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I didn't bring up Faust or the Iliad, works that don't actually have anything resembling an 'original'. Still not sure what, specifically, this is a response to.



Of course the Iliad has an original. It's a poem written by Homer [1]. Feel free to read the original yourself [2] if you don't believe me.

I suppose you might interpret "Faust" as possibly referring to the general legend of Faust, but OP was almost certainly referring to Goethe's Faust, "considered by many to be...the greatest work of German literature" [3]. Likewise, as proof by existence, here's the original (in two parts) [4], [5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliad

[2] https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%99%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%AC%CF%8...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%27s_Faust

[4] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_-_Der_Trag%C3%B6die_ers...

[5] https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Faust_-_Der_Trag%C3%B6die_zwe...


Again, I did not bring Faust or the Iliad into this conversation. I don't even know what the conversation is about and how it relates to my original comment! Let's wrap this up here because at this point I'm being lectured on the classics by one person who can't spell 'Iliad' and another who thinks it was 'written by Homer' and neither can actually tell me why.


Oh for god’s sake - they were clearly brought up simply as examples of great works of literature that are often translated, and translated loyally when they are, because when translators translate great works of literature they generally try to respect the originals instead of deliberately mutilating them for the sensibilities of their audience. And I’m being scolded for saying that the Iliad was “written by Homer” instead of, what, “was composed by Homer”? “Is generally attributed to Homer”, as Wikipedia puts it? By someone who - either owning to pedantry, bad faith, or extreme ignorance - denies that “the Iliad” as an original work even exists!

This conversation is about whether it's "sinister" or not, as you put it, to make "all sorts of minor changes in the text and images to better fit regional tastes and cultural norms", and whether to call those changes "censorship". jevoten believed that these changes were, in fact, sinister, and explained why - arguing by analogy that making similar changes to works in other artforms to satisfy prudish sensibilities would be viewed as heretical. You then, seemingly, played inexplicably ignorant and focused on the fact that the particular works that they chose as examples were based on mythologies that have inspired other, independent works. The only way your confusion here makes any sense whatsoever would be if you were literally unaware of the specific works they were referring to, particularly when you said that there was "nothing resembling" an original Iliad or Faust, so, taking you at face value, I demonstrated their existence.

As for the question of what constitutes "censorship" - maybe that's what you perceived as the significant part of your comment? I suppose that'd help explain some of your frustration, not that it'd justify your bad faith argumentation or personal slights. Censorship doesn't need to be handed down by official government censors or something - it can be self-imposed, or imposed by copyright holders against the wishes of the original creator, due to political, social, or economic pressure, which is clearly the case here.




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