Homer's epic chronicle of the Greek hero Odysseus' journey home from the Trojan War has inspired writers from Virgil to James Joyce. Odysseus survives storm and shipwreck, the cave of the Cyclops and the isle of Circe, the lure of the Sirens' song and a trip to the Underworld, only to find his most difficult challenge at home, where treacherous suitors seek to steal his kingdom and his loyal wife, Penelope. Favorite of the gods, Odysseus embodies the energy, intellect, and resourcefulness that were of highest value to the ancients and that remain ideals in out time. In this new verse translation, Allen Mandelbaum--celebrated poet and translator of Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy--realizes the power and beauty of the original Greek verse and demonstrates why the epic tale of The Odyssey has captured the human imagination for nearly three thousand years.
There would have been less controversy about the proper method of Homeric translation, if critics had recognised that the question is a purely relative one, that of Homer there can be no final translation. The taste and the literary habits of each age demand different qualities in poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would have appeared bald, it seems, and lacking in ingenuity, if he had been presented in his antique simplicity.
For the Elizabethan age, Chapman supplied what was then necessary, and the mannerisms that were then deemed of the essence of poetry, namely, daring and luxurious conceits. Thus in Chapman's verse Troy must 'shed her towers for tears of overthrow,' and when the winds toss Odysseus about, their sport must be called 'the horrid tennis.'
In the age of Anne, 'dignity' and 'correctness' had to be given to Homer, and Pope gave them by aid of his dazzling rhetoric, his antitheses, his nettete, his command of every conventional and favourite artifice. Without Chapman's conceits, Homer's poems would hardly have been what the Elizabethans took for poetry; without Pope's smoothness, and Pope's points, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed rude, and harsh in the age of Anne. These great translations must always live as English poems. As transcripts of Homer they are like pictures drawn from a lost point of view. Chaque siecle depuis le xvi a ue de ce cote son belveder different. Again, when Europe woke to a sense, an almost exaggerated and certainly uncritical sense, of the value of her songs of the people, of all the ballads that Herder, Scott, Lonnrot, and the rest collected, it was commonly said that Homer was a ballad-minstrel, that the translator must imitate the simplicity, and even adopt the formulae of the ballad. Hence came the renderings of Maginn, the experiments of Mr. Gladstone, and others. There was some excuse for the error of critics who asked for a Homer in ballad rhyme. The Epic poet, the poet of gods and heroes, did indeed inherit some of the formulae of the earlier Volks-lied. Homer, like the author of The Song of Roland, like the singers of the Kalevala, uses constantly recurring epithets, and repeats, word for word, certain emphatic passages, messages, and so on. That custom is essential in the ballad, it is an accident not the essence of the epic. The epic is a poem of complete and elaborate art, but it still bears some birthmarks, some signs of the early popular chant, out of which it sprung, as the garden-rose springs from the wild stock, When this is recognised the demand for ballad-like simplicity and 'ballad-slang' ceases to exist, and then all Homeric translations in the ballad manner cease to represent our conception of Homer. After the belief in the ballad manner follows the recognition of the romantic vein in Homer, and, as a result, came Mr. Worsley's admirable Odyssey. This masterly translation does all that can be done for the Odyssey in the romantic style. The smoothness of the verse, the wonderful closeness to the original, reproduce all of Homer, in music and in meaning, that can be rendered in English verse. There still, however, seems an aspect Homeric poems, and a demand in connection with Homer to be recognised, and to be satisfied.
