I need to find a good unabridged translation of The Iliad and other Trojan Cycle stories... There is always the MIT Classics Index, but... Well, just click it at right and see - it goes down all the time! There's no reliability.
I'm working on adapting the Trojan Cycle for the screen and I need to be able to makes notes in the margins and whatnot. I actually should probably get several translations done by different people since I can't read ancient Greek and have no time to learn at the moment. See, I'd like to eventually see an historically accurate, unbiased or colored by modern eyes, and complete dramatization of the great Greek epics done. And since no one else seems capable or willing, I think it will have to be me who writes the script. I'm suspicious of everything "historical" that Hollywood does after this last year of stunning disasters ("Troy," "Alexander," "Kingdom of Heaven" ::shudders::), not to mention the year before - "King Arthur" (gag me!). I'm thinking that they shouldn't be allowed to do period films anymore without adult supervision. Although, they could turn things around if "The New World" and "Beowulf & Grendel" live up to expectations... but I'm not really holding my breath.
I started making notes the other day. The Fates will be the Chorus. I think that's appropriate, since they are a neutral force in the Trojan War and Fate is a major theme in all of the Greek epics I'll be dealing with... I want to go at least from the marriage of Achilles' parents through the epilogue of the Iliad, if not the back-story to it all (Zeus' affair with Leda and Hecuba's dream) through the epilogue of the Odyssey... I'm not fond of Odysseus, despite the fact that the reader is supposed to like him. Unlike Athena, I do not find his manipulations and machinations "cute." I think he's jerkier than most ancient Greek men, and I'd just as soon not rehash his story of personal discovery ::rolls eyes::. I realize that everything he did was culturally acceptable and even expected because nearly all ancient Greek men were chauvinist pigs, but I've got to draw a line somewhere. And well, even if I can grit my teeth and bear his wife remaining completely faithful to his memory while he's gallivanting across the Aegean like a 10th century BCE Lothario because he *does* love her so much that not even goddesses dangling immortality in front of his face and terrible monsters can keep him from her in the end, he crosses it one too many times with getting Iphigenia "sacrificed" by trying to incite a riot. In any case, this would obviously have to be a mini-series.
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2 comments:
we certainly cannot say you exhibit a lack of impetus --charge on, noble scholar! tell us more of how it is/was/should be!!
That's me! Driven to seek... If only I knew what I was looking for half the time. LOL!
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