The Fitzgerald translation (1974) is the translation that was assigned in college, and the only one I've read all the way through. I haven't read it since the late 1990s, when I found it while going through boxes after moving, but I remember it as being wonderful. It isn't in rhyme, or I don't remember it being in rhyme, but it was suitable for a bunch of college students in the early '80s.
I work with the Samuel Butler translation: "Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy." I find it a goldilocks moderation between lofty and engaging.
Here's an English-Greek interlinear version -- you be the judge:
The Fitzgerald translation (1974) is the translation that was assigned in college, and the only one I've read all the way through. I haven't read it since the late 1990s, when I found it while going through boxes after moving, but I remember it as being wonderful. It isn't in rhyme, or I don't remember it being in rhyme, but it was suitable for a bunch of college students in the early '80s.
I don't remember what translation I read, which makes sense because I don't have concrete memories of reading it at all. I wonder if I didn't?
I studied the Fagles translation when I was in school:
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.
I like the repetition of "man" in the first line there. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post!
I work with the Samuel Butler translation: "Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy." I find it a goldilocks moderation between lofty and engaging.
Here's an English-Greek interlinear version -- you be the judge:
https://greatlibraryproject.com/odyssey.html#1.1
"Ingenious hero" is a different take on that. He was crafty and heroic in many ways!