Which Translation: The Odyssey

J. W. Mackail

1903 · Quatrains

Features

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199
Holdings
10
Reviews

Biography

John William Mackail OM FBA (1859-1945) was a Scottish classical scholar, Oxford Professor of Poetry, President of the British Academy, and son-in-law of the artist Edward Burne-Jones. He was a scholar of Virgil and the official biographer of William Morris.

Mackail translated the Odyssey into English quatrains, in three volumes published between 1903 and 1910. His verse form imposed a tight stanzaic structure on Homer’s hexameters, reflecting his deep expertise in both Greek and English poetry. Mackail also wrote the notable essay, ‘Penelope in the Odyssey.’

The Spectator called his work ‘probably the most poetical translation in our language’, while the Classical Journal later praised its smoothness and faithfulness, calling attention to how Mackail translated Homer’s epithets. Perhaps because of its stanzaic form and archaizing language, it is rather obscure today.

J. W. Mackail on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1903 — John Murray, The Odyssey ★
  • 1932 — Clarendon Press, The Odyssey; translated in verse

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
O Muse, instruct me of the man who drew
His changeful course through wanderings not a few
After he sacked the holy town of Troy,
And saw the cities and the counsel knew
Of many men, and many a time at sea
Within his heart he bore calamity,
While his own life he laboured to redeem
And bring his fellows back from jeopardy.
Yet not his fellows thus from death he won,
Fain as he was to save them : who undone
By their own hearts’ infatuation died,
Fools, that devoured the oxen of the Sun,
Hyperion: and therefore he the day
Of their returning homeward reft away.
Goddess, God’s daughter, grant that now thereof
We too may hear, such portion as we may.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
Saying to us: O youthful wooers mine,
Since dead is bright Odysseus, cease awhile
My heart to hasty marriage to incline,
“Until this web be finished, lest I leave
A labour spoiled the weaving that I weave,
A shroud for burial of the aged prince
Laertes: since it verily would grieve
“Full many Achaean women in the town,
If shroudless he should lie, who had renown
For wealth of his own gathering, when the doom
Of Death the Leveller shall strike him down.
“So spake she; and, as is the way of men,
We were persuaded. All the daytime then
At the great loom she wove, and every night
With torches set unwove her work again.
“Thus for the space of full three years did she
Deceive the Achaeans by her subtlety;
But when the fourth year brought the seasons round,
One of her maids revealed the mystery.
“And we the bright web on the loom that lay
Found her unravelling: wherefore from that day
Perforce she needs must bring it to an end.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“Jealous you are, O Gods, to envy stirred
“Beyond all others, and can never brook
On loves of Goddesses and men to look,
Whoso among us takes a bedfellow
Openly: thus when Dawn rose-fingered took
“Orion, then you Gods who live in bliss
Ceased not to grudge, till holy Artemis,
Gold-throned, her lover in Ortygia
With slumberous arrows pierced and slew for this.
“And with fair-tressed Demeter was it thus,
When she upon the son of Iasus
Let loose her heart, and on the furrowed tilth
Mixed with him in embraces amorous.
“For Zeus thereof not long being unaware
Smote with his fiery bolt and slew him there.
And likewise now again you grudge it me,
O Gods, that mortal man my bed should share.
“Yet I it was who rescued him, while he
Clung round the keel, alone, when mightily

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
And him she found upon the ocean-brim,
Where evermore his eyes with tears were dim,
And with home-sickness all the joy of life
In lamentation wore away from him.
For now no more the nymph was his delight,
Though in the hollow caverns night by night
Perforce he needs must sleep beside her, yet
With no desire could her desire requite:
And day by day on cliff or beach apart,
Fretted with tears and sighs and bitter smart
He sat, and on the sea unharvested
Gazed with the tears down-dropping, sick at heart.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So saying, bright Odysseus from his bed
Crept, and from off the bushy thicket shred
A leafy bough to hide his nakedness,
And like a lion on the mountains bred
Strode forth, that, in his might of none in awe,
With eyes afire, through rain and gusty flaw
Goes hunting after the wild woodland deer,
Or sheep or oxen: for his hungry maw
Even the fenced yard where the flocks are pent
Bids him adventure: so Odysseus went
Among the fair-tressed maids to cast himself,
Though naked: for his need was imminent.
Dreadful to them the sea-stained man drew nigh:
And up and down they ran dispersedly
Along the jutting beaches; only then
The daughter of Alcinous did not fly:
Such courage put Athena in her breast:

