From Library Journal
Translator Fagles (comparative literature, Princeton Univ.) offers a new verse translation of the Odyssey, a worthy companion to his version of the Iliad (LJ 8/90). Joining the translations of Robert Fitzgerald, Richard Lattimore, and, more recently, Allan Mandelbaum, his version attempts to achieve readability and the vigor of the original, avoiding the anachronizing of Fitzgerald. At the same time he is more literal than Lattimore and Mandelbaum. As with his Iliad, this translation is accompanied by a long introduction, notes, and glossaries, provided by noted classicist Bernard Knox. Fagles's Iliad and Odyssey provide both the general reader and the student of literature a fine version of Homer in English.?Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Although today epic is often used to suggest the expansive, exhaustive, and possibly overblown, Tolstoy was so impressed by the economy of the father of the form that it caused him to look critically at his own vast works. The greatest strength of Fagles' Homeric translations is that they do nothing to slow the narrative. If anything, they argue that, used well, verse can move faster than prose. Musically, though, they strike the ear as a little ugly. They do not have the strange, hieratic quality (so perfect for the Iliad) of Richmond Lattimore's translation, the strange, off-center power of Alan Mandlebaum's, or the Shakespearean resonance of Robert Fitzgerald's. And some of Fagles' strategies (his italicized pronouns and very modern colloquialisms) seem obvious and contrived. Still, Fagles' Odyssey is the one to put into the hands of younger, first-time readers, not least because of its paucity of notes, which, though sometimes frustrating, is a sign that translation has been used to do the work of explanation. Altogether, an outstanding piece of work. Stuart Whitwell
Review
The Odyssey: Book 1. Athena Inspires The Prince
The Odyssey: Book 10. The Bewitching Queen Of Aeaea
The Odyssey: Book 11. The Kingdom Of The Dead
The Odyssey: Book 12. The Cattle Of The Sun
The Odyssey: Book 13. Ithaca At Last
The Odyssey: Book 14. The Loyal Swineherd
The Odyssey: Book 15. The Prince Sets Sail For Home
The Odyssey: Book 16. Father And Son
The Odyssey: Book 17. Stranger At The Gates
The Odyssey: Book 18. The Beggar-king Of Ithaca
The Odyssey: Book 19. Penelope And Her Guest
The Odyssey: Book 2. Telemachus Sets Sail
The Odyssey: Book 20. Portents Gather
The Odyssey: Book 21. Odysseus Strings His Bow
The Odyssey: Book 22. Slaughter In The Hall
The Odyssey: Book 23. The Great Rooted Bed
The Odyssey: Book 24. Peace
The Odyssey: Book 3. King Nestor Remembers
The Odyssey: Book 4. The King And Queen Of Sparta
The Odyssey: Book 5. Odysseus - Nymph And Shipwreck
The Odyssey: Book 6. The Princess And The Stranger
The Odyssey: Book 7. Phaeacia's Halls And Gardens
The Odyssey: Book 8. A Day For Songs And Contests
The Odyssey: Book 9. In The One-eyed Giant's Cave
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
The success of Robert Fagles's new translation can be seen from his opening lines:
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the
man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course,
once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and
learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick
on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring
his comrades home.
How good that is. ... Mr. Fagles's translation of the "Iliad was greeted by a chorus of praise when it appeared; his Odyssey is a worthy successor. -- The New York Times Book Review, Richard Jenkyns About the Author
Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives.
He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. Both works attributed to Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer must have had an amazing memory but was helped by the formulaic poetry style of the time.
In the Iliad Homer sang of death and glory, of a few days in the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. The Odyssey is the original collection of tall traveller’s tales. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope.
We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. In fact Homer’ may not be a real name but a kind of nickname meaning perhaps the hostage’ or the blind one’. Whatever the truth of their origin, the two stories, developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years’ time.
Robert Fagles (1933-2008) was Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His translations include Sophocles’s Three Theban Plays, Aeschylus’s Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award), Homer’s Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets), Homer’s Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid.
Bernard Knox (1914-2010) was Director Emeritus of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He taught at Yale University for many years. Among his numerous honors are awards from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His works include The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy, Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time and Essays Ancient and Modern (awarded the 1989 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award). 
