A Guide to the Odyssey: A Commentary on the English Translation of Robert Fitzgerald

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

Homer and the Archeological Reader

Poet and Poem, Singer and Song

History and Geography

The Gods

Violence

Fathers and Sons

Men and Women, Families and Couples

Memory

A Final Word Before Reading

Notes

Chronology

Map and Illustrations

Commentary

  
BOOK I
:
A Goddess Intervenes

  
BOOK II
:
A Hero’s Son Awakens

 
BOOK III
:
The Lord of the Western Approaches

 
BOOK IV
:
The Red-Haired King and His Lady

  
BOOK V
:
Sweet Nymph and Open Sea

  
BOOK VI
:
The Princess at the River

 
BOOK VII
:
Gardens and Firelight

BOOK VIII
:
The Songs of the Harper

 
BOOK IX
:
New Coasts and Poseidon’s Son

  
BOOK X
:
The Grace of the Witch

  
BOOK XI
:
A Gathering of Shades

 
BOOK XII
:
Sea Perils and Defeat

BOOK XIII
:
One More Strange Island

 
BOOK XIV
:
Hospitality in the Forest

  
BOOK XV
:
How They Came to Ithaka

 
BOOK XVI
:
Father and Son

 
BOOK XVII
:
The Beggar at the Manor

BOOK XVIII
:
Blows and a Queen’s Beauty

 
BOOK XIX
:
Recognitions and a Dream

 
BOOK XX
:
Signs and a Vision

 
BOOK XXI
:
The Test of the Bow

 
BOOK XXII
:
Death in the Great Hall

BOOK XXIII
:
The Trunk of the Olive Tree

BOOK XXIV
:
Warriors, Farewell

Who’s Who in The Odyssey

Bibliography: Suggestions for Further Reading

Acknowledgments

  1.
Map: The World of
The Odyssey

  2.
A Plan of the Palace at Pylos

  3.
The Homeric Ship: Odysseus on His Travels

  4.
A Scene from
The Odyssey:
The Ram Jug, 7th century,
B.C.E
.

  5.
Odysseus’ Bow: Strung and Unstrung

  6.
Stringing the Bow: A Coin from Thebes, 5th century,
B.C.E
.

  7.
The Test of the Bow: Ring-Handled Axes in a Line

  8.
Double Axe-Heads Fixed in the Ground

  9.
A Fragment of
The Odyssey
,
Book XV
. 161–181, 3rd or 4th century,
C.E
.

10.
A Page from the
Editio Princeps
of
The Odyssey
,
Book I
.1–32, Printed in Florence, 1488

Following is a guide to
The Odyssey
keyed to the translation of Robert Fitzgerald. I had long known, as reader and teacher, that the Fitzgerald translation of
The Odyssey
is astoundingly vivid; it seems to me to capture in English what I appreciate in Homer’s Greek. As I worked on the guide, rereading, back and forth, again and again, both Homer and Fitzgerald, I began to appreciate what a truly monumental accomplishment the Fitzgerald translation is, how accurate, how brilliant. But let me emphasize that however much this volume is intended as a companion to his translation, neither publisher nor editor constrained me always to agree with Fitzgerald. Indeed, as users of the guide will see, I introduce discussion of Fitzgerald’s translation into my comments at many points, often providing more literal renderings of the Greek, occasionally marking my disagreement with the translator’s interpretation and proposing an alternate solution. Obviously, accuracy is my first aim here, but I have brought readers into the interpreter’s shop with
several other purposes in mind. First, exploring a particular choice on the translator’s part is an effective way to highlight differences between Homer’s world and our own.

As I explain in the Introduction, appreciating the distances across which
The Odyssey
comes to us is part of the task of the “archeological reader.” One aspect of this distance is the translation, which lies between us and the original not as a sheet of plate glass but as a darkened mirror. The work of the translator should be demystified, however much the end product shares in the miracle of poetry (and it does because Fitzgerald is a true poet). If I so often say, “No, it doesn’t really say this, the Greek means …,” it is because I want readers occasionally to be frustrated that they aren’t reading the original, frustrated so that at least some of them will decide to learn ancient Greek for themselves. Homer in the original can be read with pleasure and profit, albeit slowly, after only a year of study. Even if it takes years to become adept at the finer points of Homeric philology, it is well worth the effort.

