Review of Barry B. Powell's Translation of Homer's Odyssey

There is one place in book eight that was confusing. Odysseus gives Demodokos a prime cut of meat, but the herald hands him a lyre. The other translations have the word gift, not sure how Powell got lyre there, but it is obviously supposed to be that gift of meat from Odysseus.

I'm a little put off by the typos and grammar gaffs in both the translations of this and The Iliad. And the indicators of nonexistent footnotes.

Since, overall, this is an excellent translation, I was able to overlook these picayune matters. I don't think I will actually purchase this or The Iliad until later editions when I'm hopeful the typos, etc., will be fixed. I don't buy the excuse that editors are busy. They can afford to hire proofreaders. And, how did all the early reviewers miss those things that I stumbled over and nearly came to a full stop at?

This is a wonderful translation and does deserve a place among the other modern/contemporary translations. Because of that, it also deserves a better job on the editing. Who is culpable here? The publisher? The translator? The editor? I guess I'm not finished....

It just is beyond my small intellectual capacity to understand how such an important book (couple of books, actually) can be released in such a state. It's like letting the king go out in his underclothes. We're floored by the intimacy of those things; we expect majesty; we expect royal robes worthy of the office. Even if these translations are for modern readers, we expect spelling and grammar fit for the work.

Even if it was not Homer, how hard is it to get someone to proof the thing? Would you send your children out to school in rags? I think some in our day would.

Okay, I'm finished with my rant.

Review of Barry B. Powell's Translation of Homer's Iliad

I'm overwhelmingly grateful that Barry B. Powell did not use the word 'careering' in his translation of Homer's Iliad. That word jarred me all through a previous translator's translation (name withheld to protect my own backside). It is an ugly, unfortunate word which in my mind wars against its very definition. It was like riding with a driver who slams heavily on the brakes at every stop: annoying and exhausting. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but this is my review, so I think that is my prerogative. Right? Well, anyway, back to Powell's welcome translation.

Apart from a few typos (The funniest is when 'gods' is put in for 'dogs' in book 24 line 402, which makes it sound like the gods eat humans. Wrong religion, I think.) and at least one place where a footnote is indicated but nonexistent (22.327: 'knees'), and a few notes which a quick glance at a few other translations would solve -- (the most troublesome example is book 24 lines 44-46. Here Powell translates the Greek αιδως as 'respect,' which I think really only works in it's old connotation, i.e. and e.g. the phrase from the King James Bible: "God is no respecter of persons" (Acts 10.34). In that way, i.e. respecting another's opinion of you can cause harm. (For a more thorough look at this idea, read: Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness, where he writes: "... the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners....") The other translations I looked at chose to use 'shame,' which makes it more evident how it can harm as well as help.) -- this is a wonderful translation. It is easy to read and the copious notes make it a valuable addition to any Homeric geek's bookshelf.

There are several places, marked in the text by a speaker icon, which are read by the author. These recordings can be found at the book's website. Unfortunately, this feature is not mentioned in the actual book; I had to dig around online to figure it out. It would have been quite easy to mention it in a footnote, or in the introduction. I can only assume that this was another overlooked and forgotten footnote. Still, I haven't listened to the recordings, so ...

I am partial to Lattimore's translation, but find Powell's enjoyable and refreshing; if that can be said about such a bloody and violent work. I try not to let those themes keep me from the other, more interesting and pertinent themes for our time. A new translation of Homer's Iliad only serves to show the continued importance of this classic. Of course, as usual, not everyone will agree with that. That's okay. Without the strife of disagreement, the friction necessary for growth would be missed.

I plan to reread and reread Powell's wonderful translation. I hope you will read it at least once and decide for yourself if you like it or not.

Review of Cormac McCarthy's Child of God

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Coming to this book, I knew only that the main character, Lester Ballard, had some strange ways, but I didn't know how strange until several chapters into the book. It is an interesting read; McCarthy has a way of making it seem dream-like: broken up, but still flowing together. I'm not sure that makes sense, but that's how it reads to me. He kept the chapters short, most being only a single scene: some shorter, some longer. The short chapters coupled with Lester's bizarre behavior keeps you turning the pages, not to mention the "need" to know what happens....

There is a strong link to mythology in most of McCarthy's work and this book is no different. There are trips to the underworld, shape-shifting and tragedy among other motifs.

Without giving away too much, I will say that this book is not for the faint of heart. If Nabokov's Lolita bothers you, then there is a possibility that this will, too. It isn't exactly the same as Lolita , but the deviance of Lester, the main character, is very pronounced as is that of Humbert Humbert. But, in the case of Child of God, Lester is not the narrator.

I wonder if you could still call Lester a protagonist? He does change, but not much. The reader gets the sense that he is depraved right from the beginning. It's the level, or depth, of his depravity that changes.

The writing itself will not disappoint fans of McCarthy. His prose, as always, is tight and musical; the critics like to call it poetic, which it is. It damn near sings. I give it four stars simply for the prose. The content gives me pause; that's not to say that we should ignore it, it's just more unsettling than a book with a happy-go-lucky attitude and a bright happy ending. McCarthy almost never has happy endings and this is no exception. He does have "just" endings on occasion, or endings in which those who deserve it get it, if you get my drift.

