{"id":87220,"date":"2015-07-01T13:30:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T17:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=87220"},"modified":"2015-07-01T13:50:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T17:50:41","slug":"mumbling-like-a-maniac-an-interview-with-robert-fagles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/01\/mumbling-like-a-maniac-an-interview-with-robert-fagles\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMumbling Like a Maniac\u201d: An Interview with Robert Fagles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qI7mSFLAUdM?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http:\/\/92yondemand.org\/Topic\/poetry-center-online\/\">92Y\u2019s Unterberg Poetry Center<\/a>, <em>The Paris Review<\/em> has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers\u2014many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and <em>The Paris Review<\/em> have made recordings of these interviews available at <a href=\"http:\/\/92yondemand.org\/Topic\/paris-review-series\/\">92Y\u2019s Poetry Center Online<\/a> and here at\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/92y\">The Paris Review<\/a><\/em>. Consider them deleted scenes from our Writers at Work interviews, or directors\u2019 cuts, or surprisingly lifelike radio adaptations.<\/p>\n<p>Because our new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/back-issues\/213\" target=\"_blank\">Summer issue<\/a> has a focus on translation,\u00a0we\u2019ve dug up\u00a0two interviews with translators to present this week. This one features <strong>Robert Fagles<\/strong>, who died in 2008\u2014a prolific translator of ancient Greek and Roman texts, he\u2019s remembered especially for his seminal editions of the <em>Iliad<\/em> and the <em>Odyssey<\/em>. <!--more--><strong>Patricia Storace <\/strong>interviewed Fagles on<strong> November 24, 1997<\/strong>; their talk formed the basis of Fagles\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/930\/the-art-of-translation-no-2-robert-fagles\" target=\"_blank\">Art of Translation interview<\/a>, published in our Summer 1999 issue. \u201cHis manners,\u201d Storace wrote then, \u201care fine in the way that Americans, having not yet evolved a word, still inappropriately describe as courtly, a word that misses the lack of ostentation and the deliberate grace that are at the heart of democratic elegance.\u201d And you don\u2019t have to listen to him long to hear that grace:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There are about twenty-seven hundred years that separate the two traditions, and the trick (and the hard labor) is somehow to bring the two together. What I always do is read the Greek aloud until I begin to feel or find some English lurking between the Greek words, between the Greek lines, and I keep on mumbling like a maniac.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We are able to share these recordings thanks to a generous gift in memory of Christopher Lightfoot Walker, longtime friend of the Poetry Center and <i>The Paris Review<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Dan Piepenbring is the web editor of <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 92Y\u2019s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers\u2014many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Recently, 92Y and The Paris Review have made recordings of these interviews available at 92Y\u2019s Poetry Center Online and here at\u00a0The Paris Review. Consider them deleted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7646],"tags":[11557,16112,5227,12365,1132,18602,7221,165,14627,18601,530,14674,10113],"class_list":["post-87220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look-2","tag-92y","tag-92y-ungerberg-poetry-center","tag-audio","tag-interview-series","tag-interviews","tag-patricia-storace","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-recordings","tag-robert-fagles","tag-translation","tag-translators","tag-writers-at-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Listen: An Archival Interview with Robert Fagles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fagles discusses translation in an extended 1997 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