Homer

The Odyssey

Translated by Joe Sachs

Philadelphia 2014

Sample from the Opening of the Poem

Book I

A man, resourceful but forced into so many wanderings from the time
he sacked the sacred stronghold of Troy—sing me his story, Muse.
There were many people whose towns he saw, whose minds he took
the measure of, and many miseries he suffered at sea, sick at heart,
while trying to earn his own life and a way home for his shipmates.
But there was no saving those shipmates, determined as he was;
they were undone by their own reckless acts. With no more sense
than infants they fell on the cattle of the sun god Hyperion and
at them. The robbed them of the day—their day of homecoming.
Start anywhere, goddess, daughter of Zeus, and tell the story again for us. 10
When all the rest who had escaped utter destruction
were home, survivors of the war and also of the sea,
he alone was still yearning for his homecoming and his wife,
kept in the cavernous lair of the queenly nymph Calypso,
a goddess among goddesses, who wanted him for a husband.
Time sailed its monotonous circuit, but when the year came round
in which the gods had spun his destiny to return to Ithaca,
he was not home free even there; his struggles continued,
even among his own loved ones. All the gods took pity on him,
apart from Poseidon; he went on with his raging fury 20
at godlike Odysseus to the moment of his arrival in his own land.

But Poseidon was far from home, gone off to the Ethiopians--
the Ethiopians who are the most remote of men in either direction;
they live where Hyperion sets and also where he rises.
He went to receive their sacrifice of a hundred bulls and rams,
and he was right there for the feast, partaking with gusto. The rest
of the gods were gathered in the palace of Olympian Zeus,
and the first to speak among them was the father of men and gods.
His heart was mindful of Aegisthus, a man not to be trifled with,
yet Agamemnon’s far-famed son Orestes had killed him. 30
With him in mind, he spoke among the immortal ones, saying:

“Incredible how quick mortals are to blame the gods!
They claim all their evils come from us, when their own
reckless acts get them sufferings outstripping what’s fated;
and now Aegisthus oversteps fate and marries Agamemnon’s
lawful wedded wife, then kills him when he comes home,
knowing it would be utter destruction; we told him so beforehand!
We sent Hermes, who sees far and appears in a flash,
to warn him not to kill the man or seduce the wife,
since there would be vengeance from the line of Atreus, from Orestes 40
when the time came that he grew up and yearned for his own land.
That’s what Hermes told him, but he couldn’t get that into the stubborn heart
of Aegisthus, even for his own good, and now he’s paid the price in one lump sum.”

REVIEW COMMENT

Sachs in his preface announce that his translation “falls unambiguously on the prose side of this territory [between poetry and prose] . . . even though it is laid out lines. . . . [It] does its best to give you the feel of the poem without poetry of its own . . . [and] strives to give you an accurate rendering of the poet’s words without being what is called ‘literal.’” The result is (to my mind) something quite odd—prose rather limply posing as poetry and a close following of Homer’s text without scrupulous fidelity. It’s as if the translator could not make up his mind about some key decisions, is trying to have it both ways, and has fallen to the floor between two stools. Sachs describes how in the past he liked to read prosaic and poetic translations of the Odyssey both at the same time, so perhaps that has something to do with the curious English style he ends up with.

For a longer preview of Sachs’ translation (at Amazon), use the following link: Sachs Odyssey.

[Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]