The Odyssey

This is my fourth time reading The Odyssey, each time in a different translation. This version is by far the best. Emily Wilson has chosen a contemporary vocabulary and syntax that only rarely produces a jarring note. The poetic lines have an unforced rhythm that enhances the epic narrative.

No matter how many times I read the Odyssey, I'm always surprised at how little space is given to Odysseus's meanderings between Troy and his captivity with Calypso. The lotus-eaters get about a dozen lines, the sirens even fewer; the Laestrygonians accomplish their cannibalistic, fleet-wrecking revenge in less than a page. Meanwhile we get four whole books of Odysseus living it up with the Phaeacians (not that I ever get tired of hearing about the succulent roast meat, bread and wine) and seven books of caginess, dissembling, loyalty tests, and general crafty plotting from when he finally lands back in Ithaca to when he announces himself with that badass arrow-shot through the axe-heads.

My favourite moment will always be at the end of Book V, where Odysseus at his lowest ebb, exhausted and bedraggled having gone twelve rounds with Poseidon and only still alive thanks to the attentions of a passing naiad, crawls ashore on Scherie and beds down under the twin olive trees, covering himself in dry leaves. Just profoundly peaceful. Respite from the ever-terrifying ungovernable winedark sea. And of course the old "my name is Nobody" pranking of Polyphemus, ho ho.

A beautiful poetic translation of Homer's Odyssey. One of my favorite poems and a seminal epic that should be read and reread.

I'm no Greek scholar but I can read English, and know when a writing transfixes me. It's been about 45 years since I read Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Odyssey, and while that was comprehensible it never captivated my like this. Suddenly the energy of Homer (whoever he/they was/were) from the beautifully presented papyrusesque pages, and I knew at last why Homer is important. I'm not qualified to say anytghing more than "thank you, Emily Wilson, for your translation, and oh the gods, your Introduction is inspiratioinal in its own right."

I finally read the Odyssey after sitting in my shelf for a long time.
This version is translated by Roger Fagles.
Description of the book:
"So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey.
If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, then the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of everyman's journey though 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 a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance."
I have seen many movies of the Odyssey and I felt the book and the movies were very close.
Quite and adventure and a book worth a re-read. I recommend readers add it to their classic reads.

Haha, who am I to rate Homer?! So funny!

In my opinion, Homer's work is a beautiful love story, Shakespearean before there was a Shakespeare.
My beef is the tediousness of Odysseus' trials and tribulations but that's just a matter of opinion. In the 21st century, we desire expedience but something has to be said about the titillating slowness of 750 BC.
The Greek gods, popping in and out, are amusing and entertaining. Humans, mere mortals, are puppet-like to their will. Hmm, but are they really?
Odysseus's journey somewhat mirrors our own. In that way, the novel/poem is adaptable to every age and thus makes it a classic for the ages.

First off, it is what it is, a heroic epic written back in the day when heroes were brave warriors, period. Not much introspection, not much of the 'good guy' we've come to expect in our own culture. It's not unlike Beowulf in that sense, or The Tain, although the cultures are very different. I liked The Odyssey better than The Iliad (which bored me to tears with all that monotonous description of battle). It seems strange that these epics were composed by the same person, because they are so different. The Iliad has so much more focus on action rather than character. And at least the Odyssey gives us some POV of the women, Penelope and Nausicaa and Circe for instance. And the violence is limited to pretty much the last few chapters, with no descriptions of eyes popping out or intestines strewn on the ground like the Iliad.

I first read this back when I was in the sixth grade, perusing the library for things to read. I couldn't get through the Iliad at that time but I enjoyed the adventures of the Odyssey. Our town library had had a story time featuring the Greek myths, so I was familiar with the gods and goddesses. I re-read both in college, the Fitzgerald translation, I think? And now I have read them again, in my mid-fifties. Fagles translation this time. I still enjoyed The Odyssey, although it sits less well with modern sensibilities, and there's some cultural mores that I wish I knew more about (Penelope being forced to endure the suitors, for instance). I hadn't remembered that there was such a long portion in Telemachus' POV. In some ways, it's as much about him as it is about Odysseus. Telemachus comes of age, at first searching for his father and finally fighting by his side to eject the parasitical suitors from their home.

In any case, one of the cornerstones of Western literature.

So I decided to make this my big classic read for Dewey's Readathon, which means I read this in more or less a single sitting. The advantage was not losing momentum/familiarity while taking weeks or months to finish this. The disadvantage was getting. little antsy. Not a big price to pay.

