The Odyssey

October 27, 2014
British actor Stevens of Downton Abbey fame brings Homer’s epic poem to life with this well-executed reading of the classic tale of the Greek hero Odysseus and his 10-year journey home. When Odysseus is presumed dead after the Trojan War, his wife, Penelope, is awash with suitors looking to court her and in turn take over the land. While Penelope stalls the persistent suitors, her husband is cursed to wander the seas encountering all manner of mythical beings and even the gods, who all play their part in helping, or mostly hindering, the hero in his quest to find home. Stevens, with a cool, unmannered delivery, brings a modern vocal interpretation to his performance, making this ancient poem engaging to the modern ear and easy to listen to. With his relaxed reading, Stevens proves that this classic poem is definitely not some dry, dusty work of ancient history, but a vibrant exciting story that, like the best tales of adventure, works best when read aloud, as scholars contend it was intended. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback.

February 15, 2018

Green (Dougherty Centennial Professor Emeritus of Classics, Univ. of Texas at Austin), classical historian, translator, and poet, whose many books include a noted biography of Alexander the Great, a history of the Persian War, and translations of the Argonautika and Ovid's Tristia, offers a new verse translation of the Odyssey, the product of many years of reading and thinking. As with his earlier translation of the Iliad, Green aspires to a "declaimable" style, inspired by C. Day Lewis's Aeneid and Richmond Lattimore's Iliad. He avoids the anarchizing tendencies of Stanley Lombardo, following an approach closer to that of Anthony Verity and Robert Fagles. Comparisons to Emily Wilson's recent translation are inevitable. While Wilson seeks a modern, readable version Green wishes to capture the strangeness of Homer's oral language, preserving the repetitive epithets and phraseology, using the transliteration of the Greek names rather than their Latinate forms, and following the linear rhetoric and syntax of the original. VERDICT Both Wilson and Green capture the spirit of the Odyssey, but word-for-word, Green also captures a feel for the Homeric language, an experience closer to the original.--Thomas L. Cooksey, formerly with Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah

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