Which Translation: The Odyssey

S. O. Andrew

1948 · Accentual verse

Features

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48
Holdings
1
Reviews

Biography

Samuel Ogden Andrew (1868-1952) was a British classical scholar known for his verse translations of Homer. His Odyssey was published posthumously in the Everyman’s Library series with an introduction by John Warrington.

Andrew devised what he considered a new Homer-metre: an accentual five-stress line based on counting stress-words rather than long syllables in Homer’s lines. He rejected both dactylic hexameter, for its monotony in English, and blank verse, for its non-Homeric literary associations.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch praised Andrew’s ‘invention of a verse-form which carries one along,’ capturing Homer’s ‘combined majesty and rush as of a wind.’

S. O. Andrew on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 1948 — J.M. Dent, Homer's Odyssey; translated (Everyman's Library)
  • 1953 — J.M. Dent / E.P. Dutton, Homer's Odyssey; translated; with an introduction by John Warrington (Everyman's Library) ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me, O Muse, of the hero fated to roam
So long and so far when Ilion’s keep he had sack’d,
And the city and mind of many a people he knew,
And many a woe he endur’d on the face of the deep
To win both life for himself and his comrades’ return;
Yet for all his striving he brought not his company home,
For they by their own blindness at last were destroy’d,
Fools! who ate of the sacred beeves of the Sun
And he, Hyperion, ras’d out their day of return:
Sing, then, O daughter of Zeus, that Wanderer’s tale.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Princes, my wooers, now godlike Odysseus is dead,
Wait ye a while, tho’ eager my marriage to speed,
Till I finish the robe, lest my weaving fail in its aim—
A shroud for the hero Laertes to wear on the day
When he suffers the mortal doom of outstretching Death:
So none of the Ithacan women shall count it for blame
That, lord of so many possessions, unshrouded he lie.’
So she, and our lordly hearts consented thereto;
And then in the daytime the mighty web she would weave
But at night, when the torches were lighted, unravel again.
And so for a three-year space the beguilement she hid;
But, when with the circling seasons the fourth year was come
Then one of her women that knew it her secret reveal’d,
And we found her unwinding the splendid web in the night,
And so, unwilling, that work she must bring to an end.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
‘Hard-hearted are ye, and jealous o’er measure, ye Gods,
Who never can brook that a Goddess should mate with a man
In open wedlock, and make him her bedfellow dear.
When rose-finger’d Dawn had chosen Orion to love,
Ye Gods that live at your ease were jealous thereof,
Till the gold-thron’d virginal Artemis visited him
And with life-stilling arrows slew him in Órtygia.
So also when fair Demeter, yielding to love,
Lay on that summer’s morning with Íasion
In the thrice-plough’d fallow, not long was Zeus unaware
But smote him at once with his flaming levin and slew.
And now ye are jealous, ye gods, that a mortal should be
A lover of mine, whom I sav’d as he rode in the deep
Bestriding his keel,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
And mark’d where he sat on the beach, and never his eyes
Were dry of their tears, and his sweet life wasted away
With longing for home, since the fair nymph pleas’d him no more.
Albeit by night he must sleep with Calypso perforce
In the hollow cave, unwilling tho’ willing was she,
Yet by day on rocks or on beaches alone he would sit,
Fretting his soul with sighings and groanings and tears
As o’er the unharvested sea he wistfully gaz’d.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
So saying, goodly Odysseus crept from his bush,
First breaking with strong fingers a leaf-cover’d spray
To shield his body withal and his nakedness hide,
And he strode like a mountain lion that trusts in his strength
And, reckless of tempest or rain, fares forth from his den
With fire in his eyes, and harries the oxen or sheep
Or chases the wild deer, for his hunger is sharp
And even the fencèd fold it would bid him assail:
So did Odysseus the fair-tress’d maidens approach
Though naked he was: such need had come upon him.
But his body was dreadful to look on, encrusted with brine,
And the maids fled cow’ring along the spits of the shore:
Nausicaa only abode, for Athena her breast
With courage inspir’d, and she felt no tremor of heart

War-widow simile

8.521–532
This was the lay that he sang, and Odysseus was stirr’d
And melted to tears, that bedew’d both his eyes and his cheeks:
As a woman wails for a husband dearly belov’d
And clasps his body to her in the place where he fell
Defending his children and town from the pitiless day—
She sees him dying and drawing his difficult breath
And, embracing him, loudly laments while the foemen behind
Cruelly smite with their spears on her shoulders and back
And drive her away into bondage and travail and pain,
And her cheeks are wasted because of her piteous grief,
So fell neath the brows of Odysseus his piteous tears.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
‘I spake, and he answer’d me naught in his pitilessness,
But, springing up, seiz’d two of my crew in his hands
And clutch’d them together and dash’d them like whelps to the floor,
And the brain from their skulls ooz’d forth and bedabbled the earth.
Then tore he them limb from limb to prepare him a meal,
And he ate like a mountain lion, till nothing was left,
Devouring both entrails and flesh and the marrowy bones;
And, wailing, we lifted our hands up to all-ruling Zeus,
At our wits’ end as in horror we gaz’d on the deed.
And when now the Cyclop had fill’d his insatiate maw
With human flesh and the basins of milk that he swill’d,
He lay at his length on the floor in the midst of his flock,

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
“Cyclop, thou askest my name; I will tell it to thee,
And do thou give the guesting-gift as thou promisedst me.
My name, then, is Noman; ’tis Noman they call me at home,
Both my father and mother and all my kindred and friends.”
So I, and he answer’d at once in his pitilessness:
“Noman, of all thy crew I will eat thee the last,
After thy fellows; this is my guesting to thee.”

