I owe thanks to the Fulbright Committee who made it possible for me to spend the academic year of 1954-55 as a Research Scholar in Modern Greek Literature at the University of Athens. To Archibald MacLeish, Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken, Theodore Weiss, John Malcolm Brinnin, James Laughlin, Seymour Lawrence, and Lawrence Durrell I am grateful for the encouragement they gave me in my various translations from modern Greek poetry to their culmination in this work. In particular I am grateful to Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra, Arthur Miller, Gore Vidal, Karl Shapiro, John Ciardi, James Merrill, Ronald Freelander, Anthony Decavalles, and Dean Moody Prior of Northwestern University, all of whom read my first tentative experiments with the Odyssey in both prose and poetry and encouraged me to attempt the more arduous but more rewarding metrical version. T. S. Eliot wrote me of his pleased astonishment that any publisher today would be willing to gamble on the publication of so long a poem, and in verse translation. I owe this to the initial inspiration of Mr. M. Lincoln Schuster, who first sent me to Antibes to collaborate with Kazantzakis, and to whom I have been most grateful during these past four years for his continuous support and unfailing enthusiasm.
Antofagasta, Chile
April 1958
Prologue
O Sun, great Oriental, my proud mind’s golden cap,
I love to wear you cocked askew, to play and burst
in song throughout our lives, and so rejoice our hearts.
Good is this earth, it suits us! Like the global grape
it hangs, dear God, in the blue air and sways in the gale, 5
nibbled by all the birds and spirits of the four winds.
Come, let’s start nibbling too and so refresh our minds!
Between two throbbing temples in the mind’s great wine vats
I tread on the crisp grapes until the wild must boils
and my mind laughs and steams within the upright day. 10
Has the earth sprouted wings and sails, has my mind swayed
until black-eyed Necessity got drunk and burst in song?
Above me spreads the raging sky, below me swoops
my belly, a white gull that breasts the cooling waves;
my nostrils fill with salty spray, the billows burst 15
swiftly against my back, rush on, and I rush after.
Great Sun, who pass on high yet watch all things below,
I see the sea-drenched cap of the great castle-wrecker:
let’s kick and scuff it round to see where it will take us!
Learn, lads, that Time has cycles and that Fate has wheels 20
and that the mind of man sits high and twirls them round;
come quick, let’s spin the world about and send it tumbling!
O Sun, my quick coquetting eye, my red-haired hound,
sniff out all quarries that I love, give them swift chase,
tell me all that you’ve seen on earth, all that you’ve heard, 25
and I shall pass them through my entrails’ secret forge
till slowly, with profound caresses, play and laughter,
stones, water, fire, and earth shall be transformed to spirit,
and the mud-winged and heavy soul, freed of its flesh,
shall like a flame serene ascend and fade in the sun. 30
You’ve drunk and eaten well, my lads, on festive shores,
until the feast within you turned to dance and laughter,
love-bites and idle chatter that dissolved in flesh;
but in myself the meat turned monstrous, the wine rose,
a sea-chant leapt within me, rushed to knock me down, 35
until I longed to sing this song—make way, my brothers!
Oho, the festival lasts long, the place is small;
make way, let me have air, give me a ring to stretch in,
a place to spread my shinhones, to kick up my heels,
so that my giddiness won’t wound your wives and children. 40
As soon as I let loose my words along the shore
to hunt all mankind down, I know they’ll choke my throat,
hut when my full neck smothers and my pain grows vast
I shall rise up—make way!—to dance on raging shores.
Snatch prudence from me, God, burst my brows wide, fling far 45
the trap doors of my mind, let the world breathe awhile.
Ho, workers, peasants, you ant-swarms, carters of grain,
I fling red poppies down, may the world burst in flames!
Maidens, with wild doves fluttering in your soothing breasts,
brave lads, with your black-hilted swords thrust in your belts, 50
no matter how you strive, earth’s but a barren tree,
but I, ahoy, with my salt songs shall force the flower!
Fold up your aprons, craftsmen, cast your tools away,
fling off Necessity’s firm yoke, for Freedom calls.
Freedom, my lads, is neither wine nor a sweet maid, 55
not goods stacked in vast cellars, no, nor sons in cradles;
it’s but a scornful, lonely song the wind has taken . . .
Come, drink of Lethe’s brackish spring to cleanse your minds,
forget your cares, your poisons, your ignoble profits,
and make your hearts as babes, unburdened, pure and light. 60
O brain, be flowers that nightingales may come to sing!
