Which Translation: The Odyssey

Stanley Lombardo

2000 · Tetrameter verse

Features

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635
Holdings
4
Reviews

Biography

Stanley F. Lombardo (b. 1943) is an American classicist and Zen teacher, who was Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas for 37 years.

Lombardo’s translation uses rapid, colloquial, punchy verse drawn from natural speech, emphasizing conversational modern English and dramatic immediacy over formal literary diction, reflecting his background as a Zen practitioner. He varied epithets and formulae to heighten their effect, and paid close attention to the poetic elements of the original. The opening phrase ‘Speak, memory’, is a reference to Nabakov’s memoir, where he recalls Homer while recalling his own life.

Lombardo’s Odyssey was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2000. The Bryn Mawr Classical Review praised the ‘physicality, rapidity, and suppleness of the verse’, while the New York Times Book Review wrote that the ‘lines, rhythmic and clipped, have the tautness and force of Odysseus’ bow.’ Lombardo’s translation was widely used in college classrooms.

Stanley Lombardo on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 2000 — Hackett Publishing, The Odyssey ★

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Speak, Memory—
Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.
Speak
Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,
The suffering deep in his heart at sea
As he struggled to survive and bring his men home
But could not save them, hard as he tried—
The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness
When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
And that god snuffed out their day of return.
Of these things,
Speak, Immortal One,
And tell the tale once more in our time.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young men—my suitors, since Odysseus is dead—
Eager as you are to marry me, you must wait
Until I finish this robe—it would be a shame
To waste my spinning—a shroud for the hero
Laertes, when death’s doom lays him low.
I fear the Achaean women would reproach me
If he should lie in death shroudless for all his wealth.’
“We were persuaded by this appeal to our honor.
Every day she would weave at the great loom,
And every night she would unweave by torchlight.
She fooled us for three years with her craft.
But in the fourth year, as the seasons rolled by,
And the moons waned, and the days dragged on,
One of her women who knew all about it
Told us, and we caught her unweaving
The gloried shroud. Then we forced her to finish it.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You gods are the most jealous bastards in the universe—
Persecuting any goddess who ever openly takes
A mortal lover to her bed and sleeps with him.
When Dawn caressed Orion with her rosy fingers,
You celestial layabouts gave her nothing but trouble
Until Artemis finally shot him on Ortygia—
Gold-throned, holy, gentle-shafted assault goddess!
When Demeter followed her heart and unbound
Her hair for Iasion and made love to him
In a late-summer field, Zeus was there taking notes
And executed the man with a cobalt lightning blast.
And now you gods are after me for having a man.
Well, I was the one who saved his life, unprying him
From the spar he came floating here on, sole survivor

