Which Translation: The Odyssey

Allen Mandelbaum

1990 · Blank verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
968
Holdings
2
Reviews

Biography

Allen Mandelbaum (1926-2011) was an American poet, translator, and professor of humanities at Wake Forest University. He won the National Book Award for his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid and was renowned for his translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Homer, and other classical works.

Mandelbaum’s translation aimed to realize the power and beauty of Homer’s original Greek in rapid but dignified blank verse. He freely incorporated rhyme and alliteration, and transposed or expanded lines where necessary to preserve sound effects or details. The result reflected his deep immersion in the tradition of epic verse translation across Latin, Greek, and Italian.

The New York Times Book Review praised it as having ‘real poetic power’, while Paula Saffire called it ‘the obvious translation for students’. Anthony Long called it ‘a splendid achievement outstripping all competitors’.

Allen Mandelbaum on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1990 — University of California Press, The Odyssey of Homer; a new verse translation; with twelve engravings by Marialuisa de Romans ★
  • 1991 — Bantam Books, The Odyssey of Homer; a new verse translation (Bantam Classics)

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Muse, tell me of the man of many wiles,
the man who wandered many paths of exile
after he sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.
He saw the cities—mapped the minds—of many;
and on the sea, his spirit suffered every
adversity—to keep his life intact,
to bring his comrades back. In that last task,
his will was firm and fast, and yet he failed:
he could not save his comrades. Fools, they foiled
themselves: they ate the oxen of the Sun,
the herd of Hélios Hypérion;
the lord of light requited their transgression—
he took away the day of their return.
Muse, tell us of these matters. Daughter of Zeus,
my starting point is any point you choose.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young men, since bright Odysseus now is dead,
be patient; though you’re keen to marry me,
wait till the cloth is done, lest any thread
unravel. This is lord Laërtes’ shroud—
the robe he’ll wear when dark death strikes him down.
I weave it now, lest some Achaéan women
condemn me for neglect, for having let
a man who’d won such wealth lie at his death
without a shroud.’ These were her words—and we,
with manly hearts, agreed. So she would weave
that mighty web by day—but then, by night,
by torchlight, she undid what she had done.
She hoodwinked all of us for three long years;
but when, as spring returned, the fourth was here,
one of her women servants—well aware
of how your mother had connived—told all.
We caught Penelope as she unraveled
that lovely web. So she—against her will—
completed it.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You gods are cruel and more jealous than
all others: if a goddess beds a man
and wants him—openly—as her dear husband,
then you begrudge her that. Your envy punished
rose-fingered Dawn when she embraced Orion:
you gods, at ease, your least desire appeased,
sent down chaste Artemis of the gold throne,
and she, in Delos, killed him with her shafts.
And when fair-haired Deméter dared to clasp
Iásion (they mingled, breast to breast,
upon a field where plows had worked three furrows),
Zeus did not wait too long to find that out,
to kill him with a blazing thunderbolt.
So now, you gods resent my having chosen
a mortal.

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
He was seated
along the shore; his eyes were never dry,
and his sweet life was squandered as he wept
for his dear home; he now took no delight
in her: the nymph no longer pleased his sight.
By night, indeed, within Calypso’s cave,
he slept with her: so side by side they lay,
the willing and unwilling. But by day,
his heart was rent by torment as he sat
along the sands or on the rocks; he watched
the never-resting sea and, watching, wept.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
And now he burst out of the underbrush;
with his stout hand he tore a leafy branch
from that thick wood, to hide his nakedness.
He moved out as a mountain lion would
when—sure of his own strength, his eyes ablaze—
through driving wind and rain, he stalks his prey,
wild deer or sheep or oxen; he’ll attack
a cattle-fold, however tight the fence
that pens the herd—his hunger’s so intense.
So did Odysseus seem as he prepared
to burst into the band of fair-haired girls,
though he was naked; he was ravenous.
But he—his form was filthy, fouled with brine—
struck them as horrible; and terrified,
they scattered on the shore, one here, one there,
along the sandspits jutting out to sea.
The daughter of Alcinoüs was left
alone: her spirit had received the gift
of courage from Athena, who had freed
the limbs of the young girl from fear and trembling.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
These things the famous singer sang. Odysseus
held fast his purple cloak with sturdy hands;
he drew its great folds over his bent head
and hid his handsome features out of shame,
lest the Phaeácians see the tears he shed.
But when the singer stopped his song, Odysseus,
after he dried his tears, drew back the cloak
and, lifting his two-handled cup, poured out
libations to the gods. Yet once the poet,
urged on by the Phaeácian chiefs, again
began to chant, the Ithacan, concealing
his head, began to sob again.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“These were my words, but no words answered mine:
his heart was pitiless. And springing up,
he stretched his hands and snatched two of my men
at once and smashed them to the ground like pups:
their brains gushed out and wet the earth. He cut
those comrades limb from limb, and then he supped—
and like a mountain lion, left no shred:
he ate the flesh and innards, chewed the bones
down to the marrow. Lifting hands to Zeus,
we wept at this obscenity—helpless.
But when his maw was stuffed with human flesh,
as well as pure milk he then gulped, the Cyclops
stretched out within the cave, among his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“Cyclops, you ask me for my noted name;
I’ll tell it to you if in recompense
you keep your promise and I get that present.
My name is No-one; No-one—so I’m called
by both my mother and my father, and all
my comrades.’
“This I said. And he replied:
‘No-one, your friends come first; I’ll eat you last.
This is the gift I give to you, my guest.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“‘Who are you? From what family? What city?
You drank my drugs, but you were not entranced.
No other man has ever passed that test;
for once that potion’s passed their teeth, the rest
have fallen prey: you have within your chest
a heart that can defeat my sorcery.
You surely are the man of many wiles,
Odysseus, he whom I was warned against
by Hermes of the golden wand: he said
that you would come from Troy in a black ship.
But now put back your blade within that sheath
and let us lie together on my bed:
in loving, we’ll learn trust and confidence.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“She’d spoken. And despite my doubts, I longed
to clasp my mother’s shade within my arms.
Three times—my heart kept urging me—I tried;
and three times she escaped my hands, much like
a shadow or a dream. The pain grew sharp
and sharper in my heart. My winged words said:
“‘Dear mother, why do you shrink back when I
want so to hold you fast? Can’t we embrace
and, with our arms around each other, take
our fill of this chill grief in Hades’ house?
Or are you just a phantom sent to me
by great Perséphonë, that she might add
still other tears to those that I have shed?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Odysseus, don’t embellish death for me.
I’d rather be another’s hired hand,
working for some poor man who owns no land
but pays his rent from what scant gains he gets,
than to rule over all whom death has crushed.
But tell me something of my worthy son:
Has he, a lord of men, gone off to war,
become a chieftain? And what have you heard
of stalwart Péleus? Does he still preserve
his place of honor with the Myrmidons,
or is he scorned in Hellas and in Phthía
because old age has slowed his hands and feet?
I do not rise beneath the rays of sun
to take the form I had in Troy’s broad land
when, to defend the Argives, my attacks
killed stalwart men:

