Homer's Odyssey 1.1-10
Homeric poetry comes from a time when the earth’s pole pointed toward the Great Bear (Iliad XVIII.485-9, Odyssey 5.271-5). Modern science, and classical and Homeric scholarship, know nothing whatsoever about this time—the configuration of the earth, its continents, landscapes and seas, its peoples, even the colour of its skins and skies—only some compositions in language, that survived the thing it took to shift the axes of our world, compositions which persist and thrive to such an extent that we today may be sure that the tales told in them were, at least in part, about truly human beings. I have spent my life figuring out how to sound out authentically the word-music of these stories, composed in a dead language in a since reoriented world; and I hope my performance of Homer’s Odyssey will inspire others to become more familiar with this language, to the point where they can take their own impression of its precious surviving artefacts, and relive the human story of this world that was ancient to the ancients. There is another side of any world! Aethiopians are rumoured to live there, together with Cyclopses and bossy nymphs. The Odyssey, the world’s first and deepest comedy, brings you home.
Free for all are the recordings in Greek available as audio and video with the accompanying texts; by subscription (although free initially) will be my own impression in a linear English translation, papers, poems and essays, together with podcasts for paid subscribers of occasional commentary and readings in English.
Χαῖρε
~
Greek text hyperlinked to lexica via Perseus (perseus.tufts.edu)
ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:
πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ:
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.
From ‘A literal impression of Homer’s Odyssea from someone who’s literally heard it’, © 2022 by A. P. David:
Get into my man, muse, the twists in his spine: so many times
He strayed, once he sacked Troy’s sacred city,
So many the peoples whose towns he knew, whose thought he solved!
And many the times on the sea he suffered griefs, down his warm breath,
Saving his own life and the return home of his companions. 5
But no, he did not protect his crew, as eager as he was;
For by their own outrageous acts were they continually lost,
The fools, who went through the oxen ranks of High-going Helius, the Sun,
Feasting daily away; but it was he who subtracted from them, their day of homecoming.
From somewhere round there, Goddess, daughter of Zeus, pick us a line—even us!