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting where the breakers rolled in.
His eyes were perpetually wet with tears now,
His life draining away in homesickness.
The nymph had long since ceased to please.
He still slept with her at night in her cavern,
An unwilling lover mated to her eager embrace.
Days he spent sitting on the rocks by the breakers,
Staring out to sea with hollow, salt-rimmed eyes.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
With that Odysseus emerged from the bushes.
He broke off a leafy branch from the undergrowth
And held it before him to cover himself.
A weathered mountain lion steps into a clearing,
Confident in his strength, eyes glowing.
The wind and rain have let up, and he’s hunting
Cattle, sheep, or wild deer, but is hungry enough
To jump the stone walls of the animal pens.
So Odysseus advanced upon these ringleted girls,
Naked as he was. What choice did he have?
He was a frightening sight, disfigured with brine,
And the girls fluttered off to the jutting beaches.
Only Alcinous’ daughter stayed. Athena
Put courage in her heart and stopped her trembling.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
This was his song. And Odysseus wept. Tears
Welled up in his eyes and flowed down his cheeks.
A woman wails as she throws herself upon
Her husband’s body. He has fallen in battle
Before the town walls, fighting to the last
To defend his city and protect his children.
As she sees him dying and gasping for breath
She clings to him and shrieks, while behind her
Soldiers prod their spears into her shoulders and back,
And as they lead her away into slavery
Her tear-drenched face is a mask of pain.
So too Odysseus, pitiful in his grief.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
This brought no response from his pitiless heart
But a sudden assault upon my men. His hands
Reached out, seized two of them, and smashed them
To the ground like puppies. Their brains spattered out
And oozed into the dirt. He tore them limb from limb
To make his supper, gulping them down
Like a mountain lion, leaving nothing behind—
Guts, flesh, or marrowy bones.
Crying out, we lifted our hands to Zeus
At this outrage, bewildered and helpless.
When the Cyclops had filled his huge belly
With human flesh, he washed it down with milk,
Then stretched out in his cave among his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops,
You ask me my name, my glorious name,
And I will tell it to you. Remember now,
To give me the gift just as you promised.
Noman is my name. They call me Noman—
My mother, my father, and all my friends, too.’
He answered me from his pitiless heart:
‘Noman I will eat last after his friends.
Friends first, him last. That’s my gift to you.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who are you, and where do you come from?
What is your city and who are your parents?
I am amazed that you drank this potion
And are not bewitched. No other man
Has ever resisted this drug once it’s past his lips.
But you have a mind that cannot be beguiled.
You must be Odysseus, the man of many wiles,
Who Quicksilver Hermes always said would come here
In his swift black ship on his way home from Troy.
Well then, sheath your sword and let’s
Climb into my bed and tangle in love there,
So we may come to trust each other.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
So she spoke, and my heart yearned
To embrace the ghost of my dead mother.
Three times I rushed forward to hug her,
And three times she drifted out of my arms
Like a shadow or a dream. The pain
That pierced my heart grew ever sharper,
And my words rose to my mother on wings:
‘Mother, why do you slip away when I try
To embrace you? Even though we are in Hades,
Why can’t we throw our arms around each other
And console ourselves with chill lamentation?
Are you a phantom sent by Persephone
To make me groan even more in my grief?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Don’t try to sell me on death, Odysseus.
I’d rather be a hired hand back up on earth,
Slaving away for some poor dirt farmer,
Than lord it over all these withered dead.
But tell me about that boy of mine.
Did he come to the war and take his place
As one of the best? Or did he stay away?
And what about Peleus? What have you heard?
Is he still respected among the Myrmidons,
Or do they dishonor him in Phthia and Hellas,
Crippled by old age in hand and foot?
And I’m not there for him up in the sunlight
With the strength I had in wide Troy once
When I killed Ilion’s best and saved the army.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come hither, Odysseus,
glory of the Achaeans,
Stop your ship
so you can hear our voices.
No one has ever sailed
his black ship past here
Without listening to the honeyed
sound from our lips.
He journeys on delighted
and knows more than before.
For we know everything
that the Greeks and Trojans
Suffered in wide Troy
by the will of the gods.
We know all that happens
on the teeming earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All forms of death are hateful, but to die
Of hunger is the most wretched way to go.
What are we waiting for? Let’s drive off
The prime beef in that herd and offer sacrifice
To the gods of broad heaven. If we ever
Return to Ithaca, we will build a rich temple
To Hyperion the Sun, and deposit there
Many fine treasures. If he becomes angry
Over his cattle and gets the other gods’ consent
To destroy our ship, well, I would rather
Gulp down saltwater and die once and for all
Than waste away slowly on a desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
So saying,
Eumaeus entered the great house
And the hall filled with the insolent suitors.
But the shadow of death descended upon Argus,
Once he had seen Odysseus after twenty years.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
It was like a man roasting a paunch
Stuffed with fat and blood over afire.
He can’t wait for it to be done
And so keeps turning it over and over—
Odysseus tossing and turning as he pondered how
To get his hands on the shameless suitors,
One man against many.
And then Athena came
Down from the sky, and stood above his head
In the form of a woman, and spoke to him:
“Why are you sleepless, most ill-fated of men?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
Thus the suitors, while Odysseus, deep in thought,
Was looking over his bow. And then, effortlessly,
Like a musician stretching a string
Over a new peg on his lyre, and making
The twisted sheep-gut fast at either end,
Odysseus strung the great bow. Lifting it up,
He plucked the string, and it sang beautifully
Under his touch, with a note like a swallow’s.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
And now Odysseus’ cunning was revealed.
He stripped off his rags and leapt with his bow
To the great threshold. Spreading the arrows
Out before his feet, he spoke to the suitors:
“Now that we’ve separated the men from the boys,
I’ll see if I can hit a mark that no man
Has ever hit. Apollo grant me glory!”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
He spoke, and tied the cable of a dark-prowed ship
To a great pillar and pulled it about the round house,
Stretching it high so their feet couldn’t touch the ground.
Long-winged thrushes, or doves, making their way
To their roosts, fall into a snare set in a thicket,
And the bed that receives them is far from welcome.
So too these women, their heads hanging in a row,
The cable looped around each of their necks.
It was a most piteous death. Their feet fluttered
For a little while, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She was testing her husband.
Odysseus
Could bear no more, and he cried out to his wife:
“By God, woman, now you’ve cut deep.
Who moved my bed? It would be hard
For anyone, no matter how skilled, to move it.
A god could come down and move it easily,
But not a man alive, however young and strong,
Could ever pry it up. There’s something telling
About how that bed’s built, and no one else
Built it but me.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
Land is a welcome sight to men swimming
For their lives, after Poseidon has smashed their ship
In heavy seas. Only a few of them escape
And make it to shore. They come out
Of the grey water crusted with brine, glad
To be alive and set foot on dry land.
So welcome a sight was her husband to her.
She would not loosen her white arms from his neck,