Odyssey: A Modern Translation of Homer's Classic Tale - Softcover

Eickhoff, Randy Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312869010 ISBN 13: 9780312869014

Verlag: Forge, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

THE ODYSSEY, translated by a former soldier, award winning novelist and classics scholar. This translation encompasses the best of both worlds--a prose translation with the most dramatic sections rendered into verse.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ancient readers and hearers, Greek and Latin, considered the poems printed here in translation to be the work of Homer, composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey, so they shared the great authority of the epics. Though we do not know their specific authors, they remain important sources of the mythical tales they recount. The Frog-Mouse-Battle occurs with countless variations in about as many manuscripts as the Odyssey, the most popular of all epics, thereby suggesting its use for instruction in the Byzantine empire, where the MSS of the poem were transcribed. The many variations in these MSS may indicate that some of the writers were teachers adapting the poem to their particular classroom needs. The translator has published dactylic-hexameter translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey at the University of Michigan Press, and privately of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, the Idylls of Theocritus, and Menander's Dyskolos, The Curmudgeon. He is currently working on translations of the works of Virgil, Homer's greatest follower in the Roman world.

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THE FIRST BOOK

The Council of the Gods


The Invocation to the Muse, greeting
Her and the gods' meeting.
Athene ordered to start Odysseus
Homeward and the visit
Of the goddess to Telemachus.



Sing, Muse,1 of that wanderer who sundered
The sacred walls of Troy and traveled
Many sea-lanes while struggling for his
Life and his men's return. His men, who
In their folly slew and consumed the holy
Cattle of the Sun, Hyperion,2 who
Therefore spurned their journey home.
Now, Muse, begin the tale of that man
Of many masquerades. Sing to us how he,
Bereft of hearth and home, pined for his wife
In hallowed Calypso's cave, the divine Nymph,
Eager him to wed and bed, but when
The circling seasons ran their wheel, they spun
The thread for his return to Ithaca.
Yet the gods determined that he would not
Find his peace at home until all the gods
Took pity upon him. At last all did,
Save Poseidon, who grimly blocked the noble
Wanderer until the man of masquerades
Finally reached his native land, there to
Find grim designs waiting for his return.
Sing, Muse, of that man of men and tell me
The story of the man whose own wisdom
And trickery wounded him and caused him
To languish far from the loving arms of
His wife. Sing to me the story of that
Wanderer who sacked Troy and sundered her
Heaven-built walls, only to be forced to roam
Uncharted seas and visit strange lands
Where he faced many grueling trials.
Sing to me of his great adventures among nations
Of all manners, minds, fashions, and traditions.
Sing to me of a man, abandoned by the gods
After his men slew the sun god's sacred cattle,
Who still proves himself worthy of song and story.
Sing, O Muse, of him in his glory. How after ten
Long years at Troy trying to storm the many-
Towered city of Ilium, the gods
Denied Odysseus3 return passage
Home to his loving wife while other
Comrades were led to safe haven where
They sleep free from the horror of war and
The sea. Tell me how the Nymph Calypso,
Yearning for his love, trapped him by magic
In her caves, making him her lord and spouse.
Sing, Muse, why Poseidon, the god of the sea--
Despite destiny--blocks his passage home.
Explain why Poseidon spurned Zeus's council
Determining Odysseus's fate and
Sped to Ethiopia at the end
Of the earth, feasting at his festival
While the other gods obeyed the summons
Of mighty Zeus. Let us listen to Zeus's words:

"Vain, petulant men! Yes, that's what they are! All of them! Look at them playing their games, misusing their freedom, and blaming their sins on wicked fate. Fate! And blaming us for their crimes! I tell you that I will not tolerate these floundering fools for long! Look! Look there! Do you see what I mean? Adulterous Aegisthus making love to Agamemnon's wife and scheming that king's slaughter!4 Listen to the cry of Agamemnon, 'Oh, I am killed by a mortal blow!' Why does man sin knowing he will suffer? I even sent Hermes (who slaughtered Argus--but enough of that waggling tale) to Aegisthus before he struck the mortal blow, telling him to beware of desecrating the marriage bed. Yet he ignored my warning. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, wreaks vengeance on Aegisthus now. Blood war ensues! Oh, these mortal fools! Oh! My head, my head!" moaned Zeus, rubbing the heels of his hands hard against his temples.
Athene rose, her graceful form and azure eyes drawing covetous glances from the others, and said, "Now, Father, son of the Titan Cronus,5 king of kings, the well of power upon the earth--"
"Yes, yes. Out with it," Zeus growled, glowering from beneath heavily beetled brows. "Nuts and nails! I know you! Wandering words where one will do! Speak!"
"All right." Athene drew herself up, her bold beauty hammering pulses. She shrugged. "All right. Aegisthus is fate past. Nothing can be done, and Agamemnon's land is a blood ground. So be it! Why wail over its fate? The die is cast: Aegisthus deserves his death. But my heart aches for Odysseus's sorrows. Why should he suffer because proud Poseidon pouts, refusing to lift his yoke and forgive Odysseus for the innocent insult he flung at the sea god? Now Odysseus suffers in Calypso's arms,6 daughter of Atlas,7 upon her sylvan island, where she has entrapped him with sorcery and beauty--"
"Aye, we should all suffer such pains!" one god broke in. The others roared in mirth while Athene cast a disapproving eye upon the author of the ribald jest.
"Now," she said softly, "Calypso's wizard father, the author of many jests himself, shoulders the colossal columns that separate heaven and earth." The offender averted his eyes, reddened, gulping nectar to conceal his chagrin. "Yes, great Odysseus languishes on a rocky isle amid the thunder of great Poseidon's roaring waves. A lesser man--thrall to Calypso's charms--would be content, but Odysseus remembers his chimney smoke, the bleat of his sheep, and the warmth of Penelope's arms.8 For seven years Calypso has sought to soothe his troubled mind, vanquish memory, and smother in his breast all thoughts of Ithaca. For seven years he is lost to hearth and home because he has angered one of us. Yet many times in Troy he honored you, Father, with burnt sacrifices. Still, he is denied Ithaca."
The cloud-trembler glowered, but she boldly stared him down. He sighed and said, "All right. What words fly so boldly from your lips! Pale daughter, how can I not recall Odysseus? No more resourceful man treads the earth or has so enriched the Immortals enthroned on high. His gifts are vast, but remember he is bold. It is he who stole the Cyclops's glaring eye. This same Polyphemus, I might add, who is the son of Poseidon from the sea Nymph Thoosa, daughter to the sea king Phorcys, who lay with Poseidon in his hollow caves and bore this wheel-eyed Cyclops to the god of storms. This is why Poseidon torments the great Odysseus. But"--he raised his hands, stifling Athene's lips--"let us reason and seek to ease the torment of Odysseus since no one god can prevail against a man despite his vaunted powers."
The gray-eyed maid laughed and cried, "Father and adored king! Let all who reside on Olympus make the wandering Greek their public care and succor his misery. Let Hermes carry our message to the golden-tressed Nymph on Ogygia that it is our will that she no longer hold him fast. I will travel to Ithaca and seek out his son who, despite his green, unpracticed years, shows spirit--although he is hot-blooded and headstrong when caution should work its way through his words. I will advise him to assemble Ithaca's Greeks and denounce his mother's suitors who devour their sheep and oxen and desire her for their pride." She gave a short, ugly laugh. "The suitors will, of course, like foxes whose noses are filled with a vixen's scent, scorn the words of Telemachus.9 I will counsel him to sail to Sparta and to Pylos to gather news of his wandering father. His search for his father far from Ithaca will draw its people to him. This I will do! You do your part!"10
And she placed her glittering golden sandals upon her alabaster feet, those sandals fledged with ambrosial plumes with which she flies like the wind, and wielding her army-slaughtering spear, she soared from the halls of Olympus to the rocky shores of Ithaca. There, close at Odysseus's gates, she shape-shifted her lovely form into the lumpy muscled form of Anchialus's son Mentes, the king of Taphia....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Forge
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312869010
• ISBN 13: 9780312869014
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 436
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland