Response To Homer's Odyssey '

Reading Response for Feb 17

Choose two (2) of the following pairs of translated passages and discuss (in detail using specific examples) how the differences change the way you perceive the situation and/or character. Please type your responses in the body of the discussion post as usual.

1. Fagles:
“…To the life he’s like the son of great Odysseus, surely he’s Telemachus! The boy that hero left a babe in arms at home when all you Achaeans fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles just for my sake, shameless whore that I was” (IV.158-162).

1. Rieu:
“…Surely this must be the great-hearted Odysseus’ son Telemachus, whom his father left as a new-born baby in his home, when you Achaeans came to Troy with war in your hearts for my sake,
shameless creature that I was” (IV.142-145)!

2.
Fagles:
“…my heart leapt up— My heart had changed by now— I yearned to sail back home again! I grieved too late for the madness
Aphrodite sent me, luring me there, far from my dear land, forsaking my own child, my bridal bed, my husband too, a man who lacked for neither brains nor beauty” (IV.192-196).

2. Rieu:
“...The women of Troy were loud in their lamentations, but I rejoiced, for I was already longing to go home again. I had suffered a change of heart, repenting the blindness which Aphrodite sent me when she brought me to Troy from my own dear country and made me forsake my daughter, my bridal chamber, and a husband who lacked nothing in intelligence and looks” (IV.258-264).

3. Fagles:
“Never. All I have in mind and devise for you are the very plans I’d fashion for myself if I were in your straits. My every impulse bends to what is right. Not iron, trust me, the heart within my breast. I am all compassion” (V.208-212).

3.
Rieu:
“… I plot no other mischief against you but am considering only what I should do on my own behalf if I found myself in such a plight.
For I have some sense of what is fair; and my heart is not made of iron. I know what pity is” (V.185-190).

4. Fagles: But Zeus’s daughter Athena countered him at once.
The rest of the winds she stopped right in their tracks, commanding them to hush now, go to sleep (V.420-423).
4. Rieu: At this point Athene, Daughter of Zeus, decided to intervene. She checked all the other winds in their courses, bidding them calm down and sleep (V.381-383).

5. Fagles: At the same time, Odysseus set off toward the city.
Pallas Athena, harboring kindness for the hero, drifted a heavy mist around him, shielding him from any swaggering islander who’d cross his path, provoke him with taunts and search out who he was (VII.15-19).

5. Rieu:
The Odysseus started for the town. Athene, in her concern for his welfare, enveloped him in a thick mist, in case some high-handed Phaeacian who crossed his path insulted him and asked who he was (VII.15-19).

6. Fagles:
Odysseus, the great teller of tales, launched out on his story (IX.1).

6. Rieu:
In answer to the King, this is how Odysseus, the man of many resources began his tale
(IX.1-2).

Works Cited

Homer. The Odyssey. Tran. Robert Fagles. The Longman Anthology of World Literature, 2nd ed. Vol. A. Eds. David Damrosch and David L. Pike. New York: Longman, 2009. 259-554.
---. The Odyssey. Tran. E. V. Rieu. Rev. Ed. New York: Penguin, 2003.