Montse Barderi recommends a translated classic with "very high beauty"

BarcelonaIf the Odyssey of Homer deserved two translations by Carles Riba – and later versions by Joan Alberich, Joan F. Mira and Pau Sabaté–, the Iliad, the other great epic poem by the author from ancient Greece was also tackled on two occasions by Manuel Balasch, on one occasion by Joan Alberich, on another by Montserrat Ros and on a final one, for the moment, by Pau Sabaté. Montse Barderi, novelist, journalist, philosopher and collaborator of the 3Cat program La Selva,recommends the version by Montserrat Ros (1944-2018), where he worked for more than a decade while, in parallel, editing the books of the Bernat Metge Foundation.

"Catalan is one of the few European languages with a Iliad translated by a woman", recalls Barderi, who has published novels such as The sea, which shines and laughs (Columna, 2025). "Montserrat Ros belongs to that tradition of discrete, severe, almost invisible wisdom, which sustains a culture through rigor –Barderi continues–. She dedicated her life to the classics with extraordinary intellectual rigor".

The Iliad narrates in verse an episode of the Achaean expedition against Troy. On the Achaean side we find heroes like Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, and Odysseus, protagonist of the Odyssey. The Trojan faction is represented by King Priam, Paris – who has abducted Helen – and his brother Hector, commander of the Trojan troops. "The Catalan of Montserrat Ros's translation is cultured, but alive, of a Noucentista root, but not stiff, noble and exact – Barderi affirms –. It is of the highest beauty, capable of sustaining Homer to the point that, reading it, I have the sensation that the Iliad has not only been translated into Catalan. Its prose translation, moreover, scrupulously preserves the rhythmic cadence of the Greek hexameters".