Book review: “The Odyssey” by Homer, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

Kalypso has been told by Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, to permit Odysseus to return home after being held on her island of Ogygia — and in her bed — for seven years. Grouchily, she agrees.

But, first, she reminds the hero of the Trojan War that, if he’d stay, he’d become an immortal.  Also, in trying to get back to his wife Penelope in Ithaka, he will face great anguish. And, after all, she’s just a woman.

“This much I will say: I doubt I am lesser than she,

No, not when it comes to my figure, now in full bloom—it’s unthinkable

For mortals to vie with immortals in either their build or their looks.”

(Mendelsohn: Book 5, 211-213)

That’s how Daniel Mendelsohn renders the nymph’s comments in his new translation of The Odyssey by Homer, just published by the University of Chicago Press.

It seems to be a fine rendition, but, to my mind, it doesn’t hold a candle to the way Emily Wilson handles Kalypso’s cattiness in her 2018 translation:

“And anyway, I know my body is

better than hers is.  I am taller too.

Mortals can never rival the immortals

in beauty.”
(Wilson: Book 5, 211-214)

Wilson was the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English verse, and she brings to these lines a feminine sensibility that opens them up in a way that generations of male translators never achieved.

It certainly sounds realistic to me that a female goddess would crow that “my body is/better than hers” and “I am taller too” — and less likely that she would, as in Mendelsohn’s version, talk about “my figure, now in full bloom” and the “build” and “looks” of the immortals.

Compared to “body,” the word “build” seems tepid at best.

 

“Each dense line of Homer’s Greek”

It is, I suppose, somewhat unusual to start a review of one translation by pitting it against another, but Mendelsohn, a humanities professor at Bard College and editor-at-large of the New York Review of Books, spends a good part of “A Note on the Translation” at the start of his book finding fault with Wilson’s version.

Wilson, a classical studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in her introduction that she set out to create an iambic pentameter translation that had the same number of lines (12,110) as the original:

I chose to write within this difficult constraint because any translations without such limitations will tend to be longer than the original, and I wanted a narrative pace that could match its stride to Homer’s nimble gallop.

By contrast, Mendelsohn writes in his translation note that his aim was “to offer and English language Odyssey that is pleasurable to read — by which I mean, has the fluency, muscularity, and rhythm of poetry — while reproducing, to the greatest extent possible what I see in each dense line of Homer’s Greek.”

 

“A six-beat, seventeen-syllable-long behemoth”

His translation, he writes, is “the first contemporary English version of the Odyssey that renders the Greek on a line-by-line basis with full consideration of the poetic qualities of the original.”  He continues:

It does so by eschewing the meter typically used by English translators of classic epic — the five-beat, ten syllable line known as iambic pentameter, the “blank verse” familiar to readers of much Anglophone poetry.  Instead, I have developed a much longer line, one that replicates, to a great extent, the distinctive pulse of the original, as often as possible with its customary pauses and breaks.

Mendelsohn’s model was Homer’s line, “a six-beat, theoretically seventeen-syllable-long behemoth known as dactylic hexameter.”  Such a “behemoth” line — nearly twice as long as a blank verse line — was necessary, he writes, to capture the fullness of Homer’s words and ideas.

And the proof, he writes, is in Wilson’s translation which, although praised by critics “for its speed, vigor, and clarity” had to leave out “much of what was in each line.” Indeed, Mendelsohn notes that one reviewer “who greatly admired her talent for versification” estimated that a third of Homer’s text had been lost in Wilson’s translation.

 

A richer experience

In his note, Mendelsohn compares some instances which, he argues, show that his longer line provides a much richer experience for the reader than Wilson’s does.

This set the stage for me to go into my reading of his translation with the earlier shorter-line one in mind.

In some cases, I looked at places where Mendelsohn’s lines seemed particularly descriptive.  In addition, I focused on key moments and scenes from my earlier reading of a variety of translations, such as the Cyclops Polyphemos eating Odysseus’s men and the hanging of the twelve female servants who consorted with the Suitors.

One note: The names in Mendelsohn’s translation are generally somewhat different than in other modern versions because he transliterates names in a manner to mimic Greek spellings, such as his use of k instead of c.  Hence, Kalypso instead of Calypso.

 

“Reaching up on tiptoe”

There were places in the translation where Mendelsohn’s longer line enabled him to bring a moment to light much better than Wilson was able to, such as when Penelope takes down Odysseus’s bow and weeps.

 

Mendelsohn: Book 21: 53-56

Reaching up as she stood on tiptoe, she took the bow from its peg

Along with the bow-case, which gleamed as it cradled the bow inside.

She sat right down on the ground, placing the case on her knees

As she wept, keening shrilly; then she took out the bow of her lord.

 

Wilson: Book 21: 51-55

…..and reached to lift the bow

down from its hook, still in its shining case.

She sat down on the floor to take it out,

resting it on her lap, and started sobbing

and wailing as she saw her husband’s bow.

 

With Mendelsohn’s words, the reader sees the moment in great detail and emotional intensity.  Not so with Wilson’s.

A similar example is the early description of Athena’s spear:

 

Mendelsohn: Book 1: 99-101

She took up her mighty spear. Tipped with a sharp point of bronze,

Heavy, huge, stout, she wields it to break the battalions

Of heroes with whom she is wroth — a mighty father’s true daughter.

 

Wilson: Book 1: 100-103

She took the heavy bronze-tipped spear she uses

to tame the ranks of warriors with whom

she is enraged….

 

Wilson’s rendering seems thin next to Mendelsohn’s full-bodied wording. “Heavy, huge, stout” give great weight, compared to the simple “heavy.”

I can’t read the original Greek, but it would appear that Mendelsohn was able to bring in something that Wilson leaves out, “a mighty father’s true daughter.”

 

“Wetting its whirring wings”

In some cases, each version has its pleasures, such as the description of Hermes flying with Zeus’s order to Kalypso:

 

Mendelsohn: Book 5: 50-53

Swooping down, he set foot on Pieria; then he plunged into the sea

And skimmed along the breakers like nothing so much as a tern,

Which drenches its thick plumage in the brine as it hunts for fish

Down through the troughs of the breakers on the restless wastes of the sea.

 

Wilson: Book 5: 50-53

He touched Pieria, then from the sky

he plunged into the sea and swooped between

the waves, just like a seagull catching fish,

wetting its whirring wings in tireless brine.

 

Mendelsohn is able to bring the reader deeper into the metaphor of a tern flying so close to the surface of the sea that its wings are drenched.  Wilson’s description is much tighter, but it glistens with its final line “wetting its whirring wings in tireless brine.”

 

“Drink the sea”

When I reviewed Wilson’s translation three years ago, I described it as enticing, absorbing and tangy. Her tanginess was often expressed in such delightful imagery as the “whirring wings.”

That was also the case when, with Odysseus away, his second-in-command Eurylochus convinces the hungry crew to eat the Sun God’s cattle on the island of Thrinakia despite the warning that it will lead to disaster.

 

Mendelsohn: Book 12: 350-351

“Well, I’d rather lose my life at once by gagging on a wave

Than waste away, drop by drop, here on this desert island!”

 

Wilson: Book 12: 350-352

“I would prefer to drink the sea and die

at once, than perish slowly, shriveled up

here on this desert island.”…

 

Wilson’s words “drink the sea” are, to my mind and ear, much better than “gagging on a wave.”

 

Argos and the Cyclops

Wilson’s shorter lines enable her to bring an intensity to many scenes.  Consider the death of Argos, Odysseus’s dog:

 

Mendelsohn: Book 17: 326-7

And Argos? His fate — black death — took him in its grip

The moment he saw Odysseus, after twenty years had passed.

 

Wilson: Book 17: 325-328

…..Twenty years

had passed since Argos saw Odysseus,

and now he saw him for the final time —

then suddenly, black death took hold of him.

