Bryan Cruz

Good performance, solid translation, perfect story

Revisado: 01-18-23

Tolstoy's work itself is brilliant, haunting, beautiful, and most importantly compelling. The gravity of it all weighs on you slowly, and then it consumes, just as death did for Ivan Ilyich.

The performance was pretty good. With a few exceptions of lines spoken too softly that it was hard to understand and I had to consult the text, it had very good representations of characters voice. Ivan Ilyich's voice as his illness progresses is particularly well done.

The translation is alright. Tolstoy's prose is said to be very short and clear, without much in the way of verbosity or obscurity. Some descriptions were too wordy, and sounded too English. However, it is a better translation than some. For my money, Garnett is superior to Briggs' translation, but I prefer Pevear & Volokhonsky to both.

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Abridgement with no Alternative

Revisado: 12-28-22

I will get straight to the point: do not let this audiobook be your sole experience of the Iliad. This is an abridged recording, and so much wonderful and necessary detail is left out (yes — even the dreaded catalog of ships is necessary.)

For the highlights, Derek Jacobi is an EXCELLENT narrator and it is by virtue of this that I was able to tolerate the abridgement to the final lines. He breathes life into characters, always distinct between their voices. It is an incredibly dynamic performance: he reflects rhythm of the poetry with his cadence and does justice to Fagles' lively style.

To my knowledge no unabridged version of Fagles' translation has been available as an audiobook. As a result, for those who enjoy listening and following along, you will be forced to stop and read on your own at length - sometimes entire books worth, like the penultimate book. Furthermore, the entire chapters do not correspond at all with sections of the book in the Fagles version.

I can only recommend this recording to those who have read the Iliad before and know every detail of it well. Perhaps the abridgement will be an enjoyable return to some highlights. To everyone else, unless you are willing to stop and read between the abridged sections on your own as I have, I would avoid this recording. Wonderful as the performance is, do not sacrifice your holistic understanding of this great text for convenience.

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