War-widow simile

8.521–532
By valiant-souled Athena’s help made strong,
Thereof the famous minstrel framed his song;
But melted was Odysseus, and the tear
Under his eyelids stole his cheek along.
Even such tears as by a wife are shed
Who clasps her own dear husband fallen dead
In the front rank, before the walls, where he
From town and children kept the day of dread:
And as her eyes behold him gasp and die,
She clings around him with a bitter cry;
While on her back and shoulders from behind
They smite with spears, and to captivity
Hale her away, through toil and grief to go,
And her cheeks dwindle for most piteous woe:
So piteously Odysseus weeping now
From all the rest concealed his tears’ downflow:

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“So said I, and he answered not again
With ruthless heart, but leapt upon my men,
And at a single clutch a pair of them
Caught, and like puppies dashed them on his den,
“So that their brains were spattered on the floor,
Wetting the earth: then limb from limb he tore,
And like a mountain lion supped on them
Devouring, and left nothing, less or more,
“Entrails and flesh and marrow bones; while we
Hold up to God our hands most wretchedly,
Weeping to see such deeds of wickedness,
Helpless to succour their extremity.
“But when the Cyclops with the flesh of men
Had filled his ravening maw, and swallowed then
Great draughts of his raw milk, amid his flocks
He stretched him out to sleep within his den.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
Cyclops, you ask the name men call me by:
“That will I utter forth; and likewise you
Give me a guest-gift as you sware to do.
Noman my name is: Noman am I called
By them who bare me and by all my crew.
“So said I; and he answered me straightway
With ruthless heart: Then Noman shall my prey
Be after all his fellows, and they first:
This gift I give you as my guest to-day.

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
She uttered: Who and whence of men are you?
Where is the city of your ancestry?
I marvel greatly how this cup I brew
“You drink, and yet its sorcery have withstood:
For unbewitched has none of mortal brood
Drunk of it yet or let it pass his lips;
But your breast holds against bewitchment good.
“Wandering Odysseus truly you must be,
Who in his swift black ship across the sea
Ever the golden-wanded Shining One
Said should from Troy returning visit me.
“Now lay your sword into the sheath again,
And to the bed ascend we, for us twain
Arrayed, that having lain and loved therein
Each to the other faithful may remain.

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“So said she: but I inly for a space
Mused and was full of longing to embrace
The soul of my dead mother. Thrice I sprang
Toward her, fain to clasp her face to face;
“And thrice from out my hands to clasp her spread
Like to a shadow or a dream she fled.
And grief waxed ever keener at my heart,
And winged words I spake to her and said:
“My mother, wherefore draw you thus aside
From me and will not my embrace abide
That we in this dark realm may cast our hands
Each round the other, and be satisfied
“With frozen wailing! or should this have been
A phantom only that the awful Queen
Persephone has sent me. to the end
My grief and sorrow may be yet more keen?

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“Speak not soft words concerning death to me
Glorious Odysseus: rather had I be
A thrall upon the acres to a man
Portionless and sunk low in poverty,
“Than over all the perished dead below
Hold lordship. But now tell me ere you go
Of the high prince my son, if to the war
As battle-leader he went forth or no.
“And tell me if your ears have tidings met
Concerning faultless Peleus: keeps he yet
Honour among the many Myrmidons?
Or do men hold him lightly, and forget
“His fame in Hellas and the Phthian land,
Now when old age has bound him foot and hand?
Would that I might but once again arise
Beneath the sunlight by his side to stand,
“And be his helper, in the night that then
Was mine when in wide Troy the flower of men
I slew, defending all the Argive host:

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Come hither, come, Odysseus far-renowned,
High fame of the Achaeans, lay aground
Your ship that you may listen to our voice:
For never yet has mariner been found
“That past our shore in his black ship would go,
Near the sweet sound issuing from our lips, that flow
And hence a gladder and a wiser man
Pass on his voyage: for the tale we know
“Of all the Argive and the Trojan toil
When in wide Troy the Gods’ will bred them broil,
And whatsoever things have come to pass
We know, upon the earth’s all-nurturing soil.

