Which Translation: The Odyssey

Stephen Mitchell

2013 · Accentual verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
553
Holdings
3
Reviews

Biography

Stephen Mitchell (b. 1943) is an American poet, translator, and anthologist educated at Amherst College, the University of Paris, and Yale University. He is known for his translations of the Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, Rilke, and the Book of Job.

Mitchell employed a five-beat line composed mostly of anapests and dactyls, so that the line length was closer to that of the Greek original. He omitted most of the repetitive formulae and epithets, in the interest of making the English more rapid and natural. His intention was to ‘re-create the ancient epic as a contemporary poem in the parallel universe of the English language’. Mitchell did not read ancient Greek; his translation was made from existing English versions and scholarly cribs.

The New York Times praised Mitchell’s ‘fresh, elegant diction’ and careful use of meter.

Stephen Mitchell on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 2013 — Atria Books, The Odyssey (US edition) ★
  • 2013 — Weidenfeld & Nicolson, The Odyssey (UK edition)

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Sing to me, Muse, of that endlessly cunning man
who was blown off course to the ends of the earth, in the years
after he plundered Troy. He passed through the cities
of many people and learned how they thought, and he suffered
many bitter hardships upon the high seas
as he tried to save his own life and bring his companions
back to their home. But however bravely he struggled,
he could not rescue them, fools that they were—their own
recklessness brought disaster upon them all;
they slaughtered and ate the cattle of Hélios,
so the sun god destroyed them and blotted out their homecoming.
Goddess, daughter of Zeus, begin now, wherever
you wish to, and tell the story again, for us.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
and she said to us all, ‘Young men who are seeking my hand
now that Odysseus is dead, be patient, however
ardent you are for marriage with me; hold off
until I have finished this robe, so that all my spinning
won’t go to waste. I am making a burial garment
for Laértes, for when death strikes him down—so that no one
among the Ithacan women will blame me for letting
someone so wealthy lie there without a fine shroud.’
These were her words, and magnanimously we consented.
Then each day she would weave the funeral robe;
but with torches beside it, each night she would undo
what she had woven. In this way, for three whole years
she tricked us all. But when the fourth year came round,
one of her serving women told us the secret,
and that same night we went to her room and caught her
in the very act of unraveling what she had done,
and however reluctant she was, we forced her to finish.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You are all hard-hearted, you gods, and envious too;
you hate it whenever a goddess sleeps with a man,
even if she has chosen him as her husband.
You were just as malicious that time when rose-fingered Dawn
made love to Oríon; you envied her, and at last
Ártemis hunted him down in Ortýgia and shot him.
And the time when Deméter yielded to her desire
and lay in love with Ïásion in the field
of the three plowed furrows: Soon enough Zeus found out
and, furious, struck him dead with a bolt of lightning.
In just the same way, you envy me now for living
with a mortal man. I rescued him as he floated
alone, astride the keel of his ship,

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him sitting and weeping
on the shore; his sweet life was ebbing away as he mourned
for Ithaca. No longer did the nymph please him.
At night, it is true, he slept with her in her cave,
but there was no choice; she was passionate, and he had to.
But by day he would sit on the rocky beach and look out
over the restless sea and shed bitter tears.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
And so Odysseus crawled forth from the undergrowth
and broke off a leafy branch from the tangle of bushes
to cover his genitals. Then he stood up and walked
like a lion who is advancing through wind and rain
with burning eyes as he prowls among sheep and cattle
or hunts down deer, and his belly even commands him
to leap the fence of a homestead and try for the flocks:
just so did Odysseus approach the young women, naked
as he was, for he felt that this was his only choice.
Terrifying he seemed, as he walked forward
caked with brine, and they scattered in every direction.
Only the princess stood firm. Athena had taken
all fear from her and put courage into her heart,

