Which Translation: The Odyssey

Ennis Rees

1960 · Accentual verse

Features

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404
Holdings
2
Reviews

Biography

Ennis Samuel Rees Jr. (1925-2009) was an American poet, translator, and professor of English at the University of South Carolina for over 30 years. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard and was named South Carolina Poet Laureate in 1984.

Rees translated the Odyssey into an accentual pentameter, with natural diction and syntax. He tried to be faithful to the original’s ideas and images, while also creating readable, flowing verse that used uncomplicated language and modern English word order. He recorded readings from both the Iliad and Odyssey on a vinyl LP in 1960.

James Dickey praised Rees’s translations as ‘among the finest of our times.’ Robert Everett-Green in The Globe and Mail championed Rees’s Iliad over Fagles and Green, writing that it ‘moves me as the others never do,’ while noting that ‘nobody else seems to have heard of it.’ The translations were largely eclipsed by Fitzgerald’s Odyssey (1961) and Lattimore’s Iliad (1951).

Ennis Rees on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1960 — Random House / Modern Library, The Odyssey of Homer ★
  • 1977 — Bobbs-Merrill, The Odyssey of Homer
  • 1991 — Macmillan, The Odyssey of Homer

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
How he wandered both long and far after sacking
The city of holy Troy. Many were the towns
He saw and many the men whose minds he knew,
And many were the woes his stout heart suffered at sea
As he fought to return alive with living comrades.
Them he could not save, though much he longed to,
For through their own thoughtless greed they died—blind fools
Who slaughtered the Sun’s own cattle, Hyperion’s herd,
For food, and so by him were kept from returning.
Of all these things, O Goddess, daughter of Zeus,
Beginning wherever you wish, tell even us.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘My ardent young suitors, gallant Odysseus is dead,
And you can’t wait for me to marry again,
But you, my wooers, must try to be patient until
I finish this shroud for lord Laertes, for him
When the painful fate of leveling and grievous death
Arrives. Naturally, I would not have my labor
Go to waste, nor any Achaean woman
Speak ill of me for not providing a shroud
For one who has amassed so great a fortune.’
“Such was her request, nor could our proud hearts
Deny it. There daily she wove at that great web,
But at night she unraveled her work by the light of torches.
Thus for three wily years she beguiled the Achaeans,
But when the fourth arrived and winter gave way
To spring, one of her women, who knew whereof
She spoke, told us all, and we surprised her
Unraveling that marvelous fabric. She finished it then,
Believe me! unwilling though she was.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“O cruel! but then you begrudging gods are ever so
When goddesses would lie with mortal men and do it
With no deception. Right well I recollect what happened
When Dawn, that rosy sweet lass, thought to have
Orion for herself. You slothful gods
Begrudged her him, of course, till in Ortygia
Cold Artemis killed him with her painless arrows. So too
When fair-haired Demeter gave in to her yearning and lay
In love with Iasion in that thrice-plowed fallow field.
Zeus soon heard of it, and with his thundering bright bolt
Demolished her lover. And now I am the one you begrudge—
Cruel gods, that can’t abide to see a mere mortal
Living with me, a man I once saved when he
All alone was adrift astride the keel of his ship,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
On the beach, sitting there with eyes full of tears, his sweet life
Trickling away in his mournful yearning for home.
The nymph he no longer found pleasing, though at night he still slept
With her in the looming caves, an unwilling man
By a nymph not at all that way. But during the day
He would sit on the rocky beach tormenting himself
With sorrows, groaning and tearful, wistfully looking
On the barren and unresting sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So saying, the good Odysseus crept out from beneath
The bushes and with his great hand reached into the thicket
And broke off a leafy branch to hide his nakedness.
Then on he went like a bold lion of the mountains
Who goes through wind and rain with his eyes of fire
In search of cattle, sheep, or wild deer, and when
His belly bids him right into the close-barred fold
To attack the flocks therein. Even such was the need
Of Odysseus as he went in his nakedness to approach that party
Of girls with hair so beautifully braided. And to them
He appeared very terrible indeed, all encrusted with brine
As he was, and they scurried in all directions mid the jutting
Banks of sand. Only Alcinous’ daughter
Remained. Made brave by Athena, who took the fear
From her limbs,

War-widow simile

8.521–532
As the famous bard sang this song, the heart of Odysseus
Melted, and tears ran down his cheeks. He wept
Like a woman who wails and throws herself wildly upon
Her dear husband, who has fallen in front of his city, fighting
To ward off from his children and home the ruthless day.
She finds him there throttling and dying and pours herself
About him, frantically shrieking, while the enemy beat her
On the back and shoulders and lead her off in fetters,
Her face all drawn and shrunken with most pitiful grief,
To a life of misery and toil. So too from the eyes
Of Odysseus came pitiful tears.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“Such was my story, but this time his ruthless heart
Made no reply. Lunging at us, he snatched up
Two of my comrades as if they were puppies and dashed them
Down at his feet where their brains ran out on the ground.
Then he cut them up and prepared his evening meal,
Which he ate like a mountain lion—meat, bones,
Entrails and all. Watching this abominable feast,
We were all but dead with fear, able only to wail
And hold up our hands to Zeus. But when the Cyclops
Had filled his monstrous belly with human flesh
And fresh milk, he stretched out to sleep on the floor of his cave
Among the sheep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“‘Cyclops, you ask my name,
A famous name, and I will tell it to you,
That you may give me the friendly gift you promised.
Nobody is my name. They all call me Nobody—
My mother, my father, and all the rest of my friends.’
“Then ruthless as ever, he answered: ‘Nobody I’ll eat
Last of all, and all the others I’ll eat before Nobody.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
Where from? Your city, your parents, where are they? I’m amazed
That you have drunk this potion and remain unenchanted.
No other man—but no one!—has ever been able
To resist this charm once it passed the barrier
Of his teeth. Your mind refuses to be
Enchanted. Surely, you must be that versatile man
Odysseus, who the slayer of Argus, god of the golden
Wand, has always said would stop off here
As he returned from Troy in his swift black ship.
But come, put your sword in its sheath, and let’s both get
In my bed, that we may make love together and come
To trust each other.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“When she had finished, my hesitant heart made me long
To embrace her, and thrice I went toward the ghost of my
Dead mother with outstretched arms, and thrice she flitted
Through them like a shadow or a dream. The pain in my heart
Grew increasingly keener, and, when I spoke, my words
Came winged with anguish:
“My mother, why don’t you wait
For me, since I am so eager to hold you close,
That even here in the house of Hades we two
Might embrace and give full vent to our cold lamenting?
Are you a mere image that mighty Persephone has sent
To mock me and make me lament and groan all the more?”

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Keen Odysseus, do not try to make me
Welcome death. I would rather live on earth
As a hireling of one who was but poor himself
Than to be king of all the ghosts there are!
But come, tell me what you know of my son,
That splendid youth who may have become a leader
In the war. And what have you heard of noble Peleus?
Is he still honored among the Myrmidon host,
Or has old age deprived him of his glory
Throughout all Hellas and Phthia? For I no longer
Live up there in the sunlight where I might be
Some help to him with strength such as was mine
At the broad city of Troy where I, in defense
Of the Argives, slew the best men the Trojans had.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Here on your way, O great glory of all the Achaeans,
Most famous Odysseus, linger awhile. Stay your ship
And listen as we two blend our voices. Never yet
Has any man rowed his black ship by this spot without hearing
The honeyed tones of our song. Such listeners enjoy
What they hear and go on all the wiser. For we know all
The suffering and hardship that Argives and Trojans endured
By will of the gods at wide Troy, and we know all
That will happen on the bountiful earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
To miserable mortals no form of death
Is less than hateful, but none is so pitifully wretched
As death by starvation! So come, let us round up the best
Of the Sun-god’s cattle and offer them up in sacrifice
To the immortal gods who rule the wide sky. And if
We ever do get home to Ithaca again,
We’ll build a rich temple to Helios, god of the sun,
And in it we’ll put all sorts of splendid things
Most precious to him. If, however, he does
Get angry with us on account of his straight-horned cattle
And chooses, with the other gods’ consent, to wreck
Our ship, why then I would surely prefer to gulp
At a wave and give up the ghost all at once, than have life
Leak out drop by drop on a desolate island!’”

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
Then Eumaeus entered the stately palace
And went straight to the hall where the lordly wooers
were feasting.
But Argus now, after nineteen long years, no sooner
Saw Odysseus again, than he gave in to fate
And lay still in the grip of black death.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
like a paunch of rich blood pudding
That a man who is eager to roast it turns quickly this way
And that above a large and blazing hot fire. Even so
Odysseus tossed and turned, pondering how
He might come to grips with the shameless wooers, he being
But one and they so many. At last Athena
Came down from the sky, and coming up close to him
In the form of a woman, she stood at his head, and said:
“Why again are you lying awake, most wretched of men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So they mocked him, but resourceful Odysseus weighed
The bow in his hands and examined it all with care.
Then, with as little effort as a skillful bard
Employs when about a new peg on his lyre he strings
The gut of a sheep and makes it fast at both ends,
Odysseus now, with equal ease, strung
The great bow. And holding it in his right hand he tested
The string, which gave back a musical twang as sweet
As the voice of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Now able Odysseus stripped his limbs of their rags
And sprang to the ample threshold, bearing the bow
And quiver full of swift arrows, which he poured out there
At his feet, and spoke these words to the wooers:
“At last
This final tough test is ended, and now I’ll shoot
At a mark which no man ever has hit, to see
If Apollo will grant me that glory.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So saying, he tied the rope of a blue-bowed ship
To a massive portico pillar, then flung it around
The rotunda’s dome, drawing it taut and high
So that none of the women could reach the ground with her feet.
Like long-winged thrushes or doves that come in to roost
In a thicket and find themselves in a net, a bed
Of misery and pain where they looked for nothing but sleep,
So the women held their heads in a row while nooses
Were laid on their necks, that they might die most wretchedly.
They twitched their feet for a while, but not very long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke, to see what her husband would say.
And Odysseus lost his composure and angrily spoke
To his clever and faithful wife: “Truly, woman,
Those words were bitter and painful! Who has moved
My bed? No easy job, I can tell you, no matter
How skilled a man were, though a god if he wished might come
And easily put it elsewhere. But no mere mortal
Alive, however young and lusty, would find it
Easy to pry that bed out of place—for I alone
Built it, and a greatly unusual feature went into
The careful construction of that elaborate bed.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And to her he was as welcome as sight
Of land to swimmers whose sturdy ship Poseidon
Has battered and shattered at sea where wind and big wave
Beat hard upon it, and sweet indeed is the moment
When the few survivors, having swum inshore and struggled
Their way through the surf, set foot at last on dry land
And escape the treacherous sea with their bodies all crusted
With brine. Such was the gladness she felt to welcome
Her husband again, as she feasted her eyes upon him
And could not for a moment take her white arms from his neck.