I will read it again, simply because I love McCarthy's writing and want to learn from him. If I were reading it as a reader only, once would be enough--maybe more than enough.

View all my reviews

If you need your own copy:

Agamemnon Part III – The Consequences of Sacrifice

In my last post, I wrote about the silencing of the voice of the victim.  That same idea is carried into the first antistrophe 5, which says, “Lusting for war, the bloody arbiters / Closed heart and ears, and would not heed / The girl-voice plead.”  Those carrying her to the slaughter, those who had been guests in her father’s house and had known her from an infant, closed their ears and their hearts.  Agamemnon goes a step further.  At the end of antistrophe 5, he “Bade them, as with the bit that mutely tames the steed, / Her fair lips’ speech refrain, / Lest she should speak a curse on Atreus’ home and seed.” 
This was unnecessary.  For the curse has already been spoken; at the end of the epode, after the first antistrophe, we find, “At home there tarries like a lurking snake, / Biding its time, a wrath unreconciled, / A wily watcher, passionate to slake, / In blood, resentment for a murdered child.”  It is fitting that the end of the movement of strophes and antistrophes would also foretell the end of the play itself.  If we go back to the watchman from my first post of this series, we can see that he wants the war with Troy to be over because he is tired of watching day and night.  He believes Clytemnestra to be awaiting her man’s return, in the manner of Odysseus’s wife Penelope.  He says in the beginning of the play:

Let the loud summons ring within the ears
Of Agamemnon’s queen, that she anon
Start from her couch and with a shrill voice cry
A joyous welcome to the beacon-blaze,
For Ilion’s fall ….

Clytemnestra, however, has a completely different reason for wanting Agamemnon to return, and Aeschylus tells us what it is before we even finish the first complete movement of the play.  Her “wrath unreconciled” will barely allow her to pretend joy at the Achaeans’ return, but she must play the part of the good and loyal wife, lest she rouse Agamemnon’s suspicions. 
I want to avoid ruining the entire play for those who have not read it, but I am keeping my initial goal in mind; which is to briefly look at the back story of the Iliad.  During the writing of these posts, I have followed other tangential ideas, but have tried to ensure that they are still connect and not merely touching as they fly by.  Sacrifice, honor, silencing victims and war are all themes that I see that this play shares with the Iliad.  I want to look at the manner in which Agamemnon’s foretold doom is carried out.  Behind the execution of that prophecy is an old, dark presence; revenge.
The idea of revenge is prominent in early poetry and drama.  It is evident in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the play I am now studying, and even in Scandinavian sagas—including Beowulf.  In most cases revenge is carried out by a male character related to a victim.  This play is an exception, in that Agamemnon’s sons do not carry out the pre-ordained and foretold end of the king.  Clytemnestra is key in the orchestration and the fulfillment of the deed, by her hand Agamemnon’s blood is actually shed.  She slakes “in blood” the “resentment for a murdered child.”
Clytemnestra says, after killing Agamemnon:

My guilt thou harpest, o’er and o’er!
I bid thee reckon me no more
As Agamemnon’s spouse.
The old Avenger, stern of mood
for Atreus and his feast of blood,
Hath struck the lord of Atreus’ house,
And in the semblance of his wife
The king hath slain.—
Yea , for the murdered children’s life,
A chieftain’s in requital ta’en.

She claims that the Avenger took her form and struck Agamemnon down.  This is a euphuistic way of saying that she was overcome by vengeance and wrath.  In this short second stanza of this second refrain, Aeschylus makes a connection between Greek drama and the Hebrew religion.  The latter, states in the law, “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21.23-25). 
It seems that the idea of vengeance is strong and deep in the human history.  What drives it?  Agamemnon murdered his own child and, as we will see, goes off to Troy and begins to amass treasure and women slaves.  And while the Iliad was written before Agamemnon, the back story must have been there even while Homer was singing the poem.
Aeschylus’ play covers what happens back home—Agamemnon’s home.  As I hinted earlier, this is the final post in my study of Agamemnon.  Next, I will look at a few parts of The Trojan Women by Euripides, particularly the parts that give us a portrayal of Helen, who Aeschylus calls “one false woman.”
I have a quote from The Trojan Women that fits nicely with the discussion of vengeance.  Cassandra, who was taken prisoner by Agamemnon and who was also killed by Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ play, says this in The Trojan Women:

O Mother, fill mine hair with happy flowers,
And speed me forth. Yea, if my spirit cowers,
Drive me with wrath! So liveth Loxias,
A bloodier bride than ever Helen was
Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high
Of Hellas!… I shall kill him, mother; I
Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire
As he laid ours. My brethren and my sire
Shall win again….
      (Checking herself) But part I must let be,
And speak not. Not the axe that craveth me,
And more than me; not the dark wanderings
Of mother-murder that my bridal brings,
And all the House of Atreus down, down, down….

She dies in Agamemnon, but she had her own plans for letting the old Avenger take her form in order to take vengeance on the king for killing her family.

