Homer’s Odyssey is reckoned as one of the earliest works of Western literature (the book’s back cover says it is the second,
after Homer’s other famous work, The Iliad. That book chronicled of course the Trojan Wars, but the Odyssey follows one of the heroes of that campaign, Odysseus, as he tries to return home. (Made just ever so slightly more difficult due to the Gods being against him, being slightly miffed as they are by his previous behaviour. Odysseus blinded the Cyclops, which rather upset the god Poseidon, who thereafter decided to make life very difficult for him.) Well actually that’s just one half of the book – the other is of Odysseus’ son Telemachus on his search for his father – or, as he thinks is more likely, to bring his father’s bones back to Ithaca and bury them. Actually, there is a third strand to The Odyssey - Odysseus’ wife Penelope and her constancy to him, fighting off increasingly aggressive suitors.
The story is described as epic and indeed, in terms of scope and grandeur, it certainly is. Odysseus travels the world, sees many strange creatures, is ensnared by a goddess, and even visits the land of the dead on his way home. Telemachus doesn’t face the same sorts of dangers and Penelope doesn’t travel out of her native Icatha at all, but the common thread that comes through in each of them is their unwillingness to give up – even in the face of opposition by the Gods themselves in Odyssues’ case.
The
translation is done by D C H Rieu, in a revision of his father’s prose translation. It is a very
scholarly work, with accurate translation – this means unfortunately that the story is pretty hard-going as the language used is so much more repetitive and (at times) overly detailed than what we’re used to reading (particularly in a novel). It does flow quite nicely overall though, for me it was the repetition that really made it a tough read. Rieu consulted Dr Peter Jones of Newcastle University in compiling this translation, and the book opens with a one-page outline of when The Odyssey is believed to have been written etc and some information about R C H Rieu and Peter Jones. There follows a preface by Rieu explaining why he wanted to produce a revised translation, an introduction by Dr Jones which contains extensive notes on characters, structure, history, controversies regarding Homer and The Odyssey, language construction, and several other bits that were quite interesting but you can easily skip if you find it too heavy going. After that there is a brief reading list, and then we have a map of the areas covered in the story, followed by the story itself and finally a comprehensive index and glossary.
It’s very difficult to know how to rate this book. The scholarly work that has gone into it is tremendous, and for those perhaps studying this book for an English degree, this would be perfect. The story itself contains everything you could ever wish to in a novel, and it’s only the writing style and sentence structure of the time that makes it slightly hard-going for the modern reader. I would have rated it 5 stars from a scholarly point of view, 3 from the point of view of a modern reader, so a 4 star rating seems fair. Go for this if you’re interested in classical literature (and particularly Greek mythology), avoid if you want an easy read.