The Odyssey(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Page 62
—Josephine Balmer, The Independent on Sunday (London)
“Readers make their own odyssey, by now, through Odysseys. This latest lap of the journey returns us quite spectrally to the poetry of the affair: ‘So they traded stories, the two ghosts standing there in the House of Death . . .’ Poetry for which, yet again, we aspirants to Homeric harness are in Robert Fagles’ debt, and happy to be there.”
—Richard Howard
“Fagles does justice to the narrative velocity of the poem, to its economy, and he writes a supple English that’s especially pleasing when read aloud. . . . The Odyssey is a journey on which Robert Fagles is excellent company.”
—The Boston Globe
“Translators have inherited from the bards and troubadours the task of making the poem new. . . . This new version is a wonderful addition to that history. Fagles has made the lines fresh again. It’s as if the dew’s still on them.”
—William Fiennes, The Observer
“A memorable achievement . . . Mr. Fagles has been remarkably successful in finding a style that is of our time and yet timeless. . . . The long and excellent Introduction by Bernard Knox is a further bonus, scholarly but also relaxed and compellingly readable. Mr. Fagles’ translation of the Iliad was greeted by a chorus of praise when it appeared; his Odyssey is a worthy successor.”
—Richard Jenkyns, front page of The New York Times Book Review
“The other shoe has dropped, and now we have the superb Fagles/Knox Odyssey. If, as Robert Fagles remarks in his Postscript, Homer’s work is ‘a musical event,’ it is Beethoven’s Ninth.”
—Anthony Hecht
“In his translation of the Odyssey, Fagles has created in English a masterpiece of world literature, combining in his poetry the crispness and timeliness of modern colloquial speech and a timeless classical beauty and dignity. The reader is entranced with a mythical, magical world . . . in which mortal heroes and immortal gods and goddesses hold close communication.”
—Nashville Banner
“Robert Fagles’ Odyssey is a splendid companion piece to his memorable English version of the Iliad. He has managed to create a poetic colloquial English with a timeless dignity. The sensory values of Odysseus’ archaic world—the snap of the sails, the scud of seafoam, the gleam of burnished bronze—come wonderfully alive in this supple, rhythmic English.”
—Robert Alter
“As Ezra Pound said, Homer had an ‘ear for the sea-surge,’ and Fagles captures it superbly in images of dripping oarblades and pitchers of shining wine. . . . [He] triumphantly restores the poem to its Hellenic toughness . . . [and] breathes fantastic new life into an ancient adventure.”
—Manchester Guardian Weekly
“Fagles keeps taut the scenes of deception and recognition as the hero tests his family and friends, driving his lines at a surging pace. His poetic momentum does more than merely move the great battle scene in the hall to its dramatic close; it keeps the reader always on top of the action with a vantage point to see the subtlety of the actors.”
—Peter Stothard, The Times (London)
“It is not every day that a batter manages a Homer on each of his first two tries at the plate. But now with his Odyssey, as earlier with his Iliad, translator Robert Fagles has done just this. There is also a triumphant Introduction by Bernard Knox.”
—Maynard Mack
“Now I have Robert Fagles to thank for a new and precious gift. He has let me hear the rhapsode work his magic, and held me spellbound in those shadowy halls.”
—Peter Green, The New Republic
“For those bereft of Greek, the immortality of Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and their compatriots has been secured through his elegant and pithy translations. We present this medal to Robert Fagles with heartfelt thanks and appreciation in lieu of a libation to the hidden muse who graces the minds of the finest translators.”
—Gregory Rabassa, Citation for the winner of the 1997
PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation for Lifetime Achievement
The Odyssey was chosen as a main selection of The Book-of-the-Month Club, The Quality Paperback Book Club, The Canadian Book-of-the-Month Club, and as a dual main selection of The Readers Subscription Book Club (with Robert Fagles’ translation of the Iliad). It was also chosen by The History Book Club, The Softback Preview Book Club, and The Folio Society.
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE ODYSSEY
The Greeks believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed by a single poet whom they named Homer. Nothing is known of his life. While seven Greek cities claim the honor of being his birthplace, ancient tradition places him in Ionia, located in the eastern Aegean. His birthdate is undocumented as well, though most modern scholars now place the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the late eighth or early seventh century B.C.
ROBERT FAGLES is Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Fagles has been elected to the Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He has translated the poems of Bacchylides. His translations of Sophocles’ Three Theban Plays, Aeschylus’ Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award) and Homer’s Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets, an award from The Translation Center of Columbia University, and the New Jersey Humanities Book Award) are published in Penguin Classics. His original poetry and his translations have appeared in many journals and reviews, as well as in his book of poems, I, Vincent: Poems from the Pictures of Van Gogh. Mr. Fagles was one of the associate editors of Maynard Mack’s Twickenham Edition of Alexander Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey, and, with George Steiner, edited Homer: A Collection of Critical Essays.
BERNARD KNOX is Director Emeritus of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. His essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications and in 1978 he won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. His works include Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time; The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy; Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theatre; Essays Ancient and Modern (awarded the 1989 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award); The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics; and Backing into the Future: The Classical Tradition and its Renewal. Mr. Knox is the editor of The Norton Book of Classical Literature, and has also collaborated with Robert Fagles on the Iliad and The Three Theban Plays.