![]() ![]() By the same token, we do not need to decide conclusively whether these poems began existence as oral poems-“composition in performance”-or as literate derivatives of the great tradition of oral epic. From the translator’s point of view it does not greatly matter whether those qualities derive from actual performance as ritual, or whether they constitute a literary convention. These hymns, whether considered as independent works or as proems to a recitation of epic, seem to require such understanding at least as much as the epic itself, for their ritual qualities, explicit or implicit, underlie their narratives and qualify both their drama and their humor. They have to do with conveying the formal, one should even say musical, aspects of the work, which seem to me to have a direct and profound bearing on its overall significance. ![]() My main aims in translating this hymn are similar to those I have set forth at some length in the translator’s introduction to my version of the Odyssey (Ann Arbor, 2002, 64–85), and more briefly in the introduction to my version of the Iliad (Ann Arbor, 2007, 1–22). ![]()
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