Homer’s Odyssey
A Line for Line Translation in the Metre of the Original
H. B. Cotterill
London 1911
[Sample from the Opening of the Poem]
ODYSSEY BOOK I
SING, O Muse, of the man
so wary and wise, who in far lands
Wandered whenas he had wasted the sacred town of the
Trojans.
Many a people he saw and beheld their cities and customs,
Many a woe he endured in his heart as he tossed on the ocean,
Striving to win him his life and to bring home safely his comrades.
Ah but he rescued them not, those comrades, much as he wished it.
Ruined by their own act of infatuate madness they perished,
Fools that they were—who the cows of the sun-god, lord Hyperion,
Slaughtered and ate; and he took from the men their day of returning.
Sing—whence-ever the lay—sing, Zeus-born goddess, for us too!
Now ere all of the rest
of the Greeks who had ’scaped from destruction
Safely at home and secure from the dangers of war and the ocean,
All but the one, whom yearning in vain for his wife and his homeland
Still idd the beautiful goddess, the sea-nymph
Calypso,
Hold in her hollow caves, with a longing to make him her husband.
Ay and at last, when the year in the slow revolution of seasons
Came, in the which, as the gods had ordained, he returned to his country,
Ithaca’s isle, e’en then was he nowise free from his
troubles,
Though once more with his own; and the gods were touched with compassion,
All but Poseidon, who was ever unceasingly angered
Raging at godlike Odysseus and keeping him far from his homeland.
Now was he gone to revisit the far-off Aethiop
people—
Aethiop people that dwell wide-sundered, furthest of
mortals,
Some where sinks Hyperion to rest, some where he ariseth,
Here he expected of rams and of oxen a solemn oblation,
Herehe rejoiced as he sat at the feast. But the other
immortals
Unto the mansion of Zeus the Olympian gathered together.
Then in the midst brake silence the Father of men and immortals,
Since in the depths of his heart he remembered the noble Aegisthus
Slaughtered by King Agamemnon’s son, far-famous Orestes;
Mindful of him these words he addressed to gods everlasting:
“Verily! how these mortals of earth give blame to the heaven!
Evil is sent by the gods, they affirm! It is they that in folly,
Ay in the madness of folly, o’erleaping their
destiny, seek it.
Thus did Aegisthus, in spite of his fate predestined, in madness
Marry the wife of Atrides and murdered her lord at
his coming,
Fully he knew of the doom that impended—for this we foretold him,
Sending him Hermes, the keen-eyed slayer of Argus, to warn him
Neither to murder the man nor his wife to solicit as suitor:
Else shall Orestes repay for his father a terrible vengeance
After the days of his youth, when he learneth to long
for his homeland.
Such was the warning of Hermes, but nowise heeded Aegisthus
Well-meant counsel—and now he hath paid all reckonings fully.”
REVIEW
COMMENT
I’ve never understood why
anyone would want to try rendering Homer in English line by line, even less
with some attempt to deliver the rhythm of the Greek. Given that Greek rhythm is very different from English
rhythm based on stresses, why would anyone want to impose a foreign style upon
a language not designed for it? And one has to
wonder just how many readers have any idea of how to
read an English Homer while observing the “rules” for traditional Greek rhythm
(how many of them read it aloud anyway). Yes,
the requirement does make an interesting challenge, but what possible
attractions are there for the reader, if the attempt means that the English has
to be delivered in a manner so different from modern or traditional English
poetry?
However, those readers
for whom these two criteria are important (for some reason) might enjoy reading
Cotterill. His language, though
suffering from too many deliberate archaisms and the syntactical awkwardness
typical of those who wrench the English to fit the Greek, is no harder on the
ears or the understanding than Lattimore’s.
In fairness to Cotterill,
I should mention that he respects his readers enough to offer a lucid and
interesting explanation for the choices he has made. In these matters, however,
“the proof of the pudding . . .” (as they say).
Those who would like to access
the full text of Cotterill's translation should use the following link: Cotterill Odyssey.
[List of
Published English Translations of Homer’s Iliad
and Odyssey]