Which Translation: The Odyssey

Herbert Jordan

2014 · Blank verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
111
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

Herbert Jordan is an American attorney, businessman, and independent scholar of Greek from Roxbury, New York, who taught himself Homeric Greek after his teenage son’s death in 1999, channeling his grief into translating Homer’s epics.

Jordan rendered the Odyssey line-for-line in blank verse, aiming not to translate literally but to ‘capture the essence of Homer’s individual lines’. He omitted some formulaic epithets and stock phrases in favor of poetic flow, producing what one reviewer of his Iliad called ‘perhaps the most readable of all the verse translations’ of Homer. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor coached him on diction and tone throughout the drafting process.

Jordan spent four to six hours daily for two years teaching himself Homeric Greek. His translation was published in the University of Oklahoma’s Classical Culture series with an introduction by E. Christian Kopff.

Publication History

  • 2014 — University of Oklahoma Press, The Odyssey of Homer ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell how he wandered, Muse, time and again
confounded, after he sacked Troy’s citadel,
how many towns he saw and learned their ways,
how many trials the man endured at sea
to save his comrades’ lives, return them home.
Hard though he tried, he failed to save those men
whose recklessness secured their own demise.
Like fools they ate the sun god Helios’ cows,
and he made certain they would not survive.
Choose where to start your story, Zeus’s daughter!
So many other men eluded ruin,

