My spouse and I have just begun reading the Odyssey. We’re going at a casual pace, taking it one book (chapter) at a time and then discussing things that stand out.
Once upon a time I was a classics student, and though I never read the Odyssey in its entirety, I am pretty familiar with the characters and major episodes contained therein.
I’m already two books in, and thought it might be fun to make a post per book with my own reflections and spark some discussion here on the SDMB!
To start with, I’m reading the Odyssey in translation. I already had a few translations on my shelf (from my student days), but for this read we’re going with the new 2018 translation by Emily Wilson.
When I was a student I was exposed to translations by Fagels (1996) and Fitzgerald (1961). It’s pretty stunning to compare the differences between even just these three, and understand what an undertaking translation is.
Take just the opening lines of the poem:
Fitzgerald (1961)
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all-
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Helios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.
Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
tell us in our time, lift the great song again.
Fagels (1996)
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns…
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove-
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story. Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will - sing for our time too.
Wilson (2018)
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how we wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered on the sea, and how he worked
to save his life and bring his men back home.
He failed, and for their own mistakes, they died.
They ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
Dramatic differences, and these are just three of many translations that have been done.
Right off the bat, as a casual student of classics, I was struck by the lack of the “sing, Muse” construction. I’m so used to hearing it that it was conspicuously absent. I also found (and continue to find) this translation an “easy” read… it flows comfortably and I rarely get lost in complex sentence structure.
Wilson talks about some of her guiding objectives in her translator’s notes, including:
- Maintaining the same number of lines as the original, and casting it into iambic pentamater. She makes this choice because “any translation without such limitations will tend to be longer than the original, and I wanted a narrative pace that could match its stride to Homer’s nimble gallop", and because iambic pentamater, being familiar to readers and listeners of English poetry, will feel natural and comfortable for English-speaking readers.”
- Simplicity of language. She claims “in using language that is largely simple, my goal is not to make Homer sound “primitive,” but to mark the fact that stylistic pomposity is entirely un-Homeric.”
- Differing translations of epithets depending on context. For those who are familiar with Homer and other ancient texts, you might know that repeated epithets are a hallmark of the works, providing recognizable phrases that can help ground the listener within a longer work. Gray-eyed Athena, the wine-dark sea, Earth-shaker Poseidon being a few. Wilson says: “I have used the opportunity offered by the repetitions to explore the multiple different connotations of each epithet. The enduring Odysseus can be a “veteran” or “resilient” or “stoical,” while the wily Odysseus can be a “trickster” or speak “deceitfully,” depending on the needs of a particular passage.”
- Wilson also is concerned with revealing truths about the source material, which might have been glossed or altered by the lens through which other translations have been made. She writes: “… The Odyssey is a poem that may seem to normalize or valorize the treatment of non-Western people as monsters. I have made clear, especially in my version of the Polyphemus episode, that this is not entirely true: the text allows for a certain amount of sympathy and even admiration for this maimed non-Greek person. Unlike many modern translators, I have avoided describing the Cyclops with words such as “savage,” which carry with them the legacy of early modern and modern forms of colonialism- a legacy that is, of course, anachronistic in the world of The Odyssey.
The elite households represented in The Odyssey all include a large staff of domestic slaves to work in the house, preparing and serving food and taking care of their masters’ clothes, and field slaves to work the estate and tend the animals. The language used to describe these people poses a particular challenge to the translator. To translate a domestic female slave, called in the original a dmoe (“female-house-slave”), as a “maid” or “domestic servant” would imply that she was free. I have often used “slave,” although it is less specific than many of the terms for types of slaves in the original. The need to acknowledge the fact and the horror of slavery, and to mark the fact that the idealized society depicted in the poem is one where slavery is shockingly taken for granted, seems to me to outweigh the need to specify, in every instance, the type of slave.”
There is much more in her notes at the beginning of the book, and they make interesting and thoughtful reading even if you are not planning on reading her translation.