Old men, howl all you can to bring your white teeth back,
to make your hair crow-black, your youthful wits go wild,
for by our Lady Moon and our Lord Sun, I swear
old age is a false dream and Death but fantasy, 65
all playthings of the brain and the soul’s affectations,
all but a mistral’s blast that blows the temples wide;
the dream was lightly dreamt and thus the earth was made;
let’s take possession of the world with song, my lads!
Aye, fellow craftsmen, seize your oars, the Captain comes; 70
and mothers, give your sweet babes suck to stop their wailing!
Ahoy, cast wretched sorrow out, prick up your ears—
I sing the sufferings and the torments of renowned Odysseus!
I
And when in his wide courtyards Odysseus had cut down
the insolent youths, he hung on high his sated bow
and strode to the warm bath to cleanse his bloodstained body.
Two slaves prepared his bath, but when they saw their lord
they shrieked with terror, for his loins and belly steamed 5
and thick black blood dripped down from both his murderous palms;
their copper jugs rolled clanging on the marble tiles.
The wandering man smiled gently in his thorny beard
and with his eyebrows signaled the frightened girls to go.
For hours he washed himself in the warm water, his veins 10
spread out like rivers in his body, his loins cooled,
and his great mind was in the waters cleansed and calmed.
Then softly sweet with aromatic oils he smoothed
his long coarse hair, his body hardened by black brine,
till youthfulness awoke his wintry flesh with flowers. 15
On golden-studded nails in fragrant shadows flashed
row upon row the robes his faithful wife had woven,
adorned with hurrying winds and gods and swift triremes,
and stretching out a sunburnt hand, he quickly chose
the one most flaming, flung it flat across his back, 20
and steaming still, shot back the bolt and crossed the threshold.
His slaves in shade were dazzled till the huge smoked beams
of his ancestral home flashed with reflected light,
and as she waited by the throne in pallid, speechless dread,
Penelope turned to look, and her knees shook with fright: 25
“That’s not the man I’ve awaited year on year, O Gods,
this forty-footed dragon that stalks
my quaking house!”
But the mind-archer quickly sensed the obscure dread
of his poor wife and to his swelling breast replied:
“O heart, she who for years has awaited you to force 30
her bolted knees and join you in rejoicing cries,
she is that one you’ve longed for, battling the far seas,
the cruel gods and the deep voices of your deathless mind.”
He spoke, but still his heart leapt not in his wild chest,
still in his nostrils steamed the blood of the newly slain; 35
he saw his wife still tangled in their naked forms,
and as he watched her sideways, his eyes glazed, almost
in slaughter’s seething wrath he might have pierced her through.
Swiftly he passed and mutely stood on his wide sill;
the burning sun in splendor sank and filled all nooks 40
and every vaulted cell with rose and azure shade.
Athena’s altar in the court still smoked, replete,
while in the long arcades in cool night air there swung
the new-hung slaves, their eyes and swollen tongues protruding.
His own eyes calmly gazed in the starry eyes of night, 45
who from the mountains with her curly flocks descended,
till all his murderous work and whir of arrows sank
within his heart in peace, distilled like mist or dream,
and his wild tiger heart in darkness licked its lips.
After the joy of bathing, his mind grew serene, 50
nor did he once glance backward toward the splattered blood,
nor in its cunning coils once scheme for ways to save
his dreadful head from dangers that besieged it now.
Thus in this holy hour Odysseus basked in peace,
on his ancestral threshold standing, bathed and shorn of care. 55
Meanwhile in every courtyard the swift news had spread
how slyly their king had stolen to his ancestral land
and slain the suitors round the feasting boards like bulls.
Leaning on their oak staffs, the slain men’s fathers shrieked
and knocked on each town door to rouse the angry crowd; 60
the common workmen threw their rough tools to the ground,
the craftsmen closed their shops, and from the seaside pubs
the drunken oarsmen lurched, climbing the winding paths.
Cluster by cluster in the market place all swarmed
like angry bees when wasps have robbed their hives of honey. 65
A woman who had lost her man on Trojan shores
for Helen’s sake raised her love-aching arms, and cried:
“We’ve welcomed him too well, my lads, that barbarous butcher!
Behold his gifts: a sword, a shield, three flasks of poison;
one to be drunk at dawn, one at high noon, the third 70
most bitter one, dear Gods, to be drunk in bed, alone!”
Shrilly from doors, roofs, terraces, the widows swarmed,
flinging black kerchiefs round their heads, and yelled with rage:
“May Zeus curse him who scorched us now in our first bloom!
Our beds are filmed with mold, our honest homes are ruined, 75
and all for the sake of a man-luring, shameless slut!”
