March 29, 2008 by wilmington.

I just saw the sad news that classicist and translator Robert Fagles has died. His translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad are two of the most important books I’ve ever read - in large part because I also taught them for 6 years.

First is a link and some quotations from an article reporting this, and then below that a few observations and thoughts for anyone interested in the self-indulgent reaction of a fan and teacher of Fagles’ translations.

Classics Translator Robert Fagles Dies
By HILLEL ITALIE
Friday, March 28, 2008

Robert Fagles, a professor emeritus at Princeton University whose bold, flowing translations of Homer and Virgil made him an esteemed and best-selling classical scholar, has died. He was 74.
Fagles died Wednesday in Princeton of prostate cancer, the university said Friday.
“He was a quiet man, diligent and decorous, yet one who was unexpectedly equal to the swagger and savagery of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ in a way no one had managed before him,” Princeton humanities professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon said in a statement.
Two years ago, his long-awaited edition of “The Aeneid” was released, a decade-long project for which Fagles _ whose specialty was Greek _ had to refresh himself on the Latin he learned in college, using grammar books, and the works of Catullus and Horace and other Roman writers. He was first diagnosed with cancer while working on “The Aeneid” and suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
“The Aeneid,” Virgil’s immortal tale of the warrior Aeneus and the founding of Rome, capped a trilogy of critically and commercially successful translations of the classical world’s greatest epics, starting with “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” All were praised for honoring the translator’s highest calling: Respecting the original text, while making it fresh and relevant for the contemporary reader.

Also see this review from 1997.

Like many people, I was forced to read The Odyssey in high school. I didn’t see what the big deal was, it wasn’t that exciting, and the teacher not only wasn’t that excited about it but also seemed to be reciting from a “Teacher’s Guide” each class.

The translation was Fitzgerald’s prose version - we only read excerpts of the stuff everyone usually reads: Cyclops, Sirens, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis. Now I realize that my reactions are the tell-tale signs of a weak translation and a teacher who probably didn’t get it (or who just wasn’t interested).

Fast forward through the rest of high school and college to about 8 years later. I hear some reviewer on NPR talk about and, most importantly, READ from a new translation of The Odyssey . I was already interested in filling in a few gaps in a list of supposedly-great things I never really read, so I bought it. The reviewer was right: Fagles brought out the action, the characterization, and even managed to find a rhythm in English that pushed things along in a way similar to the Greek.

Here was the dramatic context of which the stories of the Cyclops and the Sirens are only a small part. Here was the story of doubtful and frustrated Prince Telemachus that dominates the first 5 books! Here were hilarious episodes with drunken soldiers falling off of roofs, massive feasts and olympic games, deep pathos when Odysseus discovers his own mother in the Kingdom of the Dead, gory, bloody, ruthless violence as a purifying action climax that pre-dates Cormac McCarthy by 2400 years, and a dramatic climax of reconciliation between husband and wife as complicated and imperfect as any 20th century novel.

I read the whole thing, and then went out and bought Fagles’ translation of The Iliad. A more difficult work to get into but filled with surprising and moving moments in the middle of more gory, bloody, ruthless violence. I can hear the emotion in other translations now, but Fagles’ was the one that allowed me to hear first the many brief asides about otherwise nameless and unimportant soldiers whose souls fly down to the house of death. Their mothers would never cry with joy to see their sons walk back through the arches of their well-built houses. Their fathers would never look with pride as a son returned triumphant from battle. The spears, swords, and arrows shattered, stabbed, and pierced the bodies of so many vital sons. And the blood pooled black on the plains.

Gods battled against other, Hector showed what real heroism is, Achilles slaughtered out his selfish revenge - even battling a river god! - and Ajax, Teucer, Diomedes, Patroclus, Menelaus, Agamemnon, and long-winded Nestor spoke and did battle….but those corpse-littered plains drinking the black draught spilt by the nameless sons of Achaea and Ilium…that image of war, justified or not, is what won me over completely for Homer and for Fagles.

It made me listen to stories, read books, and hear language differently.

