kundalini's log

[kundalini]

Made it to 11.361 today. The battle scenes are definitely easier to read, having encountered the words and the images a number of times by now.

Book 11: 361 / 847

[kundalini]

Read to 11.458. More battle scenes.

Book 11: 458 / 847

[Nogon]

The battle scenes are definitely easier to read

Read to 11.458. More battle scenes.

Sounds like the Iliad. You are reading the Iliad, aren't you? Many years ago I read it in translation. I still vividly remember the boredom it gave me, and my exasperation each time I encountered the phrase "und die Waffen fielen rasselnd zu Boden" (something like "and the weapons fell clatteringly to the ground"). I'm sure you know that phrase by heart now, given the incredible amount of people dying in battles and their weapons falling to the ground together with themselves.
The Odyssey was a more interesting read, but I guess it would be harder to read for a learner, just because of its more varying plot and - I guess - vocabulary.

[kundalini]

Sounds like the Iliad. You are reading the Iliad, aren't you? Many years ago I read it in translation. I still vividly remember the boredom it gave me, and my exasperation each time I encountered the phrase "und die Waffen fielen rasselnd zu Boden" (something like "and the weapons fell clatteringly to the ground"). I'm sure you know that phrase by heart now, given the incredible amount of people dying in battles and their weapons falling to the ground together with themselves.
The Odyssey was a more interesting read, but I guess it would be harder to read for a learner, just because of its more varying plot and - I guess - vocabulary.

There is indeed quite a bit of repetition in the Iliad. The initial shock I experienced while reading descriptions of spears entering through the upper back and exiting out of the chest, or piercing the bladder, or entering through the jaw and cleaving the tongue have, through repetition, worn off. But I haven't experienced boredom yet, I think partly out of just trying to keep up with the torrent of new words, perhaps also partly out of a psychological need to recoup the heavy investment I've made to read the Iliad, and additionally, I think out of a fascination with the urgency of the storytelling.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the vocabulary sizes of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad appears to have about 5450 unique words and the Odyssey, 4856 according to this blog entry: https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2021/11/unique-words-in-odyssey-24.html. It also says that both epics, combined have 6800 unique words. I hope to read the Odyssey at some point after the Iliad, so it would mean that I'd encounter roughly 1350 or so unknown words.

[Nogon]

The initial shock I experienced while reading descriptions of spears entering through the upper back and exiting out of the chest, or piercing the bladder, or entering through the jaw and cleaving the tongue have, through repetition, worn off.

Having read quite a few Iceland sagas, the descriptions of how people were killed were not especially shocking for me. But I remember well my first encounter with a saga, which I had to read in Old Norse. After checking a lot of words in the dictionary, I looked at them and thought something like "This can't possibly mean that he (the hero) took his axe and split his enemy's body down to his waist?!?" But that was exactly what it meant.

[kundalini]

The last hundred lines have been pretty tough going. Made it to 11.556.
Book 11: 556 / 847

Having read quite a few Iceland sagas, the descriptions of how people were killed were not especially shocking for me. But I remember well my first encounter with a saga, which I had to read in Old Norse. After checking a lot of words in the dictionary, I looked at them and thought something like "This can't possibly mean that he (the hero) took his axe and split his enemy's body down to his waist?!?" But that was exactly what it meant.

Very interesting. I guess then, as now, people have a great appetite for violence. From your profile description, you have a command across a wide swath of the Germanic languages. How much of a stretch was it to read the sagas in Old Norse?

[Nogon]

Very interesting. I guess then, as now, people have a great appetite for violence. From your profile description, you have a command across a wide swath of the Germanic languages. How much of a stretch was it to read the sagas in Old Norse?

I "read" that saga more than 30 years ago, at a time when my "Scandinavian" was much worse than it is now. Back than it meant to spend hours and hours of checking words in the dictionary, and leafing through a grammar. ("Ah yes, this noun means xy and it's the genitive plural, and this seams to be the verb z in third person plural, past tense, so together with these recently identified words the whole sentence probably means ....") I don't think it would be much easier now.
Old Norse is very close to Icelandic (or better the other way round) and Icelandic unfortunately is still quite opaque to me. Oh - I recognize quite a few words, but far too few to be able to read anything except the most simple texts without a dictionary, and for more complicated texts I guess that I'd have to learn some grammar. Although - last year I read several children's books in Faroese which is quite close to Icelandic but just a bit easier to understand than the latter. (I'm talking about written texts here.) I progressed quite a bit, so maybe Icelandic and Old Norse now would no longer be "almost impossible", but "very difficult" instead. Have to check that one day.

[kundalini]

Read to 11.669. This chapter just feels like a lot of work so far, with less narrative payoff than the previous books.

Book 11: 669 / 847

[kundalini]

Finished book 11. Nestor is presented as an old and wise man in the Iliad, but he's also prone to long and rambling digressions. He took up most of the last several hundred lines of book 11, which I found painful. But book 11, at last, is done.

Book 11: 847 / 847

[kundalini]

Read to 12.227.

The Trojans are eager to finish off the Greeks, but witness a striking omen.

αἰετὸς ὑψιπέτης ἐπ᾽ ἀριστερὰ λαὸν ἐέργων
φοινήεντα δράκοντα φέρων ὀνύχεσσι πέλωρον
ζωὸν ἔτ᾽ ἀσπαίροντα, καὶ οὔ πω λήθετο χάρμης,
κόψε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἔχοντα κατὰ στῆθος παρὰ δειρὴν
ἰδνωθεὶς ὀπίσω: ὃ δ᾽ ἀπὸ ἕθεν ἧκε χαμᾶζε
ἀλγήσας ὀδύνῃσι, μέσῳ δ᾽ ἐνὶ κάββαλ᾽ ὁμίλῳ,
αὐτὸς δὲ κλάγξας πέτετο πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο.

Loose translation:

An eagle flew high, hewing to the left side of the Trojans, carrying a monstrous, bloody serpent in its talons, still alive and gasping. The serpent hadn't forgotten how to fight. It coiled backwards and struck the eagle in the chest near the neck. The eagle, in pain, threw the serpent down in the middle of the Trojan crowd, and flew along the breath of the wind.

Book 12: 227 / 471