I get very little out of them. besides being able to say that hey, I read these books. I might try a translation in my native language some day, maybe that will change that.

I'd rather just read Greek plays for fun or something and continue hating on every idiot who told me that I need to read Iliad and Odyssey before reading Greek philosophy (either I'm an idiot who doesn't get it or they're really not necessary)

Not the underworld bit?

>I'd rather just read Greek plays for fun or something and continue hating on every idiot who told me that I need to read Iliad and Odyssey before reading Greek philosophy


That is acceptable provided you really are reading Greek plays. The philosophy makes no difference either way.

not really as much as I would like, not like the swirling gyre of souls in Inferno would

"I had not thought death had undone so many"

>op doesn't know greek
>he didn't have fun with Aquiles and Hector
spot the pseud, don't read shit you don't like, stick to YA

Reading the Homeric tragedies makes you connected to people who lived 3000 years ago. How can you not think that is one of the coolest things you can do intellectually? It is one of the only things that can give you an idea about the true human nature, without all the influences of the times and society.
If you know that then people fought sorrowful wars because of stupid shit, won glories that in the end availed them nothing and wanted nothing more than to be with their family, doesn't it make you feel a little better about your life?
The Iliad and the Odyssey are not different at all from the other great masterpieces of literature and if you can't see what makes them great, you should just keep thinking about it. Don't expect to get your answer in this thread or anytime soon, but continue reading more and revisit them as often as you can.

youtube.com/watch?v=aofPdMbXzUQ

You didn't get it, try secondary literature

Well, you're not an idiot. To be honest it is impossible to appreciate the Iliad and the Odyssey without understanding certain key terms such as Kleos and Time. I highly suggest you listen to The Teaching Company's lecture on the Iliad by Vandiver. Because of listening to the lecture the book went from a 7.5/10 to a 9/10 for me. The Iliad especially is just such a wonderful work of man.

Link?

Hey can you give us the link to this lecture, I can't find it on YouTube.

Why are people so fucking arrogant.

thegreatcourses.com/courses/iliad-of-homer.html

got 200 clams?

>what are torrents

torrentproject.se/7089acf6ca7bb744fb516d051f1ecd3735668ce8/TTC-Iliad-of-Homer-torrent.html

>I'm guessing by your talk

You might be an overweight virgin.

>You're a female.

You're an overweight virgin.

Why did you feel the need to insult him? Did you feel humiliated or hurt for being called a woman and you are reciprocating in kind? If so, why do you you see 'woman' as some sort of invective?

>being this retarded

fucking this one of the best passages i've ever read. When he finds greater Ajax.

To quote Joyce:

>The most beautiful, all-embracing theme is that of the Odyssey. It is greater, more human than that of 'Hamlet', Don Quixote, Dante, Faust... The most beautiful, most human traits are contained in the Odyssey

The poem is about the indomitable human spirit. The will to survive and conquer against all the odds. The quest for freedom and all that is valuable in life.
Remember, Odysseus is a man who abandons the offer of immortality and nothing but sex forever with a beautiful nymph to return to Ithaca through countless terrible trials and arrives at a home in anarchy. Why? Because he wants to be free. He wants to be with his wife. He wants to live in his country and at the head of his household. He wants to be a man.

Also, some of the writing is just amazing even in English. This is just about my favourite simile ever written (Fitzgerald, Book 20):

His rage, held hard in leash, submitted to his mind,
while he himself rocked, rolling from side to side,
as a cook turns a sausage, big with blood
and fat, at a scorching blaze, without a pause,
to broil it quick: so he rolled left and right,
casting about to see how he, alone,
against the false outrageous crowd of suitors
could press the fight.

Only a genius like Homer could come up with such a bizarre, striking image and make it stick.

>This is just about my favourite simile ever written

different yokes for diffo folks for sure, I think the sausage part is what ruins it for me, or "rocked, rolling"; I'm far too spoiled by contemporary sensibilities and popular constructions to not be distracted by something like that


Joyce would say that though cause he believed Odysseus to be in every man, and his [any man's] struggles to be those of the very substance of life whether condensed into the microscopic or expanded into the macroscopic. Ulysses is basically revealing a trip to the store for bread and liver to be as existentially pressing, confounding and confronting as any other feat one might undertake. Both enmythening the myth and demythologizing the myth at once.

I think something you're forgetting (and believe me, I respect and admire your views here) is that the Odyssey also contains a huge amount of literary nostalgia. I'm not going to necessarily invoke Proust here but there's a similar sense of "what once was can be invoked again" in the Odyssey that really hits home. The entire motivating factor of the story is Odysseus's rememberances of home and the idea that his memory will be interfered with by time. Do you agree?

Is this a good book to learn Homeric Greek?

Lmao.

Not a woman. Not OP.

Thanks for your tears though, chubby.

Cheers senpai

>Odyssey
>in english translation

lemaoo

>Not a woman.

Don't worry buddy, I believe you. You're a man all right. There, feeling better now?

Please guys, nobody call him a woman anymore, ok? He's a bit sensitive about that.