Which Translation: The Odyssey

J. G. Cordery

1897 · Blank verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
35
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

John Graham Cordery CSI (1833-1900) was a British Indian Civil Service officer who served as Resident at Hyderabad and held other senior administrative posts in India.

Cordery translated the Odyssey into blank verse as literally as possible, eschewing all mock-archaic diction in the belief that Homer’s language was not viewed as such by his original audience. His aim as to bring the poem to a wider English audience.

Cordery’s Odyssey received a review in The Spectator in August 1898 and was recognized as a competent scholarly effort, but never achieved wide circulation. It remains a minor but respectable entry in the Victorian tradition of Homer translation.

Publication History

  • 1897 — Methuen, The Odyssey of Homer ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Sing through my lips, O Goddess, sing the man
Resourceful, who, storm-buffeted far and wide,
After despoiling of Troy’s sacred tower,
Beheld the cities of mankind, and knew
Their various temper! Many on the sea
The sorrows in his inmost heart he bore
For rescue of his comrades and his life;
Those not for all his effort might he save;
Fools, of their own perversities they fell,
Daring consume the cattle of the Sun
Hyperion, who bereft them of return!
That we too may have knowledge, sing these things,
Daughter of Zeus, beginning whence thou wilt!

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Princes, ye who woo me thus,
Seeing that divine Odysseus is no more,
Refrain from pressing on your suits, until
I shall have ended quite this woven cloth
(So that my labour may not be in vain),
A shroud to swathe Laertes, against the day
He meets the doom of melancholy death;
Lest else Achaian women cry me shame,
Amongst the townfolk, that, despite his wealth,
They see him lying shroudless.’ So she spake,
And our high tempers yielded to her word.
Then every day upon that web she wove
What she unwove by torchlight in the nights,
And three years long so guiled the Achaian Chiefs,
Till some accomplice among her women told,
And in the act, unweaving her fine work,
We found her; then, however loth, perforce,
She made the task complete.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“Ah hard of heart, and jealous over-much—
Exceeding jealous, Gods! Who alway grudge
The Goddesses our loves with mortal men,
When unconceal’d we make ourselves such mates!
Thus was it, when rose-finger’d Dawn divine
Took to herself Orion; ye the Gods
Begrudged her passion from your blissful thrones,
Till in Ortygia holy Artemis
Pass’d o’er him with her gentle darts and slew.
Thus was it, when gold-hair’d Demeter loved
Jason, and yielding to her fond desire
Lay with him in a thrice-plough’d fallow field.
No long while Zeus was unaware, but struck
And slew him with a white-hot flash from heaven.
This is it now, when ye the Gods begrudge
That this loved mortal in my house abides.
Yet him I rescued on his keel afloat

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting on the shore, his eyes
Big with unceasing tears, and in lament
For his return the sweetness of his life
Was ebbing fast away: since now no more
The heavenly Nymph was pleasing in his sight!
The nights perforce inside the grot he lay,
Unloving, by her loving; but all days
Sitting amongst the rocks and sands he spent,
Straining his eyes across the barren sea,
In sorrow and lamentation, weeping still.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Speaking, divine Odysseus stooped, and came
From out the thicket, off the brushwood green
First plucking, to protect his nakedness,
A leafy branch, and onward moved, most like
Some lion, on the mountains nursed, in might
Disdainful, who through rain and wind makes way,
A fire within his eyes, for sheep or ox
Prowling, or wilder buck, his belly’s pinch
Driving him to adventure on the flocks
Though thick the habitation; in such wise
Odysseus to those fair-haired maiden’s went,
Nor recked his nakedness, so sore his need.
But dire to them his aspect, all with brine
Befoul’d, and in a panic scattered, all
Ran to each point and foreland: only stood
Alcinous’ daughter, by Athene filled
With courage, and her limbs all freed from fear:

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So sang the glorious Minstrel of these things:
With grief Odysseus inly was consumed.
Tears dropped from either eyelid down his cheeks.
Ev’n as in tears a woman falling clasps
Her husband, who before his people’s eyes
Hath perished for his children and his home;
And she hath seen him in his agony,
And wildly across his body showering herself
Lies shrieking, till her enemies lead her off,
Pricking her with their lances from behind
To slavery, and to bear distress and toil,
While her fair cheeks thenceforward fall away
In grief most piteous; such the piteous tears
Odysseus shed.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
I spoke; he gave no answer, pitiless,
But springing on my comrades threw his hands
On two, and gripped them, as a man picks whelps
From a wolf’s litter, and against the ground
Dashed their heads down, whose brains bedewed the earth.
Then limb from limb he cut them up, and made
His meal, but ate as lion eats, nor left
Bone, marrow, flesh, or entrail, undevoured.
Beholding that his barbarism, in tears
We sate and lifted up our hands to Zeus,
Vainly, all lost in impotent despair.
When he had glutted his huge stomach full
With flesh of man and draughts of unmix’d milk,
Stretching him out at length amidst his flocks
He laid him down inside the den,

