The Odyssey
translated
by
Charles Stein
(Berkeley, 2008)

Sample from the Opening of the Poem

 
SPEAK THROUGH ME, O MUSE,
of that man of many devices
who wandered much
once he'd sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.
He saw the cities of many men
                             and knew their minds,
suffering many sorrows
in order to win back his life-soul
and the return of his companions.
In the end he failed to save them,
in spite of his longing to do so,
for through their own heedlessness they perished.
Fools -- who ate the cows of Helios-Hyperion,
and the day of their return was taken from them.
Of these matters, goddess, daughter of Zeus, speak through us
beginning wherever you will.

When all the warriors who'd managed
to escape complete destruction
were back at home
safe from war and the sea,
the queenly nymph Calypso, radiant goddess
detained only him
back in her hollow cavern
longing that he be her husband
though he longed only to return
and yearned for Penelope.

And when as the seasons turned and the year came 'round
that the gods had appointed for him to sail home to Ithaka,
he was not done with affliction even then,
even among his own people.
All the gods pitied him but Poseidon,
who raged against Odysseus
until the time when he at last
                     arrived at his native country.
But Poseidon now was far away
among the Ethiopians,
                 that most remote of peoples,
a people split in two:
some dwell where Hyperion sets, some where he rises.
He had gone among them to receive
a hecatomb of rams and bulls
and was there enjoying the feast.
But the other gods were gathered
in the halls of Olympian Zeus.
The father of gods and men
began to speak among them,
for he was mindful in his blameless heart
of Aigisthos whom Orestes,
Agamemnon's famous son, had slain.
With him on his mind he spoke to the immortals.

"See how mortals blame to gods
from whom they say all evils spring;
yet they themselves
suffer beyond their allotment
because of their own folly.
Witness how Aigisthos, beyond his portion,
wooed the wedded wife of Agamemnon
and killed him upon his return
and now knows utter ruin
even though we warned him,
sending Hermes, the keen-eyed Argeiphontes,
not to woo Agamemnon's wife
                               and not to kill him,
because from Orestes vengeance would surely come
for the death of Agamemnon
when he should attain full manhood
and want his patrimony.
Thus Hermes warned,
              Hermes' good intentions failed
                    to perusde the mind of Aigisthos,
and now he has paid for all his crimes together."


REVIEW COMMENT

Stein eschews the hexameter or pentameter, neither of which he seems to regard with much favour, in order to explain his decision to translate Homer into free verse based upon some of the better-known principles of modern poetry (i.e., post Imagism), where the musicality and immediacy of the phrase are more important than any regularity in the rhythm. The result does take some getting used to, since one can move quickly from a line of two or three syllables to a line of twenty syllables and back again, and one is constantly shifting one’s eyes here and there as lines are indented or not, at the translator’s discretion. Reading this poem does not give one the luxury of remaining in a regular and comfortable verse form. This feature may well put off readers so quickly that they simply set the book immediately aside. However, the text is worth lingering on: its a brave and interesting attempt to tackle the problem of writing a long narrative poem in a style which is often very fractured and constantly shifting.

Stein’s language is, for the most part, plain and evocative (although I have some problem with phrases like “Daimoniac person,” “arrow-emitting Artemis,” and “who have perished away,” especially in direct speech), and I’m not sure that the style serves him well in places where some gathering momentum in the verse would help to bring out important emotional qualities in the speech or action.

However, I have read only selected portions of the translation, available at the following link: Charles Stein, Odyssey.

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