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Now that Odysseus surely died, young suitors,
impatient as you are, wait for the shroud,
which I must finish, lest my thread be wasted.
The shroud will wrap Laertes when, for him,
the doleful final fate of death arrives.
The women hereabouts would censure me
if he should lie unwrapped despite his wealth.’
“She told us that, and we men trusted her.
In fact, by day she plied the massive loom,
but after dark she took her work apart.
For three long years her trick deluded us,
but when the passing seasons brought a fourth,
a servant maid who knew the truth spoke up.
We caught her then unraveling the shroud,
and after that she finished it perforce.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You gods are cruel, and jealous most of all!
You grudge the goddesses who bed a mortal
and treat him like a husband openly.
So was it when Dawn’s fingers snatched Orion.
You gods who live at ease denied her that,
and on Ortygia, gold-throned Artemis
shot him with gentle arrows, took his life.
So was it when Demeter and Iasion
united when her passion took control
atop a thrice-plowed field, but when Zeus heard,
he cast a silver thunderbolt that killed him.
So now you gods grudge me my mortal man.
I saved him, found him floating on a keel,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him yet upon the shore. His eyes
still filled with bitter tears. His sweet life ebbed
while he, tired of Calypso, yearned for home.
He had no choice except to sleep with her,
unwilling slave to her more forceful will,
but every day he sat beside the shore
and sorrow racked his heart. He groaned, he wept,
he gazed at trackless seas as tears flowed on.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Odysseus crept from underneath the shrubs.
With powerful hands he snapped a sapling’s stem,
a leafy shoot to hide his manly parts.
He moved as might a seasoned mountain lion
who strides through driving wind and rain, his eyes
ablaze like fire, in search of oxen, sheep,
wild-ranging deer—unless his belly bids
him raid a farm and taste the cattle there.
Like him, Odysseus neared the fair young women,
despite his nakedness; he had no choice.
To them he looked repulsive, caked in brine,
and they ran terrified this way and that,
except Alcinous’ child, in whom Athena
steeled the heart and stayed her limbs from tremors.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So sang the honored minstrel while the guest
let go restraint and tears bedewed his cheeks.
As when a woman weeps upon her husband—
fallen before their city and its people,
defending helpless folk against attack,
she hears him gasp for breath and sees him die—
releasing sobs and cries of grief, while foes
use spears to beat her on her back and shoulders,
then lead her off to slavery and toil—
unmitigated sorrow mars her cheeks,
so did Odysseus’ eyes shed mournful tears.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“The ruthless-hearted man did not reply.
Instead he shot both hands toward my comrades,
seized two as if they were small pups and bashed
them on the floor, spilled dripping brains to earth.
He tore them limb from limb to make his dinner,
then like a mountain lion devoured their parts,
including flesh, entrails and marrowy bones.
We wept and held our hands aloft to Zeus,
watching these heinous deeds, but we were helpless.
After the Cyclops filled his monstrous belly,
devouring human meat, he drank fresh milk
and lay stretched out among his stock to sleep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, you asked my name, and now I will
declare it, then accept the gift you promised.
My name is No One, which is what my parents
called me at birth, and what my comrades call me.’
‘With ruthless heart he answered straightaway:
‘Well, No One shall be last for me to eat,
your comrades first. That is my gift to you.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Where are you from? Where are your kin? Your town?
I am amazed the drug did not bewitch you!
No man before you has withstood its spell,
the many who allowed it past their teeth.
Your chest contains a soul immune to witchcraft.
Indeed, you must be versatile Odysseus,
the man the Argus-slayer said would come
aboard a ship when traveling back from Troy.
Here, then! Do sheathe your weapon! Let us two
go now to bed in order that the weld
of making love will create trust between us.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“What she said roiled my heart, and I desired
to clasp, embrace my perished mother’s shade.
Three times I tried to take her in my arms,
three times she fluttered off as might a dream
or shadow, leaving me but keen heartache.
At length, frustrated, I spoke out to her:
‘Why do you not remain for my embrace
and let us throw our arms around each other,
so we can take some pleasure while lamenting?
Are you a figment that Persephone
devised to make me suffer more than ever?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Do not make light of death to me, Odysseus.
I would prefer to labor tilling land
beside a poor man who had little food
rather than rule unnumbered hosts of shades.
Now speak a word to me about my son.
Did he become preeminent in war?
And tell me what you know of noble Peleus.
Is he esteemed among the Myrmidons,
or do they slight him now in Phthia and Hellas
because old age subdues his hands and feet?
I cannot lend support where sunbeams shine.
I am not as I once was outside Troy,
when I cut down their best and saved the Argives.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come here, Odysseus, pride of broad Achaea,
the ship can wait while you enjoy our singing!
Each man who sailed a dark-hued ship past here
has listened to the voice that leaves our lips,
then went his way delighted, also wiser.
We are aware of spacious Troy and all
that Greeks and Trojans bore to please gods’ whims.
We know whatever comes to pass on earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Of all the wretched ways for men to die,
starvation is the worst, most piteous fate.
So come! We should choose Helios’ finest cows
as sacrifice to those who hold the heavens,
and if we reach our homes in Ithaca,
straightway a temple just for Helios
we shall erect and fill with bounteous treasure.
Should he be vexed enough about his stock
to smash our ship with other gods’ support,
well, I would rather die by gulping brine
than starve and waste away on this bleak isle.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
Having said that, Eumaeus went inside,
straight to the central hall where suitors lounged.
Meanwhile the fate of dismal death took Argus
once he had seen his lord, gone twenty years.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when one sears a pouch of fat and blood,
rotates it over fire this way and that,
flipping it over, so to speed the cooking,
so did Odysseus twist and flop; he searched
for means by which he could defeat the suitors,
unaided, but at length Athena neared,
disguised in mortal’s form, come down from heaven.
She stood above his head and spoke to him:
“Most sorely tried of men, why are you wakeful?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
Adroit Odysseus, while the suitors talked,
completed his perusal of the weapon.
As might a man, master of lyre and song,
easily stretch a new string on his lyre,
grasping the twisted gut at either end,
so did Odysseus easily string the bow.
His right hand plucked and tested out the string,
which sang as lovely as a swallow’s voice.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Now protean Odysseus shed his rags,
leapt to the threshold holding bow and quiver
abrim with arrows, which he emptied out,
dumped at his feet, proclaiming to the suitors:
“Thus will the baleful contest reach its end:
a target no man ever hit till now—
but if Apollo grants my prayer, I will.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
That said, he took a rope—ship’s rigging once—
and tied it to a sturdy pergola beam,
up high so no maid’s feet could reach the ground.
As when a long-winged timid dove or thrush
is captured, snared within a leafy shrub
where she would roost but finds her final sleep,
so did the women, one by one, with heads
in nooses round their necks die miserably.
Their feet twitched just a moment, not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She said that as a test of him. Odysseus,
incensed, protested to his cautious wife:
“Woman, the words you spoke have cut me deeply!
Has someone moved my bed? That would be hard
for any man, although a god could come
and simply set it in another place.
No mortal, even one in youthful prime,
could budge it. No, there is a secret made
into that bed, which I alone once built.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As when a welcome shore appears to swimmers—
oarsmen whose sturdy seagoing ship Poseidon
shattered by power of wind, of mighty waves—
a few of whom escape to reach dry land
by swimming—bodies caked with hardened brine—
and gladly step on earth, eluding fate,
so was she gladdened as she eyed Odysseus.
She could not take her pale arms from his neck.