In Odyssey book 23, Penelope tells Eurycleia, the old enslaved nurse, to pull out the bed from the bedroom so her guest, the ostensible old beggar (who is actually her husband Odysseus in disguise), can sleep.
I love your point that Penelope is trying to achieve the exact response she gets. How a translator chooses to convey Odysseus' response also affects what readers think Penelope wants out of him.
Yes, definitely. It seems to me that some readers, including some translators, haven't thought very much about what Penelope is trying to do, or what the text suggests about how she might be feeling. I think she makes him angry because that's what she's trying to do. Some versions seem to suggest that she makes him angry because she's just annoying, which is a very different reading.
I think it's significant that she maneuvers him into a place where he stops playing along. I would like to consider that Penelope is being deliberate, not only in making him prove that he knows what Odysseus would know (which he could potentially do without being provoked to anger), but in finding out if he's willing to reveal himself emotionally.
I just want to say I am REALLY enjoying these newsletters. I never thought I would find comparing translations so interesting but I am weirdly hooked. 😊
Also, I am reading simultaneously Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad. All this is new to me and reading both helps me appreciate it even more. I am 75 and reading and lifting weights in my garage gym great pleasures. I also read the articles that you write, one recently in LRB .
Ah! I love this point in the story so much, and your translation choices make so much sense to me! I also love getting a glimpse into the others I’ve enjoyed over the years. Please keep this up!
Enjoyed this greatly, in part for taking me back to an earlier realization (of the obvious) that so many translations are contemporary lenses applied to very different contexts. Not being a scholar in this vein, I receive translations through my own contemporary lens and tend to judge based on whether the work flows as good writing without much (adequate?) regard how the meaning of the original is brought forward into the translation. I lack the knowledge of the original, so cannot assess that important aspect. I think most readers fall into this category. Still, it is startling when I stumble across glaring errors in works whose original form I do know. That makes me appreciate analyses such as yours all the more...thanks!
Thank you for this wonderful discussion of these translations of Odysseus and Penelope's bed. I majored in classics in college and your newsletter has been such a great way for me to stay in touch with Ancient Greek and Homer.
I love discussions of translation choices. Earlier this year, I was looking at your translation alongside Samuel Butler's prose retelling, so I now looked up the exact wording of this passage:
"She said this to try him, but Odysseus was very angry and said 'Wife, I am much displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been taking my bed from the place in which I left it?'"
It feels unwieldy in comparison to almost all the others but within its own narrative style it works.
This may be a big ask, but can you show the metrical feet in the lines with gunai and aloxon? When I was a Bryn Mawr undergraduate, Lattimore was Emeritus, elderly, but sharp and a magnificent reciter too, and, as you probably know, a poet independent of his academic career. He translates like one because he thinks like one. He allowed for two words, words that “could” mean the same thing, to be translated that way if he interpreted one or the other as being a metrical choice - i.e., the author(s) needing the lines to fit a number of needs, including that they would be sung, and that there could be a choice between some close or synonymous words based less on subtle character development than the poetic artifact itself. Thus “lady” twice. He also knew his work as a translation, thus “virtuous” as a veritable epithet for Penelope, because what other modern word comes close? He did have his own ideas about her, of course, like you do - and is to the credit of you both that she is “not” annoying and in it just to p*ss off her wayward husband in either yours nor his. . .?
Yes, a reasonable point. Homeric characters don't tend to use "alochos" in the vocative, and gune in the accusative (gunaika) would not scan in the line before (where it has to be "alochon" for meter, or else the whole line would have to be different, which of course is also possible). So, sure, you could argue that the variation in words is there for that reason. But... in a scene which really is focused on the specific relationship of these two characters, and in a linguistic world where neither of the Greek terms are marked as "the grand/ polite word for woman", Lattimore's particular choices here (to use the same word for two different Greek words, to use a fancy word for two simple words, not to include "wife" to translate either Greek word although both can mean that, to associate care or loyalty with virtue) still strike me as each quite debatable. Thinking as a poet can, of course, mean many different things; not all poets are the same, any more than all scholars or readers or writers. One can always argue about whether or not a specific feature of Homeric poetry is just there for meter or formula, or there for a reason, and it's always debatable. To my ear, the repetition of "lady" is just a little tiny bit clunky, and the original variation is much less so; the needs of the poetic artifact, in English or in Greek, include the need to consider sonic variety and layers of semantics as well as meter. But of course your mileage may vary. I do not mean any disrespect to Lattimore's honored Manes in saying any of this. I know he was a very interesting person, writer and translator, who had an interesting life story and was and is inspirational to many. It's lovely that you remember him so vividly.
