Which Translation: The Odyssey

Richard Wilding

2011 · Free verse

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Biography

Richard Wilding is a British classicist and civil servant whose works include ‘A Classical Anthology’ and ‘Civil Servant: A Memoir’. He began his translation of the Odyssey in his eighties.

Wilding aimed for an appealing and readable free verse translation that retained the lilt and drive of the Homeric line. He preserved many traditional names and repeated phrases, and consulted Cowper’s translation for interpretational issues.

A relatively obscure translation, it has not attracted wide critical attention.

Publication History

  • 2011 — The Book Guild, The Odyssey ★

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me my Muse, of the man, the resourceful one, who wandered
so much and so far from the sacking of Troy, the holy city.
Many the peoples whose towns he saw and whose ways he noted,
and many the sorrows he endured at sea
protecting his life and his comrades’ long journey home.
Yet he could not save his companions, hard though he strove to.
They were destroyed by their own blind folly,
the fools who feasted on the cattle of the Sun-god.
It was he who cancelled their hope of going home.
Tell us their story also, o goddess, daughter of Zeus.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
“Kind sirs, my suitors, since my noble Odysseus is dead,
wait and refrain from pressing re-marriage upon me
until I have finished this cloth, for I fear that my thread may rot.
I am weaving this pall for the hero Laertes,
against the day when the sad fate of death
shall lay him low. All other women would blame me
if I left him, a wealthy man, without a proper shroud.”
That’s what she said; in our manly pride we believed her.
From that time on she wove her great cloth by day,
and then unravelled it at night by torchlight.
Three years she escaped detection and deceived us,
but in the fourth year, when the season came round,
one of her maids who knew it all betrayed her,
and we caught her unravelling her delicate work.
So she was forced to finish the shroud.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
‘You gods, you are unjust and over-jealous,
resenting a goddess who takes to her bed a mortal
and openly wishes to wed him as her husband.
So too, when rosy-fingered Dawn espoused Orion,
you gods who live an easy life were jealous
until chaste Artemis sent from her golden throne
the kindly arrow that killed him in Ortygia.
So too fair-haired Demeter, moved by passion,
made love with Jason in a thrice-ploughed field,
till Zeus, aware of her infatuation,
hurled his flaming thunderbolt and killed him.
And now, you gods, you envy me my comfort,
this man, whom I found clinging to his keel

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him on the shore. His tears were never dried
but fell perpetual. He no longer felt desire,
constrained to lie beside her through the night
as cold as she was amorous, while all day
he sat among the pebbles and the rocks,
breaking his heart with tears and lamentation,
forever gazing at the barren sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Deciding thus, Odysseus ducked out of the thicket.
From a thick bush he tore a leafy branch
to make a decent screen for his virility.
He came out like a mountain-lion, conscious of its strength,
beaten by wind and rain, with eyes aflame.
It hunts for herds or flocks or for wild deer;
its starving belly makes it try its luck
even where sheep are guarded in the fold.
Odysseus knew he would frighten the delicate maidens
all naked as he was, but extremity drove him on;
indeed he made a hideous sight, all crusted with brine.
The maidens scattered and fled along the beach,
all but Alcinous’ daughter, for Athene
put courage in her heart and stilled the trembling of her limbs.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
So sang the bard, but the heart of Odysseus melted
and he wetted his cheeks with his flowing tears.
As when a woman weeps for her well-loved husband
who has fallen before her eyes in defence of the city,
seeking to keep destruction away from his home and children;
she sees him dying and struggling for breath,
she folds him in her arms and cries aloud,
while the enemy beat her with cudgels on back and shoulders
and drag her away condemned to a life of slavery
where her fair cheeks will fade in grinding misery.
So did Odysseus weep his pitiful tears.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
In his anger he made no reply to my speech,
but leapt up and stretched out his hands to my comrades.
He seized two at once, and dashed them on the floor
like puppies; their brains leaked out and wet the ground.
He carved them up in joints, and so prepared his supper.
He gobbled them up like a lion, leaving no trace behind,
no flesh, no entrails, not a single marrowy bone.
We wept and held up our despairing arms to Zeus
as we watched the horrid deed; we felt utterly helpless.
But when the Cyclops had filled his massive belly
with human flesh washed down with creamy milk,
he lay down in his cave, stretched out among his flock.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell you,
and then you can give me the gift that you have promised.
My name is Nobody. That is what they call me,
father and mother and all my friends – just Nobody.’
When I said that, he gave me a savage answer:
“I shall eat Nobody last of all his comrades.
The others shall all go first; and that is the gift I give you.”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“Who are you, where do you come from, where are your city and parents?
I can’t understand that you drink my potion unharmed,
for no other man, not anyone ever, has drunk it
without being conquered as soon as it passed his lips.
But here is one with a mind that is proof against charms.
I know, you must be Odysseus the cunning one, he who Hermes
the bearer of the golden wand was always saying
would come with his swift ship on his way back from Troy.
Come, put your sword back in its sheath; let us go to bed
and learn to trust one another in mutual love.”

