The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Read online

  For my sons and daughters

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  BOOK I - A GODDESS INTERVENES

  BOOK II - A HERO’S SON AWAKENS

  BOOK III - THE LORD OF THE WESTERN APPROACHES

  BOOK IV - THE RED-HAIRED KING AND HIS LADY

  BOOK V - SWEET NYMPH AND OPEN SEA

  BOOK VI - THE PRINCESS AT THE RIVER

  BOOK VII - GARDENS AND FIRELIGHT

  BOOK VIII - THE SONGS OF THE HARPER

  BOOK IX - NEW COASTS AND POSEIDON’S SON

  BOOK X - THE GRACE OF THE WITCH

  BOOK XI - A GATHERING OF SHADES

  BOOK XII - SEA PERILS AND DEFEAT

  BOOK XIII - ONE MORE STRANGE ISLAND

  BOOK XIV - HOSPITALITY IN THE FOREST

  BOOK XV - HOW THEY CAME TO ITHAKA

  BOOK XVI - FATHER AND SON

  BOOK XVII - THE BEGGAR AT THE MANOR

  BOOK XVIII - BLOWS AND A QUEEN’S BEAUTY

  BOOK XIX - RECOGNITIONS AND A DREAM

  BOOK XX - SIGNS AND A VISION

  BOOK XXI - THE TEST OF THE BOW

  BOOK XXII - DEATH IN THE GREAT HALL

  BOOK XXIII - THE TRUNK OF THE OLIVE TREE

  BOOK XXIV - WARRIORS, FAREWELL

  THE POEM OF ODYSSEUS

  BY ROBERT FITZGERALD

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  POSTSCRIPT

  CRITICAL WRITING ON THE ODYSSEY AND HOMERIC POETRY

  NOTES AND GLOSSARY

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  BOOK I

  A GODDESS INTERVENES

  Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

  of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

  the wanderer, harried for years on end,

  after he plundered the stronghold

  on the proud height of Troy.

  He saw the townlands

  and learned the minds of many distant men,

  and weathered many bitter nights and days

  in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only

  to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.

  But not by will nor valor could he save them,

  for their own recklessness destroyed them all—

  children and fools, they killed and feasted on

  the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,

  and he who moves all day through heaven

  took from their eyes the dawn of their return.

  Of these adventures, Muse, daughter of Zeus,

  tell us in our time, lift the great song again.

  Begin when all the rest who left behind them

  headlong death in battle or at sea

  had long ago returned, while he alone still hungered

  for home and wife. Her ladyship Kalypso

  clung to him in her sea-hollowed caves—

  a nymph, immortal and most beautiful,

  who craved him for her own.

  And when long years and seasons

  wheeling brought around that point of time

  ordained for him to make his passage homeward,

  trials and dangers, even so, attended him

  even in Ithaka, near those he loved.

  Yet all the gods had pitied Lord Odysseus,

  all but Poseidon, raging cold and rough

  against the brave king till he came ashore

  at last on his own land.

  But now that god

  had gone far off among the sunburnt races,

  most remote of men, at earth’s two verges,

  in sunset lands and lands of the rising sun,

  to be regaled by smoke of thighbones burning,

  haunches of rams and bulls, a hundred fold.

  He lingered delighted at the banquet side.

  In the bright hall of Zeus upon Olympos

  the other gods were all at home, and Zeus,

  the father of gods and men, made conversation.

  For he had meditated on Aigísthos, dead

  by the hand of Agamémnon’s son, Orestês,

  and spoke his thought aloud before them all:

  “My word, how mortals take the gods to task!

  All their afflictions come from us, we hear.

  And what of their own failings? Greed and folly

  double the suffering in the lot of man.

  See how Aigísthos, for his double portion,

  stole Agamémnon’s wife and killed the soldier

  on his homecoming day. And yet Aigísthos

  knew that his own doom lay in this. We gods

  had warned him, sent down Hermês Argeiphontês,

  our most observant courier, to say:

  ‘Don’t kill the man, don’t touch his wife,

  or face a reckoning with Orestês

  the day he comes of age and wants his patrimony.’

  Friendly advice—but would Aigísthos take it?

  Now he has paid the reckoning in full.”

  The grey-eyed goddess Athena replied to Zeus:

  “O Majesty, O Father of us all,

  that man is in the dust indeed, and justly.

  So perish all who do what he had done.

  But my own heart is broken for Odysseus,

  the master mind of war, so long a castaway

  upon an island in the running sea;

  a wooded island, in the sea’s middle,

  and there’s a goddess in the place, the daughter

  of one whose baleful mind knows all the deeps

  of the blue sea—Atlas, who holds the columns

  that bear from land the great thrust of the sky.

