Which Translation: The Odyssey

Mordaunt Barnard

1876 · Blank verse

Features

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11
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

Mordaunt Roger Barnard (1828-1906) was an English clergyman from Yorkshire. Educated at Charterhouse, Rugby, and Christ’s College, Cambridge, he served as British Chaplain in Oslo and as Vicar of Margaretting, Essex. In addition to Homer, he translated Scandinavian works, including the first English edition of Valdemar Adolph Thisted’s novel ‘Letters from Hell’.

Barnard saw his purpose as assisting students in mastering the original, by producing a translation that was as literal as the requirements of meter would allow.

His blank verse Odyssey is a minor entry in the history of Homer translations and received limited critical attention.

Mordaunt Barnard on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1876 — Williams and Norgate, The Odyssey of Homer, rendered into English blank verse ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Muse! tell me of the man with much resource,
Who wandered far, when sacred Troy he sacked;
Saw towns of many men, learned all they knew,
Wanting his own life and his friends’ return,
Yet them he saved not, earnest though he was,
For by their own temerity they died.
Fools! who devoured the oxen of the sun,
Who from them took the day of their return.
These, child of Jove! from some source tell us this.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘“Young suitors! since Ulysses now is dead,
‘“Delay to urge my marriage on me till
‘“The web I finish, lest my threads be vain.
‘“For brave Laertes ’tis a winding sheet,
‘“When of long-sleeping death the fate shall come,
‘“That no Greek matron may indignant be
‘“That one so rich should die without a shroud.”
‘This said she, and our noble mind agreed.
‘She, while by day the ample web she wove,
‘Unravelled it by torchlight in the night.
‘Three years by craft she thus misled the Greeks;
‘But when the fourth year came and hours went on,
‘One of her women told, who knew it well,
‘And her we found unravelling the web;
‘So she completed it against her will.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
‘Hard above all and jealous are ye Gods,
‘Who grudge that Goddesses should mate with men
‘In open wedlock, should one choose a spouse.
‘Aurora of the rosy fingers chose
‘Orion, and ye tranquil Gods were wroth.
‘[Him chaste Diana of the golden throne
‘Slew in Ortygia with her painless darts.]
‘The fair-belted Ceres with Iasion,
‘To passion yielding, was in wedlock joined
‘In the thrice furrowed field; not long unknown
‘To Jove, who killed him with his gleaming bolt.
‘Ye Gods are jealous that a mortal man
‘Is here, whom clinging to the keel I saved

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him on the shore; his eyes from tears
Were never dry; his sweet life ebbed away
In grief for home; the nymph no longer pleased,
Though by her in the cave at night he slept
Perforce, unwilling by a willing spouse.
By day he sate upon the rocks and beach,
Vexing his mind with tears, and groans and griefs,
And weeping looked upon the barren sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Thus speaking from the copse Ulysses came,
And with a strong hand a leafy bough he broke
From the thick wood, his person to conceal.
He went as goes a lion in his strength,
Bred on the mountains, spite of rain and wind;
His eyes are glaring; and he goes among
Cows, ewes, or deer, while hunger drives him on
The thickly-peopled sheep-fold to attack.
So ’mong the maidens, naked as he was,
Ulysses dared to go, for sore his need;
Dreadful he seemed to them, besmeared with brine.
To the high banks confusedly they ran
Alarmed; the daughter of Alcinoü
Alone remained; Minerva to her mind
Gave strength, and terror from her limbs removed.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
Thus sang the famous bard: Ulysses wept,
And from his eyes a tear bedewed his cheeks.
As wails a woman, clinging to her spouse,
Who for his home and countrymen has died,
From town and children seeking to repel
The day so pitiless; she sees him breathe
His dying gasp, and lying on him weeps;
Behind, the foe her back and shoulders strike,
And bear her off, a slave, to toil and woe,
While her cheeks fade away with piteous grief;
Ulysses so a piteous tear let fall.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
‘He with relentless mind made no reply,
‘But rushing onward seized upon my friends,
‘And grasping two he dashed them to the ground,
‘Like puppies, and their brains bedewed the earth.
‘Tearing them limb-meal he prepared a feast,
‘And, like a lion on the mountains bred,
‘Devoured them, nor a fragment left behind
‘Of entrails, flesh, or marrow-moistened bones.
‘We, weeping, lifted up our hands to Jove,
‘When such abominable deeds we saw,
‘And helpless terror seized upon our minds.
‘Soon as his mighty maw the Cyclops filled,
‘Eaten man’s-flesh and washed it down with milk,
‘He lay within the cave, among the sheep.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘“Cyclops! thou askest me my noble name.
‘“I’ll tell thee; give the guest gift as thou said’st.
‘“My name is Noman, and me Noman call
‘“My mother, father, and all other friends.”
‘I spake; he answered with relentless mind:
‘“Noman I’ll eat the last of all his friends,
‘“The others first; this shall thy guerdon be.”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘“Who art thou? whence? what city, parents thine?
‘“I wonder thou hast drunk those drugs, nor art
‘“Bewitched: no other man whoe’er has drunk,
‘“And let them pass the barrier of his teeth,
‘“Has borne against them; but within thy breast
‘“There is a mind against enchantment proof.
‘“Ulysses sure thou art, of much resource,
‘“Whom Hermes of the golden rod announced
‘“To come, returning in his ship from Troy.
‘“Come, put thy sword within its sheath, that we
‘“May on this couch ascend, and each with each
‘“Pledges of love and friendship interchange.”

