A
Nearly Literal
Translation
of
Homer’s Odyssey
Into Accentuated Dramatic Verses
by the
Rev. Lovelace Bigge-Wither
Oxford 1869
[Sample
from the Opening of the Poem]
HOMER’S
ODYSSEY.
BOOK
I.
TELL
me, oh Muse, of-the-many-sided man,
Who wandered far and wide full sore bestead,
When he had razed the mighty town of Troy :
And-of-many-a-race of human-kind he saw
The cities; and he learned their mind and ways :
And on the deep full many-a-woe he bore
In his own hosom, while he strove to save
His proper life, and-his-comrades’ home-return. 5
But them not so he
saved with all his zeal;
For they in their own
wilful folly perished:
Infatuates! to devour Hyperion’s kine!
So he bereft
them of their home-return.
Of these things, Goddess, where thou wilt beginning,
Daughter of Zeus, the tale tell e’en to us!
Now
all the rest, who swift destruction, ’scaped,
At home were safe from peril-of-war and sea:
While him alone
for home and wife sore yearning
The Ladie-Nymph Calypso, lovely goddess,
Held in her grot, for love to make him hers!
But when came-on the time, as-the-years rolled
round,
At which the gods had destined his return
To Ithaca-home; not then was-he-free
from struggles,
E’en midst his friends! The gods
all pitied him ;
Save Posidaon: he raged
ceaselessly 20
’Gainst god-like-Odyssus, ere he reached his
home:
But he was
gone to the Æthiops far away—
(Æthiops, extreme of men, all-parted twain-wise,
Some by the setting, some by-the-rising sun)—
To share of bulls and lambs their hecatombs! 25
There merrily-sat he feasting:
but the others
Were thronged in-the-halls of Zeus Olympius.
’Mid them ’gan
speak the Sire of men and gods;
For he remembered in his heart Ægisthus,
Whom slew Agamemnon’s famous son Orestes: 30
Of him full
mindful ’mid the gods he spake:
“Oh heavens! how mortals now do blame the gods!
From us they
say spring ills! but they themselves
By their own folly bring unfated woes.
As now Ægisthus married-in-spite of fate 35
Atrides’ wife, and slew him home returning—
Knowing full well his own death hard at hand:
For we ourselves foretold it him; and sent
Hermes—the keen-eyed Argicide—to warn him—
‘Slay not the husband, and wed not the wife!
For vengeance-shall-come from-Orestes, son of
Atreus, 40
When grown a man he-shall-yearn for his own
land.’
Thus Hermes spake: but-Ægisthus’ will he
turned not,
Tho’ kindly wise; who now has paid for all!”
Review
Comment
Bigge-Wither
is, so far as I can tell, among the first to hope that his English will be
sufficiently similar to the Greek so that people will think of the Greek as they
read the translation:
The
aim of this translation is to be literal. In many passages
it is almost line for line, and even word for word
with the original; so that to persons well acquainted with
the Greek this version will readily suggest the very words
of the divine old bard himself.
This
very odd notion, which has come into vogue in recent years in an even more
pronounced manner, leaves one wondering why anyone who wished to be reminded of
the Greek did not just read Homer in Greek rather than putting up with various
unidiomatic oddities in the English. Perhaps
it is with this purpose in mind that Bigge-Wither makes such an idiosyncratic
use of hyphens:
Where three syllables are intended to form one foot they are connected by hyphens, and the stress is always on the last syllable . . . In some instances the hyphens are omitted or misplaced: the reader will easily discover where this is so.
In
keeping with a great many Victorian (and later) translators, Bigge-Wither looks
to the poetic styles of the past to define his verse form and diction:
In order to be free to render that text literally, the translator has chosen the most elastic of English metres—the accentuated dramatic, in which, though the accents are only five in each line, the syllables vary from ten to sixteen. . . . For diction the translator has taken as his models—Shakespeare—Milton—and above all the authorized version of the Bible.”
Readers
who would like to see the full translation should use the following link: Bigge-Wither
Odyssey.
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