Which Translation: The Odyssey

Charles Stein

2008 · Free verse

Features

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63
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

Charles Stein (b. 1944) is a second-generation Black Mountain poet with a B.A. in ancient Greek from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut. He has lived and taught in Barrytown, New York, and at Bard College.

Stein employed free verse in his translation, noting that the poem may have been composed phrase-by-phrase, before evolving into a more regular dactylic hexameter form. He tried to produce a translation that made use of more recent prosodic inventions, as part of a long tradition, dating from before the Odyssey was written down, of bringing the spirit of the epic into new forms and contexts.

Pierre Joris, in a letter to the London Review of Books protesting the omission of Stein’s translation from Colin Burrow’s comparative review of Odyssey translations, praised its ‘liveliness & accurate complexity’, and noted that Stein ‘manages to keep in mind that Homerian epics are not exclusively or not first off immutable written text, but were performed by rhapsodes.’

Publication History

  • 2008 — North Atlantic Books, The Odyssey [of] Homer; a new verse translation ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
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.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
“O young men, my wooers,
since divine Odysseus is dead, forbear a while,
though you are eager for the match,
until I finish my sail.
I would not that my spinning be undone
as if it were blown to the winds,
it being a shroud for Lord Laertês,
against such time as a grievous fate of death,
stretching him out, should take him down,
and that no local Achaian women despise me,
if he who laid up so much
should lie without a sail to wrap his limbs in.’
“So she spoke,
and the manly spirit within us was persuaded.
By day she wove there at her great loom
but by night with torches beside her she loosened the strands.
For three years by this ruse she beguiled the Achaians,
but when the fourth year came ‘round,
and the seasons turned,
and the months passed,
and many days were completed,
one of her women, who knew it all, spoke up
and we found Penelope unraveling the shining web.
We forced her to finish it
though she did not wish to do it.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“Savage and cruel are you gods,
eminent in envy above all others.
You grudge it of us goddesses
if we openly bed down with a mortal man
or if a mortal takes us as a lover.
So Dawn with rose-colored fingers took Orion
until the gods whose life runs free
begrudged it of her:
On Quail Island, chaste Artemis of the golden throne
set about him and slew him with her kindly arrows.
So also Demeter with the beautiful hair,
surrendering her heart, merged in love with Iasiôn
and bedded down in the thrice-ploughed fallows,
nor did Zeus remain long ignorant of it
but hurled his glistening thunderbolt and slaughtered him.
Just so do the gods begrudge me
the mortal man that is with me.
I saved him as he steadied himself
by his ruined keel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting on the beach,
his eyes unstaunched of tears,
his sweet vitality flowing away
as he pined for his return,
for the nymph no longer delighted him,
though he still passed the nights by necessity
in her hollow cave,
the unwilling with the willing;
but he spent his days sitting with rocks and sand,
with sobs and groans, rending his soul in sorrow,
gazing out at the desert sea, letting tears flow.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So saying, divine Odysseus came out of the bushes
and broke a leafy branch from the thick wood
with his strong hands
to hide his flesh and cover his genitals.
And just as a mountain lion, mighty and confident,
though assailed by rain and wind,
goes forth with blazing eyes among sheep and cattle
or pursues wild deer,
for his stomach commands him
even to hazard entrance
to the confines of a sheepfold
to get at the flocks,
so Odysseus was about to descend upon the maidens
with beautiful hair,
even though he was naked,
for necessity had him.
A frightful sight did he seem to them—
all befouled with brine,
and they shrank in terror away,
each along a different spit of beach sand.
But the daughter of Alkinoös held fast,
for Athena put courage in her breast
and plucked the fright right out of her limbs.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
The famous poet-singer sang of these matters,
and the heart of Odysseus melted.
His tears gushed over his cheeks from under his eyelids.
And just as a woman falls down wailing
about her dear husband,
wailing away when he falls
before the city and the people
defending the citadel and his children
against the pitiless day,
who seeing him dying and gasping his last
clings to him lamenting in clear-toned shrieks,
while behind her, her enemies are striking at her back
and shoulders with their spears
to lead her into slavery
and a life of toil and grief,
her cheeks to waste away in sorrow—
so Odysseus let piteous tears
fall from under his brows.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“So I spoke,
and he, with pitiless mind, said not a thing,
but rather sprang up and snatched two of my comrades
and dashed them on the ground
as easily as if they were a couple of puppies.
Their brains ran out and soaked the earth
and, cutting limb from limb, he prepared his supper,
and he ate like a lion
reared in the mountains—there were no leavings—
devouring marrow bones and flesh and entrails.
Wailing, we raised our hands to Zeus
as we witnessed these cruel deeds,
but helplessness gripped our spirit.
And when Cyclops had gorged his giant belly,
eating human meat
and drinking pure fresh milk,
he stretched himself out in the cave among his animals.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“Cyclops, you ask for my name, and I’ll tell you.
And you, for your part—give me that stranger’s gift
as you just promised.
No-One is my name.
My mother and father and my companions call me: No-One.’
“So I spoke,
and he answered from his pitiless heart:
“Then I will eat No-One last among his companions—
