eBook, 548 pages
English language
Published June 27, 2014 by Amazon Classics.
I really wish I had read this translation in school. It's a great translation that flows brilliantly and seems like it would perform well on a stage. Bravo!
I really wish I had read this translation in school. It's a great translation that flows brilliantly and seems like it would perform well on a stage. Bravo!
An approachable version of The Odyssey in a plain and modern English. Wilson matches Homer line-for-line, but compresses each line to a 5-beat iambic pentameter. Her language is chiseled, sometimes to a fault. But it adds up to a surprisingly quick, enjoyable, and morally engaging read.
Homer's most vivid images really shine in this rendering: "He saw them fallen, all of them, so many; / lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up / out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; / tipped out upon the curving beach's sand, / they gasp for water from the salty sea. / The sun shines down and takes their life away. / So lay the suitors, heaped across each other."
The text avoids justifying or masking immoral or questionable acts and practices. The word "slave" is used frequently, rather than euphemisms. Sometimes the translation strikes a judgmental note, like …
An approachable version of The Odyssey in a plain and modern English. Wilson matches Homer line-for-line, but compresses each line to a 5-beat iambic pentameter. Her language is chiseled, sometimes to a fault. But it adds up to a surprisingly quick, enjoyable, and morally engaging read.
Homer's most vivid images really shine in this rendering: "He saw them fallen, all of them, so many; / lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up / out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; / tipped out upon the curving beach's sand, / they gasp for water from the salty sea. / The sun shines down and takes their life away. / So lay the suitors, heaped across each other."
The text avoids justifying or masking immoral or questionable acts and practices. The word "slave" is used frequently, rather than euphemisms. Sometimes the translation strikes a judgmental note, like when the opening stanza says of Odysseus and his men: "He failed to keep them safe." Overall, I loved being invited to see these characters as flawed people in a flawed world, not as monuments.