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Though in all shapes to wretched men’s regard
Hateful is death, yet he who pines and dies
Of hunger has the lot of all most hard.
“Of the Sun’s oxen therefore let us take
The goodliest, offering to the Gods to make,
Who hold wide heaven; and if ever to Ithaca
We come, our native country, for their sake
“Straight will we to the Sun, Hyperion,
Rear a rich shrine and lay great gifts thereon;
But if our ship he shatter in his wrath
For his high-horned oxen dead and gone,
“With all the Gods assenting, yet would I
Drink the salt billow once for all and die
Rather than linger famished and at last
On a lone island dead of hunger lie.

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So saying, to the fair-built house anon
Among the haughty suitors he passed on.
But black death fell on Argus, having seen
Odysseus after twenty years were gone.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
Even as a pudding stuffed with fat and blood
That on a glowing fire of kindled wood
Hither and thither a man turns about,
Fain that the roasting quickly be made good,
So restlessly from side to side he tossed,
Revolving what device might help him most
Upon the shameless suitors to lay hands,
Being a single man against a host.
But now Athena, as he lay awake,
From heaven descended, and in bodily make
Like to a woman stood above his head,
And uttered counsel to him thus, and spake:
“Why wake you yet, O man of misery

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
But subtle-souled Odysseus, now that he
Had balanced the great bow and carefully
Looked it all over, even as a man
In viol-playing skilled and minstrelsy
Easily stretches round a new-cut pin
The string of twisted sheep-gut, fastened in
At either end, so then Odysseus drew
The mighty bow and took no pains therein:
And with his right hand plucked the string to try;
And it rang sweetly like a swallow’s cry,

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
But subtle-souled Odysseus stripped away
From off him his disguise of mean array,
And leapt upon the mighty doorway-sill
Holding the bow and all the shafts that lay
Stored in the quiver, and before his feet
Poured out upon the floor the arrows fleet,
And there among the suitors cried aloud:
“Lo, this decisive trial is complete.
“But now another target I descry,
That no man yet has hit; and I will try
If I may touch it, and Apollo give
Once more the glory to my archery.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So said he, and the vaulted kitchen round
The cable of a blue-prowed ship he bound,
Tying it from a pillar stretched aloft
So high that no one’s feet might touch the ground.
And even as are entangled in a net,
Within a thicket of the wood is set,
Pigeons or long-winged thrushes hasting in
To roost, and doleful is the bed they get:
So by the head these hung there side by side,
And round the neck of each a noose was tied
That they might die most dismally; and they
Twitched with their feet a little, and so died.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
And rugs and fleeces.” So she spake to try
Her husband; but Odysseus ill-content
Thus to his wife wise-hearted made reply:
“O wife, this word you utter likes me ill,
Who moved the bed! that were a feat of skill
Hard to perform, except a God himself
Coming removed it lightly at his will.
“But of live mortals none, though young he be
And lusty, from its place might easily
Remove it; for a rare device was wrought
In the bed’s framing, by no man but me.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
He wept; and even as the sight of shore
Is welcome to men swimming painfully,
Whose well-wrought ship the Poseidon in the sea
Has broken by the overwhelming shock
Of tempest and the swoln waves’ injury;
And from the grey sea few who were therein
Get to dry land by swimming, and their skin
With the salt brine is crusted, and right glad
Escaping from their death to land they win:
So joyfully her lord she looked upon,
Nor would her white arms from his neck be gone,