He says his knowledge of modern American poetry helps his translations. It's a balancing act between the ancient and the modern.'

You look back to the great original behind you, trying to be as faithful to it as possible, trying to convey as much of what it says as possible, but the conveyance takes place in a modern medium that has both limitations and opportunities for a kind of expansiveness. In an interview with playwright Gideon Lester, Fagles described the job of a translator: 'It is forever a tightrope act. I had done my dissertation on Pope's translation, and I wanted to make it new.' 'I wanted to bring the epic poem to life. Finally, there came a time when I wanted to try my hand at it myself.'įagles translated The Iliad in 1990 and The Odyssey in 1996. 'Translation is an ongoing field of endeavor throughout all of English letters. 'I shuttled between teaching the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus. The great job of this work was to discover that there is in fact a great number of very intelligent, hardworking readers out there.'Īs a comparative literature professor at Princeton University for more than forty years, Fagles was always involved with the classics. 'Because I'm an academic, a lot of hand wringing goes on in the academy about the illiteracy of the public. 'I was very surprised,' he said in a recent New York Times interview. Now, he has tackled the Roman epic, Virgil's Aeneid his translation of Virgil has just been published.įagles found the success of these works unexpected. His translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey were both bestsellers. I wanted it to be in my voice, for better or worse.'įagles's translations are known for their emphasis on contemporary English phrasing while being faithful to the original. 'I very much hope my translation sounds like me. Each has a distinctive badge, each comes with its own vocal DNA,' he says. 'It has to do with the tone of voice of the translator. 'Every translation is different,' says classicist Robert Fagles.

The iliad fagles