The Reading Room

8:22 AM

@Tsundoku This one is specifically tricky to try to describe from memory, because it's easy to conflate Aeneis's visit to the underworld (a story obviously templated on Odysseus's visit) with it, so it might be better if you read it from the Odyssey, or at least a well-written summary of it. You can probably find both on the internet.

Knight

@b_jonas Hi

I was waiting for someone here

b_jonas

This is in Odysseia chapter 14, with parts of chapter 13 about Hermēs giving Odysseus helpful information.

Knight

Okay so you figured out my history

Can you tell me some background of Odysseus and Tiresias?

Rand al'Thor

8:52 AM

@Bookworm From the title I was going to say, is this too broad? But it seems OP is actually interested in one specific book. Should we edit the question to focus more clearly on that specific question? Or is the general question not really too broad?

Tsundoku

9:31 AM

@Randal'Thor I doubt that anybody would have systematically compared B&N editions of public-domain works with original or scholarly editions. (For scholars, those cheap reprints are probably simply litter.) So it would be better to focus on that specific translation.

Cheap reprints of public-domain works: can we call those litterature instead of literature? ;-)

Bookworm

11:16 AM

0

Q: Why does Khushwant Singh's grandmother consider music as a 'monopoly of harlots and beggars and not meant for gentlefolk'?

In the story The Portrait of a Lady, written by Khushwant Singh, there are sentences which I couldn't understand properly (highlighted bold). (An excerpt from The Portrait of A Lady) One day I announced that we were being given music lessons. She was very disturbed. To her music had lewd associa...

meaning

Bookworm

11:41 AM

0

Q: What's exactly meant here by "fairish man" & "rich complexion"?

In "The New Jersey Sphinx" in Dr. Thorndyke's Case-Book by R. Austin Freeman, Thorndyke went to a porter to know the vacant chambers to let, and asked him whether it's quite: "Quiet?" "Yes, pretty quiet. There's a metallurgist overhead—Highley—used to be Burt & Highley, but Burt has gone to th...

short-stories r-austin-freeman

Rand al'Thor

12:17 PM

closes six tabs about the British peerage system

Ah, the fun of learning while researching an answer.

Librarian

1:52 PM

2

Q: Are questions about non-famous works and authors (English or a foreign language) on-topic here?

Well, asking and answering about well-known English and foreign-language literature work is frequent here; English works need no explanation, but those famous foreign works have been translated into English. For example, The Count of Monte Cristo which was written by French writer Alexander Duma....

discussion scope

Knight

2:02 PM

Can someone please suggest me some movie/animation or TV show of Odyssey (by Homer)? I shall not be able to read that huge book alone. I just want to know the major events and the background of the characters.

Mithical

Major events: War, horse, ocean, cyclops, siren, pigs, Titan, suitors, murder. That should cover most of it.

b_jonas

2:19 PM

@Knight Skip the Illiad, read only the Odyssey, it's actually much more easily readable. Odysseus a nobleman who took part in the Trojan war on the greek side, that wars is what the Illiad is about. He was described as the most cunning, and invented the trick that won that war. Achilleus was the strongest fighter on the Greek side, and consider the greatest mortal hero after Heracles.

He died in the trojan war. After that, Odysseus got Achilleus's weapons, and Agamemnon, who also wanted Odysseus's weapons, is angry about him for that ever since. All this happened before the Odysseia even started.

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas Agamemnon wanted Odysseus's weapons? Or Achilles's?

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Achilleus's

Now the Odysseia starts with the situation that the war is over and Odysseus wants to return home to his land, where he's rich and has a loving wife. The gods are divided on this: Poseidon hates Odysseus and wants to kill him; but Zeus and Hermes wants Odysseus to live, and Zeus is stronger, so Poseidon settles on delaying Odysseus and killing all his friends and punishing him as much as possible, without actually stopping him from going home.

The first few chapters of Odysseia tells this and where Odysseus is now. The next third of Odysseia is a long flashback about the part of Odysseus's journey that was in the past, including visiting the underworld and meeting Teiresias and Agamemnon and more. The middle third is the next part of Odysseus's journey as it happens, then the last third is what Odysseus does once he arrived home.

Also among the gods, Athēnē is involved somehow, but I'm absolutely confused about that, mostly because he's also the main god who helps Aeneis. You can probably find less confused summaries of Odysseia somewhere on the internet.

Or maybe Athēnē helps Odysseus, and a different god helps Aeneis? Drat, someone may have to help.

Rand al'Thor

2:35 PM

Isn't Athena one of the gods against Odysseus? Maybe because he fought/killed one of her children or something.

Bookworm

0

Q: Can you help me understand a literature joke?

Someone sent me this literature joke but I don't get it, can someone help me please? He wrote "*writing in the time of covid-19" Apparently the joke has something to do with literature, so if anyone understands it can they please explain it:)

meaning wording-choice

Rand al'Thor

Or am I getting mixed up with Poseidon hating Odysseus because he killed one of Poseidon's sons? Was Polyphemus Poseidon's son?

Tsundoku

2:54 PM

"Puny god."

Knight

Polyphemus, yes, he was Poseidon’s son. He was not a human, but a bigger creature than humans.

@b_jonas Thanks.

Mithical

> "I'm Nobody. Who are you?"

b_jonas

No, Athēnē definitely helps Odysseus, after he arrives home, and he wanted Odysseus to get home at the start when the gods were debating his fate. The only part where Athēnē is against Odysseus is at the very end, after Athēnē single-handedly decides that everyone else loses and Odysseus wins, Athēnē telss Odysseus that now he is also not allowed to kill his enemies, and has to let them go home in peace.

But in that case, which god helps Aeneis?

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas Aphrodite (his mother)? Zeus?

b_jonas

He's the son or grandson of Venus, so probably that.

Rand al'Thor

3:08 PM

Yes, but now you're mixing the Greek and Roman names :-)

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Yes, Aphrodite, but she's known as Venus then.

@Randal'Thor That is deliberate. The Aeneid uses the Roman names.

Mithical

Well, he went on to found Rome, didn't he?

b_jonas

@Mithical Yes, and that is why Vergilius chose to write about him. Or maybe backwards, Vergilius decided to make him found Rome in the story.

Rand al'Thor

Well OK, Virgil's Aeneid in Latin and Homer's Odyssey in Greek. It's still confusing to refer to the same gods of the same pantheon in interrelated stories by different names.

(Not that much interrelated, but at least Odysseus and Aeneas were both survivors of the Trojan War.)

b_jonas

And the choice of gods is totally logical too: Paris chose to give the golden apple to Aphroditē aka Venus, so Aphroditē supports a troyan hero who survives, which is Aeneus; Athēnē was one of the two other gods who did not get a golden apple, so she supports a greek hero who survives, Odysseus.

I don't know Hermēs's motivations though, perhaps he just hated Circē that much.

Knight

3:16 PM

Circe converts the crews into swines?

and then that underworld episode comes?

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor And yes, the Odyssey claims that Poseidon was against Odysseus because he killed Polyphēmos, but I don't think that's right. Odysseus has already been lost in the see for a while, so I think Poseidon hated him from even earlier,

made him get totally lost at see, sent him to Polyphēmos's island, to Circē, to the Sirens, the Charybdis, all of which lost some of the crew, and to the island with Hēlios's cows starved to make them eat those cows and make Hēlios mad at them too, in some order.

Killing Polyphēmos was just a convenient excuse for him.

Rand al'Thor

Which side did Poseidon take during the Trojan War?

b_jonas

@Knight I've no clue what order all these episodes come after each other in the real world and in the Odysseia.

Rand al'Thor

I remember he killed the guy who said "don't trust the Greeks even when they bear gifts", but wasn't that a personal grudge more than playing his side in the war?

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor No clue. I'm not familiar enough with the Illiad and the Aeneid.

Mithical

3:20 PM

@Randal'Thor Greek IIRC

Rand al'Thor

Found this online.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor And Eris, who gave the golden apple, just wanted a big ugly war, not anyone winning.

Tsundoku

3:43 PM

@Mithical Aeneas didn't found Rome, that was Remus. (Hmm, if it had been Romulus, part of Europe would have been conquered by Romulans.)

Rand al'Thor

3:57 PM

@Tsundoku I thought it was Romulus who founded Rome, after killing Remus?

Napoleon Wilson

4:35 PM

That was Kain and Abel. ;-)

Rand al'Thor

4:48 PM

@NapoleonWilson To continue a discussion from another room, general shared trope? :-)

(Also, I always read it as Cain and Abel. I guess Kain is the German spelling?)

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor That's just mythology. Romulus founded Rome and Remus founded Re :-P

Napoleon Wilson

Are you saying Mother Wolf didn't exist? O_O

Tsundoku

6:12 PM

@NapoleonWilson Their father was Steppenwolf. Mother Wolf was the one who ate Little Red Riding Hood.

And Steppenwolf was the son of Beowulf and Virginia Woolf.

Napoleon Wilson

I'll assume the one from Hermann Hesse and not the guy from the Justice League film? ;-)

Beowulf wasn't an actual wolf, though, rather than a bear. ;-)

Tsundoku

@NapoleonWilson Are you mixing up Beowulf and Grendel?

Napoleon Wilson

Heh, no.

Napoleon Wilson

6:55 PM

@Tsundoku Also, she only tried to eat her.

She ate the 7 goatlings, though.

While Grendel ate the Geats. ;-)

b_jonas

7:45 PM

So per chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53625706#53625706 , I'm now looking on used book sales websites for Jules Verne, A rejtelmes sziget (orig. "L'île mystérieuse") in Majtényi's translation, published after 1990, and a full version (not abridged). But the data about books in used book stores is often so lacking that it often doesn't list the number of pages, publication date, publisher, and almost never lists ISBN or translator name, so this is not easy.

This might be one that would be much easier in person in certain good used book stores of the city. On a workday in times when I normally work, obviously.

I might try that.

Or I might try to phone first.

Ok, it looks like libri.hu is better in this than bookline.hu , they list more data. Still no translator, but I can cross-reference library catalogs from the ISBN.

Or so I thought... is this not the correct ISBN, or is it one of those stupid cases where the library catalog can only find it if I put spaces or hyphens in the right places?

Ok, so how does a book that was published before 2000 even have an ISBN-13 that is not an upgraded ISBN-10? This data looks bogus.

I think I found what I want on antikvarium.hu , which actually lists correct metadata including translator and correct ISBN. And it's probably the same as some of the entries on the other sites listed with insufficient metadata.

Only… there's an entry but no copies available. I'll subscribe so they notify me when they get one, this seems to be an edition with a large number of copies available so I have hopes. Only of course I'll get a shitton of false flag notifications for other translations too.

Rand al'Thor

8:11 PM

@Bookworm HNQ.

b_jonas

No, I think their webpage might be kind enough not to send me false flags this time.

I also put in a subscription at regikonyvek.hu

North Læraðr

11:53 PM

@Randal'Thor Are you going to accept the other answers from the Korean Folklore questions :P?

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