Which Translation: The Odyssey

Albert Spaulding Cook

1967 · Free verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
1,632
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

Albert Spaulding Cook (1925-1998) was an American literary critic, poet, classical scholar, and translator. He held distinguished professorships at UC Berkeley, Western Reserve University, the University at Buffalo, and Brown University. He was also the author of The Classic Line: A Study of Epic Poetry.

Cook produced a line-by-line verse translation acclaimed for its poetic phrasing and linguistic accuracy, with no other translation being more faithful to the original in its line-for-line correspondence. First published in 1967, it became the basis for the Norton Critical Edition on 1974.

Francis D. Lazenby of the University of Notre Dame praised Cook’s lines as ‘scanning easily and moving rapidly, thus reproducing one of the special delights of Homeric style.’ The Norton Critical Edition served as a classroom standard for nearly 50 years before being replaced by Emily Wilson’s translation.

Albert Spaulding Cook on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1967 — W.W. Norton, The Odyssey; a new verse translation (Norton Critical Edition)
  • 1974 — W.W. Norton, The Odyssey; a new verse translation, backgrounds, the Odyssey in antiquity, criticism (Norton Critical Edition, expanded) ★
  • 1993 — W.W. Norton, The Odyssey [of] Homer; a verse translation, backgrounds, criticism (Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed.)