I had the opportunity of meeting Robert Fitzgerald only once, when he spoke to a group of eager undergraduates about finding the right register for each of his translations of ancient epic (he also translated
The Iliad
and
The Aeneid
). From the passion for the poetry he radiated then, and from the poetry of his translation itself, I daresay that no one would be happier if his work led readers to read and study Homer in Homer’s Greek rather than his own English. And while no translation is the equal of its original, Homer is among the more “translatable” of ancient authors: his carefully plotted story, his subtle characters and their eloquent speeches, his vivid descriptions and striking metaphors, in short, the major portion of his infinite invention transfers well into modern English, guaranteeing joys to the reader of a translation comparable to the pleasures of reading the original. As Fitzgerald, himself a consummate student of Homer’s Greek, proves, we need not choose between the two.

*  *  *

Two notes to readers:

In general I employ the spellings for proper names that Fitzgerald himself used—transliterations of the original Greek names—even though English-speaking readers will in some cases be more familiar with the Romanized versions of these names. Thus both translator and commentator refer to Odysseus rather than Ulysses (based on the Latin Ulixes); Akhilleus, not Achilles; Kirkê, not Circe; and so on. However, in the Introduction I use the more familiar English forms for place names where confusion might otherwise arise (e.g., Crete, not Krete), and I do refer to “Ulysses” when I am speaking of the character in the Latin tradition, from Vergil to Dante to Joyce. One note on my own transliteration of Greek words: Greek “u” [u—upsilon] is rendered “u” except for the family of
poly-
epithets—an element whose familiarity to English readers I did not want to obscure—and for the name “Euryalos” [Eurualos], translated “Seareach” by Fitzgerald (VIII. 148), but often appearing as “Euryalos” or “Euryalus” in literature on Homer and his epic descendants.

Finally, I use the abbreviations “
B.C.E
.” (Before the Common Era) and “
C.E
.” (Common Era) in place of the older denominators of the same periods, “
B.C
.” (Before Christ) and “
A.D
.” (anno Domini).

Apart from the Bible, it is hard to think of any literary work that, in the world we have come to call “the West,” has been so influential through so many centuries as
The Odyssey
, as both a text and a direct source of characters and incidents. This may be a surprising outcome for a poem that seems to have had its beginnings as sung entertainment in the banquet halls of petty chieftains in Greece and around the Aegean basin during a time often named the Dark Age of Greece (roughly the years 1150–800
B.C.E
.). Darkness is, of course, relative. Even if the written documents and material culture of the early first millennium
B.C.E
. in Greece seem meager compared with those of the earlier civilizations of Mycenae and Crete, much less the subsequent brilliance of Classical Greece, both of these cultural moments and all subsequent Western civilization are illuminated by the twin flames that blazed forth out of that darkness:
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
. No matter what role a bard named Homer had in the final shaping and polishing of the epics, the enduring strength of these two works lies in the fact that they are the living
productions of entire cultures, the culmination of the narrative talent of who knows how many generations of bards and audiences, each of which contributed in some way to the drama, the images, the wisdom—in short, the humanity to be discovered in these poems.

Both
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
were popular as sung stories in their time, and once recorded in written form they were installed by literary scholars and have never been replaced as the twin models of the genre of epic poetry. If
The Iliad
has traditionally been received as in some sense the more epic—in other words, the more fiercely heroic and bloodier of the two—
The Odyssey
has been treasured as the more accessibly human. Even as Odysseus’ narrative takes him well beyond familiar geography, the boundaries of the human psyche and human society are drawn and figuratively patrolled. The very border of mortality marks the limits of the human, while at the same time it is presented as penetrable: the poet takes Odysseus once and us twice into the realm of the dead, to speak and listen to the shades of the dead. And even if in
The Odyssey
we see less petty backbiting and infighting among the gods and demigods than in
The Iliad
, the gods of
The Odyssey
are frequently all too human. Learning how to behave toward the gods, in daily piety and ritual, and how to negotiate the incursions of the divine into the human—from interpreting oracles and portents to facing the presence of a god in disguise or in epiphany—all of this tests and defines what it is to be human.

The narrative course of
The Odyssey
presents a wider range of characters than
The Iliad
offers. In the besieged Troy we get a glimpse of family units—men, women, and children—but the thematic pattern of
The Odyssey
demands that both poet and audience enter more often and more deeply into the hopes and fears, the desperation and exultation of individual characters—among others, a fatherless youth, a slave bereft of his master, a husbandless wife, a young woman who fantasizes about a potential bridegroom, an old man condemned to mourn his son, and an older and erotically
experienced woman who gives up her best hope for a lasting relationship. It is the variety and depth of character as much as the compelling plot in which they all play their allotted roles that have kept
The Odyssey
irresistibly alive in the minds of readers of all ages.