The second section of Book 3 of The Odyssey, as generally agreed, has the goddess Athena addressing Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. Here it is in the original, in Emily Wilson’s new-ish translation, in the T.E. Lawrence prose which I read in 2009, and in the classic first English translation by George Chapman (he of Flann O’Brien’s “Keats and Chapman” stories).
| (Homer) “Τηλέμαχ᾿, οὐ μέν σε χρὴ ἔτ᾿ αἰδοῦς, οὐδ᾿ ἠβαιόν· τοὔνεκα γὰρ καὶ πόντον ἐπέπλως, ὄφρα πύθηαι πατρός, ὅπου κύθε γαῖα καὶ ὅν τινα πότμον ἐπέσπεν. ἀλλ᾿ ἄγε νῦν ἰθὺς κίε Νέστορος ἱπποδάμοιο· εἴδομεν ἥν τινα μῆτιν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι κέκευθε. λίσσεσθαι δέ μιν αὐτός, ὅπως νημερτέα εἴπῃ· ψεῦδος δ᾿ οὐκ ἐρέει· μάλα γὰρ πεπνυμένος ἐστί.” | (Emily Wilson, 2018) “Do not be shy, Telemachus. You sailed over the sea to ask about your father, where the earth hides him, what his fate might be. So hurry now to Nestor, lord of horses. Learn what advice he has in mind for you. Supplicate him yourself, and he will tell you the truth; he is not one to tell a lie.” | |
| (T.E. Lawrence, 1932 – prose) ‘Telemachus, here is no room for false modesty: no room at all. Have you not come oversea in quest of your father, expressly to learn where the earth is hiding him or what doom he has drawn upon himself? So you must go up straight, now, to this horse-proud Nestor, and make him yield to you the inmost secrets of his heart. Implore him, yourself, to speak perfect truth: and then he will not deceive us: for his mind is compact with wisdom.’ | (George Chapman, 1616) “Now No more befits thee the least bashful brow; T’ embolden which this act is put on thee, To seek thy father both at shore and sea, And learn in what clime he abides so close, Or in the pow’r of what Fate doth repose. Come then, go right to Nestor; let us see, If in his bosom any counsel be, That may inform us. Pray him not to trace The common courtship, and to speak in grace Of the demander, but to tell the truth; Which will delight him, and commend thy youth For such prevention; for he loves no lies, Nor will report them, being truly wise.” |
I got myself this as a late Christmas present, having read positive reviews and also having slogged through a couple of other translations. I was familiar with the high points of The Odyssey, which is fairly approachable, if oddly structured. But this is definitely worth getting. I really appreciated Wilson’s paring down of the language to take only as much space as the original words – most other English translators seem to have been rather verbose (cf Lawrence and Chapman above, three centuries apart).
As you would expect, given where Wilson is coming from, she boosts the voices of the women characters more than other translators do – and let’s bear in mind that Odysseus has love affairs with Calypso and Circe, and less explicitly with Nausicaa, while poor old Penelope has to stay faithful to him despite his years of absence. I also felt I got a much better sense of Telemachus here.
The book comes with an 80-page introduction and another 12 pages of preliminary notes, and it’s really worth it – a very good survey of both the society which the poem depicts, and the efforts that others have made to interpret the text for later times and places. And crucially the language is crystal clear. I have been told that this is now the standard translation used to teach The Odyssey, and I can see why. You can get it here.
Bechdel fail at the third step. There are plenty of named women, and they sometimes even talk to each other, but it’s always about a man (or men).
This was my top book acquired last year. Next on that pile is The Pragmatic Programmer, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt.
