that was my heart when time was a seed

[timeripple]

Oh, Homer, baby. Why did I ever leave you? *snuggles*

I mean, come on:

οὐ γάρ τίς μοι ἔτ᾽ ἄλλος ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ
ἤπιος οὐδὲ φίλος, πάντες δέ με πεφρίκασιν.
(Il. 24.775).

I don't even have a word awesome enough for πεφρίκασιν, that's how awesome this is.

Comments

[mousapelli.livejournal.com]

♥ i miss grad school.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

♥

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

hm. My possibly incorrect transliteration gives me pephricasin, which is giving me nothing from my meager knowledge of roots and cognates. Beg a few words to share some sense of the awesome?

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

*beams* I am so happy you ask! Awesome is meant to be shared. The lines are from Helen's lament for Hector, and they go something like, "For in broad Troy I have no one else/ Either kind or friendly; but everyone shudders at me."

pephrikasin--you indeed have transliteration skillz--is the word I translated as "shudders." It's from the verb φρίσσω which means to bristle or get goosebumps or shiver (or thrill with passionate joy, apparently, but that's kind of inappropriate here). Say it aloud: phrisso, pephrikasin. There's something spiky and shivery about it. "Shudder" seems kind of inadequate to me, even though that's what most translators use. Because what she's saying (according to me) is, "Everyone here hates me so much that I give them goosebumps, I make them shiver with disgust, their hair stands on end at my approach, that's how much everyone here hates me."

Yeah. Helen's kind of intense.

[satakieli.livejournal.com]

That is amazingly evocative. Thanks for sharing!

I wonder if phrisso is the source of the English word frisson.

[timeripple.livejournal.com]

Could well be--I keep meaning to check it on the OED online when I'm on campus and then forgetting. Greek is just full of awesome words like that (apoptuein is another favorite of mine, meaning to spit out. Go on, say it).