Old Books, New Readers discussion

Happy October Everyone!

After a very close poll, October’s Book of the Month is The Odyssey by Homer. The theme was "Old, Old Books" and this is was the oldest nomination - over 2800 years old.

I am very excited that we are doing this book; when I was trying to read Ulysses a few months back, I found it hard to follow along without having read The Odyssey first.

I am reading the Penguin Clothbound Classics version, so that is where the page numbers are coming from for the reading schedule. There are 24 chapters so the pace is 6 chapters a week (approximately 11 pages per day)

Week 1 October 1-10 Chapters 1-6 pages 1-84
Week 2 October 11-17 Chapters 7-12 pages 85-168
Week 3 October 18-24 Chapters 13-18 pages 169-249
Week 4 October 25-31 Chapters 19-24 pages 250-324

For those not fluent in ancient Greek, there are many translations for this book. I am reading the E.V. Rieu translation, i think it is supposed to be easier to read, but it does not strictly follow poetic meter as other versions.

Feel free to add any background resources to this thread - as long as there are no spoilers :-)

So excited to see that The Odyssey won, although I was excited about the other close winners too. Perhaps we can read them another time.

For The Odyssey, I will be reading the Robert Fagles version. Back when I was reading Ulysses, I wish I had read the Odyssey before. It would have made Ulysses much more enjoyable for me.

I'm checking out the Robert Fagles version for now. Which edition do you all recommend as the best?

I own the Barnes and Noble edition that is translated by Samuel Butler. Is that a good one? I'm reluctant to purchase a book if I already own it.

A very educated online friend who was fluent in ancient Greek had this to say about the translations she had read:

"For the Iliad and the Odyssey, imnsho, the only translations I have ever seen which begin to do justice to Homer are Lattimore's. Simple, unadorned, but managing in so many places to capture the feel of the original. I wish I had maintained my Greek, because the original is always better... some things just can't be translated... but Lattimore makes me catch glimpses of the real thing and has a quiet grandeur which I love.



Fitzgerald has a nice translation of the Aeneid, but his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey are, imho, too florid.. there is too much Fitzgerald and not enough Homer. They are pretty, but way off key.



The Fagles translations repulse me. They are so colloquial, so far from Homeric that they feel more like modern adaptations than translations.



Lombardo takes even more liberties with the text - imho this is definitely more of an adaptation than a translation.



For a very literal translation (most useful if you are trying to translate Homer yourself) the Loeb editions have facing English and Greek pages and follows the word order of each Greek line as closely as possible - I wouldn't use it as a primary text, but it is a neat supplement. (Ex: "The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus' son Achilles," )



Some people like the Rieu prose translations, and I guess they could serve as an intro to Homer, but I wouldn't use them.



Mandlebaum has a slightly clunky translation of the Odyssey - he is my translator of choice for Dante (though it was a hard choice!), but not for Homer... but, unlike most of the others it *is* a reasonably reliable translation, as I recall.



Pope's translations are an older version of what Fagles has done - an adaptation in the "translator's" own style.. pretty, but not Homer... but, imo, less grating than Fagles and less ornate than Fitzgerald... though Fitzgerald is a more reliable translator.



Butler has prose translations of Homer... pedestrian is the adjective I would apply to them. Rieu's has a little more flavor, but Butler's is sold and straightforward.... not a version I would choose, but there isn't anything *wrong* with it...



Chapman's translation is a classic in its own right, but one I would read for itself not for Homer...



Those are all of the translations I have read... "

I love Lattimore's translations. He makes words echo sounds, for instance, the sea, just like Homer did. I've tried a bit of Fagles (I agree with my friend above) and Fitzgerald but I like Lattimore best. However, I think Fitzgerald's translation of The Aeneid is best.

Hope that gives some information that helps! :-)

I was not going to read this because just not enough reading time. However I have Lattimore's translation sitting on my book shelf so maybe if I can get through these two reads I will pick it up

@Cleo: Thanks for the info on the translations!

