I truly appreciated The Odyssey when I first read it during my college days. It was a challenging yet rewarding experience, especially after painstakingly decoding the ornate and padded stanzas with the valuable help of my classmates. However, this recent reading was an entirely different ballgame! Emily Wilson's new translation is crystal-clear, and when combined with Claire Danes' audio interpretation, it creates an electrifying and suspenseful experience. I found myself completely immersed in the story, gliding through the book as if I was in a trance (or rather, I walked, cleaned, and drove while listening). It seems to me that this is the perfect way Homer's works are meant to be read - as oral poetry that directly touches the heart. I did have the print book on hand, just in case I might need it, but I only referred to it at the very end, for the excellent introduction and translator's note.

This audio version has truly brought The Odyssey to life in a whole new way, making it accessible and engaging for a new generation of readers. It's a remarkable achievement that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in classic literature.

Audiobook read by Claire Danes. I completed this Audiobook several weeks ago. However, when it comes to the physical book, I'm giving up. I possess the physical copy, but I simply couldn't make myself stick with it.

I really enjoyed listening to Claire Danes. At that time, I was fully engaged. (She was very helpful in keeping my interest.) But now, I'm already forgetting everything.

It seems that I need to borrow someone else's brain! Maybe I should try a different approach to reading or find a more effective way to retain the information. I wonder if there are any techniques or strategies that could help me.

Perhaps I could take notes while listening to the Audiobook or discuss the content with someone else. That way, I might be able to better understand and remember what I've heard.

I'll have to explore these options and see if they work for me. In the meantime, I'll keep looking for that perfect book that will truly capture my attention and leave a lasting impression.

**The Odyssey - A Timeless Epic**

The Odyssey, by Homer, is an epic that takes readers on a wild ride.

On one hand, the wine-dark seas, meddling gods, and Odysseus's chaotic journey have a timeless allure. The poetic language, with its rhythms and captivating descriptions, pulls you into a world where the divine and the mortal blend.

However, it's also a long and sometimes challenging read. But every moment is earned, and every challenge significant. The story explores themes like human strength, the will to survive, and the yearning for home.

Standout lines, such as "Longed for as the sun warmed earth is by the wayfaring man in autumn," capture Odysseus's intense longing. Others, like "Endurance is the key to life," convey important messages.

The Odyssey is a cultural gem that speaks to the timeless aspects of the human experience. It's a story of longing, love, and survival that still feels powerful today.

Despite its pacing issues, it's a classic for a reason. The themes of resilience, wit, and human flaws are relatable across centuries. It's like a love letter to storytelling itself.

Overall, The Odyssey gets three stars for its historical significance and for keeping readers hooked. But Homer, let's save long epics for after exams!

2° Leitura - 2019

“Isn't the Odyssey then the myth of all travels? Perhaps for Ulysses-Homer, the distinction between lie and truth did not exist, and he told the same experience now in the language of the lived, now in the language of the myth, just as today for us any journey, small or large, is always an Odyssey.”
Italo Calvino - Why Read the Classics?

And five years later, the rereading of the Odyssey grew and consolidated the 5☆, in this edition of Cotovia and in the excellent text of Frederico Lourenço.

1° Leitura - 2014
“Odyssey s.f. Fig. Journey full of extraordinary adventures. Series of strange and varied events and peripeteias.”

And that's exactly what it's about; the most exceptional journey ever, the hero most admired and cherished by his people, now put to the test, now helped by the capricious gods. Cunning, he faced unthinkable challenges for the common mortal in an epic that lasted twenty years. He was the example of bravery, courage, tenacity, and intelligence.
Older than Christ, this work has served as inspiration to painters, filmmakers, writers, and, in a summarized version, continues to be part of the Portuguese Language program in schools.
In a time when honor was washed with blood and a man's courage was measured by the number of heads cut off, Ulysses did not escape the rule. There were too many accounts of maimed members and violent deaths. So much blood robbed him of a star.

The Odyssey is not just a story of adventure. It is a profound exploration of human nature, of the struggles and triumphs that define us. It shows us that even in the face of the most insurmountable odds, we can find the strength within ourselves to persevere. It is a timeless classic that continues to resonate with readers today, offering us valuable lessons and insights into the human condition. Whether we are on a physical journey or a metaphorical one, the Odyssey reminds us that every step counts and that the destination is not always as important as the journey itself.

The Advantage of Rereading a Classic?