  His daughter will not let Odysseus go,

  poor mournful man; she keeps on coaxing him

  with her beguiling talk, to turn his mind

  from Ithaka. But such desire is in him

  merely to see the hearthsmoke leaping upward

  from his own island, that he longs to die.

  Are you not moved by this, Lord of Olympos?

  Had you no pleasure from Odysseus’ offerings

  beside the Argive ships, on Troy’s wide seaboard?

  O Zeus, what do you hold against him now?”

  To this the summoner of cloud replied:

  “My child, what strange remarks you let escape you.

  Could I forget that kingly man, Odysseus?

  There is no mortal half so wise; no mortal

  gave so much to the lords of open sky.

  Only the god who laps the land in water,

  Poseidon, bears the fighter an old grudge

  since he poked out the eye of Polyphemos,

  brawniest of the Kyklopes. Who bore

  that giant lout? Thoösa, daughter of Phorkys,

  an offshore sea lord: for this nymph had lain

  with Lord Poseidon in her hollow caves.

  Naturally, the god, after the blinding—

  mind you, he does not kill the man;

  he only buffets him away from home.

  But come now, we are all at leisure here,

  let us take up this matter of his return,

  that he may sail. Poseidon must relent

  for being quarrelsome will get him nowhere,

  one god, flouting the will of all the gods.”

  The grey-eyed goddess Athena answered him:

  “O Majesty, O Father of us all,

  if it now please the blissful gods

  that wise Odysseus reach his home again,

  let the Wayfinder, Hermês, cross the sea

  to the island of Ogýgia; let him tell

  our fixed intent to the
nymph with pretty braids,

  and let the steadfast man depart for home.

  For my part, I shall visit Ithaka

  to put more courage in the son, and rouse him

  to call an assembly of the islanders,

  Akhaian gentlemen with flowing hair.

  He must warn off that wolf pack of the suitors

  who prey upon his flocks and dusky cattle.

  I’ll send him to the mainland then, to Sparta

  by the sand beach of Pylos; let him find

  news of his dear father where he may

  and win his own renown about the world.”

  She bent to tie her beautiful sandals on,

  ambrosial, golden, that carry her over water

  or over endless land on the wings of the wind,

  and took the great haft of her spear in hand—

  that bronzeshod spear this child of Power can use

  to break in wrath long battle lines of fighters.

  Flashing down from Olympos’ height she went

  to stand in Ithaka, before the Manor,

  just at the doorsill of the court. She seemed

  a family friend, the Taphian captain, Mentes,

  waiting, with a light hand on her spear.

  Before her eyes she found the lusty suitors

  casting dice inside the gate, at ease

  on hides of oxen—oxen they had killed.

  Their own retainers made a busy sight

  with houseboys mixing bowls of water and wine,

  or sopping water up in sponges, wiping

  tables to be placed about in hall,

  or butchering whole carcasses for roasting.

  Long before anyone else, the prince Telémakhos

  now caught sight of Athena—for he, too,

  was sitting there unhappy among the suitors,

  a boy, daydreaming. What if his great father

  came from the unknown world and drove these men

  like dead leaves through the place, recovering

  honor and lordship in his own domains?

  Then he who dreamed in the crowd gazed out at Athena.

  Straight to the door he came, irked with himself

  to think a visitor had been kept there waiting,

  and took her right hand, grasping with his left

  her tall bronze-bladed spear. Then he said warmly:

  “Greetings, stranger! Welcome to our feast.

  There will be time to tell your errand later.”

  He led the way, and Pallas Athena followed

  into the lofty hall. The boy reached up

  and thrust her spear high in a polished rack

  against a pillar where tough spear on spear

  of the old soldier, his father, stood in order.

  Then, shaking out a splendid coverlet,

  he seated her on a throne with footrest—all

  finely carved—and drew his painted armchair

  near her, at a distance from the rest.

  To be amid the din, the suitors’ riot,

  would ruin his guest’s appetite, he thought,

  and he wished privacy to ask for news

  about his father, gone for years.

  A maid

  brought them a silver finger bowl and filled it

  out of a beautiful spouting golden jug,

  then drew a polished table to their side.

  The larder mistress with her tray came by

  and served them generously. A carver lifted

  cuts of each roast meat to put on trenchers

  before the two. He gave them cups of gold,

  and these the steward as he went his rounds

  filled and filled again.

