Which Translation: The Odyssey

Richard Whitaker

2017 · Accentual verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
56
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

Richard Whitaker is a South African classicist and Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Cape Town, specializing in Roman love poetry and oral literature.

Whitaker translated into free verse with a five-beat line that Emily Wilson described as having ‘some memory of blank verse in its bones’. The most distinctive feature of his Odyssey was the incorporation of South African words like ‘imbongi’ (praise poet), ‘assegais’ (spears), and ‘knobkierie’ (club). To remind readers that Homer’s world was an oral culture of relatively small communities, he avoided words like ‘king’ in favor of ‘chief’.

Despite its somewhat archaizing and unidiomatic English, Whitaker’s translation has been praised for providing a new, less Eurocentric perspective on the Odyssey.

Publication History

  • 2017 — New Voices Publishing, The Odyssey of Homer: A Southern African Translation ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me, Muse, of that resourceful man who trekked
far and wide, when he’d sacked Troy’s holy place;
he saw many towns of men and came to know
their minds, his spirit suffering on the sea
as he strove to bring his comrades home alive;
he failed, much though he longed to save them,
for their own blind folly cut them down
– fools, who ate the oxen of Hyperion
the sun-god, who took away their homecoming.
Daughter of Zeus, tell us the tale from there...

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young suitors of mine, Odysseus has died,
but, keen though you are to wed me, wait until
I complete this cloth, so the yarn’s not wasted –
a winding-sheet for the hero, Laertes,
when cruel fate and pitiless death remove him;
so no Akhaian gossip can say in public
that a rich man has been laid out with no shroud.’
So she spoke, and our proud spirits obeyed.
But while she wove at her great loom by day,
at night she unpicked, by torchlight, what she’d made.
For three years she lulled and tricked the Akhaians;
but in the fourth, as the seasons circled round,
a woman of hers, who knew the truth, told us,
and we found her as she unpicked the shining cloth.
And so she had to finish it, against her will.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You gods are cruel, and jealous above all,
you resent goddesses’ sleeping openly with
mortals, or if one makes a man her husband.
When rose-fingered Dawn picked out Orion,
you easy-living gods resented it,
and on Ortygia chaste Artemis
shot and killed him with her kindly arrows.
And when Demeter gave way to her heart’s
desire and made love with Iasion
in the thrice-ploughed field, Zeus noted it at once
and killed him with a flashing thunderbolt.
And now you gods resent my mortal lover,
whom I rescued, as he rode his ship’s keel,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting on the shore, pining
for home, eyes filled with tears, as his sweet life
ebbed away. The nymph no longer pleased him;
but he still had to sleep with her by night
in her hollow cave, she willing, he reluctant.
By day he sat on the rocky sea-shore,
rending his heart with groans and tears and grief,
as he gazed, weeping, over the unwearied sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So saying, Odysseus came out from the bush
and with his powerful hand broke off a leafy
branch to hide his male sex and nakedness.
He strode out like a mighty mountain lion
who prowls, eyes blazing, through blasts of wind
and rain to attack the cattle, or the flocks,
or wild buck; but now his stomach urges him
to enter a well-
made kraal and try its sheep;
so Odysseus, all naked, driven by need,
went to mingle with the girls with braided hair.
Crusted with salt, he looked a shocking sight;
in fear, they scattered along the spits of sand.
Only Alkinoos’ daughter stayed; Athene
steadied her limbs and put courage in her heart.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So the famous imbongi sang. But Odysseus
gave in, the tears ran down and wet his cheeks.
As a wife collapses, weeping, on the body
of her husband, who falls before his people,
trying to ward off the day of doom from town
and children; seeing him gasp out his life,
she ululates over his body, as men beat her
with assegais about the head and shoulders
and drag her off to toil and suffer as a slave,
and her cheeks are wasted with pitiful grief –
so pitiful tears fell from Odysseus’ eyes.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
“I spoke. He did not answer from his cruel heart,
but leaping up laid hands upon my comrades,
snatching two, he smashed them against the floor
like puppies; their brains oozed out and wet the ground.
Tearing them limb from limb, he made his meal
and ate, like a mountain lion, every part –
their entrails and flesh and marrow-filled bones.
Witnessing these horrendous deeds, in helplessness
of heart we wept and raised our arms to Zeus.
But when the Kyklops had stuffed his belly full
with eating human flesh and drinking milk,
he lay stretched out in the cave among his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Kyklops, you ask my name, well, I shall tell you;
then you give me a guest-gift, as you promised.
‘No One’ is my name – ‘No One’ is what my
mother, father, and other comrades call me.’
“I spoke. He answered from his cruel heart:
‘I’ll eat No One last of all his comrades,
the others first – that is my guest-gift to you.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Where do you come from? Of what parents? From which town?
The mutis in the drink did not bewitch you!
I’m astounded – no other man who drank them,
who let them down his throat, stayed unbewitched;
you have a mind that cannot be enchanted.
You must be resourceful Odysseus – Hermes
of the golden wand always said you’d come
in a quick black ship, returning home from Troy.
But come, put your sword back in its sheath
and let’s go to bed, so, when we have slept
together and made love, we’ll trust each other.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
“She spoke, and I had the thought, the impulse
to hold the shade of my departed mother.
Three times my spirit urged me to embrace her,
three times like a dream or shadow she slipped
right through my arms. Sharp grief rose in my heart,
and I said, addressing her with winged words:
‘Mother, why will you not let me touch you?
Even in Hades, we could hold each other,
both taking some cold comfort in our tears.
Or is this just a phantom that Persephonē
has sent here to swell my pain and sorrow?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Do not make light of death to me, Odysseus.
I’d rather be bywoner of some landless
man without a livelihood, on earth,
than inkosi over all the dead and gone.
But come, let’s speak about my noble son:
did he go as an induna to the war?
And tell me what news you have of Peleus:
do the Myrmidons still respect him, or do they
dishonour him in Phthia and in Hellas
because old age slows down his hands and feet?
I’m not there in the sunlight to protect him
as the kind of man I was when, once, at Troy
I slaughtered their best warriors for the Akhaians.
If I came back to Peleus’ house like that,

