Homer

The Odyssey of Homer
Translated by T. E. Shaw
(Colonel T. E. Lawrence)
USA 1932

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

O DIVINE POESY
GODDESS-DAUGHTER OF ZEUS
SUSTAIN FOR ME
THIS SONG OF THE VARIOUS-MINDED MAN
WHO AFTER HE HAD PLUNDERED
THE INNERMOST CITADEL OF HALLOWED TROY
WAS MADE TO STRAY GRIEVOUSLY
ABOUT THE COASTS OF MEN
THE SPORT OF THEIR CUSTOMS GOOD OR BAD
WHILE HIS HEART
THROUGH ALL THE SEA-FARING
ACHED IN AN AGONY TO REDEEM HIMSELF
AND BRING HIS COMPANY SAFE HOME

VAIN HOPE—FOR THEM
FOR HIS FELLOWS HE STROVE IN VAIN
THEIR OWN WITLESSNESS CAST THEM AWAY
THE FOOLS
TO DESTROY FOR MEAT
THE OXEN OF THE MOST EXALTED SUN
WHEREFORE THE SUN-GOD BLOTTED OUT
THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN

MAKE THE TALE LIVE FOR US
IN ALL ITS MANY BEARINGS
O MUSE

BOOK I

By now the other warriors, those that had escaped headlong ruin by sea or in battle, were safely home.  Only Odysseus tarried, shut up by Lady Calypso, a nymph and very Goddess, in her hewn-out caves.  She craved him for her bed-mate: while he was longing for his house and his wife.  Of a truth the rolling seasons had at last brought up the year marked by the Gods for his return to Ithaca; but not even there among his loved things would he escape further conflict.  Yet had all the Gods with lapse of time grown compassionate towards Odysseus—all but Poseidon, whose emnity flamed every against him till he had reached his home.  Poseidon, however, was for the moment far away among the Aethiopians, that last race of men, whose dispersion across the world’s end is so broad that some of them can see the Sun-God rise while others see him set.  Thither had Poseidon gone in the hope of burnt offerings, bulls and rams, by hundreds: and there he sat feasting merrily while the other Gods came together in the halls of Olympian Zeus.  To them the father of Gods and men began speech, for his breast teemed with though of great Aegisthus, whom famous Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, had slain.
    “It vexes me to see how mean are these creatures of a day towards us Gods, when they charge against us the evils (far beyond our worst dooming) which their own exceeding wantonness has heaped upon themselves.  Just so did Aegisthus exceed when he took to his bed the lawful wife of Atrides and killed her returning husband.  He knew the sheer ruin this would entail.  Did we not warn him by the mouth of our trusty Hermes, the keen-eyed slayer of Argus, neither to murder the man nor lust after the woman’s body?  ‘For the death of the son of Atreus will be requited by Orestes, even as he grows up and dreams of his native place.’  These were Hermes’ very words: but not even such friendly interposition could restrain Aegisthus, who now pays the final penalty.”

REVIEW COMMENT

Lawrence claims that his is the twenty-eighth English rendering of the Odyssey.  His version has no particular merits.  In general the prose is fairly vigorous, in spite of the sometimes odd phraseology (“beyond our worst dooming”).  Still, I get the impression throughout that the traditional habit of rendering Homer in deliberately archaic language has affected Lawrence’s prose for the worse.  In his own writing he is surely much better than he is in this translation.

For a preview of Lawrence’s translation, please use the following link: Lawrence Odyssey.