This was a lovely read! The translation was almost shockingly readable. It really was fascinating how familiar almost all the story beats were, yet how surprised I still was by how the story unfolded.

So glad I finally read this.

An almost startlingly approachable translation. As others, including Ms. Wilson, have written, the translation brings out the complexity of Odysseus' character. I haven't read The Odyssey in a long time, so I'm not sure if it also brings out the violence in the story or if I had merely forgotten it.

Also part of this semester's reading list. I didn't enjoy it as much as The Iliad but I'm glad I read it. Above and beyond having to read it for school. ;)

A really good read, though between this and the Iliad, I actually found the Iliad more engaging. The journey of Odysseus was over too quickly and the revenge too long. Still a great tale. Never did find the noxious overtones that certain modern commenters find in it (e.g. Sexism, etc). Rather I found a man who only wanted his home and could never fully reach it. Too vexed by fate and war that even when he found home and his beloved, his past overrode his sense. Bittersweet, as both Homeric epics are.

I can't really speak to the translation: I've read the Fitzgerald version, but that was several years ago and don't remember the specifics of the language.

What we have here is a faithful and passionate rendering of the epic poem, which captures both the problematic nature of Odysseus's character and some of the more important features of the civilization. My feeling is that the early listener was meant to learn the values of the society through the trials and travails of Odysseus. Some of these values persist today in different forms: but the question of revenge is not really dealt with after the death of Penelope's suitors at her husband's hands. (Aeschylus wrestles with this in the story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra).

Don't be intimidated, this is very readable and one of the pillars of our civilization!!!

Postscript 2: My third reading of this epic in the last eight years! My one additional insight from this reading is how closely the description of the slaughter of the suitors in the hall tracks with some of the gorier battle scenes in The Iliad. If the two epics are part of a continuum, the return of "Trojan War" Odysseus at the end brings his journey full circle.

Such a creative and fascinating story! To experience the Odyssey is to tread through dreams with your eyes wide open.

I've read at least four versions of The Odyssey over my lifetime. There was the Classic Comic from the 1940s or 50s; a copy, maybe by Pope, in my high school library, which I barely understood; there was a paperback version read sometime in mid-life; then the 1996 Robert Fagles translation in pretty clear English; and finally this volume, translated a few years ago, in 2018 by Emily Wilson, and in iambic pentameter no less.
I enjoyed each reading, still own both the Fagles and Wilson versions, but Wilson's is my clear favorite now.

This version of the Odyssey only gets three stars because Alexander Pope's translation of the Odyssey is one of the few books ever that actually made me fall asleep while reading it. Which is dangerous because the Easton Press edition is very heavy--its not a great one to have fall on your face. Part of this might be that I wasn't a big fan of Pope when I read him college, and another part is that its poetry from the 1700's. In any case, I think there are both better versions of the Odyssey, and better things written by Pope, to read. The story itself is pretty interesting, though similar to the Iliad, and the bible, all of the exciting bits and stories--the things they are famous for--only take up a small amount of the text itself.

4 1/2 stars. While I found Pope's poetry with its strong rhyming and regular meter appealing, I would recommend Fagles modern translation over this unless the reader has a strong classical background. Not only does Fagles use the Greek, rather than the Roman, names but his writing style and word choice is more easily understood by the modern reader.

On a trivial note, I have now read something which uses the word "whelm"!

I love Emily Wilson's translation. It feels direct, letting the poet speak in my language. Where the story feels archaic, it is because of the story, not a layer of translation.

The introduction is really useful for understanding the story. Long, but worth it.

The last paragraph of the introduction is this invitation to the reader. Read this for her writing style but also for her approach to the book. The Odyssey is a book of hospitality and stories. Listen carefully.


There is a stranger outside your house. He is old ragged, and dirty. He is tired. He has been wandering, homeless, for a long time, perhaps many years. Invite him inside. You do not know his name. He may be a thief. He may be a murderer. He may be a god. He may remind your of your husband, your father, or yourself. Do not ask questions. Wait. Let him him sit on a comfortable chair and warm himself beside your fire. Bring him some food, the best you have, and some wine. Let him eat and drink until he is satisfied. Be patient. When he is finished, he will tell you his story. Listen carefully. It may not be as you expect.

To atone for missing my Shakespeare last summer I tackled the mighty Odyssey...just kidding, it's actually something I've wanted to read for a very long time, especially since I was ripped off in high school by just being made to watch the atrocious 1990s TV show. Ugh.

