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The Odyssey
translated
by
Charles Stein
Review Comment
Stein eschews the hexameter or pentameter, neither of which he seems to regard with much favour, in order to explain his decision to translate Homer into free verse based upon some of the better-known principles of modern poetry (i.e., post Imagism), where the musicality and immediacy of the phrase are more important than any regularity in the rhythm. The result does take some getting used to, since one can move quickly from a line of two or three syllables to a line of twenty syllables and back again, and one is constantly shifting one’s eyes here and there as lines are indented or not, at the translator’s discretion. Reading this poem does not give one the luxury of remaining in a regular and comfortable verse form. This feature may well put off readers so quickly that they simply set the book immediately aside. However, the text is worth lingering on: its a brave and interesting attempt to tackle the problem of writing a long narrative poem in a style which is often very fractured and constantly shifting.
Stein’s language is, for the most part, plain and evocative (although I have some problem with phrases like “Daimoniac person,” “arrow-emitting Artemis,” and “who have perished away,” especially in direct speech), and I’m not sure that the style serves him well in places where some gathering momentum in the verse would help to bring out important emotional qualities in the speech or action.
However, I have read only selected portions of the translation, available at the following link: Charles Stein, Odyssey.
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