poetry

This review will focus upon the translation of "The Odyssey" more than the work itself. Having withstood the test of time and considered the first great work of the Western tradition, "The Odyssey" can do well enough without my two cents.

This translation is among the most accurate on the market. Though I speak no Greek myself, classics professors have urged me to read this translation, the best English source for it. Despite the usual popularity for the Fitzgerald translation, the Lattimore version provides a more literal translation with consistent themes of word choice running throughout. "They put their hands to the good things that lay ready before them," for example, will come up over and over again because, quite simply, the phrase comes up over and over again. And we have the same adjectives consistently before each of the major players: resourceful Odysseus, thoughtful Telemachos, and circumspect Penelope, along with the gray-eyed Athene. Lattimore explains how he chooses to translate the work, and his translation is a literal work of a genius.

For those who desire the most accurate translation of this great work, I would highly recommend the Lattimore translation of "The Odyssey of Homer."

As with his work on the Iliad, few translators have had the success that Richmond Lattimore has when it comes to THE ODYSSEY. I would be hard pressed to find a better translation since others are either too literal to be poetic or too liberal to be faithful to Homer's story. Alexander Pope's is, of course, one of the greatest, but you have to go back 250 years to find one as enduring as Lattimore's.

HI: i can't find out from Help how to edit the prior review I wrote explaining that because I found Lattimore's translations of the Gospels&Revelation inaccurate, I wondered how good His Homer could be. So, consider this the correction. The prior review was way too strongly-worded. I meant what I said, but it wasn't as soft as it should have been.

No one is perfect, and there is YET no good English translation of the New Testament, so why should Lattimore be expected to get right what NO one has ever gotten right? So, please bear this thought in mind as you see me lambast Lattimore in my other review, which has the words "ek koilia" in it (vocabulary form).

I heartily apologize for the other review's tone!