Homer
The Odyssey
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald
(New York 1961)
Review
Comment
Fitzgerald’s Odyssey is
one of the best, if not the best, modern rendition of Homer into English verse,
mainly because Fitzgerald is a much more accomplished poet than his competitors
and because he understands better than almost all his fellow translators
(ancient and modern) how best to reconcile the demands of the Greek text with
the requirements of a modern readership. He also knows how to
use the iambic pentameter line to convey the energy, speed, and beauty of
Homer’s original, without being sidetracked by misleading notions of fidelity
to the Greek metre or to the original sound of the poem (notions which have
infected a number of modern translations): he has “paid less attention to the
technicalities of his Homeric verse and more to an inventive American style in
[his] mother tongue” (McCrorie).
This
translation places Fitzgerald in the tradition of the best and most successful
translators of Homer who have rendered the Greek in extraordinarily expressive
poetry of their own age:
Fitzgerald’s supreme virtue is to have solved the dilemma of adequate language. . . . he has developed a mode which is at once neutral and modern, lyric yet full of technical resource. It has many of the qualities of very good prose, being at all times in forward motion and responsive to the claims of precision. But it has the economy and soar of the poet. Written in flexible blank verse, Fitzgerald’s narrative moves with such ease of tread that we often forget the sheer virtuosity of the artisan. . . . Fitzgerald’s book is a primer in the vexed craft of translation.” (George Steiner, Kenyon Review 1961).
Readers
who would like a preview of Fitzgerald’s translation should use the following
link:Fitzgerald
Odyssey.
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