War-widow simile

8.521–532
This was the song that the famous poet was singing,
and Odysseus wept, and the hot tears poured down his cheeks.
And as a woman weeps when she flings her arms
around her dear husband when he has fallen in battle
defending his city and people, trying to ward off
the pitiless day of doom from his wife and children,
and when he is in his last throes, gasping for breath,
she clings to him even more tightly, sobbing and wailing,
but the enemy come up behind her and with their spears
they prod her shoulders and back, and they drag her off
to slavery and a life of toil and hardship,
and she pines away and her face is ravaged by sorrow:
just so did Odysseus weep.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
For a moment he made no answer, then pitilessly
he leaped up and, reaching over toward my companions,
grabbed two of them. They squirmed in his hands like puppies,
and he smashed them against the ground. Their skulls cracked, their brains
poured out and soaked the earth, and he tore them to pieces
and ate them raw like a lion: the entrails, the flesh,
the bones, and the marrow. Nothing of them was left.
We wept and held up our hands to Zeus in our horror
at the gruesome sight, and helplessness gripped our minds.
But after the Cyclops had eaten and filled his huge belly
with human flesh and washed it down with the whey,
he stretched on the ground to sleep, in the midst of his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, you asked me my name, and now I will tell you,
and you, for your part, must give me the gift you promised.
My name is Noman. Noman is what my mother
and father and all my comrades have always called me.’
He roared an answer to me, from his pitiless heart:
‘Good. I will eat your companions before you, Noman,
and will save you for last. That is the gift I give you.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who are you? Where do you come from? Who are your parents?
How can it be that my drug has no power to change you?
You weren’t affected at all. Never before
have I known a man who drank it and didn’t succumb.
You must have a mind impervious to enchantment.
I am sure that you are Odysseus, that endlessly cunning
fellow whom Hermes has told me about—he always
said you would sail here on your way home from Troy.
Put up your sword now. Come with me to my bed,
and in making love we will learn how to trust each other.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
When she finished speaking, I took a step forward to touch
my mother’s spirit. Three times I tried to embrace her;
three times she slipped through my arms like a shadow, a dream.
And as I kept trying, and kept embracing the air,
the pain in my heart grew more intense. And I said,
‘Mother, why won’t you stay here for me? If only
we could hold each other, even for a brief moment,
we might have some consolation down here in Hades.
Or are you some phantom that Queen Perséphonē sent
as a mockery, to load more sorrow upon me?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
And he said, ‘Don’t try to smooth-talk me into accepting
death, Odysseus. I would much rather be
above ground as the most destitute serf, hired out
to some tenant farmer with hardly enough to live on,
than to be king over all the shadowy dead.
But give me news of my son. Did he follow me
to the war and win fame there? And tell me about my father,
Peleus: What have you heard? Does he still rule
over the Mýrmidons, or are they treating him badly
in Hellas and Phthia because he is gripped by old age
and I am no longer there in the world of sunlight
to defend him, just as I once defended the Argives
and slaughtered the enemy on the wide plain of Troy?

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Come, Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans,
draw up your ship with us now; oh, stop here and listen.
No sailor has ever rowed past this shore without hearing
the honey-sweet voice from our lips, and all those who come here
are thrilled with delight and go away wiser men.
We know all the sorrow the Argives and Trojans suffered
on the plain of Troy, when the will of the gods ordained it,
and we know all that comes to pass on the bountiful earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
all forms of death are abhorrent,
but to die of hunger is the most wretched of all.
So let us round up the best of the sun god’s cattle
and offer them to the gods. And if we should ever
return again to Ithaca, our dear country,
the first thing we do, as soon as we get there, will be
to build a magnificent temple to Hélios
and fill it with splendid treasures. And if he is angry
at the death of his cattle and chooses to wreck our ship
and the other gods second him, I, for one, would much rather
drown all at once and be swallowed up by the sea
than keep starving to death like this on a desolate island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
With these words he entered the palace and went to the hall
where the suitors were assembled at one of their banquets.
And just then death came and darkened the eyes of Argos,
who had seen Odysseus again after twenty years.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
As when a man is cooking a sausage stuffed
with fat and blood, and he turns it this way and that
over the fire, eager for it to be roasted:
just so he twisted and turned as he wondered how
in the world he was going to overpower the suitors,
since he was only one man and they were so many.
But Athena came down from heaven and took the form
of a woman, and she stood there above him and said,
“Odysseus, you who are more ill-fated than any
mortal on earth, why are you sleepless this time?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
As they were speaking, Odysseus examined the bow
thoroughly, and just as a poet well-skilled
in playing the lyre will easily stretch a new string
around a peg as he fastens the twisted sheep-gut
at both its ends: so effortlessly did Odysseus
string the great bow. And, as a test, with his right hand
he plucked the string, and it sang out under his touch
with a sound as beautiful as the voice of a swallow.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Odysseus threw off his rags and leaped to the threshold,
holding the bow and the quiver, and then poured out
the swift arrows onto the ground at his feet, and he said,
“The contest is over, gentlemen. Now I will see
how well I can do with another target, which no one
has thought of yet. With Apollo’s help I will hit it.”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
With these words, he tied the end of a ship’s cable
to one of the pillars and fastened the other end
to the roof of the roundhouse, so that the women’s feet
would dangle above the ground. As thrushes or doves
who are flying home to their roosting-place in a thicket
hit a snare and their necks snap: so were the women
forced to line up with nooses around their necks,
and they died a most contemptible death, and their feet
kicked for a little while, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She had spoken these words as a test. Odysseus, angry
and hurt, cried out to her, “Woman, what you just told me
pierces my heart. What man dared move my bed?
He must have found it a difficult task, however
skillful a workman he was, unless some god came
and helped him move it. There is no man alive
who is capable of prying that bed from its place.
I built it myself, and a secret went into its making.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
And as welcome as is the moment
when land appears to sailors whose ship Poseidon
has wrecked with the fury of wind and waves, and the few
who have not been drowned swim onto the shore, their bodies
crusted with brine, and they feel sheer joy that the ground
is beneath their feet and that now they are out of danger:
just so welcome to her was the sight of her husband,
and she held him tight in her arms and did not let go.