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
“Who art thou and whence? and where are thy parents and kin?
’Tis strange that thou drankest the cup and art still un-subdued,
For no other man has resisted the sovereign charm
Whosoever has drunk, and the fence of whose teeth it has pass’d;
But the mind within thee ’gainst all enchantment is proof.
Art thou indeed that Odysseus, ready at need,
That He of the golden wand oft told me should come
Returning from Troy in his swift-going black-painted ship?
I pray thee, withhold, and put up thy sword in its sheath,
And thereafter let us at once go up to my bed,
And, sleeping in mutual trust, have converse in love.”

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
‘So spake she in answer and I, having mused on her words,
The ghost of my dear mother would fain have embraced;
Thrice I essay’d it, for strong was the love in my heart,
And thrice from my hands, like an empty shadow or dream,
She flitted away, and sharper the grief in my breast
Wax’d, and in wingèd words I address’d her and spake:
‘Dear mother, why shunnest thou thus my loving embrace,
That each round the other, ev’n in the house of the dead,
Our arms we might fold and of chill lament have our joy?
Or is it a phantom that Queen Persephone sends
To mock me and plague me with groaning and sorrow the more?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
“Odysseus, speak not of death such comforting words;
I had rather live above ground as the hireling or thrall
Of a landless churl, that a scant livelihood wins,
Than be king over all these dead that have perish’d on earth.
But come now, tell me some word of my valiant son:
Did he go to the war and become there a leader of men?
And tell me of blameless Peleus, if aught thou hast heard;
Do the Myrmidons hold him in honour, still as of old,
Or is he, from Hellas to Phthia, in little esteem
Because old age has benumb’d both his hands and his feet?
For I am no longer his champion under the sun,
So stalwart a hero as once in Troyland I was
When, succouring the Argives, I slew all the best of our foes.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
“Come hither, O pride of Achaea, Odysseus renown’d,
And stay thy bark that our voice thou mayst hear,
For never a sailor has pass’d in his black-painted ship
Ere the honey-sweet strain of our voice he might hear;
And a gladder and wiser man he has gone on his way,
For we know all the toils that the Trojans and ye
By the will of the Gods on the plains of Troyland endur’d,
Yea, all on the fruitful earth that hereafter shall be.”

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
Tho’ death in its every shape is abhorrent to me,
To perish of hunger I deem most pitiable.
Come, let us drive off the goodliest kine of the Sun
And sacrifice make to the Gods in the heaven above;
And if Ithaca yet we may reach, our own native land,
An acceptable shrine to the Sun-god Hyperion
We will build, and increase it with offerings many and fair,
But if for his tall-horn’d cattle he choose to be wroth
And shatter our ship, and the Gods be assenting thereto,
I would fainer perish with one swift gulp of the wave
Than slowly be tortur’d to death on a desolate isle.”

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So saying, he enter’d at once the well-builded house
And mix’d with the throng of the lordly suitors within;
But on Argus descended the fate of black-hooded death
In the hour when Odysseus he saw in the twentieth year.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
And, ev’n as a kitchener roasts him a paunch at a fire,
Stuff’d full both of fat and of blood, and on every side
He turns it, fain that the roasting should quickly be done,
E’en so did Odysseus turn as he mused in his heart
How on those shameless suitors his vengeance to wreak,
One against many. But now was Athena his help,
Who, in bodily form as a woman, descended from heav’n
And, standing over his pillow, a word to him spake:
‘Why dost thou wake yet again, most hapless of men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So spake the suitors, but wary Odysseus the while
Tested the weapon and view’d it from every side,
And ev’n as a minstrel, skilful in handling the lyre,
Easily stretches the string on a peg he has cut
After tying the twisted sheepgut above and below,
E’en so without effort Odysseus bended the bow
And, taking it up, with his right hand pluck’d at the string,
And sweetly it sang, like the cry of a swallow in tone.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
And Odysseus of many devices stripp’d off his rags
And leapt to the great door with the bow in his hands
And the quiver of arrows, and pour’d on the ground at his feet
The swift-wing’d shafts; and among those suitors he spake:
‘Lo you, this fearful ordeal is brought to an end;
And now for another mark, undream’d of as yet,
That perchance I may hit if Apollo grant me renown.’

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
So saying, for those wantons a ship’s cable he slung
To the roundhouse roof from a pillar, drawing it tight
So that none of their feet should be touching the ground as they hung;
And even as long-wing’d thrushes or pigeons are caught
In the mesh of a net that is spread in a thicket of thorn,
As they throng to their beds, and a doleful roosting they find,
So hung those maids in a row from the nooses of cord
Which he tied on the rope that a piteous death they might die;
And they twitched their feet for a while, but not very long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
So spake she, her husband to prove, and Odysseus perplex’d,
At once to his true-hearted wife made answer and spake:
‘Verily, wife, thou hast spoken a heart-piercing word.
Who then has mov’d the bedstead? Hard would it be
For any, how skill’d soever, since only a God
Could move it with ease from the chamber, if such were his will,—
But of men there is none upon earth so lusty and strong
As to lift it lightly. A wonderful secret was wrought
In the framing thereof, and by none was it wrought but myself

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And ev’n as the land is welcome to swimmers at sea
Whose well-timber’d vessel Poseidon has wreck’d in the deep
When driv’n by the swelling waves and tempestuous wind,
And only a remnant the hoar salt water escape
And swim to the shore, and their limbs are encrusted with brine
But gladly, escaping disaster, they win to the land,
E’en so was the sight of her husband welcome to her,
And her white arms she was slow to unclasp from his neck.