Going through the Great Books series demonstrates how the text can shift our understanding. Also, as a reader, I change and my experience and understanding of great themes change. Because of the richness of these works, so many ideas, themes, thoughts, and inspirations contribute to our reading and the development of civilization.
As I embarked into my latest voyage of, The Odyssey, I purposely selected a different translation then I read in the past. The Fitzgerald translation remains the classic most students get introduced to. T.E. Lawrence, that famous Lawrence of Arabia, made a prose translation that Steven Pressfield, author of “The War of Art” uses as his invocation before he writes. The Robert Fagles, which I read this time around, is accessible and one of the best translations. Emily Wilson’s newest translation has many fans.
As Robert Frost remarked, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Below are examples of the different versions of the “Invocation of the Muse” from Book 1 where you can feel what the translator has tried to accomplish. After reading all four, you begin to grasp the meaning that Homer may have intended in the original Greek.
Mrs. Eastman introduced me to The Odyssey in tenth grade. She handed us the classic Fitzgerald translation. The exciting twists and turns of the plot enticed me. I felt enthralled with Odysseus’s adventures with the sirens, slipping past Polyphemus, the bone crunching Cyclops who was blinded by Nobody, his swimming between Charybdis and man eating Scylla. And the gods and goddesses, like Circe who turns Odysseus’s men into pigs, Calypso and her island, the Old Man of the Sea who takes on various shapes. After many adventures, Odysseus returns home in disguise, slinging his bow, and slaughtering the suiters. The tricky and faithful Penelope who could trick her suitors for years by creating her tapestry for Laertes in the day and unweaving it at the night. It’s even interesting to find out that Mentor, a friend of Odysseus, entrusted with the education of Telemachus, is where we get the word, “mentor.”
At the time, the story had some thrilling points, though admittedly some lulls and dull points.
Then I started diving further into Greek writing, different translations and even studied a bit of ancient Greek. The second time I read the epic I had two sons. I found the theme of fatherhood enticing. As a father, I related to Odysseus longing to get home to his wife and son, Telemachus. Odysseus too as a son to the old Laertes tending his garden. I saw a tender father. We are not introduced to Odysseus until Book 5 and he is first described to us by Hermes who has come to instruct Calypso to allow him to go free:
But as for great Odysseus—
Heremes could not find him within the cave.
Off he sat on a headland, weeping there as always,
wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish,
gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears.
(5.91-95)
This is not the wily, adventurous hero I had remembered, but now came across as an older husband and father held prisoner.
Last year, I started going through the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. What surprised me most when I returned to The Odyssey was how how prominently Agamemnon’s unfortunate homecoming featured. The story adds a depth of a husband’s return home only to find his kingdom stolen and then murdered by his wife. The story of Agamemnon shows at the beginning of The Odyssey and is mentioned several times throughout, but is again reiterated in Book 24. The story contrasts how dangerous Odysseus’s homecoming could have been.
Now, I take away the theme of loyalty and the importance of keeping faith and remaining steadfast. Throughout the story, we see how Odysseus’s men didn’t trust him take the bag that King Aeolus had given him where the unfavourable winds were held. They opened it and kept them from their homecoming.
Then there are the cows of Apollo that were killed and again turned the sailors away. Of course, the suiters who have invaded Odysseus’s house, eat his food, drink his wine, court his wife, and plot to kill his son. All these people are destroyed.
In contrast, there is the importance of remaining committed and how loyalty, in the end, wins the day, like Odysseus’s childhood maid, Eurycleia, who recognized his scar, the old swineherd, Eumaeus, or, my personal favorite, Odysseus’s dog, Argo.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,
here lay the hound, old Argos.
But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master.
(17.329)
And of course, Penelope, unlike Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, who murder Agamemnon on his return from Troy, which leads to his son, Orestes needing to kills his mother. In contrast, we see here a family united.
From here, I took the theme of loyalty to heart, both to those I’ve made to others and the promises made to others. Rather than have the distraction from all sorts of other things trying to grab my attention, I feel Homer is guiding me on a path to stay loyal to my true nature, to the king that guides me. And though there are twists and turns and fate may throw many unexpected predicaments, remaining constant and true eventually takes us back home.