One can say more or less without embarking on a review-comment thanks to a sense of the ridiculous, proportional to the advancing years. In the end, it is a story of the emotional relationship, with its ups and downs, between the reader and the masterpiece.

In this case, between me and him, Odysseus – the part for the whole: the Odyssey – there have never been any highs, but only lows as far back as memory goes.

The first encounter? In third grade when I mistook the myth for history. The joke of the horse full of invading soldiers that burned an entire city didn't sit well with me.

I don't know if I already sided with Ilium, as it happened throughout my life, or if that news gave rise to an aversion to the Achaeans or Danaans, whatever you want to call them, and to their crafty king. A secondary character in the Iliad, a nobody compared to the divine Achilles or the beloved Hector, over whose corpse I shed real tears in seventh grade, memorizing all of canto VI, that of the Sceean Gates and Astyanax playing with his helmet.

[Why a girl should love the war poem and not the adventurous one, a bit frilly, is not so mysterious: Homer, or whoever for him, did not dream of either taking sides or praising violence: growing up, in the second post-war period, with the stories of bombings on displaced civilians and soldiers running around looking for fräulein or ladies, I was a pacifist by imprinting.

As I discovered later (much later, with Simone Weil), the bards, seeing a world disappear before their eyes (the imaginary golden age?), replaced by an aggressive and armed one to the teeth, condemned brute force or only psychological force that makes men things, unable to defend their own lives. I already intuited the truth: the condemnation of war, of abuses and injustices for which there was no eschatological redemption].

At thirteen, instead, I had a direct acquaintance with what is called the founding poem of modern literature. Only one character, Odysseus, whose very name is suspended between nothing* and the Odious** (the meaning I lean towards).

I studied it pedantically line by line, book by book, indulging the tastes of the teacher, a right-wing liberal who could only see that character favorably, all geared towards self-assertion, even at the cost of taking unnecessary risks and, above all, I think with the wisdom of hindsight, not approving of the healthy revenge against those who had violated his private property (the security decrees are healing the wound by bringing us back to the good old days of the healthy massacres of the usurping suitors).

[That was the year, with that of high school graduation, in which I savored the intoxication of being first in the class: in fact, a castrating experience that in the name of the podium makes you give up a healthy critical judgment, sewn together by a liberating mavaffa…towards the book and its author].

I got annoyed with it again in high school, directly in Greek, over whose verses entire Sunday afternoons were spent until the discovery of Bignamino, who was never thanked enough, but who caused me an expulsion and a note with a corresponding six in conduct. Paris is good for a mass.

And here we are today.

I had an outstanding score: was it the pre-ormonal sensitivity of a girl that made him unlikable to me or was it really that of Odysseus, wise and thirsty for knowledge according to everyone, is his reputation undeserved and despite the muscular thighs that, according to Homer himself, were irresistible to women?

Certainly I started off on the wrong foot, in the sense that the rhythm of my reading was on an ironic meter, and there was no way to take Odysseus seriously: it was impossible for me to feel a moment of sympathy for the womanizer, the unlucky one, the crafty one, the calculating one, the unemotional hero. Knowing how it ended, I couldn't hope for a finale that would do justice to his countless victims. I read it like "The Count of Monte Cristo", a thousand and one and more very entertaining pages but all aimed at revenge, terrible revenge, where the psychological depth (to say a banality, but it serves to explain myself) was lost like a needle in a haystack.

Here's the novelty: I had a great time reading it because I no longer have a moralistic reading, in the sense of the correspondence of the text to my personal mores: now I'm ready to appreciate even the devil if the author is able to make you appreciate him in his devilry.

I have also freed myself from the myth of Penelope as a wise woman, irreproachable, in short, a self-castrated wife: her flexible descent, "very beautiful woman" into the living room where the suitors were camping, her leaning softly against the column covering her face with a veil leaving her winking eyes free, says a lot about her true desires and anyway, for me Penelope has always been the Marchesini throughout the rather long rereading (thanks to the Calzecchi Onesti, very enjoyable even if literal or almost).

Who knows, Anna, what faces she would have made in expressing the wonder and disgust at hearing the last "witticism" of her just-found husband: "look, beauty, that Tiresias predicted to me that I don't have time to arrive and re-enjoy the bed with you because I will leave: other worlds await me, and surely other inflamed women, and a sweet death at sea. It seems that I was not born for 'terrestrial bonds'." As we know, man is a hunter, fisherman, climber, aviator, astronaut (without rhyme) and adorable scoundrel…

And "mischievous" were the three women buggered by the testicles of the androgynes: Calypso, Circe and Nausicaa. Fortunately, the times were not ripe for suicides like that of Dido for Aeneas the wimp, otherwise we would have had three more books of funerals.

