Arnold, Matthew. “On Translating Homer.” In On the Classical Tradition, ed. R. H. Super. Ann Arbor and London, 1960.
Austin, Norman. Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer’s Odyssey. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1975.
Carpenter, Rhys. Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics. Berkeley, 1946. [“Suffers from a preoccupation with bears.”—E. R. Dodds.]
Finley, Sir Moses. The World of Odysseus. 2d rev. ed. Har-mondsworth, 1979.
Fitzgerald, Robert. “Postscript to a Translation of the Odyssey.” In The Third Kind of Knowledge: Memoirs & Selected Writings, ed. Penelope Laurans Fitzgerald. New York, 1993.
Lamberton, Robert. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1986.
Nilsson, Martin P. Homer and Maecenae. Paperback ed. Philadelphia, 1972.
Page, Sir Denys. Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey. Cambridge, Mass., 1973.
———. The Homeric Odyssey. Oxford, 1955.
Russo, Joseph. Introduction and commentary, Books 17-20. In A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. III. New York and Oxford, 1988—92. [Designed primarily for those reading the poem in Greek but providing useful critical comments.]
Scully, Stephen. “Doubling in the Tale of Odysseus.” Classical World, July—August 1987.
Segal, Charles. Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey. Ithaca, 1994.
Stanford, W. B. The Odyssey. Ed. with Introduction, Commentary, and Indexes. 2d ed. 2 vols. London and New York, reprinted with alterations and additions, 1967.
———. The Ulysses Theme: A Study in the Adaptability of a Traditional Hero. Oxford, 1983.
Vivante, Paolo. The Epithets in Homer: A Study in Poetic Values. New Haven and London, 1982.
———. Homer. Hermes Books, ed. John Herington. New Haven and London, 1985.
———. The Homeric Imagination: A Study of Homer’s Poetic Perception of Reality. Bloomington, Ind., and London, 1970.
Woodhouse, W. J. The Composition of Homer’s Odyssey. Oxford, 1930; repr. Oxford, 1969.
NOTES AND GLOSSARY
Much of the information that readers may need is found in the Postscript, often in the form of footnotes.
1.132. the Taphian captain, Mentês. Athena sometimes assumes the form of Mentês, sometimes, as at 2.283, of Mentor.
2.163. on the right hand. The lucky side for omens. When at 20.266 an eagle flies over from the left, this betokens ill luck.
4.11. Megapénthês. The name means “Great Sorrow” in Greek.
4.607—8. For the gods/hold you. Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda. Her husband, Menelaos, is thus the son-in-law of Zeus and privileged accordingly.
5.2. Tithonos. A mortal beloved of the dawn goddess, who granted him immortal life but not immortal youth. Tennyson’s beautiful poem “Tithonus” describes his old age.
5.290. Skhería. The island of the Phaiákians, sometimes called Phaiákia.
5.344. Ino, Kadmos’daughter. Transformed into Leukothea, the White Goddess. A saving benevolence, she turns up in Pound’s late Cantos: “Then Leucothea had pity,/mortal once/who now is a sea-god …” (End of Canto 95.)
8.281,2. Arês’ dalliance … Hephaistos’ house. Ares (Roman Mars), god of war. Hephaistos (Roman Vulcan), god of fire.
9.46. the coast of the Kikonês. A people who lived in Thrace, to the north of Troy.
9.87. I came round Malea. Southeastern cape of the Peloponnese.
10.309—40. Why take the inland path alone. These lines are not in lyric form in the Greek but in Homer’s usual meter, the hexameter.
11.316. Thaki. Ithaka.
11.16. the Men of Winter. A fabled northern people living in regions with long winter nights and fogs.
11.267. Here was great loveliness of ghosts! This introductory line is Fitzgerald’s, not Homer’s. The poetry tells us what we need to know about these legendary ladies.
11.310. Epikastê. Called Jokasta in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.
11.535. The day of faithful wives is gone forever. The contrast between the faithless Klytaimnestra and the faithful Penélopê is one of the poem’s constants.
11.681. And then I glimpsed Orion. A legendary sinner, like Títyos, Tántalos, and Sísyphos, punished for his crimes.
12.220—45. This way, oh turn your bows. Like Hermês’ words in Book 10, in the Greek these lines are in Homer’s usual meter. W. B. Stanford, in a note on the opening line, suggests that it is “perhaps designed to suggest lyric verse.” See Postscript, p. 493.
14.64—65. Eumaios—/O my swineherd!—answered him. Fitzgerald introduces a speech by Eumaios in this way because in the Greek, unlike anyone else in the poem, he is addressed in the second person, probably for metrical reasons: “O Eumaios, the swineherd, you said.” Or as a mark of the poet’s affection for this decent honest man?
14.352. Kroníon. Zeus, the son of Kronos.
15.232. they made a halt at Pherai. A town between Sparta and Nestor’s home in Pylos, where they are going.
15.497—98. Apollo/with his longbow of silver. Sudden painless death coming to men was attributed to the arrows of Apollo, of Artemis if coming to women. Hence at 20.71— 72 Penelope prays to Artemis: “if you could only make an end now quickly,/let the arrow fly, stop my heart.”
18.7. nicknamed “Iros.” After Iris, the messenger of the gods; presumably he performed the same service for the suitors.
18.87. “By god, old Iros now retiros.” Fitzgerald puns on the man’s name as the Greek untranslatably does: “Iros will soon have trouble he’s brought on himself and be Aïros” (poor Iros).
18.244. Kythereia. Aphrodite.
18.441. raider of cities. The use of this heroic epithet serves to stress the outrage of the treatment that Odysseus is receiving in his own house.
19.463. Autlykos. Odysseus’ maternal grandfather, a trickster.
19.480—81. Odysseus/should be his given name. Autólykos has just spoken of himself as having odussamenos many men and women, “having dealt harshly with or caused pain to many men and women.” (Fitzgerald translates: “my hand/has been against the world of men and women.”) The same verb, used throughout the poem in relation to Odysseus, is to be used to form his name: “Odysseus should be his given name.” Though he himself has much to suffer, he brings much suffering to others: to the Trojans whose city he sacks and to the Kikonês; to Polyphê-mos and the suitors, though they may be said to deserve all they get; to his wife and father and mother and son by leaving them for years.
24.335—36. I’m King Allwoes’ only son. My name/is Quarrelman. Fitzgerald cuts through the philological problems of interpreting the names in this fictitious family tree to a solution that at least makes sense: “Allwoes” suits Laërtês well enough, and “Quarrelman” suits Odysseus, who has just settled his “quarrel” with the suitors.
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Notes
1
Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature (1896), 13.
2
“Never Blotted a Line? Formula and Premeditation in Homer and Hesiod,” Arion VI (Autumn 1967).
3
Those who wish to acquaint themselves with the multiple ramifications of the Homeric Question, as it is called, may consult Alfred Heubeck’s authoritative General Introduction to A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, Vol. I (New York and Oxford, 1988-92), and E. R. Dodds’s balanced contribution to Fifty Years (and Twelve) of Classical Scholarship (New York, 1968): “Homer and the Analysts,” “Homer and the Unitarians,” “Homer as Oral Poetry.”
4
William S. Anderson, “Calypso and Elysium,” Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism, ed. Charles H. Taylor, Jr. (Bloomington, Ind., 1963), 81.
5
Translated by William Arrowsmith and D. S. Carne-Ross (Ann Arbor, 1965), 97-100.
6
The account of this feature of Odysseus’ travels is indebted to the article by Stephen Scully, “Doubling in the Tale of Odysseus,” Classical World (July-August 1987), 401-17.
7
This is the ninth of thirty-six versions found in Appendix XIII to Sir James Frazer’s Loeb edition of The Library of Apollodorus.
8
Fitzgerald spells “Nohbdy” like this to represent the Greek word, outis, accented in a way that would have made it sound different.
9
It may seem sufficient simply to say, as some scholars do (e.g., Alfred Heubeck in his notes on this book in his Commentary, II, 26) that the narrator is looking back on events. This amounts to the same thing but does not explain why Homer makes this obvious mistake.
10
The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford, 1955), 9. Professor Page neatly points to inconsistencies in the story, not without some donnish wit at the expense of the poet, poor old buffer.
11
This fits the story, but ancient memories have worked their way into this episode and there may be another explanation, indicated by a detail in the description of the animals missed by Fitzgerald and other translators. Fawning on the men, the lions and wolves stood on their hind legs (anestan). This suggests the depiction of the goddess flanked by two rampant animals on Mycenean seals.
12
Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 60.
13
Gilgamesh, translated by David Ferry (New York, 1992), 30-32.
14
Charles H. Taylor, Jr., in his paper “The Obstacles to Odysseus’ Return,” in Essays on the Odyssey, 88, suggests that what he faces are “temptations to the surrender of his individuality.” This is another—perhaps too modern?—way to put it.
15
“Postscript to a Translation of the Odyssey,” The Third Kind of Knowledge (New York, 1993), 177.
16
Chapman translates: “She deathlesse is and that immortal ill/Grave, harsh, outrageous, not to be subdu‘d”; Pope is content to rant: “Tremendous pest! abhorr’d by man and Gods!” Cowper follows Pope with “that enormous pest/ Defies all force; retreats not; cannot die.” Leconte de Lisle in the nineteenth century writes: “Skyllè n’est point mortelle, et c’est un monstre cruel.” Butcher and Lang have “she is no mortal, but an immortal plague.”
17
Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Folk Religion (New York, 1961), 74. The poet is Archilochus, fragment 166 in the Budé edition (1958).
18
It is reported that Elders of the Church of England, uneasy about attributing to the deity so malign a purpose, have voted to replace the offending words with “Save us from the time of trial.”
19
Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer’s Odyssey (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1975), 118, 207.
20
Readers who wish to consider this book in further detail will find much that is profitable in two remarkable studies, criticism of a kind that classical literature rarely receives: Anne Amory, “The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope,” Essays on the Odyssey, ed. Taylor, 100-21, and Norman Austin, “Pe- nelope and Odysseus,” Archery at the Dark of the Moon, 200-38.
21
Why false dreams come through the ivory gates, true ones through the horn, has never been satisfactorily explained.
22
The Rise of the Greek Epic (1907), p. 119.
23
A Commentary, III, 506.
24
A different interpretation of Odysseus’ name is suggested in the note on 19.480-81.
25
It is buried in that somber compilation The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (Oxford, 1938), 34-35.
26
“Another Odyssey,” The Geography of the Imagination (Berkeley, Calif., 1981), 35.
27
Robert Lowell once remarked that even a quite minor poet can probably make a few small improvements on almost any page of Shakespeare.
28
History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), 222.
29
By, for example, Norman Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon, chap. 1, “The Homeric Formula,” and Paolo Vivante, The Epithets in Homer: A Study in Poetic Values (New Haven and London, 1982).
30
Professor Lattimore translates sedately: “Athena of the ordered hair, a dread goddess.”
31
When this was written I had not yet discovered T. B. M. Webster’s From Mycenae to Homer, a work of scholarship that I admire. I should have been glad, too, to know Ulysses Found, by Ernle Bradford, the most recent and the best study by an experienced seaman of the Mediterranean routes and landfalls of Odysseus. R. F., September 1969.
32
This enlargement has now occurred, making everyone realize with a new pang not only the beauty of our blue planet but, by contrast with lunar and extra-lunar desolations, its bounty and fantasy of life. R. F., September 1969.
This edition copyright © 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 1998 by D. S. Carne-Ross
Map copyright © 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.
Translation copyright © 1961, renewed 1989 by
Benedict R.C. Fitzgerald on behalf of the Fitzgerald children
Postscript copyright © 1962, 1963, renewed 1989 by
Benedict R.C. Fitzgerald on behalf of the Fitzgerald children
Bibliography, notes, and glossary copyright © 1998 by
D. S. Carne-Ross
All rights reserved
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Originally published in 1961 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Published simultaneously in hardcover by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Homer.
The odyssey / Homer ; translated by Robert Fitzgerald ; introduction by D. S. Carne-Ross.
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Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-374-22438-2
1. Epic poetry, Greek—Translations into English. 2. Odysseus (Greek mythology)—Poetry. I. Title.
PA4025.A5 F5 1998
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Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-374-52574-3
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The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Page 55