Anthony

Your experience with the Odyssey will hinge on the translation you read. Here is the criteria I advise you to use.

1. Do you want florid, archaic, antiquated language, or modern, simple vernacular?

2. Do you want to lean into translation-as-adaption, or do you prefer the author remain very close to the original Greek?

If you want a florid adaptation, I recommend Pope's translation. If you want a florid translation, I recommend Fitzgerald. If you want a simple adaptation, I recommend Wilson. If you want a simple translation, I recommend Fagels.

Madeline Miller’s second book, Circe, is a book I really liked. I blew through it in a single day, because it was one of those books I just could not put down. I liked the ethereal, aloof, otherworldly character of Circe, whom I thought was very well-written as a character not-quite-of-this-earth. The whole thing felt strange, foreign, peculiar, which seemed appropriate. In The Song of Achilles, I learn that this is just how Madeline Miller writes her protagonists. And although very appropriate for a half-goddess recluse mystic, it’s less appropriate for an ancient twink. There is some good gay longing in this book, though. From Chapter 5:

“He was like a flame himself. He glittered, drew eyes. There was a glamour to him, even on waking, with his hair tousled and his face still muddied with sleep. Up close, his feet looked almost unearthly: the perfectly formed pads of the toes, the tendons that flickered like lyre strings.”

I have respect for the boldness of spirit and enterprising nature that it takes for a NYT best-selling book about Ancient Greek fan-fiction to give Patroclus from the Illiad a foot fetish. Like Cirice and Lavinia, this is a feminist re-telling of something plucked out of the world of classical antiquity, re-writing Achilles and Patroclus as kind of sympathetic pre-allies for their treatment of Briseis and their burgeoning throuple status. Despite some highlights and some genuinely emotionally charged moments, I generally didn’t like this book. It’s written to be so flighty, so aloof, and so unearthly. It feels too light.

I had read Robert Fagles’ translation already, but wanted to read a translation with more archaic and florid language. I also was interested in reading a translation that leans into the “translation as interpretation” approach, rather than Fagles’, which is closer in meaning to the original. So I read John Dryden’s translation of The Aeneid from 1697. I also listened to an audiobook of The Aeneid, a translation by C. Day Lewis, which is a translation from 1953. Of the 12 books of the Aeneid, the first 6 are meant to mirror explicitly The Odyssey and the latter 6 meant explicitly to imitate The Iliad. It’s no surprise then, that the first 5 or so books are the best. Despite that, Dryden’s ability to summon emotionally meaningful phrasing from action in which we are otherwise disinterested is impressive. I quote from Book X:

“Then Jove, to soothe his sorrow, thus began / Short bounds of life are set to mortal man /’Tis virtue’s work alone to stretch the narrow span

So many sons of gods, in bloody fight / Around the Walls of Troy have lost their light

My own Sarpedon fell beneath his foe/Nor I, his mighty sire, could ward the final blow

Even Turnus shortly shall resign his breath / And stands already on the verge of Death

And Thus, the God permits the fatal fight / but from the Latian field, averts his sight”

For me, a real emotionally charged moment well conveyed, despite that I care not one bit for the characters of Pallas or Turnus. The most well known, revered, and praised part of the Aeneid is book IV, in which Dido and Aeneas kindle their whirlwind romance and then “””””fate””””” cruelly tears them apart. It is a book filled with longing, sorrow, and resentment. Consider the following passage from Book IV,

“Twas dead of night, when weary bodies close / Their eyes in balmy sleep and soft repose

The winds no longer whisper through the woods / nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods

The stars in silent order moved around; / and Peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground

The Flocks, and heads, and party-colored fowl / which haunt the woods and swim the weedy pool

Stretched on the quiet Earth, securely lay / Forgetting the past labors of the day

All else of nature’s common gift partake / Unhappy Dido was, alone, awake

Not Sleep nor ease the furious queen can find / Sleep fled her eyes, quiet fled her mind

Despair, rage, and love divide her heart / Despair and rage have some, but love the greater part.”

What a way to say essentially the same thing as “It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” Being a life-affirmer, I decline to quote those portions of book IV that are traditionally quoted. Parts of the Aeneid brim with human feelings and etch into one’s mind scenes which not only inform the greater part of subsequent western literature, but are likely to stick with you on an individual level. Despite it being a layered piece of anti-Octavian political propaganda, the “literature’ side of the poem is strong. I’d recommend Dryden’s translation if you are, for example, a fan of Pope’s Iliad and Odyssey. Although, the first 5 books represent the apex of book’s quality.

Great Book on Kantian Constructivism! But it's not called "Photosynthesis"

In book XII of The Aeneid, Aeneas endeavors to marry Lavinia, a local Latin princess, to achieve power. Sybils tell Lavinias father that she’s got to marry a foreigner, instead of the pre-planned Turnus, which sets off some of the drama in the end of the The Aeneid. Being an ancient poem about muscular manly men, written in the deeply chauvinistic and misogynistic Roman order, Lavinia does not even have a speaking role in the Aeneid. She’s akin to what they call “a McGuffin.” Ursula K Le Guin aspires to a feminist re-telling of the last 6 or so books of the Aeneid from Lavinia’s perspective, wherein she is an active participant in her fate rather than an object to which events simply happen. There is a nice post-modern kind of twist present here, where Lavinia kind of knows she’s a character in a work of fiction and has an ongoing tête-à-tête with Virgil. But I didn’t like this book – Lavinia is not a very strong character, and it is a recounting of events that I didn’t find particularly interesting the first time I read them. I respect the ambition, although the more interesting feminist themes seem to be textual recapitulations of Medea. No particularly moving passages in this book to my recollection. Okay, maybe it’s mythohistorical fiction, but whatever. It counts.