On the other hand, the point at issue was not turgidness or unnaturalness but (emphasis mine):
“Likewise, do you translate it into contemporary English or archaic one? Old texts are sometimes intentionally translated into archaic language, so that you feel like reading something old. But, when they created it originally, they used their own contemporary language and made it sound pleasant to themselves. So, do you pick old words or new words for the same thing?”
and GPʼs point is salient and correct; to be perhaps more clear: the homeric style was already archaic when the Odyssey was composed. Moreover, it was probably intentionally and somewhat artificially made archaic, e.g. using the old inflectional suffix /‑φι(ν)/ also in the singular and not only in the plural, where it was solely used originally.
AFAIK, epic poems telling about times far away are often composed in an archaic style, e.g. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildebrandslied>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied>; I guess Beowulf is similar.
“Likewise, do you translate it into contemporary English or archaic one? Old texts are sometimes intentionally translated into archaic language, so that you feel like reading something old. But, when they created it originally, they used their own contemporary language and made it sound pleasant to themselves. So, do you pick old words or new words for the same thing?”
and GPʼs point is salient and correct; to be perhaps more clear: the homeric style was already archaic when the Odyssey was composed. Moreover, it was probably intentionally and somewhat artificially made archaic, e.g. using the old inflectional suffix /‑φι(ν)/ also in the singular and not only in the plural, where it was solely used originally.
AFAIK, epic poems telling about times far away are often composed in an archaic style, e.g. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildebrandslied>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied>; I guess Beowulf is similar.