That's the end....

Related articles

• What can the ancient Greeks teach us? (guardian.co.uk)
• Paul's sermon on the Areopagus inspired by the Muses (vridar.wordpress.com)

Agamemnon Part II – Silencing the Voice of the Victim

In the first part of this series on Aeschylus' Agamemnon, I wrote that I would continue with the consequences of Agamemnon's choices, which are foretold and are included in the first chorus. Well, I am not going to write about that—this time.

Instead, I want to look at antistrophe 6, which begins, “And then—but I beheld not, nor can tell, / What further fate befell:”  According to Gil Bailie in his Violence Unveiled, this closing of the eyes, this being silent about the horror, “virtually defines myth.”[1] In other words, he says that if a person’s eyes are open they will not see myth, but truth.  Then, he goes on to equate truth with gospel.  He discusses the word aletheia, which is the Greek word for truth, and then sneaks the word gospel in beside it.

Gospel, however, comes from the Anglo-Saxon for good spell, which in turn comes from the Greek word euangelion. Euangelion means good message. A good message does not automatically provide evidence of veracity. There are many good messages that are complete fiction, but that does not make them bad, or even untrue. Bailie is confusing the denotation of the word myth, with its connotation. It has come to mean something that is not true, and is usually used to refer to the belief systems of other people. In attempting to make his argument, he tries to make "truth" equate to "gospel" and thus remove any hint of myth from the Christian religion. This makes sense in light of what Bailie is up to. But, Joseph Campbell points out that all myths are true in their context. There is only a problem when the myth and the symbols connected with it are transplanted. The myth then becomes strange and all sorts of glosses and commentaries become necessary in the attempt to explain away that strangeness.

Myth is not untruth, even if that is the connotation now attached to the word; rather, it is not-completely-revealed truth. We have to be careful that we do not immediately think this signifies half-truth. It does nothing of the sort. The Bible itself ends with a book named "The Revelation," or if you think it should be the Greek transliteration—Apokálypsis, which means the unveiling. If gospel and truth are the opposite of myth, in Bailie's terms; that is, if gospel equals truth and myth equals not-truth (or even hidden or secret truth), then what is revealed in "The Revelation of St. John?" So, I propose that the meaning of the Greek word mythos can still contain much of the Christian religion, because much of that religion is hidden or secret.

Bailie discusses interesting thoughts about violence and they ways in which humans deal with it. Unfortunately, he is too busy trying to prove that Christianity is not a mythology, and thus misses many opportunities to question truly and honestly the causes and consequences of violence. He comes down hard on the Greek tragedians, but they are able to show violence without showing it. This is part of their genius. The writers of the Hebrew and Christian texts have to settle for writing blatant descriptions of the details of the violence, because they are incapable of doing otherwise. This has nothing to do with myth or truth. It is merely the styles of writing of different cultures. Yet, Bailie insists that Aeschylus' use of "I beheld not, nor can tell" makes the entire thing the opposite of gospel truth.

In the Greek tragedies, violence is unveiled without being graphic. The emotions of those involved in the action are more important, because those emotions draw in the audience, and in this way, they arrive at the catharsis.[2] To borrow from the Hebrew Scriptures, the idea is that of the prophet Nathan who says to King David, "You are the man." Readers cannot connect with that as easily as they can when the story comes at a slant. In other words, to watch or read about an innocent person suffering, and being given cues and clues to the emotions and thoughts of those causing that suffering, lets the audience know that in every human there is both good and evil.[3] And, although I would like it to be untrue, sometimes the evil comes out on top, as in the case of Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia. Not only could that be considered evil, but consider all the evil that followed as consequence of it.

Agamemnon is a fine example of what happens when we trust superstitions (of any sort), rather than what we know to be right, true and good in our own hearts/minds. The human conscience can be a beautiful or a deadly thing, depending on perspective.

It is also a mistake to assume that Greek tragedy equals Greek mythology. Tragedies do include mythology, but they are not it entirely. The Greeks had no Bible, per se. They learned of their gods and goddesses by watching dramas and listening to travelling bards, but these only contain aspects of the mythology needed to tell the story. Most of the stories are human stories. Mythology proper, on the other hand, relates to deities and the people of those deities, and how those people do or do not keep the deities' laws, and the consequences—whether good or bad. That sounds mighty close to religion. Here, we arrive at another tangle of words, and the debates and discussions have been and will be going on for more years than I care to know.

I am looking at the Greek tragedies in terms of humanity and humanness, not in terms of their metaphysical truth or lack thereof. In other words, what can we—as humans—take home from this work of literature or drama? What overarching themes do these works contain that will help me be a better father, husband, leader, follower, or simply a better human being?
Image of Iphigenia from here.

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[1] Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, (New York: Crossroad PC, 2004). 33.
[2] For more on catharsis, see Aristotle's Poetics.
[3] I do not attempt, here, to define these two terms philosophically or theologically. Good and evil are concepts that have spawned many discussions and wars and every other kind of disharmony, disunity and contention. I use these terms in their most basic sense.