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
‘As she spoke, I ardently longed to embrace my mother’s shade.
Three times I sprang towards her, seeking to catch hold:
three times she slipped from my arms like a shadow or a dream.
My grief grew ever sharper, and I spoke to her:
“Mother, why do you not stay for my embrace,
so that even in Hades we might throw our arms
around each other and indulge our grief?
Or has Queen Persephone sent me nought but a shadow
on purpose to increase my bitter woe?”’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“Do not make light of death to me, Odysseus.
I would rather be a labourer and serve
some needy man, himself in poverty,
than reign as sovereign over all the dead.
But come, tell me about my noble son.
Does he give fair promise to be brave in war,
or does he shun it? And tell me of Peleus
if you have heard anything; is he still respected
among the Myrmidons, or do they scorn him now
in Greece and Phthia because old age has bound him
in hand and foot? I cannot help him now.
The glorious sun no longer sees me as I was
when I defended the Achaeans, and laid low
the best of all the hosts of spacious Troy.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Steer your ship this way, renowned Odysseus
great glory of the Achaeans, stay your course
and listen to our song. For no one yet
has sailed past in his ship till first he heard
our tuneful voices, which he rejoiced to hear
and went wiser on his way. We know all the troubles
the Greeks and Trojans suffered by the will of the gods at Troy,
for we know all that happens throughout the fruitful earth.”

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Poor mortal men loathe death, however caused,
but death from hunger is the worst of all.
Come, let us drive here the best of the Sun’s cattle,
and make sacrifice to the immortal gods in heaven,
resolving that if we get through to Ithaca, our native land,
we will build a splendid shrine for the Sun
and fill it with many magnificent offerings.
But if he is angry about his straight-horned beasts,
and wrecks our ship, the other gods concurring,
I would rather gulp the sea-water and die at once
than waste here starving on this desert island.”’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
With these words he entered the well-built house,
and went through the hall to find the high-born suitors.
But Argus yielded at last to death
when in the twentieth year he saw the return of Odysseus.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
as a man
who is cooking a sausage full of blood and fat,
keeps turning it over above the blazing fire
to finish its cooking quickly and satisfy his hunger.
So Odysseus kept turning this way and that
as he looked for a way of mounting his assault
on the shameless suitors, so many against his one.
But Athene came down from heaven, taking the form of a woman,
and she stood by his head, and rebuked him:
‘You have been unhappy, but why should you lie awake now?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So spoke the suitors, but cunning Odysseus
was checking the bow and finding the feel of it,
just as a man who is skilled at the lyre and singing
easily stretches a new string over a peg,
inserting the sheep’s gut neatly between thumb and finger.
So without haste or strain did Odysseus string the bow,
and tested the feel of its string with his right hand;
and the string sang sweetly under his touch, like the voice of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Then wily Odysseus shrugged off his rags
and sprang to the threshold, with his bow and quiver full of arrows.
He poured his arrows on the floor beside his feet
and spoke to the suitors:
‘That’s one decisive contest gained, now for another mark
that has never been struck before, but if I am able
and Apollo will grant me that glory, I will strike it.’

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spoke, and fastened a ship’s rope
between a stout column and the dome of the roundhouse,
stretching it high so that none could touch the ground with her feet.
As when a flight of doves or thrushes
beat their wings against the net in a trap laid in a thicket;
they seek a quiet perch, but find a fatal nesting;
so now those twelve hung in a row, a noose round every neck, a cruel death.
They danced in the air for a while, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So she spoke to test him, but Odysseus
turned on his wife in anger:
‘Woman, what you’ve just said has bruised my heart.
Who dared to move my bed? That would be hard enough
even for a craftsman unless god came to help him
to pick up the bed and put it somewhere else.
As for a mortal, even the young and strong
could hardly shift it. That specially-built bed
is the secret sign of our marriage. I made it, I alone.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
welcome as is the sight of the land to swimmers
when Poseidon has wrecked their ship at sea
with stormy wind and rolling waves,
and only a few have escaped from the hoary deep
and the salt has encrusted their bodies as they swim
and safe at last they thankfully stumble ashore,
so was her husband welcome to her eyes,
and her white arms clung to his neck, unable to let go.