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
‘She spake; but I with eagerness desired
‘Of my dead mother to embrace the shade.
‘I thrice rushed on; my soul compelled th’ embrace;
‘Thrice, like a shadow or a dream, my grasp
‘She fled, and more grief agonised my heart.
‘Then I addressed her with these wingèd words:
‘“My mother! why not wait for me, who am
‘“So eager to embrace thee, that e’en here
‘“In Hades we may twine our loving hands,
‘“And with cold sorrow both be satisfied?
‘“Or does the noble Proserpine but raise
‘“Some phantom, that I more may grieve and wail?”

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘“Noble Ulysses! make not light of death;
‘“I’d rather be a serf, another’s slave,
‘“And be a landless man, of substance small,
‘“Than be the king of all departed dead.
‘“But tell me tidings of my noble son,
‘“If as a chief he followed to the war:
‘“Tell me if aught of Peleus thou hast heard:
‘“Holds he his state yet, ‘mid the Myrmidons?
‘“In Hellas, Phthia, do they him despise,
‘“Because old age afflicts his hands and feet?
‘“In the sun’s rays I was not there to aid,
‘“Such as I once was when, in spacious Troy
‘“The Greeks protecting, I the chief men slew.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘“Far-famed Ulysses! glory of the Greeks!
‘“Come stay thy ship and listen to our song.
‘“No one e’er passes this way in a ship
‘“But from our throats our honeyed voice he hears:
‘“Delighted and much wiser home he goes.
‘“How Greeks and Trojans by the Gods’ decree
‘“In Troy have laboured, all, we know it all,
‘“Know all that happens on the fertile earth.”

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
‘“All deaths are sad to miserable men;
‘“To die by hunger saddest of them all.
‘“Come let us drive the best cows of the Sun,
‘“And to the Gods who in the wide sky dwell
‘“Do sacrifice. If e’er to Ithaca,
‘“Our native land, we go, we will erect
‘“To the Hyperion Sun a temple rich,
‘“And off’rings good and many place therein.
‘“If for the straight-horned cows enraged, he will
‘“Destroy the ship, and other Gods assent,
‘“I’d rather swallow once the wave and die,
‘“Than in a desert isle be squeezed in drops.”

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
He spoke, and passed the well-built house within,
And straightway to the noble suitors went;
But black death’s fate seized Argus suddenly,
Seeing Ulysses in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when one turns before a blazing fire
From side to side a paunch, with fat and blood
Replete, and wishes it were roasted soon;
So here and there he rolled, reflecting how
He on the shameless suitors might lay hands,
Alone on many. Near, Minerva came
Down from the sky, a woman in her form,
And standing o’er his head addressed him thus:
‘Why wakest thou? ill fated above all!

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So spake the suitors: but Ulysses wise
When he had handled and well viewed the bow,—
As when a man well skilled in harp and song,
On a new pin strains easily the string,
Fitting with well-twisted entrail of the sheep,—
So carefully Ulysses stretched the bow,
And in his right hand took and tried the string
Which twanged well, like a swallow in its note.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
The wise Ulysses bared him of his rags,
And leaping on the spacious threshold stood;
The bow and quiver filled with arrows held,
Poured the swift weapons forth upon the ground
Before his feet, and to the suitors said:
‘This harmless contest is at last complete:
‘Now for another mark, which no one yet
‘Has struck, and I will see if I can strike;
‘And may Apollo’s fame on me bestow!’

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spake; and from a pillar of the tow’r
Hanging the cable of a dark-proved ship
Put it around them, stretching it on high
That no one with her feet might reach the ground.
As when the long-winged throstles or the doves
Strike on a net, which in a bush is placed,
Ent’ring their nest, whom a sad couch awaits,
So they in order held their heads; round all
Their necks were nooses; ’twas a wretched death.
They quivered with their feet, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She thus to try her husband spoke; but he
Disturbed, addressed again his prudent wife:
‘Lady! the word thou speakest grieves my heart.
‘Who has removed my couch elsewhere? ’twere hard
‘E’en for a very skillful one, unless
‘A God should come, and he could, if he willed,
‘With ease remove it to another place:
‘But none of mortal men alive, not one
‘In prime of life, could move its fastenings;
‘For a great wonder in that well-made bed
‘Was wrought, which I and no one else contrived.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As welcome would the land appear to those
Who swim, whose well-made ship, compelled by wind
And strong waves, Neptune in the sea has wrecked,
And swimming from the white sea few escape
To land, while much brine gathers round their flesh,
And gladly step ashore escaping woe;
So when she saw him welcome was her spouse,
Nor from his neck her white arms loosed she yet;