  Now came the suitors,

  young bloods trooping in to their own seats

  on thrones or easy chairs. Attendants poured

  water over their fingers, while the maids

  piled baskets full of brown loaves near at hand,

  and houseboys brimmed the bowls with wine.

  Now they laid hands upon the ready feast

  and thought of nothing more. Not till desire

  for food and drink had left them were they mindful

  of dance and song, that are the grace of feasting.

  A herald gave a shapely cithern harp

  to Phêmios, whom they compelled to sing—

  and what a storm he plucked upon the strings

  for prelude! High and clear the song arose.

  Telémakhos now spoke to grey-eyed Athena,

  his head bent close, so no one else might hear:

  “Dear guest, will this offend you, if I speak?

  It is easy for these men to like these things,

  harping and song; they have an easy life,

  scot free, eating the livestock of another—

  a man whose bones are rotting somewhere now,

  white in the rain on dark earth where they lie,

  or tumbling in the groundswell of the sea.

  If he returned, if these men ever saw him,

  faster legs they’d pray for, to a man,

  and not more wealth in handsome robes or gold.

  But he is lost; he came to grief and perished,

  and there’s no help for us in someone’s hoping

  he still may come; that sun has long gone down.

  But tell me now, and put it for me clearly—

  who are you? Where do you come from? Where’s your home

  and family? What kind of ship is yours,

  and what course brought you here? Who are your sailors?

  I don’t suppose you walked here on the sea.

  Another thing—this too I ought to know—

  is Ithaka new to you, or were you ever

  a guest here in the old days? Far and near

  friends knew this house; for he whose home it was

  had much acquaintance in the world.”

  To this

  the grey-eyed goddess answered:

  “As you ask,

  I can account most clearly for myself.

  Mentês I’m called, son of the veteran

  Ankhíalos; I rule seafaring Taphos.

  I came by ship, with a ship’s company,

  sailing the winedark sea for ports of call

  on alien shores—to Témesê, for copper,

  bringing bright bars of iron in exchange.

  My ship is moored on a wild strip of coast

  in Reithron Bight, under the wooded mountain.

  Years back, my family and yours were friends,

  as Lord Laërtês knows; ask when you see him.

  I hear the old man comes to town no longer,

  stays up country, ailing, with only one

  old woman to prepare his meat and drink

  when pain and stiffness take him in the legs

  from working on his terraced plot, his vineyard.

  As for my sailing here—

  the tale was that your father had come home,

  therefore I came. I see the gods delay him.

  But never in this world is Odysseus dead—

  only detained somewhere on the wide sea,

  upon some island, with wild islanders;

  savages, they must be, to hold him captive.

  Well, I will forecast for you, as the gods

  put the strong feeling in me—I see it all,

  and I’m no prophet, no adept in bird-signs.

  He will not, now, be long away from Ithaka,

  his father’s dear land; though he be in chains

  he’ll scheme a way to come; he can do anything.

  But tell me this now, make it clear to me:

  You must be, by your looks, Odysseus’ boy?

  The way your head is shaped, the fine eyes—yes,

  how like him! We took meals like this together

  many a time, before he sailed for Troy

  with all the lords of Argos in the ships.

  I have not seen him since, nor h
as he seen me.”

  And thoughtfully Telémakhos replied:

  “Friend, let me put it in the plainest way.

  My mother says I am his son; I know not

  surely. Who has known his own engendering?

  I wish at least I had some happy man

  as father, growing old in his own house—

  but unknown death and silence are the fate

  of him that, since you ask, they call my father.”

  Then grey-eyed Athena said:

  “The gods decreed

  no lack of honor in this generation:

  such is the son Penelope bore in you.

  But tell me now, and make this clear to me:

  what gathering, what feast is this? Why here?

  A wedding? Revel? At the expense of all?

  Not that, I think. How arrogant they seem,

  these gluttons, making free here in your house!

  A sensible man would blush to be among them.”

  To this Telémakhos answered:

  “Friend, now that you ask about these matters,

  our house was always princely, a great house,

  as long as he of whom we speak remained here.

  But evil days the gods have brought upon it,

  making him vanish, as they have, so strangely.

  Were his death known, I could not feel such pain—

  if he had died of wounds in Trojan country

  or in the arms of friends, after the war.

  They would have made a tomb for him, the Akhaians,

  and I should have all honor as his son.

  Instead, the whirlwinds got him, and no glory.

  He’s gone, no sign, no word of him; and I inherit

  trouble and tears—and not for him alone,

  the gods have laid such other burdens on me.

  For now the lords of the islands,

  Doulíkhion and Samê, wooded Zakýnthos,