The Odyssey by Homer: Day 1

Book 1, lines 1-444

“Tell me about a complicated man.”

I know no single-word translation choice in any text as quintessential (thrilling for so many, troubling for some) as Emily Wilson’s opening “complicated.” In Robert Fagles’s opening, Odysseus is “the man of twists and turns.” In Robert Fitzgerald’s, “that man skilled in all ways of contending.” For Samuel Butler, he is “that ingenious hero.” But Wilson takes the many sides of “polytropos” and hones them to a sharp narrative and psychological point. “Complicated” is inevitably a relational designation. We readers lean close, invited to judge, to relate.

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I hadn’t before noticed that we meet the famous suitors first through Athena’s eyes:

“she found the lordly suitors / sitting on hides—they killed the cows themselves—and playing checkers.”

The cheeky dashed aside is no doubt a nod to their presumption—such rude guests! Still, I can’t help being surprised by a note of self-sufficiency. Or competence.

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The first time there’s a poem sung in this narrative of narratives, Telemachus and Athena explicitly tune it out. Speaking over Phemius’s “lovely song,” Athena, as Mentes, tells the epic’s first tall tale. A few lines later, though, it is the poet singing that will draw Penelope from her chambers. Already the tales are tangled.

Join us on March 18 for a virtual discussion of The Odyssey with Stefania Heim