Sainte–Beuve says, with reference probably to M. Leconte de Lisle's prose version of the epics, that some people treat the epics too much as if the were sagas. Now the Homeric epics are sagas, but then they are the sagas of the divine heroic age of Greece, and thus are told with an art which is not the art of the Northern poets. The epics are stories about the adventures of men living in most respects like the men of our own race who dwelt in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. The epics are, in a way, and as far as manners and institutions are concerned, historical documents. Whoever regards them in this way, must wish to read them exactly as they have reached us, without modern ornament, with nothing added or omitted. He must recognise, with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that what he now wants, namely, the simple truth about the matter of the poem, can only be given in prose, 'for in a verse translation no original work is any longer recognisable.' It is for this reason that we have attempted to tell once more, in simple prose, the story of Odysseus. We have tried to transfer, not all the truth about the poem, but the historical truth, into English. In this process Homer must lose at least half his charm, his bright and equable speed, the musical current of that narrative, which, like the river of Egypt, flows from an indiscoverable source, and mirrors the temples and the palaces of unforgotten gods and kings. Without this music of verse, only a half truth about Homer can be told, but then it is that half of the truth which, at this moment, it seems most necessary to tell. This is the half of the truth that the translators who use verse cannot easily tell. They MUST be adding to Homer, talking with Pope about 'tracing the mazy lev'ret o'er the lawn,' or with Mr. Worsley about the islands that are 'stars of the blue Aegaean,' or with Dr. Hawtrey about 'the earth's soft arms,' when Homer says nothing at all about the 'mazy lev'ret,' or the 'stars of the blue Aegaean,' or the 'soft arms' of earth. It would be impertinent indeed to blame any of these translations in their place. They give that which the romantic reader of poetry, or the student of the age of Anne, looks for in verse; and without tags of this sort, a translation of Homer in verse cannot well be made to hold together.
There can be then, it appears, no final English translation of Homer. In each there must be, in addition to what is Greek and eternal, the element of what is modern, personal, and fleeting. Thus we trust that there may be room for 'the pale and far-off shadow of a prose translation,' of which the aim is limited and humble. A prose translation cannot give the movement and the fire of a successful translation in verse; it only gathers, as it were, the crumbs which fall from the richer table, only tells the story, without the song. Yet to a prose translation is permitted, perhaps, that close adherence to the archaisms of the epic, which in verse become mere oddities. The double epithets, the recurring epithets of Homer, if rendered into verse, delay and puzzle the reader, as the Greek does not delay or puzzle him. In prose he may endure them, or even care to study them as the survivals of a stage of taste, which is to be found in its prime in the sagas. These double and recurring epithets of Homer are a softer form of the quaint Northern periphrases, which make the sea the 'swan's bath,' gold, the 'dragon's hoard,' men, the 'ring-givers,' and so on. We do not know whether it is necessary to defend our choice of a somewhat antiquated prose. Homer has no ideas which cannot be expressed in words that are 'old and plain,' and to words that are old and plain, and, as a rule, to such terms as, being used by the Translators of the Bible, are still not unfamiliar, we have tried to restrict ourselves. It may be objected, that the employment of language which does not come spontaneously to the lips, is an affectation out of place in a version of the Odyssey. To this we may answer that the Greek Epic dialect, like the English of our Bible, was a thing of slow growth and composite nature, that it was never a spoken language, nor, except for certain poetical purposes, a written language. Thus the Biblical English seems as nearly analogous to the Epic Greek, as anything that our tongue has to offer.
The few foot-notes in this book are chiefly intended to make clear some passages where there is a choice of reading. The notes at the end, which we would like to have written in the form of essays, and in company with more complete philological and archaeological studies, are chiefly meant to elucidate the life of Homer's men. We have received much help from many friends, and especially from Mr. R. W. Raper, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford and Mr. Gerald Balfour, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has aided us with many suggestions while the book was passing through the press.
In the interpretation of B. i.411, ii.191, v.90, and 471, we have departed from the received view, and followed Mr. Raper, who, however, has not been able to read through the proof-sheets further than Book xii.
We have adopted La Roche's text (Homeri Odyssea, J. La Roche, Leipzig, 1867), except in a few cases where we mention our reading in a foot-note.
The Arguments prefixed to the Books are taken, with very slight alterations, from Hobbes' Translation of the Odyssey.