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me, Muse, about the man of many turns, who many
Ways wandered when he had sacked Troy’s holy citadel;
He saw the cities of many men, and he knew their thought;
On the ocean he suffered many pains within his heart,
Striving for his life and his companions’ return.
But he did not save his companions, though he wanted to:
They lost their own lives because of their recklessness.
The fools, they devoured the cattle of Hyperion,
The Sun, and he took away the day of their return.
Begin the tale somewhere for us also, goddess, daughter of Zeus.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young men, my suitors, since godly Odysseus is dead,
Wait, though you are eager for this marriage of mine, till I
finish
This robe, so that the yarn will not waste in vain,
The burial sheet of warrior Laertes for the time
The ruinous fate of long-sorrowful death seizes him,
Lest one of the Achaian women in the district blame me
If he who had won so much lie without covering!’
So she said, and the bold heart was persuaded within us,
Then every day she kept weaving on the great loom.
And in the nights she undid it when she had the torches set up.
So three years she has fooled the Achaians and persuaded them.
But when the fourth year came and the seasons came on,
Right then one of the women, who perceived it clearly, told it,
And we happened upon her undoing the shining fabric.
So she has finished it, though unwilling and under duress.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You are cruel, you gods, jealous above all others,
Who begrudge it to goddesses when they sleep with men
Openly, if one wants to make a man her dear husband.
So when the rosy-fingered Dawn chose Orion,
You gods, who live at ease, begrudged him to her
Till the chaste golden-throned Artemis in Ortygia
Came upon him and slew him with her soothing shafts.
And so when fair-braided Demeter yielded in her heart
To Iasion, and lay with him in love and in bed
In a thrice-plowed fallow, it did not take Zeus long
To find out; he slew him, hurling a dazzling thunderbolt.
So now you gods begrudge a mortal man’s being with me.
I myself saved him as he was bestriding his keel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him seated on the shore. His eyes never
Were dry of tears, but his sweet life was flowing away
As he mourned for a return, since the nymph no longer pleased him.
But he slept the nights with her by necessity
In the hollow cave, an unwilling man with a willing woman.
During the days, sitting up on the rocks and on the beaches,
Shattering his heart with tears and laments and groans,
He kept looking over the barren ocean, shedding tears.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
When he had said this, godly Odysseus came from under the bushes.
From the thick wood he broke off in his stout hand a branch
With leaves, that it might cover the skin round a man’s loins,
And he went like a mountain-bred lion, who, relying
On his strength, goes rained on and blown on, but his eyes within
Are burning, and he chases after oxen or sheep
Or after the wild deer, and his belly bids him
To try for sheep and to go into their thick fold—
So was Odysseus about to mingle with the fair-braided girls,
Although he was naked. For need had come upon him.
Frightfully begrimed with brine did he appear to them.
One ran one way, one another, on the jutting shores.
The daughter of Alcinoos alone stayed; Athene
Had put courage in her mind and taken fear from her limbs.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
This did the renowned singer sing. And Odysseus
Melted, and a tear from under his eyelids wet his cheeks,
As a woman weeps embracing her beloved husband
Who has fallen before his own city and his own people,
Warding off from city and children the pitiless day,
And she sees the man dying and breathing heavily,
And falls down upon him and piercingly shrieks. The enemy
From behind strike her back and her shoulders with spears
And lead her off in bonds to have trouble and woe,
And her cheeks are wasted for her most wretched grief;
Just so did Odysseus shed a piteous tear under his eyebrows.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
So I said; in his pitiless spirit he answered nothing,
But he leaped up, stretched his hands to my companions,
Snatched up two together, and dashed them like whelps to the earth.
Their brains flowed out onto the ground and wet the earth.
Then he tore them limb from limb and made them his meal.
He ate like a mountain-reared lion, and did not leave off
Their entrails and their flesh and their marrowed bones.
We wailed and held our hands out to Zeus when we
Had seen the cruel deeds. Helplessness held our hearts.
And when the Cyclops had filled up his great belly
By eating human flesh and then drinking unmixed milk,
He lay down in the cave, stretched full length through the sheep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, do you ask me my famous name? Well, I
Will tell you. Then give me the guest gift you promised.
Noman is my own name. Noman do they call me,
My mother and my father and all my companions.’
So I said, and he answered at once in his pitiless spirit:
‘Noman I shall eat last among his companions
And the others first. This will be my guest gift to you.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘What men are you from? Where are your city and parents?
Wonder holds me that you drank this drug and were not charmed.
No other man at all has been able to bear this drug
Once he had drunk it and let it pass the bar of his teeth.
You have in your breast some mind that is not to be charmed.
Surely you are the Odysseus of many turns, who,
The gold-wanded slayer of Argos always told me
Would come on his way out of Troy in a swift black ship.
Well, come, put your sword in the sheath and let us now
Go up to our bed so that when we have lain together
In love and in bed we may rely on one another.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
So she spoke. And pondering in my mind, I wished
To take hold of the soul of my mother who had died.
Three times I tried and my spirit bade me to grasp her.
And three times like a shadow or a dream she flew
Out of my hands. Sharp grief grew ever greater in my heart.
So I spoke out to her and uttered wingèd words:
‘Mother, why do you not wait as I strive to grasp you,
So that even in the place of Hades we might throw our dear hands
Round each other and take pleasure in cold lamentation?
Or is this some phantom that noble Persephone
Sends me, so that I may grieve and lament still more?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Noble Odysseus, do not commend death to me.
I would rather serve on the land of another man
Who had no portion and not a great livelihood
Than to rule over all the shades of those who are dead.
Come now and tell me the story of my noble son,
Did he follow to battle and become a chief or not?
Tell me about blameless Peleus, if you have heard anything;
Does he have honor still with the many Myrmidons,
Or do they show him no honor through Hellas and Phthia
Because old age constrains him in his hands and feet?
For I am no protector under the rays of the sun
Of the kind I was at one time when in broad Troy
I slew their best men, defending for the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come near, much-praised Odysseus, the Achaians’ great glory;
Bring your ship in, so you may listen to our voice.
No one ever yet sped past this place in a black ship
Before he listened to the honey-toned voice from our mouths,
And then he went off delighted and knowing more things.
For we know all the many things that in broad Troy
The Argives and the Trojans suffered at the will of the gods.
We know all that comes to be on the much-nourishing earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
There are all kinds of hateful deaths for wretched mortals,
But most piteous is to die and meet one’s fate by hunger.
Come then, let us drive the best of the cattle of the Sun
And sacrifice them to the immortals who hold broad heaven,
And if we ever get to Ithaca, our fatherland,
We shall at once build a rich temple to Hyperion,
The Sun, and put in it many noble ornaments.
But if he is at all enraged for his straight-horned cattle
And wishes to destroy the ship, and the other gods follow,
I would rather gasp once into a wave and lose my life
Then to be starved a long time on a desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
When he had said this he entered the well-situated halls,
And he went straight through the hall to the noble suitors.
But the fortune of black death took Argos away
Once he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man shifts an intestine full of fat and blood
On a great blazing fire quickly this way and that
And longs for it to be roasted very rapidly;
So this way and that did he toss about, pondering
How he might lay his hands upon the shameless suitors,
Being one man against many. Athene came close to him,
Descending from the sky; she likened her body to a
woman’s.
She stood above his head and addressed a speech to him:
“Why are you awake, ill-fated beyond all mortal men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So the suitors said. But Odysseus of many wiles,
At once when he raised the great bow and viewed it on all sides—
As when a man skilled at the lyre and at singing
Easily stretches a string over a new peg,
Tying at both ends the flexible gut of the sheep—
So without effort did Odysseus string the great bow.
He took it in his right hand and tested the cord.
It sang sweetly beneath like a swallow in its sound.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Then Odysseus of many wiles bared himself from his rags
And sprang upon the great threshold, holding the bow
And the quiver full of arrows. He poured the swift shafts out
There before his feet. And he spoke out among the suitors:
“This inviolable contest has been brought to an end.
And now I shall know another mark that no man has ever hit,
If I happen to hit it, and Apollo grant me glory.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So he said, and a cable from a dark blue-prowed ship
He threw round a pillar of the great round-room and tied it on,
Tightening it high up, so none could reach the ground with her feet.
As when either thrushes with their long wings or doves
Rush into a net that has been set in a thicket,
As they come in to roost, and a dreadful bed takes them in;
So they held their heads in a row, and about the necks
Of all there were nooses, that they might die most piteously.
They struggled a little with their feet, but not very long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she said, testing her husband. But Odysseus
Grew angry and spoke to his wife, who had a sense of devotion:
“My wife, this is a heart-hurting speech you have made.
Who has put my bed elsewhere? That would be hard
Even for one very skilled, unless a god came in person,
And easily, if he wished, might put it in another place.
No mortal man alive, not even one in his vigor,
Could dislodge it easily, since a great token was made
In the well-wrought bed. I worked on it, and nobody else.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As when land appears welcome to men who are swimming,
Whose well-made ship Poseidon has dashed in the ocean
As it was driven on by wind and a solid wave,
And few have escaped from the hoary sea onto the mainland
By swimming, and much brine has caked upon their skin,
And they walk up on land glad, having fled misfortune,
So welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him.
In no way could she quite let her white arms go from his neck,