I'm so, so lucky to have had this version to read. Wilson's comprehensive introduction (which, I'll admit, made me groan internally until it started flying by) explains what makes her translation distinct from those before it: not just the iambic pentameter and familiar language, but the reexamination of translations long taken for granted. "A translator has a responsibility to acknowledge her own agency and to wrestle, in explicit and conscious ways, not only with the multiple meanings of the original in its own culture but also with what her own text may mean, and the effects it may have on its readers" (p. 88).

Me being me, I most appreciated Wilson's dedication to being frank about slavery's prevalence and looking for nuance rather than modern stereotype in the depiction of women. She gives a few examples of how past translators have chosen to filter their own vision of Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and others through their own cultural lenses, and states clearly where she has done the same rather than pretending she has produced an "exact" translation. It would be fascinating to have read an older translation side-by-side with this one.

Now I'm itching to dip my toes into The Iliad, which I also haven't read.


Quote Roundup
These are a bit irreverent, since I was already familiar with many of the plot basics just by cultural osmosis.

12:391-393: The gods sent signs--the hides began to twitch,
the meat on skewers started mooing,
raw and cooked. There was the sound of cattle lowing.
If that isn't enough to make you vegetarian, I don't know what is!

12:420-424: The waves bore off
the husk [the hull of the ship] and snapped the mast. But thrown across it
there was a backstay cable, oxhide leather.
With this I lashed the keel and mast together,
and rode them, carried on by fearsome winds.
Odysseus invents windsurfing.

19:14: Weapons themselves can tempt a man to fight.
Apparently having a sword in the house increases the likelihood of death by sword. Hm. Why does that sound familiar? Oh, and it gets said three different times in three different ways. The ancient Greeks could clearly teach us a thing or two about weapons control...

19:573-580
I never knew that Penelope came up with the contest with the battle axes instead of "Clever" Odysseus.

23:228-300: And when
the couple had enjoyed their lovemaking,
they shared another pleasure--telling stories.
How many lit nerds over the years have loved this line?

As a final note, The Odyssey goes down with Pride and Prejudice as having one of the most anticlimactic last lines in classic literature. Ah well, you can't have everything, can you?

As with The Iliad, I find myself once again shocked at the disparity between what I remember reading forty years ago in high school, and what actually transpires.

For instance, I would have bet a lot of money that the death of Achilles and the entire Trojan Horse thing were both detailed toward the end of The Iliad. Obviously, I know now that I would have been wrong and would have paid out a lot of money.

Similarly, after completing that book, I seemed to have remembered that no, those two scenes were near the beginning of The Odyssey, perhaps in the first two or three books (of the 24 in total), then all but the last book or two (so, maybe 19 or 20 books) would have detailed Odysseus' long trip home. And I would have sworn he left Troy and all the various delays totalled to another decade before he got home. And that he basically burst in just after his wife Penelope offered up the whole string-my-husband's-bow-and-shoot-an-arrow-through-a-dozen-ax-heads thing.

So...no death of Achilles scene—though we do meet up with him later on in Hades—and the Trojan Horse deal gets a very brief mention. But Odysseus spends most of that decade hanging with Calypso, and only spends three years getting home.

My god, no wonder humans are such lousy witnesses. I was so off on all of this.

As for the actual story itself, it was good, and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with the adventures of Odysseus, but overall, I found this one to be much more repetitious (I think we get Penelope's story of weaving a shroud by day and unspooling it by night at least three times), and overall a little less fun. Maybe it was the lack of shenanigans by all the gods, with only Calypso, Poseidon, and Athena getting any significant air time.

I still believe both these books are an essential read, and I will be also diving into Virgil's The Aenied...and might even follow that up with Beowulf. Have a bit of a taste for these epic tales right now.

Astounding. I've never read a translation like it.

I thought it was not pertinent.

You can maybe dredge up 1-point to this read.

If this was a 10-star rating system I'd perhaps score this title 5 out of 10 stars.

It's a common classic.

Cool story.

I've really enjoyed Emily Wilson's various Twitter threads over the years comparing different translations from this epic, so I finally took the time to read her full translation. I did so carefully, reading just one book per day so as to make sure I took the time to let each word matter. Hers is an excellent interpretation, to my ear, anyway. 

I read this a long time ago and I remember liking it. It is definitely a classic

It's the Odyssey; you should probably read it. Fitzgerald's version is very readable, and not particularly scholarly, so it's ideal for actually reading. I doubt it's much use if you're looking for a trot to read alongside the Greek, but since I don't know Greek... well, it suits my purposes.