For me, I never worry too much about which version of the translation I read on the first time through. For the Russian books we had as selections here, I would often read different chapters in different translations depending on whether I was reading on my Kindle or hard copy. I think bad formatting bothers me more than bad translation. :-)

The Odyssey was written in Dactylic hexameter, so the meter is 6 sets of one long and two short syllables- I am trying to imagine what this would sound like:

L-ss L-ss L-ss L-ss L-ss L-ss

I am probably wrong on this but in my head, I am thinking Pon de Replay by Rihanna..lol

I think some of the translations try to somewhat adhere to this meter – I am not sure if any of them attempt to keep a rhyme scheme.

For this read through, I am treating the meter and rhyme scheme as academic curiosities and will pay more attention to that if I read this again in the future.

Correction:

After having this song stuck in my head all morning, I thing Pon De Replay would be Dactylic Heptameter:

COME mis-ter D jay-song PON’DE re-play COME mis-ter. D jay-won't YOU turn-the MUS ic-up

But if you leave off the last "MUS ic-up", that is probably a good approximation of the meter of this poem.

Maybe "Kiss From a Rose" by Seal would have been example:
BA by-i COM pare-you TO a-kiss FROM a-rose ON the-grey

:-)

Also, my favorite podcast called "Overdue" has an Odyssey miniseries. It's very funny, and is helping me a lot with fully comprehending the story. It's for free on Spotify and other streaming services, and is grouped two or three books/chapters at a time. The series is called "Stop! Homer Time", and I really recommend it, as well as their other episodes.

Ian wrote: "Correction:

After having this song stuck in my head all morning, I thing Pon De Replay would be Dactylic Heptameter:

COME mis-ter D jay-song PON’DE re-play COME mis-ter. D jay-won't YOU turn-the..."

Lol! I think I like "Kiss From A Rose" better! 😂

I'm so excited I had to share this. I was at a used book sale yesterday with a lot of really old books, and some were displayed in boxes with spines up. Well, in the kids section, face up at the top of the box, was Lattimore's version of the Odyssey! And I wasn't even looking for it. I of course bought it because I felt that it was a sign for me to have it. This happened to me last time I was at this local book store and got a book that was sticking out enough for my attention and wasn't looking for it. It was a book I was studying in a literature class and we didn't need to have it.

That's awesome, Morgan! So was it a hardcover? I was looking for Lattimore's translation in hardcover for ages and finally found one a couple of years ago. Sometimes we look for books but sometimes, it seems like books look for us, doesn't it? :-)

Cleo it was a paperback. It does seem like the books have been picking me lately!

I’m actually liking this book a lot more than I thought I would. I was worried it was going to be very long and difficult to get through, but the storyline seems to move fairly quickly.

It’s been going quite fast for me too. I’m on book 4 now. I’ve been enjoying seeing the different bits of Greek mythology I’ve read coming together here.

I have really gotten in to this as well, and I am keeping to the schedule, which is a pretty big feat for me.

One thing that I find interesting is that the Greek gods are not really omnipotent. They can't just warp Odysseys home - they need to get/trick mortals into doing things by appearing as other people or talking directly into mortals thoughts and dreams. Calypso could not just give Odysseys a raft, she gave him an ax and he had to make the raft himself. They are similar to modern day superheros.

It is neat that he Greeks thought the gods had limitations. I guess plot-wise it works better than Zeus warping Odysseys home in chapter 1.

Ian, I like your comparison of the Greek gods to superheroes. They are beings with super powers and they often don’t have the same agenda with each other, so it really is a competition of power and influence. Even Zeus is not omnipotent and cannot easily go against his brother.

On to week 2!

The version I got from the library was a prose translation by George Herbert Palmer. It was fine. Maybe someday I'll try a poem translation.

I started reading this late as I had a couple of other books I wanted to finish first. I picked up the Amazon Classics version. Little did I know at the time, it's based on Roman mythology instead of Greek mythology. So, the main character's name is Ulysees instead of Odysseus. I previously read the Iliad (version based on Greek mythology) and Circe (a fantastic expansion on the Greek mythology around Circe). It took a little bit of time to wrap my mind around the difference in Greek vs Roman characters. Now that I have and also having built up some reading muscle through last month's reading of Ulysees, I'm really enjoying it.

Because I'm reading on a Kindle, I can click on characters and locations and get additional background. I'm not sure I would understand as much without my Kindle cheats. How do others lookup information when reading print, are you looking up reference information on a device?

I should start using a Kindle as that sounds handy, but if I have a question I just look it up on the internet on my phone. Wikipedia for the win!