Fast forward another 5 years and I’m teaching high school English. Instead of the unimaginably lame textbook excerpts (still using Fitzgerald..still using the same excerpts 15 years later, for God’s sake!), I decide that nobody will notice if I buy class sets of Fagles’ Odyssey .
Mission accomplished. I don’t make the freshmen read the whole thing because of time constraints (my first year teaching!), but I do have them read most of it. In teaching it, I see even more of the narrative core that connects the stories of Penelope, Telemachus, Nestor, Menelaus, Calypso, and Odysseus.

The next year, I’m teaching Middle School Language Arts. The school wants a new curriculum, so I propose (and get approval for!) to teach The Iliad to 7th graders and The Odyssey to 8th graders. Over the next 5 years, I continue this with several modifications to the 7th grade curriculum (eventually focusing longer on Beowulf - Heaney translation - to teach advanced reading skills and then using The Iliad as a chance to practice the new skills). But after that intense first exposure in 7th grade, the 8th graders read all of The Odyssey every year and complete a massive writing project describing a soundtrack they choose for parts of the story.

In the process, I grew even more to love these stories, characters, battles and Fagles’ translations of them. During some classes, I would have students read certain sections because I suspected I wouldn’t be able to get through them (the reunion of Telemachus and Odyssues, poor Argos). I believe that hearing and reading and thinking about these texts gave those students who were willing to hear, listen, and think (and most of them were at various points) at least a glimpse of a more robust and richer kind of literature than much of the trendy, anemic, and politicized mere texts they read after being in my classes.

Credit Fagles for seizing me and for writing translations that result in many former students still citing The Odyssey as one of their favorite books. Of course, this is a double miracle - that they should have favorite books at all is, sadly, a thing to remark upon in our increasingly snarky and pridefully disenchanted anti-intellectual educational culture. Was that a rant? Excuse me please…

My final attempt to communicate how great Fagles was: even after teaching the epics for 6 years in a row, I miss them now that I’m not teaching them. If I hadn’t loaned out my copies of both to a fellow teacher, I would be reading favorite sections of both poems now instead of writing this blog (and even though it is already past 1:00 a.m.).

So - to Robert Fagles! An admittedly nerdy toast: pour the rich wine into the bowls, tip some out for the gods, and hearty drinks to a man who called on the Muse to sing through and in him, a song for our time, too.

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March 21, 2008 by wilmington.

USA Soccer is going to the Olympics in Beijing!

Freddy Adu scored 2, Sacha Kljestan scored another, USA:3 Canada:0.
The US dominated most of the game, but after watching a few of Canada’s wing players fly up the sides, I wish they’d been born a few miles south. Fast. Like…DaMarcus Beasely fast.

AND…

The HOUSTON DYNAMO head to the semi-finals of the CONCACAF Champions Cup. The winner gets to play in the World Club Competition (against teams like Man U or Real Madrid, etc.).

Dwayne DeRosario scored 2 and Chris Wondolowski scored another to beat Municipal from Guatemala 3-1.

Speaking of lightning-fast flank players….AND….tying these two reports together…

Based on his speed, defensive sense, and ability to both GET forward and do something USEFUL with the ball when forward, Houston Dynamo defender Corey Ashe should be getting a call from the US National Team sometime soon. I say this even thought he went to UNC. I’m that forgiving a person (and he’s that dynamic a player).

He created several excellent chances against Municipal and assisted on the 3rd goal with a brilliant, angled one-touch cross into the box - while sprinting at approximately 300 mph.

Plugging this kid in, even at this early stage in his career - even in the senior US team - with about 20 minutes left in a game would simply terrorize any tired or slow opposing outside defenders.

——- Sea Shanty Info left out of Previous Post ————

The INDIE GRITS FILM FESTIVAL website has been updated with a list of all the films. Their blurb for X-GEN is old (very old!…as in, before we knew how to write really good blurbs), but you can get a sense of what will be going on in Columbia, SC on April 9-13.

These folks are really all about independent film - the kind of independent film that doesn’t have huge investors already and just so happens to have actors who’ve already been in major films or TV series but yet screen at “Independent” Film Festivals.

Looks like a great time, and we hope that plenty of folks will see X-GEN and let us know what they think.

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March 19, 2008 by wilmington.