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come, famed Odysseus, the Akhaians’ glory,
moor your ship here, and listen to our song.
For none, sailing his ship past, has not heard
the honey-sweet voice that issues from our lips –
all have sailed on happier and wiser men.
For we know all that Trojans and Akhaians,
by the gods’ will, suffered before Troy;
we know all things upon the fruitful earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
For unhappy mortals death is always bad,
but worst of fates must be to die of hunger.
Come then, let’s round up Helios’ best oxen
and sacrifice them to the gods in heaven.
If we reach Ithaka, our native land,
we must at once build a lavish temple
for Helios, and fill it with fine treasure.
But if, angry about his straight-horned oxen,
he, and the other gods, should wish to wreck our ship,
I’d rather drown and lose my life at once
than slowly waste away on a desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So saying, he entered the well-appointed house
and went straight through the hall and to the suitors.
But black death and fate laid hold of Argos
after twenty years, just as he saw Odysseus.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As a man turns a paunch stuffed with fat and blood
over a blazing fire, this way and that,
wanting to finish braaing it very quickly,
so Odysseus tossed this way and that, thinking
how he could attack the shameless suitors,
one against many. Then Athene came
from heaven, looking just like a woman,
and stood above his head and spoke to him:
“Why don’t you sleep, unluckiest of men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
The suitors spoke. At once cunning Odysseus
took the great bow up and looked at every part.
Then, as a skilled lyre-player and singer
easily stretches a new string round its peg,
tying the twisted sheep-gut at both ends,
so Odysseus nonchalantly strung the bow
and with his right hand, tried and plucked the string
that sang out like a swallow’s lovely cry.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Then, stripping off his rags, cunning Odysseus
leapt to the threshold, clutching bow and quiver
filled with arrows. He shook out the quick shafts
right before his feet, and then said to the suitors:
“This deadly game is played out to the end.
Now, if Apollo grants my prayer, I’ll strike
another target that no man yet has struck.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spoke, attached the hawser of a dark-prowed ship
to a pillar, slung it about the roundhouse,
then drew it tight, so no foot could touch the ground.
And just as doves or long-winged thrushes, flying
home to roost, fall into nets spread over
a thicket and find a painful resting place,
so the girls’ heads lined up, round each neck
a noose, so they would die a pitiful death.
Their feet kicked a little while, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
This she said to test her husband. Odysseus,
flaring up, replied to his true-hearted spouse:
“Wife, what you’ve said has cut me to the quick.
Who moved my bed? Even for an expert
it would be hard – unless some god came here
and lightly moved it to another place.
But no mortal man, however young and strong,
could shift it, for a great secret was built
into that bed, made by me and no one else.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As men in the water rejoice at the sight
of land, when Poseidon has smashed their ship
at sea with driving winds and powerful waves;
a few escape the grey salt ocean, swim
towards the land, bodies crusted with brine,
and, their troubles over, come ashore rejoicing –
so she rejoiced to see her husband, and still
would not remove her white arms from his neck.