 

Mendelsohn’s lines seem wordy (“His fate — black death”) and peter out.  Wilson, by contrast, uses “black death” as the punch at the end of her version.

Both Mendelsohn and Wilson do a good job with the scene in which the Cyclops Polyphemos starts to eat Odysseus’s men:

 

Mendelsohn: Book 9: 288-293

No! Springing to his feet, he laid violent hands on my comrades.

Grabbing two of them at once, he dashed them down on the earth

Like pups, and their brains poured out on the ground, drenching the earth.

He tore them limb from limb, then went about making his supper.

He ate like a lion reared in the mountains — not a morsel left over,

Not the innards nor the flesh nor the bones bursting with marrow.

 

Wilson: Book 9: 287-292

…..Leaping

up high, he reached his hands toward my men,

seized two, and knocked them hard against the ground

like puppies, and the floor was wet with brains.

He ripped them limb by limb to make his meal,

then ate them like a lion on the mountains,

devouring flesh, entrails, and marrow bones.

 

I particularly like Mendelsohn’s final line: “Not the innards nor the flesh nor the bones bursting with marrow.”

Wilson’s version, though, strikes me as more intense and nimbler.  Mendelsohn’s lines are a march through the gruesomeness. Wilson gives quick flashes of macabre surprises.

 

“The girls, their heads in a row”

Similarly, both translators handle another horrific scene well — the hanging of the female servants who had slept with the Suitors.

 

Mendelsohn: Book 22, 468-473

Just as when some thrushes with their slender wings, or some doves,

Go crashing into a snare that’s been set inside a bush

As they’re heading to their nests — but a loathsome bed welcomes them:

So did the women hold their heads all in a row, and the nooses

Went round the necks of them all so they’d die a most piteous death.

For a time, their feet went on twitching; but not for very long.

 

Wilson: Book 22, 468-474

As doves or thrushes spread their wings to fly

home to their nests, but someone sets a trap —

they crash into a net, a bitter bedtime;

just so the girls, their heads all in a row,

were strung up with the noose around their necks

to make their death an agony.  They gasped,

feet twitching for a while, but not for long.

 

When the two versions are next to each other, Mendelsohn comes across as long-winded and a bit old fashioned compared to Wilson.  His “loathsome bed,” to my mind, doesn’t work as well as Wilson’s “bitter bedtime.”

Also, her decision to call the servants “girls” gives her line “the girls, their heads in a row” an evocative sadness compared to his “the women hold their heads in a row.”

 

Lumbering

I found much to like in Mendelsohn’s new translation of The Odyssey, but it wasn’t as much fun to read as Wilson’s.

In Mendelsohn’s prefatory comments, he argues that his version is closer to the true Greek epic, to Homer’s epic (whoever Homer was).  His rendering, he asserts, captures all the nuances.  To hear his read aloud, he says, would be very close to hearing the sounds and rhythms and pace of Homer’s Greek.

That may be true, but, for me, an English-speaker of the twenty-first century, his version seemed slow and even lumbering at times. The sharpness of Homer’s scenes was blunted by Mendelsohn’s long lines.

I’m sure that those Greeks who first listened to The Odyssey twenty-six centuries ago didn’t experience it as lumbering.

Perhaps a translation for a twenty-first century audience needs to fit the culture by employing an iambic pentameter line that permits telling Homer’s story in a sprightly way, even if some subtleties are lost.  In other words, the most accurate translation might be one that is energetic and quick on its feet rather than one that matches the original Greek beat by beat.

I could be barking up the wrong tree; I’m no expert. I’ll leave it to the scholars to debate such questions.

However, if someone asks me for a suggestion of which translation to read, I’m going to suggest Wilson’s.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

5.9.25

 

NOTE: As a sidebar to this review, I’ve posted thirteen side-by-side-by-side versions of scenes from the epic that I gathered in preparing the above review. In this comparison, I looked at the translations by Mendelsohn and Wilson, as well as the 1967 rendering of the epic by noted translator Richmond Lattimore. You can look at these in the sidebar and decide which you like the best.