Every year or two I re-read the Odyssey, usually the WHD Rouse translation. Rouse translated the story of brave ulysses as prose, it reads like a novel. I heartily recommend it. You may also see the Samuel Butler prose translation in the bookstores, because it was done during Victorian times, and is now in the public domain. The Butler translation is certainly readable, but a little old-fashioned. Rouse fits modern tastes better.

But Homer wrote in poetry, unrhymed hexameter, probably because the old epic poems were first set down before the invention of writing and they were easier to memorize as poetry. This imposes an odd structure to the poems, such as repetitious, flowery and cliched (to modern ears) lines and, of course, the “epithets”. These sound cumbersome and awkward to us today (like “rosy-fingered Dawn” or “wine-dark sea”), especially when they are used so frequently, but no doubt played a key role in maintaining the rhythmic flow, and ability to memorize, of the poetry. Similar gimmicks in ancient Hebrew survive in the King James Version Old Testament, too. But it is my understanding that to the ancient listener, or to the modern scholar who can read archaic Greek, they add enormously to the music and drama of the text. To this day, Homer is still performed in the original Ionian dialect by modern Greek actors to contemporary Greeks, who find the ancient sounds as alien as Beowulf sounds to our ears.

Numerous poetic translations of Homer have been attempted, but I’ve never tried one, I’ve always felt that the difficulties of translating a poem from one language to another would pretty much cancel out any skill or genius the translator might possess, but lately, the Robert Fagles translations of Homer have been getting very favorable critical reviews. I’ve looked through it, and found it awkward and unconvincing, but was aware that reading poetry that was meant to be sung might leave something out. Just think how totally awful even the most clever rock and roll lyrics come across when read aloud without music, and that’s keeping it all in English!
Can you imagine translating Bob Dylan into Spanish would sound like?

So, recalling my amazement at how absolutely wonderful the Ring Trilogy was when read aloud, I recently picked up the Ian McKellen
(the actor who played Gandalf in the Tolkein films) reading of the Odyssey, as well as the Fagles text so I could follow along.

Yes, it does make a difference. It is wonderful.

I’m simultaneously reading Picketty’s “Capital”, so alternating the two is really a treat.