
Memoirs of an Ass - diodorus
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/28/memoirs-of-an-ass/
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travisluis
Part II of this essay is also great:
[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/14/memoirs-of-
an...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/14/memoirs-of-an-ass-part-
two/)

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npsimons
This review reminded me of "How to Read a Book", specifically the getting more
out of it with each reading. It might be hard to fathom with most of today's
mediocre fiction, but there's a reason some books are classics and end up on
lists of what books someone would take to a desert island.

~~~
noobly
Great book! Adler really changed my perspective quickly in that short read and
addressed many problems I've encountered. Imo, it was rather lacking in the
techniques for reading fiction, and Nabokov has some excellent insight in this
domain in his "Lectures on Literature" series (which I have admittedly only
yet read small portions of).

There's an algorithm[0] I stumbled upon that I refer to often that was derived
from Adler's book, might as well share it.

0: [https://pastebin.com/wGFMM1pZ](https://pastebin.com/wGFMM1pZ)

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raister
this opus should be included in
[https://standardebooks.org/](https://standardebooks.org/)

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sevensor
Sold. There's an English translation on Project Gutenberg, under the name _The
Golden Asse_. I'm going to give it a look.

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freefal
That's the version from 1566. It's readable, but requires some extra effort to
parse due to style, antiquated words and antiquated spelling.

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vollmond
Is there a known best translation? TFA didn't specify one.

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Jtsummers
[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/14/memoirs-of-
an...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/14/memoirs-of-an-ass-part-
two/)

From travisluis' post includes a list of translations and the author's
opinions on each.

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sevensor
Oooh, Robert Graves did a translation. I may have to dig that up if I get
tired of the 1556 version.

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mirimir
I've read the Graves translation, and it's excellent.

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ginko
I can really recommend the book. It's a lot of fun. Arguably one of the first
picaresque novels.

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wazoox
I have some trouble understanding so much effort given to reading 8 different
translations, and not giving the original text a try. Latin isn't so hard,
really.

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gugagore
What do you mean when you say a natural language isn't that hard? Surely it
depends on which languages you know already.

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wazoox
I suppose they know English, which carries many, many words with Latin roots.
Sure it's easier if you know Italian, or Spanish or French. Anyway, reading
the original text side by side with the translation gives you excellent
insights on the meaning and structure, seeing how long a phrase is, what form
it is, this sort of things.

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gugagore
Recognizing the meaning of individual Latin words does not allow you in
general to understand the meaning of a phrase! None of the languages you
mentioned have explicit case markings, and mostly rely on word order and
prepositions to signal whether nouns are subjects/objects/indirect/etc
objects. Latin is starkly not like that, don't you agree? Even if people are
coming from a language background with explicit case markings (i.e. German)
they're still going to have to know what the endings actually mean, and get
used to a different case system.

Anyway it sounds like you're recognizing that you benefit from having a
parallel translation into a language in which you are fluent in order to make
sense of the meaning... Which is 100% the point of having a translation, of
course.

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andyford
oops. one of the homepage links points to their dev site
[http://theparisreview.tierradev.com/interviews/6806/the-
art-...](http://theparisreview.tierradev.com/interviews/6806/the-art-of-
poetry-no-100-ishmael-reed)

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pvinis
Memoirs of an Arse sounds better. :D

