to be totally honest, I had never been able to get through The Odyssey before. I did listen to maybe half of Ian McKellan reading the Robert Fagles translation, and of course I knew the general gist of the stories in it. But this was the first translation that I found compelling. And, as with how I read Moby-Dick, I read this slowly over multiple months (and listened to some parts in the Clare Danes audiobook) and often got lost in the immediate moment while forgetting where in the multiply layered narratives I was. But it worked for me. Iliad next! or soon, at least.
An approachable version of The Odyssey in a plain and modern English. Wilson matches Homer line-for-line, but compresses each line to a 5-beat iambic pentameter. Her language is chiseled, sometimes to a fault. But it adds up to a surprisingly quick, enjoyable, and morally engaging read.
Homer's most vivid images really shine in this rendering: "He saw them fallen, all of them, so many; / lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up / out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; / tipped out upon the curving beach's sand, / they gasp for water from the salty sea. / The sun shines down and takes their life away. / So lay the suitors, heaped across each other."
The text avoids justifying or masking immoral or questionable acts and practices. The word "slave" is used frequently, rather than euphemisms. Sometimes the translation strikes a judgmental note, like when the …
An approachable version of The Odyssey in a plain and modern English. Wilson matches Homer line-for-line, but compresses each line to a 5-beat iambic pentameter. Her language is chiseled, sometimes to a fault. But it adds up to a surprisingly quick, enjoyable, and morally engaging read.
Homer's most vivid images really shine in this rendering: "He saw them fallen, all of them, so many; / lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up / out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; / tipped out upon the curving beach's sand, / they gasp for water from the salty sea. / The sun shines down and takes their life away. / So lay the suitors, heaped across each other."
The text avoids justifying or masking immoral or questionable acts and practices. The word "slave" is used frequently, rather than euphemisms. Sometimes the translation strikes a judgmental note, like when the opening stanza says of Odysseus and his men: "He failed to keep them safe." Overall, I loved being invited to see these characters as flawed people in a flawed world, not as monuments.
A lovely plain and readable translation, I'd entirely forgotten how much the story is of human hospitality, deceit and its dangers when surrounded by capricious gods. Even arriving home, the ancient Greece portrayed is far and foreign from us.
1) "Thus Telemachus. And Pallas Athena
Touched the suitors' minds with hysteria.
They couldn't stop laughing, and as they laughed
It seemed to them that their jaws were not theirs,
And the meat that they ate was dabbled with blood.
Tears filled their eyes, and their hearts raced.
Then the seer Theoclymenus spoke among them:
'Wretches, what wicked thing is this that you suffer?
You are shrouded in night from top to toe,
Lamentation flares, your cheeks melt with tears,
And the walls of the house are spattered with blood.
The porch and the court are crowded with ghosts
Streaming down to the undergloom. The sun is gone
From heaven, and an evil mist spreads over the land.'"
2) "Odysseus picked up
The arrow from the table and laid it upon
The bridge of the bow, and, still in his chair,
Drew the bowstring and the notched arrow back.
He …
1) "Thus Telemachus. And Pallas Athena
Touched the suitors' minds with hysteria.
They couldn't stop laughing, and as they laughed
It seemed to them that their jaws were not theirs,
And the meat that they ate was dabbled with blood.
Tears filled their eyes, and their hearts raced.
Then the seer Theoclymenus spoke among them:
'Wretches, what wicked thing is this that you suffer?
You are shrouded in night from top to toe,
Lamentation flares, your cheeks melt with tears,
And the walls of the house are spattered with blood.
The porch and the court are crowded with ghosts
Streaming down to the undergloom. The sun is gone
From heaven, and an evil mist spreads over the land.'"
2) "Odysseus picked up
The arrow from the table and laid it upon
The bridge of the bow, and, still in his chair,
Drew the bowstring and the notched arrow back.
He took aim and let fly, and the bronze-tipped arrow
Passed clean through the holes of all twelve axeheads
From first to last. And he said to Telemachus:
'Well, Telemachus, the guest in your hall
Has not disgraced you. I did not miss my target,
Nor did I take all day in stringing the bow.
I still have my strength, and I'm not as the suitors
Make me out to be in their taunts and jeers.
But now it is time to cook these men's supper,
While it is still light outside, and after that,
We'll need some entertainment-music and song-
The finishing touches for a perfect banquet.'
He spoke, and lowered his eyebrows. Telemachus,
The true son of godlike Odysseus, slung on
His sharp sword, seized his spear, and gleaming in bronze
Took his place by his father's side."
This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.
First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.
But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree …
This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.
First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.
But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree of repetitiveness to the language that grated--Wilson's introduction explains why it was so in a work written to be performed but it still took away from my experience of reading this as written text--a few too many passages that consist of just listing characters from other Greek myths to the point that they felt like the Torah's "begats", and by the end I found the character of Odysseus dislikable enough to not care about his fortunes.
I'm still glad to have read this. I didn't get anywhere near the exposure to Greek mythology that US schools seem to give, so much of the story was either new to me or connected dots that I'd picked up scattershot from English literature referencing them. And I have to say that I'm re-reading the Torah this year, which seems to be of approximately the same age, and found The Odyssey so much more sophisticated and compelling as a work of literature. But I can't exactly say that I like this story.
This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.
First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.
But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree …
This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.
First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.
But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree of repetitiveness to the language that grated--Wilson's introduction explains why it was so in a work written to be performed but it still took away from my experience of reading this as written text--a few too many passages that consist of just listing characters from other Greek myths to the point that they felt like the Torah's "begats", and by the end I found the character of Odysseus dislikable enough to not care about his fortunes.
I'm still glad to have read this. I didn't get anywhere near the exposure to Greek mythology that US schools seem to give, so much of the story was either new to me or connected dots that I'd picked up scattershot from English literature referencing them. And I have to say that I'm re-reading the Torah this year, which seems to be of approximately the same age, and found The Odyssey so much more sophisticated and compelling as a work of literature. But I can't exactly say that I like this story.
