The translation or so you mentioned is incomplete at best, and here is how I would break down the sentences 1 = Scholars have produced books about archaeology, about gift-exchange in ancient societies, about the development of oral poetry, and about virtually anything. + Those books were produced as unique reflections or distillations of life itself-as, in short, great poetry, except the Iliad and the Odyssey themselves (both were anything but short). 2 = The English poet Alexander Pope wrote that the remarks of critics in 1715 "are rather Philosophical, Historical, Geographical...or rather anything than Critical and Poetical." + Those observations seemed as applicable in 1970 as they had been over two centuries ago. [By the way, even if one has not read A. Pope’s poems before, one should recognise this name from the Da Vinci Code. He was certainly not a catholic Pope in Rome.]
|