First of all - Houston Dynamo play tonight (Wednesday, March 19) in the Semi-Finals of the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Fox Soccer Channel at 6:30pm Central Time, I believe.
and…
The US National Team (the U-23 guys, our Olympic team) play Canada on Thursday night on ESPN Deportes or your favorite online watching venue. This is OLYMPIC QUALIFYING people!!
and…
Brian McBride scored perhaps the most important goal for Fulham in the English Premiere League. He is, to me at least, the greatest soccer player America has produced.

And now….Ladies and Gentlemen…the real reason I’m writing such a long blog entry at 1:00am on a school night….

X-GEN Lives On!

X-GEN was just accepted at the INDIE GRITS Film Festival in Columbia, SC. This is our 4th major festival, but since it’s been a whille, let’s review…

First, our amazing poster by the enigmatic artist known only as El Brigham (click to see the full resolution image):

Then the mind-boggling history of fun we’ve been able to have and a walk down memory lane:

1) Write The Wingnut and You! (August-Septmeber 2003)
2) Film Wingnut (October 2003)
3) Begin writing “The Surface” (ca. February 2004)
4) Wingnut selected for broadcast on “Second Cinema”
5) Start filming “The Surface” (May, 2004)
5) Wingnut selected for broadcast on UNC Public TV’s “NC Visions” (in NC, SC, and VA)
6) Continue writing “The Surface” (Summer 2004)
7) Wingnut airs on “Second Cinema” throughout July, 2004
Wingnut airs on “NC Visions” in October, 2004 and is re-broadcast occasionally for the next year!
9) More filming on “The Surface” - then change name to X-GEN. Keep filming (fall-winter 2004)
10) More filming (and some writing) on X-GEN throughout spring and early summer 2005

Let’s take a break, shall we…

11) Finish filming X-GEN (I honestly don’t remember…November, 2005?)
12) Edit throughout 2005 and early 2006. Score, effects, CG, voice over…really, you have no idea.
13) Rough draft of X-GEN shows at New Bern Director’s Conference (early 2006)
14) More editing…very painful. Two test screenings…very fun and surprising…GET ACCEPTED at the MENDOCINO FILM FESTIVAL in, uh, Mendocino, CA!!

15) Receive phone call: We’re in at the REAL TO REEL FILM FESTIVAL . The call comes just minutes before the start of the screening of…

16) X-GEN Premiere at Duke University’s Griffith Theatre. Around 250 in attendance. Killer post-premiere party. (June 3, 2006, Durham, NC)

17) More editing; Show at Mendocino (Summer, 2006); Submit to more festivals. Get into the REAL TO REEL Festival in Charlotte, NC.

18) Eventually show at the REAL TO REEL festival and win the “Best Feature” award. Sometime after that get in at the Cackalacky Festival, also in Charlotte, NC. Wingnut gets in to some cool festivals in here somewhere…it’s a bit murkey…but it ALWAYS gets a great audience reaction.

19) Show at the Cackalacky Festival in October of 2006. Display the poster of the image above around the venues…Intern Sergio sees it and says, “We just owned every other poster at this fest.” And really, we did.

20)…and then we show at some other places around NC…show to friends…and write and film The Spectre…and write, film, edit, and screen Bailey…and some other short stuff with other folks. You know, the usual filming and editing of 3 or 4 films over the course of about 6 months.

21) AND THEN…Matt Long, Hollywood branch office, submits X-GEN to more festivals…(Winter, 2007)

22) And we’re here. In April, 2008 - -almost 2 years after the premiere and 4 years after beginning writing, X-GEN is in at the INDIE GRITS festival in April in Columbia, SC.

This film cost about $6,000 to make, and we did everything ourselves (or directly recruited and supervised others to do what we could not). Every festival we’ve been to is filled with feature films that cost closer to $100,000 or more (sometimes in the millions!).

Why detail this stuff? Because we spent so much time, 2 years of our lives to make while all working full-time jobs, etc., and unbelievable amounts of effort and bloody-minded stubborness to create these films - X-GEN especially - that it would be insane not to be proud. So…proud moment taken.

Of course, the fame that attaches to all independent film has touched us all. Cristal was consumed, dangerous risks were taken, sports cars were crashed, tell-all books were published.

Up next:
Hollywood Matt and I are looking at a new feature screenplay this summer. Thriller…Noir…but, as always, with a very unique twist on the world it’s all set in.

COMMENT! Look at the bottom right of this column or do the Facebook thing.

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