With compassion and humanity, he presents a universal and tragic view of the world, of human life lived under the shadow of suffering and death, set against a vast and largely unpitying divine background.
Seven Greek cities claim the honour of being the birthplace of
Homer (c. 8th-7th century BC), the poet to whom the composition of
the Iliad and Odyssey are attributed. The Iliad is the oldest
surviving work of Western literature, but the identity - or even
the existence - of Homer himself is a complete mystery, with no
reliable biographical information having survived.
E. V. Rieu initiated Penguin Classics with Allen Lane and his
famous translation of the Odyssey was the first book published in
the series in 1947. The Iliad followed in 1950.
“Fitzgerald has solved virtually every problem that has plagued
translators of Homer. The narrative runs, the dialogue speaks, the
military action is clear, and the repetitive epithets become useful
text rather than exotic relics.” –Atlantic Monthly
“Fitzgerald’s swift rhythms, bright images, and superb English make
Homer live as never before…This is for every reader in our time and
possibly for all time.”–Library Journal
“[Fitzgerald’s Odyssey and Iliad] open up once more the unique
greatness of Homer’s art at the level above the formula; yet at the
same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric
verse at the level of the line and the phrase.” –The Yale
Review
“What an age can read in Homer, what its translators can manage to
say in his presence, is one gauge of its morale, one index to its
system of exultations and reticences. The supple, the iridescent,
the ironic, these modes are among our strengths, and among Mr.
Fitzgerald’s.” –National Review
With an Introduction by Gregory Nagy
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