The Princeton professor and noted translator died today. If you’ve ever labored under the idea that the Greek classics were boring, stuffy, or just not action-packed enough for today’s modern world then you’ve never read his translation of The Odyssey.
The credit for the brilliant pacing and development of Odysseus’ long journey home, and which leads up to the climactic “Slaughter In The Hall,” all goes to Homer. But Fagles puts the Greek text into lean and vivid modern English that communicates the intensity and violence with no holds barred.
Now stripping back his rags Odysseus master of craft and battle
vaulted onto the great threshold, gripping his bow and quiver
bristling arrows, and poured his flashing shafts before him,
loose at his feet, and thundered out to all the suitors:
“Look — your crucial test is finished, now, at last!
But another target’s left that no one’s hit before —
we’ll se if I can hit it — Apollo give me the glory!”With that he trained a stabbing arrow on Antinous …
Just lifting a gorgeous golden loving-cup in his hands.
Just tilting the two-handled goblet back to his lips,
about to drain the wine — and slaughter the last thing
on the suitor’s mind: who could dream that one foe
in that crowd of feasters, however great his power,
would bring down death on himself, and black doom?But Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat
and the point went stabbing clean through the soft neck and out —
and off to the side he pitched, the cup dropped from his grasp
as the shaft sank home, and the man’s life-blood came spurting
from his nostrils —
thick red jets —
a sudden thrust of his foot —
he kicked away the table —
food showered across the floor,
the bread and meats soaked in a swirl of bloody filth….
Which is just the first paragraph and a half. No, there’s nothing stuffy about this at all. Besides the Odyssey and the Iliad, he also completed a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid — which I have to catch up on.
The Iliad is still hard to follow, at least for me, but Fagles made it a thrilling pleasure.