Perché leggere Omero oggi

E come leggerlo e tradurlo. Di queste interessanti questioni discute Daniel Mendelsohn.

How are the classics relevant to our times? What insights into modern life and politics do they give?

I’m going to quote my dad here, who is a scientist and has spent the last few years reading the classics, for the first time in many cases. He put it brilliantly when he said: “As long as human nature doesn’t change, which it never will, the classics have something to tell us.” People aren’t different now, they just have better gadgets. If you want to know about war, or about the manipulation of language in the service of political agendas, it’s all there. There is nothing that happened in 2003 AD that is substantively or qualitatively different from what happened in 431 BC. It’s only the details which have changed. Good literature always illuminates human nature and human action, and this is a literature that precedes everything else. So as long as people are the same, the classics are always relevant. thebrowser.