It is hoped that the Introduction added to the second edition may illustrate the growth of those national legends on which Homer worked, and may elucidate the plot of the Odyssey.
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmityof the sea-god Poseidon - Odysseus must test his bravery and native cunning to the full if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.
For three years, Shane and Yvonne were wed, sharing heated nights, while his devotion clung to his ex. Yvonne strove to be a dutiful wife, yet their marriage felt hollow, built on desire rather than real warmth. All changed when she became pregnant, only for Shane to thrust her onto the operating table, warning, “Either you or the baby survives!” Broken by his cruelty, she vanished in grief and later returned, radiantly accomplished, leaving everyone awestruck. Haunted by remorse, Shane begged for another chance, but Yvonne only smiled and replied, “I’m sorry, men no longer interest me.”
"Never let anyone treat you like shit!" I learned that the hard way. For three years, I lived with my in-laws. They didn't treat me as their son-in-law but as a slave. I put up with everything because of my wife, Yolanda Lambert. She was the light of my life. Unfortunately, my whole world came crashing down the day I caught my wife cheating on me. I have never been so heartbroken. To have my revenge, I revealed my true identity. I was none other than Liam Hoffman—the heir of a family with trillions of dollars in assets! The Lamberts were utterly shocked after the big reveal. They realized what fools they had been for treating me like trash. My wife even knelt down and begged for my forgiveness. What do you think I did? Did I take her back or made her suffer? Find out!
Rachel used to think that her devotion would win Brian over one day, but she was proven wrong when his true love returned. Rachel had endured it all—from standing alone at the altar to dragging herself to the hospital for an emergency treatment. Everyone thought she was crazy to give up so much of herself for someone who didn’t return her feelings. But when Brian received news of Rachel’s terminal illness and realized she didn’t have long to live, he completely broke down. "I forbid you to die!" Rachel just smiled. She no longer needed him. "I will finally be free."
"Sign the divorce papers and get out!" Leanna got married to pay a debt, but she was betrayed by her husband and shunned by her in-laws. Seeing that her efforts were in vain, she agreed to divorce and claimed her half of the properties. With her purse plump from the settlement, Leanna enjoyed her newfound freedom. The constant harassment from her ex's mistress never fazed her. She took back her identities as top hacker, champion racer, medical professor, and renowned jewelry designer. Then someone discovered her secret. Matthew smiled. "Will you have me as your next husband?"
Kallie, a mute who had been ignored by her husband for five years since their wedding, also suffered the loss of her pregnancy due to her cruel mother-in-law. After the divorce, she learned that her ex-husband had quickly gotten engaged to the woman he truly loved. Holding her slightly rounded belly, she realized that he had never really cared for her. Determined, she left him behind, treating him as a stranger. Yet, after she left, he scoured the globe in search of her. When their paths crossed once more, Kallie had already found new happiness. For the first time, he pleaded humbly, "Please don't leave me..." But Kallie's response was firm and dismissive, cutting through any lingering ties. "Get lost!"
"You're mine, little puppy," Kylan growled against my neck. A soft gasp escaped my lips as his lips brushed my skin. My mind screamed at me to push him away-the Lycan Prince who had humiliated me again and again, but my body betrayed me, leaning into him before I could stop myself. He pressed his lips against mine, and his kiss grew more aggressive, more possessive as I felt my legs weaken. What was I doing? In a split-second, I pulled away and slapped him hard across the face. Kylan's eyes darkened, but the smirk on his lips exposed his amusement. "You and I both know we can't fight this, Violet," he said, gripping my wrist. "You're my mate." "And yet you don't want me," I replied. "You told me you were ashamed of me, that l'd never be your queen, that you'd never love me. So please, accept my rejection and let me go." "Never," he whispered, his grip tightening as he pulled me closer. "Soon enough, you'll be begging for me. and when you do-I'll use you as I see fit and then I'll reject you."