Homer
The Odyssey
Translated by Robert Fagles
New York 1996
[Selection
from the Opening of the Poem]
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 bringing 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. 10
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will—sing for our time too.
By now,
all the survivors, all who avoided headlong death
were safe at
home, escaped the wars and waves,
But one man alone . . .
his heart set on his wife and his return—Calypso,
the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back,
deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband.
But then, when the wheeling seasons brought the year around,
that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home, 20
Ithaca—though not even there would he be free of trials,
even among his loved ones—then every good took pity,
all except Poseidon. He raged on, seething against
the great Odysseus till he reached his native land.
But now
Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away,
Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind,
a people split in two, one part where the Sungod sets
and part where Sungod rises. There Poseidon went
to receive an offering, bulls and rams by the hundred—
far away at the feast the Sea-lord sat and took his pleasure. 30
But the other gods, at home in Olympian Zeus’s halls,
met for full assembly there, and among them now
the father of men and gods was first to speak,
sorely troubled,
remembering handsome Aegisthus,
the man Agamemnon’s son, renowned Orestes, killed.
Recalling Aegisthus, Zeus harangued the immortal powers:
“Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods.
From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,
but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,
compound their pains beyond their proper share.
40
Look at Aegisthus now . . .
above and beyond
his
share he stole Atrides’ wife,
he murdered the warlord coming home from Troy
though he knew it meant his own total ruin.
Far in advance we told him so ourselves,
dispatching the guide, the giant-killer Hermes.
‘Don’t murder the man,’ he said, ‘don’t court his wife.
Beware, revenge will come from Orestes, Agamemnon’s son,
that day he comes of age and longs for his native land.’
So Hermes warned, with all the good will in the world, 50
but would Aegisthus’ hardened heart give way?
Now he pays the price—all at a single stroke.”
Review Comment
In the past thirty years Robert Fagles’ translations of classical works (Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Homer, Virgil) have earned much critical
praise and an enthusiastic following among general readers and academic
specialists. And deservedly so. Anyone mulling the
purchase of a classical work in translation should certainly include the Fagles translation (if there is one available) in the
selection process.
In his translation of Homer’s
Odyssey, Fagles
employs a line of varying length, which most of the time carries the weight of
a hexameter, and a diction that achieves the remarkable result of feeling old
(or different) and yet familiar. The poem has an unmistakable gravitas, and yet
is not at all ponderous. Fagles’ syntax is also very
skillful in maintaining the movement and energy of the poetry.
This translation invites comparison with another
very popular and poetically adept modern translation of the Odyssey, that by Fitzgerald—which offers
a much faster and less weighty style. Readers’ preferences will, I suppose, be
determined by their sense of the qualities most appropriate to Homer’s epic.
Link
to longer preview (at Amazon)
Fagles reviews:
New
York Times,
Bryn Mawr Reviews
[List of
English Translations of Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey]