Esperimento di Traduzione dell’Iliade (Experiment in Translation of the Iliad)

Published in Brescia in 1807 by Niccolò Bettoni, the same publisher that brought out the poem Dei Sepolcri, Esperimento di Traduzione dell’Iliade consists of a dedication to Vincenzo Monti, of notes entitled Intendimento del Traduttore (Intention of the Translator), of Foscolo's version of book one of the Iliad with Melchiorre Cesarotti's prose translation, Monti's translation of the first book and some Considerazioni (Considerations) on the specific problems written about by the three translators.

The book compared three different translation alternatives. Cesarotti tried to resolve the contrast between faithfulness to the text and retrieval of its most authentic meaning via a double version in prose and verse introducing, however, arbitrary solutions in the poetic version that distanced the Italian version from the Greek one and went against the spirit of Homer. Vincenzo Monti, who Foscolo admired as a poet and considered the author of the most successful translation of The Iliad, aimed above all to adapt Homer's text to the contemporary taste of Napoleonic classicism. The most innovative proposal is Foscolo's, who worked all his life on the translation of the Iliad without reaching satisfactory solutions and leaving a considerable body of fragments that show his intense research into the work. Foscolo intended to transmit the authentic spirit of Homer's poem with a faithful translation that was also respectful of the text's hidden meanings, but at the same time expressed them in harmonious, elegant language. The problem of the "accessory ideas" of the specific expressions of the original language was resolved by Foscolo with notes or by partial re-writes which, however, resurrected the problem of the translator's arbitrary intervention. So it was a work that was destined never to be finished, characterized by continued corrections, and Foscolo continued to work on translated fragments of Homer throughout his life.