Everyone who reads the thing seems to have an idea about the *one thing* the book is about, which is ridiculous, since even in translation you can see that it's a bunch of different stories stitched together with some cosmetic cover-up. Nonetheless, I have a theory for what one thing the book is about: the tragedy of hospitality. The moral code* is stressed throughout the book--be good to travelers and guests. Sometimes it's rationalized ("the guest might be a god!" or "Zeus orders it!"), and sometime not. But the big actions of the poem are all tied to being good to guests, and how it's just not actually possible. The two conclusions are Odysseus and crew slaughtering the suitors who, I will somewhat tendentiously argue, are guests; and the Phaeacians deciding that they have to place limits to their own kindness to guests. In other words, just as the Oresteia ends by 'resolving' the problem of mob-justice and revenge by setting up a formal judicial system, the Odyssey ends by resolving the problem of 'unwritten' laws of hospitality, by authorizing a weakening of them. I could really go out on a limb and say this is the ultimate end of the Trojan war: everyone is much more suspicious of everyone else, because too many people have abused social norms of kindness.

I don't expect anyone to actually buy that, but I had fun coming up with the theory.


* People like to say that Homer doesn't have morality the way 'we' have morality, because that makes them feel like a cool and revolutionary Nietzschean teenager. It is nonsense. If anything, the moral code presented in Homer is far more restrictive than that presented in, e.g., Dante, for the simple reason that the code in Homer is highly socialized, whereas that in Dante is entirely individual. There's no suggestion in Dante that doing wrong will bring down on you the wrath of other humans, which means you're free to go on being evil and take your chances on the afterlife. In Homer, people who do bad things suffer social consequences in this life. Okay, I'm overstating matters out of belligerence.

The Robert Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey was my first introduction to Homer, way back in my freshman high school days, and although my study of ancient Greek in college led me to the opinion that his work is not the best Homeric translation available - see my review of The Iliad for more details about my devotion to Richmond Lattimore - it retains a special place in my heart. I can still recall how magical I found the story of Odysseus' homeward journey, after the Trojan War, the excitement of his many adventures, the terror of the many monsters he encountered. I still recall the thrill I felt, reading of Penelope's stratagems, and Odysseus' disguised return...

Homer's two epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are definitely works that I think every reader with an interest in the development of European literature should read, at some point. I feel fortunate indeed to have read one of them (The Iliad) in the original, but for those many who do not have that chance, the issue of translation is an important one. As mentioned, the Fitzgerald has a special place in my literary memory, and I find it a beautiful work, judged upon its own merit as poetry. English-language readers could do far, far worse than to pick it up. Fagles, I understand, is also widely (and justly) praised, although I have only read his translation of The Iiad. My own vote, for best translator, goes to Lattimore, and I think those readers wanting to get a translation as close to the original as possible, in both sense and structure, should give him a try. Still, this one by Fitzgerald will always pull at my heartstrings...

a wonderful New translation in meter, so it flows and reads like a song without overly flowery verse, and deep insight into what the Greek poets meant without distortion of a later morality and cultural lens. a joy to read.

A re-read of classic literature. In this sequel to the Iliad, Homer continues with the adventures of Odysseus in the Odyssey. Maybe it was the 4 years of Latin I took in high school but this never gets old.

This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.

First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.

But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree of repetitiveness to the language that grated--Wilson's introduction explains why it was so in a work written to be performed but it still took away from my experience of reading this as written text--a few too many passages that consist of just listing characters from other Greek myths to the point that they felt like the Torah's "begats", and by the end I found the character of Odysseus dislikable enough to not care about his fortunes.

I'm still glad to have read this. I didn't get anywhere near the exposure to Greek mythology that US schools seem to give, so much of the story was either new to me or connected dots that I'd picked up scattershot from English literature referencing them. And I have to say that I'm re-reading the Torah this year, which seems to be of approximately the same age, and found The Odyssey so much more sophisticated and compelling as a work of literature. But I can't exactly say that I _like_ this story.

A wonderful translation, easy to read and to understand. But thank goodness for the intro.

Hard to believe but I've never read this before. And rather than get lost in the lengthy introduction, I jumped ahead and just began the tale itself. It was hard to put down and I sped right through it, but by the end I was thinking, "Boy, these people were weird", so thank goodness for that intro, which I started after finishing the main work. One of the first things mentioned is that no one in the ancient world, at any time, acted or spoke like these people. So that was one question answered.