And then, how much they ate…three banquets a day based on pigs, calves and sheep butchered, cooked and eaten on the spot, with a preference for tripe (intestines in my parts).

All washed down with tankards of vintage wine to keep them going all day long. A slap in the face to poverty and hunger that must have been endemic at that time.

Finally, but not least, the massacre of the suitors, the prototype of all massacres to come: an orgy of blood and mud with the excited enthusiasm of the old nurse, so out of place that even the butcher Odysseus scolds her (let's say that the good feelings, the Christian ones of forgiveness always unfulfilled, were yet to come as Weil and Arendt, very studious of the Homeric phenomenon, recognize).

Highly recommended for lovers of adventure and sedentary couch potatoes.

* “In fact, Odysseus is not even a name, only an indefinite personal pronoun, a Nobody, Oudeis, a non-entity that fluctuates in the pronominal space like a soul waiting for the next reincarnation” Giuseppe Martella, from Indiana Nation.

** From the Greek odyssomai, to hate, book XIX.

I truly believed that my perception of this would alter after having read it during my high school days. However, that was not the case.

There was an insufficient amount of time dedicated to the captivating aspects of the story, such as Polyphemus and Circe. Instead, an excessive amount of time was wasted idling around in Ithaca.

It seems that the narrative could have been enhanced by delving deeper into the adventures and encounters with these fascinating characters. The potential for excitement and intrigue was abundant, yet it was not fully explored.

Perhaps a more balanced approach, allocating more time to the interesting parts and less to the rather mundane scenes in Ithaca, would have made for a more engaging and memorable reading experience.

As it stands, my initial disappointment persists, and I can't help but feel that the story could have been so much more.

I first read Homer in the 19th-century French translation by Leconte de Lisle. It was like reading the 18th-century translation into English by Alexander Pope: a pompous, archaic and exhausting bore of a book. I persevered and later tried the 1955 translation by Victor Bérard. It was a bit less depraved than the Parnassian poet, but still not much better.

Only last year came this new English translation by Emily Wilson. She is an American academic and allegedly the first woman to translate Homer into English. And it is a truly refreshing take on Homer! For the first time, I was able to read The Odyssey without dozing off on every other page.

Wilson set herself a daunting challenge: to keep the same number of verses as in Homer’s epic and transpose the Greek’s dactylic hexameters into the traditional iambic pentameter. She accomplished this amazing feat with ease, concealing the technicalities of her achievement and dodging some of the ponderousness of the Homeric text. The result is an unaffected, luminous poem that flows effortlessly, focusing our attention on the story and the beat of the tale.

Thanks to this new translation, a few things become glaringly apparent. Odysseus is not the wise and glorious war hero we might think. He is a complicated man who lies and messes around with everyone he meets. In fact, he could be considered the first case of an “unreliable narrator”.

The Odyssey is also a tale of extreme violence. Odysseus, the most blood-thirsty character in the poem, chooses to approach the suitors as a beggar, incites them, and then slaughters them pitilessly. The poem ends with a big spring cleaning in a bath of haemoglobin.

Despite all this, The Odyssey has become a significant source of inspiration for feminists. However, most characters in the poem express a form of mistrust towards the opposite sex. It is notable that although Odysseus seems like a paragon of manliness, he is either the punchbag of Poseidon or a puppet in the hands of Athena.

All in all, The Odyssey is a complex and fascinating work. And now, we can’t wait to see what Emily Wilson will do with The Iliad.

The Odyssey is an epic poem that tells the story of Odysseus, one of the heroes of the Trojan War.

It describes his journey back to his homeland of Ithaca after the fall of Troy, which lasted for 10 years.

Odysseus travels from island to island, wanders in the sea, and experiences many adventures.

He faces numerous dangers and hardships due to the anger and vengeance of Poseidon, the god of the sea.

The epic also tells of Penelope, Odysseus' wife, who mourns his absence and waits for him for 20 years.

She and her son endure the presence of many noblemen in their palace who try to force her to marry one of them.

Finally, with the help of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Odysseus returns to his kingdom.

The epic explores themes such as responsibility, courage, assistance, honor, and loyalty.

