The Second Oldest Work of Literature Produced by the Western World: Now Showing in an iMAX Theater Near You

 
Director Christopher Nolan has managed to make a real living movie out of the protean, magical, subtle, complex thing known as Homer’s Odyssey. That’s what everyone is saying. I haven’t seen it, but I hope to soon.

In the meanwhile, I have some advice to offer to people who have seen it or intend to. I am offering advice, not only because I am an old man and offering advice is what old me do. I am also sort of qualified to be offering advice about this matter. In college, I majored in classics in order to learn to read Homer in the original Greek. I did not become a classical scholar — far from it — but I gained some familiarity with Homer’s great poems as they were first written.

Here’s my advice:

If you plan to see the movie but haven’t read the Odyssey, read the Odyssey first.

If you have seen the movie but haven’t read the Odyssey, read the Odyssey.

A good translation reads easily and smoothly. The syntax is simple and uninvolved.

Good prose translations:  George Herbert Palmer’s (Robert Frost’s favorite translation); Samuel Butler’s.  Both of these are available in inexpensive paperback editions. Walter Schwering’s prose translation is both accurate and readable, and it is printed with his interesting essay on the problems of translating the Odyssey and of translation in general.

Good verse translations:  William Cullen Bryant’s, Alexander Pope’s, Robert Fagles’

Translations to avoid:

Chapman’s. A vigorous Elizabethan version whose eccentricities seem tiresome after a while.

Richmond Lattimore’s. He is as faithful to the original as it is possible to be, given the immense difference between English and Homeric Greek in almost any respect. That makes his translation useful to the student who is parsing his way through the original Greek.  It also conveys the impression that Homer’s language is awkward, even tortured — which is as far from being the case as it could be.

Emily Wilson”s.  I’ve read only excepts from her translation, but she seems to be trying too hard to shield her readers from anything that is unfamiliar, exotic, taxing. In so doing, leaves the Odyssey rather flavorless and bland.