Homer
The Odyssey
Translated by Joe Sachs
Philadelphia
2014

[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]

 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 town 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
ate them. The god robbed them of the day--their day of homecoming.
Start anywhrere, 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 Odyseys 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

In his preface Sachs announces what sounds like a paradoxical intent: "Just as this translation does its best to give you the feel of the poem without poetry of its own, it strives to give you an accurate rendering of the poet's word without being what is called 'literal.'" I fail to see how such a prosaic and at times cumbersome. awkward, and thoroughly unmusical style comes close to conveying "the feel of the poem." The text stays close to Homer's and is clear enough, but the periphrastic style lacks any sense of imaginative energy.

For a sample and review comment on Sachs's translation of the Iliad, use the following link: Sachs Iliad

For a longer preview of Sachs's translation please use the following link: Sachs Odyssey

List of Published English Translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey