Homer
The Odyssey
Translated by Walter Shewring
Oxford 1980
[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]
BOOK I
GODS IN COUNCIL – TELEMACHUS AND ATHENE
GODDESS
of song, teach me the story of a hero.
This was the man of wide-ranging spirit who
had sacked the sacred town of Troy and who wandered afterwards long and far.
Many were those whose cities he viewed and whose minds he came to know, many
the troubles that vexed his heart as he sailed the seas, labouring to save
himself and to bring his comrades home. But his comrades he could not keep from
ruin, strive as he might; they perished instead by their own presumptuousness.
Fools, they devoured the cattle of Hyperion, and he, the sun-god, cut off from
them the day of their homecoming.
Goddess, daughter of Zeus, to me in turn
impart some knowledge of all these things, beginning where you will.
The tale begins when all those others who
had escaped the pit of destruction were safe in their own lands, spared by the
wars and seas. Only Odysseus was held elsewhere, pining for home and wife; the
nymph Calypso, a goddess of strange power and beauty, had kept him captive
within her arching caverns, yearning for him to be her husband. And when there
came with revolving seasons the year that the gods had set for his journey home
to Ithaca, not even then was he past his troubles, not even then was he with
his own people. For though all the gods beside had compassion on him,
Poseidon’s anger was unabated against the hero until he returned to his own
land.
But now Poseidon had gone to visit the
Ethiopians, those distant Ethiopians whose nation is parted within itself, so
that some are near the setting and some near the rising sun, but all alike are
at the world’s end; to these he had gone to receive a great offering of bulls and
rams, and there he was taking his pleasure now, seated at the banquet. But the
other gods were gathered together in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the
father of gods and men began to speak to them. His mind was full of Lord
Aegisthus, slain by renowned Orestes, the child of Agamemnon; with him in mind
Zeus began to speak to the Deathless Ones.
‘O the waywardness of these mortals! They
accuse the gods, they say that their troubles come from us, and yet by their
own presumptuousness they draw down sorrow upon themselves that outruns their
allotted portion. So now; Aegisthus outran his allotted portion by taking in
marriage the wedded wife of the son of Atreus and killing her husband when he
returned. Yet he knew what pit of destruction was before him, because we
ourselves warned him of it. We sent Hermes, the Keen Watcher, the Radiant One;
we forbade him to kill the king or to woo his wife, under pain of the vengeance
for Agamemnon that would come upon him from Orestes when the boy grew up and
felt a longing for his own country. Thus Hermes warned him, wishing him well,
but Aegisthus’ heart would not hear reason, and now he has paid all his debts
at once.’
Shewring offers an accurate and direct English Odyssey in
more or less idiomatic English. But the prose often feels quite flat
and at times stilted. There is little colloquial energy or passion in the
direct speech (as in the opening sentence of Zeus’ address above). Shewring’s epilogue (On Translation) suggests that he is
more concerned to get back to Homer’s Greek than to worry about the effects on
modern readers of his choice of English words.
The text offers interesting and useful
(although not always necessary) footnotes throughout. Those looking for a prose
translation should certainly consider using this text, provided they take the
trouble to read passages aloud and listen carefully to the sound of the prose.
Readers who would like a longer preview of
Shewring’s text should use the following link: Shewring Odyssey
.
[List
of Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey]