The Odyssey

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Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning new modern-verse translation.

"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy."

So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in The New York Times Review of Books hails as "a distinguished achievement."

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once the timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

In the myths and legends that are retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.

Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles' translation.

This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the public at large, and to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.

#LINK<># @IthacaStateOfMind Uh oh. This cave is a giant’s lair. He has a taste for cheese, and my companions. He also has only one eye. Trying to keep from laughing.

Got him drunk. Put a hot poker in his ONE EYE when he blacked out. That will show him – if he could see. LOL. Time to leave.

Damn. Poseidon pissed. How was I supposed to know One-Eye was his son? What Olympian whore did he sleep with to get an issue like that?

From #LINK<Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less>#

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Raquel, January 1, 2012 (view all comments by Raquel)
This college semester was a journey of "firsts" for me-- first semester at university, first time living in a different state than my family, first time living in a big city, first time seeing a drug deal, first Muslim friend, first agnostic friend, first this and first that. Much like Telemachus' transformation in the Odyssey, I developed from my innocent, naive, and immature self to one with more knowledge and maturity. Much like Odysseus' journey homeward, I had new experiences which brought me to the home of my existence, my heart and soul. In these ways, and more, I related to Homer's Odyssey.

But even still... had I not been so closely attached to the epic poem, the story of adventure, betrayal, deceit, renewal, reunion, love, testing, and ultimate reconciliation stands alone--spanning the test of time-- to bring true satisfaction. Let Homer be your guy. Let the Odyssey be your book.

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dougnlis, December 8, 2009 (view all comments by dougnlis)
waitingtoleave compares various translations, and I can't comment on Greek words or metrical sense. I can say that Fagles propels his story along swiftly and entices the reader into his form of metrical rendering of the text.

The Odyssey is an intensely modern work in its structure. Presenting it as a collection of short stories or isolated events has insulted the genius of its story telling. A few lines after the beginning, rendered by Fagles as "Sing to me of the man, Muse," comes the odd direction, "launch out where you will - sing for our time too." In ancient times that may have allowed an oral presenter to take up the story at any point, but hints that the story doesn't have to unwind chronologically so long as the beginning and end are included. So the story twists and turns.

The Odyssey is told with a cinematic sense of scene cuts and flashbacks and questionably reliable narrators. Fagles makes of this epic a book that lets readers plow through as with a modern novel, allowing the metric arrangement of lines the text to provide a sense of antiquity while translating a sense of the original text so it sings for our time too.

"Translator's Postscript" and "Notes on the Translation" satisfied my need for detail on how other times might have taken in The Odyssey for their own times.

I bow to waitingtoleave for his ability to compare translations. I embrace this Fagles translation as utterly fulfilling for me reading in my time. Knowing the Odyssey only through renderings of isolated bits and pieces (tricking the Cyclops, threading Scylla and Charybdis, etc., etc.) might meet the command to "launch where you will," but fails to tell anything like the tale of the man of twists and turns that Fagles presents, and doesn't hint at the other plot threads following the wife and son of Odysseus that twine together to make the complete tale.

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waitingtoleave, September 29, 2007 (view all comments by waitingtoleave)
this is an amazing book, with something for anyone. if you are interested in studying philosophy, you'll find it here. but, you can also read a great adventure story with fables and a love story written in. in that sense, this is a great translation; if you want to read this for the sake of entertainment, Fagles is a great translator. if you want to read for philosophical discussion, however, he might not serve your purposes. the thing you have to know about Fagles is, he often inserts adjectives and the feel of the entire story changes. so, if you want fidelity to the Greek words, try Lattimore. if you want fidelity to the Greek metrical sense, try Mandelbaum or Pope. and if you want fidelity to the Greek adventure epic, Fagles is your guy.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780140268867

Translator:

Fagles, Robert

Introduction:

Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walke

Translator:

Fagles, Robert

Introduction by:

Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walke

Introduction:

Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walke

Author:

Knox, Bernard

Author:

Homer

Author:

Fagles, Robert

Publisher:

Penguin Books

Location:

London

Subject:

Classics

Subject:

Poetry

Subject:

Poetry (poetic works by one author)

Subject:

Continental european

Subject:

Odysseus (Greek mythology)

Subject:

Epic poetry, Greek

Subject:

Ancient, Classical & Medieval

Subject:

Epic literature

Subject:

Classical literature

Subject:

Odysseus

Subject:

Classics-Medieval and Renaissance General

Copyright:

1999

Edition Description:

Mass Market

Series:

Penguin Classics Deluxe Editio

Series Volume:

EPA-650/2-74-081

Publication Date:

January 2003

Binding:

TRADE PAPER

Grade Level:

from 12

Language:

English

Illustrations:

Yes

Pages:

560

Dimensions:

8.39x5.76x1.48 in. 1.48 lbs.

Age Level:

from 18