#70: The Odyssey, by Homer. Translated by Emily Watson

The Odyssey and The Iliad were first set down on paper—or papyrus, or sheep intestine, or whatever it was—around 725 B.C., or, if you prefer the counterintuitive nomenclature, late in the 8th century B.C. But these works depict events that are supposed to have actually taken place about 400 years earlier. Though non-experts couldn’t distinguish the cultural norms of 8th century B.C. Greece from those of 12th century B.C. Greece, these were, as I learned from reading M.I. Finley’s The World of Odysseus, very different times. Homer was looking back on what he considered a purer, more exemplary time, much as Walter Scott was when he wrote about 12th century England in his 1820 novel Ivanhoe.

It's a wonder to me that we aren't more disoriented by the details of the story. Perhaps we're just able to ignore what doesn't make sense to us. Among the most valuable “gifts” that Odysseus and his fellow kings can confer on each other are women (because can you ever have too many?) and … tripods. The latter might put us in mind of photography, but originally these were devices for holding a pot over a fire. My guess is that they were valuable because they were made out of metal, a valuable resource in ancient Greece.

The version of The Odyssey that I read is a new translation by Emily Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Though the translation is in verse (iambic pentameter), it was not a difficult book to read. Watson’s language is mostly straightforward and free of archaic words and phrases. Had Watson rendered Homer with a lot of formal, old-fashioned English we would intuitively understand that she was using archaic English to convey the idea that we are looking far into the past. But the linguistic conventions of 18th century England don’t really get us any closer to 8th century B.C. Greece. So for the most part, Watson sticks to words that are in the average person’s vocabulary. In one passage I was even surprised to find the word “babysit.”

This approach worked for me, but by the same token I do not think I would enjoy a modern colloquial translation of, say, The Bible. I got to wondering why the two cases seemed so different. Though both The Bible and The Odyssey were composed in ancient languages, only the former is strongly associated with a particular translation—that is, the King James version. Most of us can quote various bits and recognize any number of passages from this translation. Along with Shakespeare, it is a foundation for eloquence and wisdom in the English language. You don’t have to be religious to be familiar with “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

The Odyssey, by contrast, comes down to us as stories—as content rather than form. Our families have not been hearing passages from The Odyssey every Sunday for the past several dozen generations. Both books are full of religion, but in the case of The Bible, that religion, though it continues to evolve and mutate, is still in force, whereas the religion of The Odyssey has been consigned to the cultural ghetto that we call “fantasy and science fiction.” We have trouble even thinking of it as a religion. (Interesting mental exercise: what if Zeus and Athena were now being declaimed by shady online preachers and cynical politicians, and Jesus was a "franchise" for comic books and Hollywood blockbusters?) It’s hard for us to feel the force and relevance of Zeus and his gang, to understand how the ancient Greeks regarded the gods in their pantheon as they went about the daily business, but there is nevertheless a pretty clear continuity from the Greeks, to the Romans, to Roman Catholicism, which retains a substantial amount of mythological specificity, with its virtual pantheon of angels, archangels, and saints, to idol-free modern Protestantism. But the name “Zeus” does not signify anything remotely similar to what the name “Jesus” does to modern readers. Which brings to mind one of the more interesting episodes of the original Star Trek series.

But back to the translation. I like that Emily Watson’s version is free of the cultural baggage of 30 centuries. It’s stark and immediate. After I’d finished reading the whole thing, I searched online and found that I could listen to Ian McKellen reading all 24 books of Robert Fagles’ prose translation. In the past I’ve tried comparing different translations of, for example, Russian novels, and there is usually a fair amount of wording in common between translations. That wasn’t the case this time. Entire sections were shuffled and rearranged, so that my eye had to run backward and forward over pages of Emily Watson’s translation to keep my place as I listened to McKellen’s declamations. Two words would become ten or vice-versa. Without any knowledge of ancient Greek, I can’t be sure which translation aligns better with the original: Watson might have taken liberties to get the words to fall into tidy metrical patterns; Fagles might have inflated the language to heighten the drama.

But my sympathies are with Watson. Her version feels leaner and more eloquent. If I’d come upon Fagles/McKellen first I’m sure I would have been quite happy with that version. It’s quite… passionate. But Fagles wants to be sure that we’re impressed and entertained--he wants to give us a ripping yarn. So he plugs in an amplifier: where Watson gives us “Calypso, the great goddess,” Fagles gives us “Calypso, the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess.” Watson’s “men” becomes Fagles’ “comrades,” and Watson’s “told” is Fagles’ “harangued.” Those examples are all from the first hundred lines of the poem.

One significant difference is that the term that Watson renders as “slave” Fagles renders as “housekeeper” or “attendant.” I can understand both decisions: Watson wants us to understand the nature of the relationship without any extenuation, while Fagles wants to normalize it, to make it seem as natural as it must have seemed at the time.

As for McKellen, I have reservations, though he is very lively. His reads everything in an atta-boy go get ‘em sort of tone that seems to pat the hero on the back at every opportunity. As though to warm the hero up for us.

Like all but the most serious scholars of ancient Greece, I am essentially just a literary tourist in the world of Odysseus—we can be entertained, instructed, and amazed by The Odyssey, but our understanding of much of what the author is trying to get across is limited.

We root for Odysseus because he is unambiguously the hero of the tale, though we are never exactly comfortable in his company. We want him to return home and reclaim his position as husband of Penelope and king of Ithaca. But maybe we raise an eyebrow when the author praises him as a “sacker of cities,” and we wonder whether it would really be necessary to kill all 108 “suitors” who have taken up residence in his palace while he has been away for 20 years. That's a lot of dead suitors.

The word “suitors” makes us think of candy and flowers, but the suitors that Odysseus must content with are not the dainty sort. They are competing to marry Odysseus’ wife Penelope and to inherit his estate, a delicate matter given that he might not be dead.

Everybody knows that The Odyssey is an adventure story, with monsters (the Cyclops), witches (Circe), angry gods, shipwrecks, whirlpools, and sirens that lure men to the deaths. But what everybody might not know is that all this action is packed into just four of The Odyssey’s 24 books. The early part of the tale deals with the journey undertaken by Odysseus’ son Telemachus to find out whether his father is still alive after 20 years. Other books deal with Odysseus’ sojourn with a people known as the Phaeacians and his efforts to persuade them to send him back to Ithaca on one of their ships. In fact, Odysseus's naval adventures are over once he sets foot back in Ithaca in book 13, just past the halfway point in the story. Over the course of the last 11 books, Odysseus very carefully sets about to reestablish himself in Ithaca. This involves identifying loyal allies, planning and carrying out the slaughter of the suitors, and reasserting his role as father, husband, and king.

Though we really don’t understand all the various protocols, restraints, and dangers that Odysseus faces in these efforts, the details are never less than interesting. Whenever he first encounters someone who once knew him back in the day, he chooses to disguise himself (with help from Athena), typically as an old beggar, in order to scope out the situation. At first this stratagem makes sense, but by the time of his last such encounter, with his father Laertes, he has already slain the suitors and reclaimed his throne. At this point the impersonation feels more like a personality quirk than a precaution.

But Homer has all along been lauding Odysseus as a liar, and it’s never just a matter of being cautious, though that’s always an ingredient. Odysseus may just be a guy who just enjoys deceiving people, whether it’s by building giant hollow wooden horses or by pretending to be a beggar. What’s next for Odysseus? One task that we know is on his list is to go steal livestock to replace the animals that have been consumed by the suitors:

I have to go on raids, to steal replacements
For all the sheep those swaggering suitors killed
And get the other Greeks to give me more
Until I fill my folds.

The good old days really are here again.

A modern writer would find ways to put us on more intimate terms with his hero. But a modern writer would have recourse to all sorts of literary and psychological resources with which to do this. We have no trouble understanding the many technological advances that have occurred in the past 3000 years—everything from the printing press to electricity to internal combustion engines to nuclear power. But there has been a parallel set of storytelling advances as well: different kinds of metaphors and styles of irony and humor, for example. Modern writers have learned how to put us inside the minds of their characters, something we as readers have become comfortable with. Homer could no more give us Odysseus’ “stream of consciousness” than he could send him home in an airplane. Emily Watson does a good job of resisting the temptation to “help” Homer by making Odysseus more like us.