I love your point that Penelope is trying to achieve the exact response she gets. How a translator chooses to convey Odysseus' response also affects what readers think Penelope wants out of him.
Yes, definitely. It seems to me that some readers, including some translators, haven't thought very much about what Penelope is trying to do, or what the text suggests about how she might be feeling. I think she makes him angry because that's what she's trying to do. Some versions seem to suggest that she makes him angry because she's just annoying, which is a very different reading.
I think it's significant that she maneuvers him into a place where he stops playing along. I would like to consider that Penelope is being deliberate, not only in making him prove that he knows what Odysseus would know (which he could potentially do without being provoked to anger), but in finding out if he's willing to reveal himself emotionally.
I just want to say I am REALLY enjoying these newsletters. I never thought I would find comparing translations so interesting but I am weirdly hooked. 😊
Also, I am reading simultaneously Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad. All this is new to me and reading both helps me appreciate it even more. I am 75 and reading and lifting weights in my garage gym great pleasures. I also read the articles that you write, one recently in LRB .
Just so fascinating…
Ah! I love this point in the story so much, and your translation choices make so much sense to me! I also love getting a glimpse into the others I’ve enjoyed over the years. Please keep this up!
I’m now reading your translation of the Iliad. Earlier your translation of the Odyssey.
Enjoyed this greatly, in part for taking me back to an earlier realization (of the obvious) that so many translations are contemporary lenses applied to very different contexts. Not being a scholar in this vein, I receive translations through my own contemporary lens and tend to judge based on whether the work flows as good writing without much (adequate?) regard how the meaning of the original is brought forward into the translation. I lack the knowledge of the original, so cannot assess that important aspect. I think most readers fall into this category. Still, it is startling when I stumble across glaring errors in works whose original form I do know. That makes me appreciate analyses such as yours all the more...thanks!
Thank you for this wonderful discussion of these translations of Odysseus and Penelope's bed. I majored in classics in college and your newsletter has been such a great way for me to stay in touch with Ancient Greek and Homer.
Loved this! It made me go and look for a Greek edition of the Odyssey... Sure I had one somewhere?
I love discussions of translation choices. Earlier this year, I was looking at your translation alongside Samuel Butler's prose retelling, so I now looked up the exact wording of this passage:
"She said this to try him, but Odysseus was very angry and said 'Wife, I am much displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been taking my bed from the place in which I left it?'"
It feels unwieldy in comparison to almost all the others but within its own narrative style it works.
Only Penelope can force Odysseus to stop being a beggar or a Cretan and to finally show himself.
This may be a big ask, but can you show the metrical feet in the lines with gunai and aloxon? When I was a Bryn Mawr undergraduate, Lattimore was Emeritus, elderly, but sharp and a magnificent reciter too, and, as you probably know, a poet independent of his academic career. He translates like one because he thinks like one. He allowed for two words, words that “could” mean the same thing, to be translated that way if he interpreted one or the other as being a metrical choice - i.e., the author(s) needing the lines to fit a number of needs, including that they would be sung, and that there could be a choice between some close or synonymous words based less on subtle character development than the poetic artifact itself. Thus “lady” twice. He also knew his work as a translation, thus “virtuous” as a veritable epithet for Penelope, because what other modern word comes close? He did have his own ideas about her, of course, like you do - and is to the credit of you both that she is “not” annoying and in it just to p*ss off her wayward husband in either yours nor his. . .?
Yes, a reasonable point. Homeric characters don't tend to use "alochos" in the vocative, and gune in the accusative (gunaika) would not scan in the line before (where it has to be "alochon" for meter, or else the whole line would have to be different, which of course is also possible). So, sure, you could argue that the variation in words is there for that reason. But... in a scene which really is focused on the specific relationship of these two characters, and in a linguistic world where neither of the Greek terms are marked as "the grand/ polite word for woman", Lattimore's particular choices here (to use the same word for two different Greek words, to use a fancy word for two simple words, not to include "wife" to translate either Greek word although both can mean that, to associate care or loyalty with virtue) still strike me as each quite debatable. Thinking as a poet can, of course, mean many different things; not all poets are the same, any more than all scholars or readers or writers. One can always argue about whether or not a specific feature of Homeric poetry is just there for meter or formula, or there for a reason, and it's always debatable. To my ear, the repetition of "lady" is just a little tiny bit clunky, and the original variation is much less so; the needs of the poetic artifact, in English or in Greek, include the need to consider sonic variety and layers of semantics as well as meter. But of course your mileage may vary. I do not mean any disrespect to Lattimore's honored Manes in saying any of this. I know he was a very interesting person, writer and translator, who had an interesting life story and was and is inspirational to many. It's lovely that you remember him so vividly.