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Remarkable Odysseus, halt and hear
the song we two sing out: Achaean chief,
the gift our voices give is honey-sweet.
No man has passed our isle in his black ship
until he’s heard the sweet song from our lips;
and when he leaves, the listener has received
delight and knowledge of so many things.
We know the Argives’ and the Trojans’ griefs:
their tribulations on the plain of Troy
because the gods had willed it so. We know
all things that come to pass on fruitful earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All deaths are dour; the fate of men is sad;
but there’s no death more miserable than
the doom starvation sends. Come, let us take
Hyperion’s best cows and sacrifice
to the undying gods, who rule the skies.
If we reach Ithaca, our fathers’ land,
there we—at once—shall build for Helios
an altar heaped with many glowing gifts.
And if our taking of his tall-horned cows
enrages Helios, and he would wreck
our ship and has the other gods’ consent,
I’d rather have my mouth drink brine and let
the waves kill me at once than meet slow death
by lingering on an island wilderness.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
That said, he went into the handsome house;
he joined the noble suitors in the hall.
But Argos, just as soon as he had seen
his master after nineteen years, fell prey
to death’s dark fate.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
Just as a man before a blazing fire
who’s skewered a paunch that’s stuffed with blood and fat
will swiftly turn the spit this way and that,
eager to have it roasted fast, so did
Odysseus toss from side to side; he thought
of traps in which the suitors could be caught,
though he was one alone and they a crowd.
Then, in the likeness of a mortal woman,
Athena came from heaven; over him
she stood, saying:
“Why are you sleepless now?
It’s true that you have suffered greater sorrow
than any man;

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So did the suitors babble. But the man
of many wiles, Odysseus, now had scanned
the bow on every side; and just as one
expert in song and harping works with ease
when he is called upon to stretch a string
around new pegs and so at either end
makes fast the twisted gut—just so, Odysseus’
stringing of that great bow was effortless.
Then he took up the bow; with his right hand,
he tried the string; it sang as clearly as
a swallow’s note.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Astute Odysseus now threw off his rags.
He leaped onto the great threshold; he grasped
the bow; he grasped the quiver full of shafts.
He cried out to the suitors:
“Now at last
the crucial test is at an end, and yet
there is another mark, one that no man
has ever struck before. But I’ve a chance
to reach it—if Apollo is my friend.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
That was said, and then he bound
the cable of a dark-prowed ship around
a sturdy pillar of the portico,
then ran it to the round tower, stretched it high,
so that no woman’s feet might reach the ground.
Just as when doves or thrushes, wings outstretched,
head for their nests but fall into a net
that’s set within a thicket, finding death
and not the place where they had hoped to rest,
so were those women’s heads, aligned, caught tight
within a noose, that each of them might die
a dismal death. Their feet twitched for a while—
but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
These words of hers were meant to test Odysseus.
Incensed, her husband cried to his keen wife:
“Woman, your words have wounded me. Who tore
my bedstead from its base? For it would take
a god—if he so pleased—to shift its place.
No man alive, however young and strong,
with mortal force alone could hope to budge
that bed without great strain, for it contains
a scret in its making. No one else
contrived that bed: I fashioned it myself.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And as the sight of land is welcomed by
the only shipwrecked sailors to survive
when whiplash winds and crashing combers sent
by lord Poseidon have destroyed their ship;
in flight from the gray sea, they swim toward shore,
their bodies caked with brine, and now at last
set foot upon the beach; their grief is past:
so at the sight of him, there was delight
in her; she twined her white arms round his neck.