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, thou askest what my name renowned,
And I inform thee; but, as thou hast said,
So do, and give some token of thy grace.
My name is Noman; Noman am I called
In my own house, and by my friends abroad.’
I spoke; but he remorsefully replied:
‘Noman shall like his comrades be devoured,
But last of all; this favour shall be his.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who and whence art thou? Where thy home? And who
Begat thee? Wonder seizes me that thou
Hast drunk these drugs, not yielding to their charm.
No other man hath e’er resisted these,
When once they passed the barrier of his teeth.
Proof to all magic must thy mind be framed.
Odysseus thou, the myriad-minded man,
Who, as gold-wanded Argeïphontes oft
Would tell me, hither should arrive some day
Returning on his swift black bark from Troy!
Nay, sheathe that sword; and let us mount my bed
Together, that, partaking love’s delights,
Each in the other may have trust henceforth.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
She spoke; and I most earnestly desired
To hold my Mother’s Spirit in mine arms;
Thrice I sprang forward for the dear embrace;
Thrice like a shadow or a dream it slid
Out of my hands; my sorrow wax’d the more;
And I addressed her thus with winged words:
‘My mother, wherefore waitst thou not to take
My dear embrace, that even in Death’s abode
Fond arms around each other we might cast
Once more, and with lament relieve our hearts?
Or what false Phantom this, create and sent
To mock me by august Persephone,
Only that I, beguiled, may mourn the more?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Nay, sage Odysseus; gloze me not my death.
For I would liefer live a hireling serf,
To drudge for ever in a master’s field—
Some poor man’s field with little substance blest-
Than reign the Monarch here of all the Dead!
Rather inform me of my noble son.
Came he to be pre-eminent in war?
And tell me, if of blameless Peleus, aught
Hath reach’d thine ears. Do men dishonour him
In Phthia or in Hellas? Since old age
Now binds him, hand and foot, nor I am near
(No more abiding in the sun-lit earth),
To stand his helper by that olden might
Wherewith in Troy’s rich fields for Argos’ sake
I slew the foe by thousands.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Hither, O hither, thou of much renown,
Achaia’s boast, Odysseus! Ne’er hath passed
Any aboard his galley by this path,
Ere he hath hearkened from our lips the strain
We hymn thus sweetly. So he goeth his way
After great pleasure and with love increased;
For all those things we know that in broad Troy
Trojans and Argives by the Gods’ high will
Endured together; yea, whatever things
Have happened on the teeming earth, we know.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
‘Death in all shapes is hideous unto men;
But to be doomed to famine—this the worst!
Rise then, and of these cattle of the Sun
Seize out the best, and sacrifice thereof
To all Immortals habitant in Heaven,
But soothe their lord Hyperion with a vow
That, if hereafter to our native land
We win our way, a costly temple there
To His great Godhead we will build, and lay
Offerings upon the altar, many and rich.
Yea, though in anger for these horned kine
He fain would sink our galley, and the Gods
Grant him his pleasure—better yet I hold
In one last gasp to perish once for all
Drowned in the wave, than die by inches here,
So sorely straitened in a barren isle!’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
He spoke, and enter’d the wide-chambered house,
Straight passing toward the Suitors in the hall.
But death closed Argus’ eyes, with faithful look
Fixed on Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man before a blazing fire
Now on this side may turn, and now on that,
A paunch with rich lard and black pudding stuffed,
For he desires it dress’d with all good speed;
So now on this side, now on that, he writhed,
In meditation how to lay strong hands
Upon the violent Suitors’ shameless crew,
Being one against so many. But from heaven
Descending to his couch Athene came,
Guised in a woman’s form, and o’er his head
Standing addressed these winged words, and spake:
“Why, O ill-fated most of all mankind!

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
They muttered thus amongst themselves; but, when
Sage Odysseus had balanced the great bow
And scanned it throughly, as a harp-player,
Well-skilled in voice and music with all ease
Stretches around a new-fixed peg a chord,
Twining at either end the twisted gut,
So he without an effort strung the bow,
Then tried the string; full sweet the note it sang,
Clear-twittering like a swallow to his touch!

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Tossing his rags from off him, up the step
Of the great threshold sprang the deep-wiled Chief
Odysseus, in his hand the bow and full
Of shafts the quiver. These before his feet
He poured, and thus amongst the Suitors spoke:
“This rueful sport is ended; let me know
If haply I may hit another mark
That no man else hath struck before, and if
Apollo so vouchsafes me boundless fame.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
Speaking, the cable of a dark-prowed ship
Fast from a pillar of the corridor
He looped about the round-house’ pointed roof.
And drew it tight across the strait, aloft
Lest any with her feet should touch the ground,
And strung them up. As doves or thrushes plunge
Into a springe within a thicket, where
For roost they enter, but the nest is death;
So in one line with nodding heads they hung
From nooses round their necks to speed their end,
With feet no long while quivering ere they died.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She spoke, to test her husband; deeply moved,
He turned on his pure-minded wife, and said:
“My Wife, this word thou utterest breaks my heart.
Who to my hurt hath moved that bed elsewhere?
That were no easy task, unless a God
Descending by his power transplanted is.
Certes no man, though in his flower of life,
Without long toil could move it. In that bed’s
Fine framework a great token lies concealed,
Wrought by me only and by none beside.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As land to swimmers shows most welcome, when
Poseidon out in open sea hath crushed
Their well-built galley under stress of wind
And ponderous wave; but from the foam-white deep
Some few by swimming have escaped to shore
With salt-encrusted skin and panting breath;
In glee they tread the ground, scarce saved from fate;
So welcome to the wife her husband showed,
As in his eyes she looked, nor yet would loose
Her white arms for one moment off his neck.