the others first—this will be your stranger’s gift of welcome.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“Who are you among men, and where is your city,
who your begetters?
Amazement has me that you drank my decoction
and are not under its spell,
for no other man has ever been subjected to it
and not been transmuted
as soon as it passed the barrier of his teeth.
The mind in your breast indeed is impermeable to enchantment.
You must be Odysseus, man of innumerable devices,
whom the Slayer of Argos with the golden wand
has always said would come to me
on his way back from Troy with his swift black ship.
But put your sword back in its scabbard
and let’s go to our bed,
so that bedding down in love,
we might come to trust one another.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“So she spoke,
and I wanted to approach
the dead ghost-soul of my mother.
Three times I went to her,
my heart bade me embrace her,
three times, like a dream or a shadow,
she slipped through my hands.
Sharp pain grew ever sharper. I said:
“My mother, why do you slip away—I want to embrace you,
that though in the House of Hades,
we might throw our arms about each other
and take our fill of chill grieving—
or are you but an image Persephone sends me
that I must grieve all the more?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“‘Don’t speak words of cheap comfort to me about death,
glorious Odysseus.
I would choose to be back on earth
as a landless man with scant livelihood,
hired out to another,
rather than lord it over
all the dead who have perished away.
But come, give me word of my boy,
whether he followed to the war to be a chieftain
or whether he did not do it.
And tell me about Pêleios,
if perhaps you’ve heard something,
if he yet has honor among the Myrmidons,
or whether they hold him in contempt
in Hellas and in Phthiê,
because old age has taken him hand and foot.
For I am not now beneath the rays of the sun
and cannot be a protector
as at Troy I was able to be
in defense of the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Come hither, overwhelming Odysseus,
great pride of the Achaians,
stop your vessel and hear our voices,
for there is not anyone yet
who has passed in his black ship
but that he listened to th’ mellifluous sounds from our mouths.
And once he has thrilled to their pleasures,
he goes on living a more knowing life,
for we know all that happened at Troy,
how Argives and Trojans suffered through the will of the gods,
and we know all that happens on earth,
with its many cows.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Every manner of death
is hateful to wretched mortals,
but to die in hunger and thus to meet one’s fate
is most wretched of all.
Therefore let us separate
the best of the cows of Helios
and sacrifice to th’immortals who own the big sky,
and if we ever get back to Ithaka our homeland,
we’ll build a sumptuous temple to Helios-Hyperion
and put in it holy statues, many and handsome,
but if he harbors anger
because of his straight-horned cattle
and wishes to wreck our ship
and the other gods concur,
still I would rather be abolished
while gulping down a wave in a single gulp
than be subject to slow starvation on this desolate island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
“So saying, Eumaios went into the well-perched palace
and came at once to the halls and the noble wooers.
But a fate of black death took Argos,
now that he’d seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
as a man with a sac of fat and blood
before a great blazing fire
turns it rapidly this way and that
eager to get it roasted,
so he tossed and turned
over how to get his hands on the shameless wooers,
one man against a multitude.
Athena drew near to him,
descending from the skies
in the likeness of a woman,
and stood above his head and said to him:
“Why are you restless, O person
ill-fated beyond all men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So spoke the wooers.
But wise Odysseus
had the great bow in his hands
and, having examined it thoroughly
just as a man
skilled in song and the lyre
easily stretches the string about a new lyre-peg,
fastening the twisted sheep-gut at both ends,
so did Odysseus without effort
bend the great bow.
Holding it in his right hand,
he tested the string.
And the string sang sweetly
under his touch
like the voice of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
But Odysseus of many devices
threw off his tatters
and sprang to the mighty threshold,
holding bow and quiver full of arrows,
and he poured the swift arrows out
right there at his feet
and spoke among the wooers:
“This unimpeachable contest is done at last!
Here I take another target—
one which no man has ever hit till now.
I shall see it, if I may—
and Apollo grant me triumph.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So he spoke
and fastened the cable of a dark-prowed ship
to a massive pillar
and flung it about the round-house
and stretched it high above
so no one could reach the floor with her feet;
and just as when long-winged thrushes or doves
fall into a snare set in the bushes
while looking for a place to roost—
and bitter is the bed that receives them—
so these women had their heads lined up,
and around their necks were nooses
so that they would die in a most piteous manner.
They twisted and writhed a bit with their feet,
but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke, testing her husband.
But Odysseus flashed with anger at his wife
(whose heart in fact rang true):
“O woman, the word you speak is a bitter one.
Who has put my bed
in some place other than in the chamber?
It would be a difficult thing to do—
even for a skillful person—
unless a god himself appeared
and easily moved it elsewhere by his will.
No mortal alive, however in the vigor of youth,
could readily dislodge it,
for a great secret sign is constructed
into the design of that bed,
and I and no other built it.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And just as the sight of land is welcome to swimmers
whose well-built ship Poseidon
has broken in pieces on the sea,
driven by mighty winds and massive waves,
few swimmers only
escaping
shoreward from the gray sea,
their flesh encrusted with brine—
and welcome is their step onto land
fleeing consummate evil—
just so was her husband welcome to her.
And now there was no way to let her white arms go
from around his neck;