The Odyssey puts us into a world that is a peculiar mixture of the strange and the familiar. The tension between strangeness and familiarity is in fact the poem’s central subject.
In this way, the Odyssey’s hero embodies one of its central themes, which is that the capacity to defer satisfaction and endure suffering is as necessary for success as the ability to perform brilliant feats.
A man cannot hide away the cravings of a hungry belly; this is an enemy which gives much trouble to all men; it is because of this that ships are fitted out to sail the seas, and to make war upon other people.
O old friend, if we two escaping this war were destined to be ageless and deathless always, I myself would not fight in the frontlines, nor would I send you into battle where men win glory; but now, since the fates of death stand by us in their thousands, which a mortal man cannot escape nor flee, let us go – either we will give the right to vaunt to someone else or he to us.
Must you have battle in your heart forever? The bloody toil of combat? Old contender, will you not yield to the immortal gods? That nightmare cannot die, being eternal evil itself – horror, and pain, and chaos; there is no fighting her, no power can fight her. All that avails is flight.
For I have seen the cities of men; and learned their manners.
All the other Greeks who had survived the brutal sack of Troy sailed safely home to their own wives – except this man alone. Calypso, a great.
Never have you patience frankly to speak forth to me the thing that you purpose.
Nothing is more miserable than man, Of all upon the earth that breathes and creeps.
The narrator commands the Muse, “Tell me”: enn-epe. An epic poem is, at its root, simply a tale that is told.
But now, since you have given me accurate proof describing our bed, which no other mortal man beside has ever seen, but only you and I, and there is one serving woman, Aktor’s daughter, whom my father gave me when I came here, who used to guard the doors for us in our well-built chamber; 230 so you persuade my heart, though it has been very stubborn.
That one of them who wins and is proved stronger, let him take the possessions fairly and the woman, and lead her homeward while the rest of us cut our oaths of faith and friendship.
Well, back in Troy, Odysseus and I always agreed in councils, with one mind. We gave the Argives all the best advice.
And as when the land appears welcome to men who are swimming, after Poseidon has smashed their strong-built ship on the open 235 water, pounding it with the weight of wind and the heavy seas, and only a few escape the gray water landward by swimming, with a thick scurf of salt coated upon them, and gladly they set foot on the shore, escaping the evil; so welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him, 240 and she could not let him go from the embrace of her white arms.
Your arrows for my tears.
No finer, greater gift in the world than that... when man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one.
Translation is the art of listening. In one ear is the sound of the original text, and in the other is a rhythm, wordless, waiting to find its voice. Somehow, eventually, the right words rise into the rhythm and become it, as if the listening created what one wanted to hear.
Bird life aplenty is found in the sunny air, not all of it significant.
Sullen Telemachus said, “Mother, no, you must not criticize the loyal bard for singing as it pleases him to sing. Poets are not to blame for how things are; Zeus is;.
No finer, greater gift in the world than that: When man and woman possess their home, two minds, two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies, a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.
The shock of encountering an ancient author speaking in largely recognizable language can make him seem more strange, and newly strange. I would like to invite readers to experience a sense of connection to this ancient text, while also recognizing its vast distance from our own place and time. Homer is, and is not, our contemporary.