The Odyssey - Couverture souple

Homer

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0143039954 ISBN 13 : 9780143039952

Editeur : Penguin Publishing Group, 2006

Synopsis

NOW A MAJOR FILM DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

When Robert Fagles' translation of The Iliad was published in 1990, critics and scholars alike hailed it as a masterpiece. Here, one of the great modern translators presents us with The Odyssey, Homer's best-loved poem, recounting Odysseus' wanderings after the Trojan War. With wit and wile, the 'man of twists and turns' meets the challenges of the sea-god Poseidon, and monsters ranging from the many-headed Scylla to the cannibalistic Cyclops Polyphemus - only to return after twenty years to a home besieged by his wife Penelope's suitors. In the myths and legends retold in this immortal poem, Fagles has captured the energy of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom.

'Wonderfully readable ... Just the right blend of roughness and sophistication'
Ted Hughes

'A memorable achievement ... Mr Fagles has been remarkably successful in finding a style that is of our time and yet timeless'
Richard Jenkyns, The New York Times Book Review

'His translation of The Odyssey is his best work yet'
Garry Wills, New Yorker

Translated by Robert Fagles
With an introduction by Bernard Knox

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

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. Both works attributed to Homer – The Iliad and The Odyssey – are over ten thousand lines long in the original.

Robert Fagles was Arthur W. Marks 1919 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

IAthene Visits Telemachus

Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many people and he learnt their ways. He suffered great anguish on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home. But he failed to save those comrades, in spite of all his efforts. It was their own transgression that brought them to their doom, for in their folly they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun-god and he saw to it that they would never return. Tell us this story, goddess daughter of Zeus, beginning at whatever point you will.

All the survivors of the war had reached their homes by now and so put the perils of battle and the sea behind them. Odysseus alone was prevented from returning to the home and wife he yearned for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who longed for him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave. Not even when the rolling seasons brought in the year which the gods had chosen for his homecoming to Ithaca was he clear of his troubles and safe among his friends. Yet all the gods pitied him, except Poseidon, who pursued the heroic Odysseus with relentless malice till the day when he reached his own country.

Poseidon, however, was now gone on a visit to the distant Ethiopians, in the most remote part of the world, half of whom live where the Sun goes down, and half where he rises. He had gone to accept a sacrifice of bulls and rams, and there he sat and enjoyed the pleasures of the feast. Meanwhile the rest of the gods had assembled in the palace of Olympian Zeus, and the Father of men and gods opened a discussion among them. He had been thinking of the handsome Aegisthus, whom Agamemnon’s far-famed son Orestes killed; and it was with Aegisthus in his mind that Zeus now addressed the immortals:

‘What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. Consider Aegisthus: it was not his destiny to steal Agamemnon’s wife and murder her husband when he came home. He knew the result would be utter disaster, since we ourselves had sent Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, to warn him neither to kill the man nor to court his wife. For Orestes, as Hermes told him, was bound to avenge Agamemnon as soon as he grew up and thought with longing of his home. Yet with all his friendly counsel Hermes failed to dissuade him. And now Aegisthus has paid the final price for all his sins.’

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Publishing Group
• Date d'édition: 2006
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0143039954
• ISBN 13: 9780143039952
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 560
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Penguin Books Limited; productsafety@penguin.co.uk; ; One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens; London; SW11 7BW; Royaume-Uni
• Personne responsable: Penguin Books Limited; productsafety@penguin.co.uk; ; One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens; London; SW11 7BW; Royaume-Uni