It also shows the ability to overcome the enemy and achieve victory, whether by force or by cunning.

My translation is a wooden one that does not match the original poetic text.

However, it provides a simple and concise narrative of the epic.

College Reading

What truly amazes me about stories such as this is the astonishing length of time they have endured. There have been hundreds of generations that have delved into these tales and passed them down through the ages. This particular story has been in existence for thousands of years. To me, this is simply mind blowing. Truly.

I recently had the pleasure of reading 'Circe', which is derived from The Odyssey and The Iliad. The influence of this story on literature is profound and far-reaching. It is, in essence, the ultimate quest story.

However, I still struggle to fully comprehend a journey that lasts for 10 long years. The thought of how much your family would miss you during that time is overwhelming. The story is filled with fascinating characters like the Cyclops, witches, and Sirens. I am truly captivated by it all and hope to have the opportunity to re-read it some day.

Ithaka is a poem that invites us to embark on a journey of discovery and adventure. As we set out, we are filled with hope that our road will be long and eventful. The poet warns us of the challenges we may face along the way, such as the Laistrygonians, Cyclops, and angry Poseidon. However, he also assures us that as long as we keep our thoughts raised high and our spirits stirred, we will overcome these obstacles.

The poem encourages us to embrace the unknown and to see it as an opportunity for growth and learning. It reminds us that the journey itself is more important than the destination, and that we should cherish every moment of it. Whether we encounter wild beasts or face the wrath of the gods, we should not be afraid, for these experiences will make us stronger and wiser.

Ithaka is a beautiful and inspiring poem that speaks to the human spirit's longing for adventure and discovery. It reminds us that life is a journey, and that we should make the most of it by following our dreams and exploring the world around us.

The story of Odysseus is also a tale of adventure and perseverance. Odysseus faces many challenges on his journey home from Troy, including encounters with the Cyclops, the Lotus-Eaters, and the Sirens. However, he never gives up, and with the help of the gods and his own wits, he finally makes it back to Ithaka.

The story of Odysseus teaches us that no matter how difficult the journey may be, we should never lose hope. We should be勇敢 in the face of danger and use our intelligence and creativity to overcome obstacles. Like Odysseus, we should also be grateful for the help and support of others, and we should always remember our home and those we love.

In conclusion, both Ithaka and the story of Odysseus offer us valuable lessons about life, adventure, and perseverance. They encourage us to embrace the unknown, to follow our dreams, and to never give up, no matter how difficult the journey may be.

Good. However, it is not as good as the Iliad. I reread it in February 2018. The story itself earns 3 stars. I still find it a lot less narratively and thematically compelling than the Iliad. On the other hand, Emily Wilson's translation is truly masterful and engaging, deserving 5 stars. There are several reasons for this. For instance, she translates the "rose-fingered Dawn" line differently every single time. Also, she renders the entire poem in iambic pentameter. Although it was not the meter of the original, since dactylic hexameter isn't really a thing in English, the iambic pentameter serves to structure the verse into a musical rhythm. Moreover, she eradicates a lot of the misogynistic language that has been used by contemporary male translators until now but was not present in the original Greek. If you haven't read the Odyssey, this is the translation you should read. And if you have, it's definitely worth revisiting to experience the skill and artistry of Wilson's translation.

Like a bolt of lightning striking a tree, The Iliad of Homer set my cranium alight when its sheer incantatory power first washed over me.

It's an astonishing work, brutal and violent, yet at the same time deeply affecting, brimming with incisive insights into human nature.

The vivid descriptions of the battles and the complex characters make it a truly captivating read.

For example, the image of Odysseus and his crew, having taken precautions to not be lured by the Sirens' song, sailing past them is both thrilling and thought-provoking.

Homer's subsequent epic poem, The Odyssey, I was less enraptured by due to its lack of focus.

Even though it represents a high-water mark in the Western canon and its narrative qualities and influence can't be overstated, it didn't have the same impact on me as The Iliad.

Similar to Odysseus, I was hoping for a homecoming of sorts, but the return didn't quite live up to my expectations.

That first, visceral contact with The Iliad spoiled me, making it difficult for The Odyssey to compete.

Do I love The Odyssey? No, but I coldly admire it from a distance and hold it in great respect.

More than likely, I'll never get to a point of "intimacy" with it.

Expansive reviews of both poems will probably follow in the future when I decide to re-read them, perhaps in different translations from the Richmond Lattimore one that I highly recommend, especially for The Iliad.