Which Translation: The Odyssey

Denison Bingham Hull

1978 · Blank verse

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Biography

Denison Bingham Hull (1897-1988) was a Harvard-educated American architect, foxhunter, and classical scholar. Son of U.S. Representative Morton Denison Hull, he began reading Greek in prep school and continued at Harvard. He restored the Old First Church in Old Bennington, Vermont (1935-1937), and was Master of Foxhounds of the Fox River Valley Hunt. He was a trustee of the American Farm School in Thessaloniki and received the Gold Cross and Order of the Phoenix from the Greek government.

Hull translated the Odyssey into blank verse, privately published in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1978 before being distributed by Ohio University Press. He later translated the Iliad in the same manner (1982).

Hull’s translations were largely overlooked by scholars, perhaps because he was a learned amateur rather than a professional classicist. The translations are now quite rare.

Denison Bingham Hull on Wikidata ↗

Publication History

  • 1978 — Ohio University Press, Homer's Odyssey; a translation with an introduction ★

The proem

1.1–11
Tell, Muse, of that most devious man who wandered
so far after he sacked Troy’s sacred city
and of the towns he saw, the minds he learned from,
The many woes he suffered on the sea
to save his life and bring his comrades home,
but how, although he tried, he couldn’t save them;
they died of their own recklessness, the fools:
they ate the cattle of the Sun God who
deprived them of the day they would reach home.
Goddess, Zeus’ daughter, start your tale and tell us.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
“‘Young men—my suitors since Odysseus died—
although you’re keen to marry me, just wait
till my web’s done; my yarn won’t then be wasted.
This is Laertes’ shroud, made for the day
his fate, death, lays him low; so the Achaean
women of this land won’t be indignant
with me that he who won so much lies shroudless.’
So she spoke, and our manly hearts obeyed.
Then every day she wove on her big loom
and every night by torchlight she unwove it.
She fooled the Achaeans three years by this trick,
but when time passed, and the fourth year came round,
one of her women who had known it, told us.
We caught her pulling out her lovely web,
and so against her will she had to finish.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You gods are cruel, jealous above all,
resenting goddesses who sleep with men
without disguise if one is made her husband.
When rosy-fingered Dawn had picked Orion
you easy-living gods resented it,
till in Ortygia Artemis the chaste
came to him with her painless shafts, and killed him.
And when Demeter, yielding to desire,
united with Iasion in love
upon a thrice-ploughed field, Zeus learned it soon,
and killed him with a shining thunderbolt.
Now, gods, you envy me the man I keep.
I rescued him riding upon a keel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
and found him sitting on the shore, his eyes
were never dry; life ebbed away as he
wept for his home; the nymph no longer pleased him.
But still he had to sleep all night beside her,
she willing, he unwilling, in the cave;
all day he sat upon the rocky seashore,
while his heart broke, with tears and moans and grief;
and shedding tears he gazed over the sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So saying, Odysseus crept out from the bushes,
and with his hands broke off a branch of leaves
from the dense brush to shield his genitals;
then started boldly like a hill-bred lion
who, wet and windblown, walks with blazing eyes,
and goes among the oxen, sheep and deer,
his belly urging him to go even
into the crowded fold to attack the sheep.
In this way, naked as he was, Odysseus
was going to join the maids, compelled by need.
Crusted with salt he looked fearful to them,
and they fled hither and thither on the banks.
Only Alcinous’ daughter stayed; Athene
filled her with courage and drained off her fear.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
The singer sang the song. Odysseus melted,
and tears poured from his eyes and wet his cheeks.
And as a woman weeps clutching her husband
who fell before his city and its people
fighting to keep disaster from his children,
and sees him gasp and die, she clings to him,
and screams shrilly, while those behind her strike
upon her back and shoulders with their spear-butts,
and lead her off to slavery and labor,
her cheeks aflame with pitiful distress,
so did tears trickle from Odysseus’ eyelids.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“Cold-heartedly he did not answer me,
but started up, laid hands on my companions,
seized two, and slammed them on the ground like puppies;
their brains poured on the ground and drenched the earth.
Cutting them limb from limb, he fixed his supper,
and like a lion, leaving nothing, ate them,
their entrails, flesh, and bones containing marrow.
“We wailed and lifted up our hands to Zeus
on seeing his cruel acts, but we felt helpless.
Then when the Cyclops had filled up his belly
by eating human flesh and drinking milk,
he stretched out in the cave among his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, you asked me what my glorious name is.
I’ll tell you if you’ll give the gift you promised.
My name is Noman; Noman’s what my mother,
my father, comrades and all others call me.’
“He answered with no pity in his heart:
‘I shall eat Noman last, after his comrades.
I’ll eat them first. And that will be your gift.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“‘Who are you and from where? What town and parents?
I marvel that you drank and weren’t enchanted.
No other man’s withstood my drugs at all
when once they’ve passed the barrier of his teeth.
You have a mind that’s proof against enchantment.
You travel much, Odysseus; Hermes always
is telling me that you will come to me
when you’re returning to your home from Troy.
But come now, sheath your sword, and then we two
can climb into our bed, so that by joining
in love in bed we shall trust one another.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“So she spoke, and pondering in my heart,
I wished I might embrace my mother’s soul.
Three times I started with an urge to hold her;
three times she fluttered like a dream or shadow
out of my hands. My grief became still sharper,
and calling her I spoke with winged words:
“‘Mother, why won’t you wait so I can hold you,
embracing with both arms in Hades’ house,
and both be satisfied by icy mourning?
Are you a phantom of Persephone’s,
sent here to make me sigh still more with sorrow?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Odysseus, don’t console me for my death.
I’d rather be a serf and serve another,
some poor man who has not enough to live on,
than be the lord of all the dead who’ve perished.
Come, tell me something of my noble son,
whether he’s gone to war a champion
or not. And tell me what you’ve learned of Peleus;
is he still honored by the Myrmidons
in Hellas or in Phthia now, or not,
because old age constrains his hands and feet?
For I’m no longer in the light to help him
as I once was upon the Trojans’ plain
killing the best of them to help the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“‘Come, wise Odysseus, glory of the Achaeans,
and land your ship so you can hear our song.
For no one yet has passed here in a black ship
before he’s heard the sweet song from our throats;
but he who has enjoyed it, leaves enlightened.
For we know what the Argives and the Trojans
suffered in spacious Troy at the gods’ will;
we know whatever may occur on earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All deaths are hateful to us wretched mortals,
but death from hunger is a pitiful fate.
So let’s cut out the best of Helios’ cattle,
and sacrifice them to the gods in heaven.
If we reach Ithaca, our native country,
we’ll quickly put a costly temple up
to Helios, and fill it full of statues.
But if he’s furious about the cattle
and wants us wrecked, and all the gods agree,
I’d rather swallow waves and die at once
than waste away upon this desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So he spoke, and entered the well-placed house,
striding straight to the suitors in the great hall.
But Argos’ lot, dark death, took him the moment
he’d seen Odysseus after nineteen years.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man tosses a pudding filled
with blood and fat over a blazing fire
from side to side, longing to broil it quickly,
so he twisted from side to side, and wondered
how he could lay his hands upon the suitors,
one against many. But Athene came
down from heaven, appearing like a woman.
She leaned over his head, and spoke to him:
“Why wakeful now, you most ill-fated man?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So spoke the suitors; but wily Odysseus,
when he had held the bow and looked it over,
then, as a singer who knows lyres well,
easily draws a string on a new peg,
holding the loop of sheepgut on each side,
so did Odysseus string the bow with ease.
Plucking with his right hand, he tried the string;
it softly sang a song just like a swallow’s.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Then wily Odysseus stripped off his old rags,
leaped to the threshold with his bow and quiver
full of arrows, and quickly poured them out
at his feet, and addressed the suitors this way:
“This perilous job has come about at last,
and now with luck I’ll find another mark
no man has hit, if Apollo grants my prayer.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spoke, attached a cable from a ship
to a tall column, flung it round the round-house,
and stretched it so no foot could touch the ground.
Like thrushes with long wings, or doves who’ve struck
a snare set in a thicket where they sought
shelter, but found a hateful bed received them,
so were their heads in line, while round their throats
were nooses so they’d die most pitifully.
They struggled with their feet a bit, not long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She spoke to test her husband, but Odysseus,
vexed with this wife who knew her duties, cried:
“Woman, the words you spoke have made my heart ache!
Who’s moved my bed? It would be hard for even
a skillful man, unless a god should come
and move it easily to another place.
No mortal, even in the prime of life,
could move it, and a secret sign was built
into the bed that I, none other, made.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As sight of land is welcome to men swimming
whose ship Poseidon smashed up in the sea,
driven by the wind and the heavy waves,
and some escape the gray sea to the land
by swimming, and with skin crusted with salt,
they gladly walk ashore, escaped from death,
so was her husband welcome to her sight;
she couldn’t take her arms from round his neck.