Why Homer is better in Greek.

“Homer” is our name for the long pre-literate tradition that produced the Iliad and Odyssey.  These poems were orally composed, and the traces of their orality come through much more clearly in the original language. While sound and rhythm are among the usual problems in translating poetry, these epics that were sung and meant to be heard have rich, mood and scene-creating sonic and metric qualities. Here’s a good example. 

795-800 from Iliad Book 13. This is one of the dozens of extended similes that Homer uses to convey how a given event looks and feels—in this instance comparing the massed ranks of Trojan troops preparing for battle to waves breaking on a shore during a wild storm at sea. Below is a line-by-line transliteration of the Greek text with translations of each word or phrase just beneath, followed by an analysis of the sound patterns and their effects.

795      Oi d’     isav       argaleon      avemon     atalantoi      aelle,
 they   and   went    out of troublesome    winds   like   storm-cloud,

796      e  ra  th’   hypo   brontes    patros    Dios  eisi   pedov  de,
 which then  beneath thunder of Father Zeus goes plain  toward,

797      thespesio  d’  homado   ali   misgetai,   en    de    te   polla
god-declared and into commotion with salt sea mingles, in and many

798      kumata    paphlazovta     polyphloisboio     thalasses
.            waves       upwelling        of much-roaring        sea

799      kurta     phalerioovta, pro  men  t’  all’,   autar   ep’   alla,
.  billow  frothing, before (while) (and)  others,   but  after  others,

800     os   Troes    pro   men   alloi     arerotes,     autar   ep’    alloi,
.    Trojans  before   (while)    others     engaged     but   after  others,

Note, first of all, how the last words of the first, third, fifth, and sixth lines of this passage all end with the same sound combination, loaded with liquid “l”s (aellêi, “maelstrom”; polla, “many”: ep’ alla, “others hard behind,” ep’alloi, “others hard behind”): these liquid “l” sounds (with some explosive “p”s thrown in in the third, fifth, and sixth lines) beautifully evoke the sounds of the roiling waters, even as the insistent repetition of the “p-ll” sound cluster from line to line gives a sense of whitecaps breaking on the beach, one after another. (In other words, the near-rhyming words do what the waves do.) And, as if to make the analogy concrete, the sixth line—which reconnects the imagined world of the sea to the narrated world of the Trojans at war—repeats the “some before … others hard behind” language of the fifth: the waves are all’ … ep alla; the Trojans are alloi … ep’ alloi. So the sixth line is packed behind the fifth, imitating its sound cluster precisely the way in which the Trojan ranks, packed together in battle formation, are massed one behind the other.

Also of note is the way that the two adjectives in the fourth line—paphladzonta, the “roiling” waves, and polyphloisboio, the “greatly-roaring” sea—replicate each other’s consonants: the “p”s, the “ph”s, the “l”s, the soft “s”s and “z” sounds. If you repeat those languidly unspooling words, you’re making the noises of the surf.

And they came on like the blast of direful winds that rush upon the earth beneath the thunder of father Zeus, and with wondrous din mingle with the salt-sea, and in its track are many surging waves of the loud-resounding sea, high-arched and white with foam, some in the vanguard and after them others

οἵ ῥ᾽ ἐξ Ἀσκανίης ἐριβώλακος ἦλθον ἀμοιβοὶ
ἥ ῥά θ᾽ ὑπὸ βροντῆς πατρὸς Διὸς εἶσι πέδον δέ,
θεσπεσίῳ δ᾽ ὁμάδῳ ἁλὶ μίσγεται, ἐν δέ τε πολλὰ
κύματα παφλάζοντα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης
κυρτὰ φαληριόωντα, πρὸ μέν τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽, αὐτὰρ ἐπ᾽ ἄλλα:
800ὣς Τρῶες πρὸ μὲν ἄλλοι ἀρηρότες, αὐτὰρ ἐπ᾽ ἄλλοι,
χαλκῷ μαρμαίροντες ἅμ᾽ ἡγεμόνεσσιν ἕποντο.