Homer's epic returns in Catalan

BarcelonaThe Iliad which has just published Adesiara, one of the young publishing houses that has persistently bet on new translations of Greek and Latin classics -Hesiod, Lucian of Samosata, Euripides, Sallust, Plautus, Ovid and a long etcetera- is special for many reasons.

The first, because it returns to bookstores “a milestone of western culture”, in the words of Jaume Pòrtulas, professor of Greek philology at the University of Barcelona. The second, because the translation is by Montserrat Ros, who for years "dedicated all efforts - not always sufficiently rewarded - to the Bernat Metge Foundation", according to the editor recalls Jordi Raventós. The third, because Ros uses “a Noucentist Catalan in its best version,” adds Pòrtulas. The fourth, for the two introductory studies: that of Jaume Pòrtulas, who traces the translations of Homer into Catalan, from the two versions by Carles Riba of the Odyssey and the two from the Iliad of Manuel Balasch until Homeric Hymns of Joan Maragall and Pere Bosch Gimpera -among others-; and that of the emeritus professor Francesc J. Cuartero, which offers in forty pages a rigorous and accessible synthesis of the epic poem's compositional and transmission process and the questions surrounding Homer. The fifth reason that sets the volume apart is the index of proper names - of people and places - and the notes compiled by Joan Alberich, until now the last translator of the poem into Catalan (his version appeared in La Magrana in 1996).

On sixth and last place, this Iliadis special because it honors Montserrat Ros, who died on February 6, 2018, at the age of 74, from a sudden illness, after dedicating more than a decade of work to the project. This is why the book cover is a fragment of the frieze by the Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen where Priam, king of Troy, is seen begging Achilles to return the body of his son Hector, who has been defeated by the hero of the Achaeans. It was the translator's favorite fragment.

Preserve the original poetic tone

“In one of the last calls that Montserrat made to me, he told me that when he finished reviewing the last canto of the book he would die, and unfortunately it turned out to be so”, remembers Jordi Raventós. The new Iliad is born from Ros's desire to "remake from top to bottom" the first twelve cantos of the work, published in three volumes by the Bernat Metge Foundation between 2005 and 2009, and to "translate the remaining twelve cantos of the epic masterpiece," with the intention of transferring "in the same way the epithets and formulaic phrases with which the Homeric text is filled" and giving "the prose of his translation a markedly poetic tone, as the cadence of the original hexameters can be easily traced."

In his text, Professor Cuartero explains that the Iliad “narrates an episode of the expedition [...] under the orders of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, against Troy, a prosperous city in the northwest of the Anatolian peninsula”. In the Achaean side we find heroes like Ajax, Odysseus - protagonist of the Odyssey -, Patroclus and Achilles. The Trojan faction is represented by King Priam, Paris - who has abducted Helen - and his brother Hector, commander of the Trojan troops. “Although it is a poem with so many battles, we cannot consider it warmongering -says Joan Alberich-. In fact, it ends with burials on both sides, showing the ravages of war.” Alberich promises that the poem's “modernity” remains fully relevant for contemporary readers.

“I have dedicated a large part of my professional life to studying the context of the production of works such as the Iliad or the Odyssey ”, Jaume Pòrtulas assures before recalling that in the case of these two Greek texts, unlike much more recent great works such as the Faust of Goethe and the Research of Marcel Proustthere are no direct testimonies about its creation. “The Iliad was composed around the 8th century BC, and although papyri with some fragments of the text were recovered from the dumps of the cities of Egypt, the first manuscripts we have with the complete work are medieval", explains Pòrtulas. In the introductory text of the volume, Francesc J. Cuartero writes that from the 14th century onwards the “number of Homeric manuscripts is high, more so than for any ancient Greek author, surpassed only by biblical texts: [Thomas W.] Allen lists 189 codices, to which one is added that Van Thiel was first used". Thefirst edition of Homer was published in Florence in 1488 by Demetrius Chalcondyles.

When talking about Homer, the “primordial poet” to whom the text is attributed, Pòrtulas raises more questions than answers. “We don’t know if he existed or not. 12 birthplaces are attributed to him, and in later times the figure rises to 25. We also don’t agree on the century of birth, whether it is the 8th or 7th century BC. The first news attributing the poem to Homer dates from the 4th century BC, that is to say four centuries after the hypothetical death of the author”. Just as we now read the Iliad “as a great poem”, for contemporaries who, generation after generation, heard the rhapsodes declaim some of the songs of the epic, it was rather “an educational way of fixing the identity of the Greek people long before national identities were fixed as we know them now”.