They beat their sterile breasts, for lack of children shrunk,
and one, swept by her grief, wailed in a wild lament:
“I weep less for my good man’s death or widowed arms
than for my fallen breasts, my teats that shrank and dried 80
for lack of milk and a stout son to bite them sweetly.”
Secret and ancient wounds in their hearts bled again,
their eyes grew dim, and the sun’s little light grew faint
as on black floating clouds astride, dark shades of men,
stranded on hopeless shores, came slowly drifting in. 85
They passed through desolate dusk in silence, wrapped in webs,
and swiftly gliding along high walls, vanished in doorways.
One lightly touched his father, and the old man shivered,
one let his shadow fall on his home’s scattered stones,
one on the shriveled apples of his wife’s worn breasts. 90
The fondled shoulders quivered, knees gave way with fright,
the air with dead men thickened, and the stifling widows
tightly embraced the empty air with grief, and moaned.
An armless man, whose hands the Trojan shores devoured,
leapt on a rock, and soon there huddled thickly round him 95
the maimed, blind, warped and crippled of man-eating War.
“Comrades,” he yelled, flailing the air with his arm-stumps,
“our king’s come back and brought his body whole, unharmed,
both of his hands, his feet, his eyes, his wily brain;
but we’re now crawling beasts that grovel on the ground; 100
we grasp, but with no hands, we leap, but with no feet,
and with our blank eyesockets knock on the archons’ doors.”
Then his voice stopped, his head thrust back in hollow shoulders,
and his friends cheered him wildly and embraced him tight;
the widows rushed into the streets bareheaded, bold, 105
grabbed torches, scattered through the town and spurred the men:
“Ho! look at these brave lads that drip tears and saliva!
Take up our spindles, bind your heads with our black kerchiefs!
Women, raise high your torches, fire that murderous man,
burn down his palace tonight and strew the ashes to the four winds!” 110
And you, in the quiet of night, you felt, O harsh sea-battler,
the tumult of the insolent crowd, the flaming torches,
and as you stretched your neck to listen, your heart flared:
“Even my isle moves under my feet like angry seas,
and here I thought to find firm earth, to plant deep roots! 115
The armature of earth is rent, the hull gapes open;
the mob roars to my left, the archons crowd my right;
how heavy the cargo grows; I’ll heave to, and unballast!”
his ears, lips, temples quivering like a slender hound, 120
and as he groped his body stealthily, he seized
his wide, two-bladed sword, in many slaughters steeped,
and all at once his heart grew whole again and calm.
From the high roofs his slaves discerned the seething mob,
unloosed their locks and filled their rooms with lamentation; 125
the queen took courage, rushed to where her husband stood
and mutely flung her arms about his ruthless knees,
but he commanded all to lock themselves in the high towers,
then bellowed for his son till all the palace rang.
The young man, lolling in his bath, leapt at the cry, 130
thrust through the frightened slaves who washed his chest of gore,
strode out and firmly stood by his dread father’s side.
His naked body, flushed, still steamed in darkling air
and like a bronze sword, slaked with slaughter, glowed and glittered.
He who has borne a son dies not; the father turned, 135
and his sea-battered vagrant heart swelled up with pride.
Good seemed to him his young son’s neck, his chest and sides,
the swift articulation of his joints, his royal veins
that from tall temples down to lithesome ankles throbbed.
Like a horse-buyer, with swift glances he enclosed 140
with joy his son’s well-planted and keen-bladed form.
“It’s I who stand before my own discarded husk,
my lip unshaven, my heart still covered with soft down,
all my calamities still buds, my wars, carnations,
and my far journeys still faint flutterings on my brow.” 145
Not to betray his joy, he lowered his eyes, and frowned:
“Tall tower of our tribe’s fort, my son, my only son,
take heed: the knavish mob now rears and tries its wings,
the maimed have taken arms, slaves have cast off their yoke,
the ballast, risen to foam, now tries to guide the prow. 150
Say that I’ve not returned, that waves have gulped me down,
and come, tell me how you would crush this crude revolt.”
A mild breeze blew on ringlets of a fallow brow,
somewhere amid an olive tree a nightbird sighed,
soft seawaves far away on the smooth shingle murmured 155
and happy night in her first sleep mumbled in dream.
Telemachus then turned to his harsh-speaking lord:
“Father, your fierce eyes brim with blood, your fists are smoking!”
The cruel man-slayer grabbed his son and roared with laughter;
two crows on two black branches shook with fright, and fled, 160
and in the court an old oak swayed with all its stars.
“Hold firm, my son, or my strong laugh will knock you down!”
But the young man shook free from his strong father’s grasp:
“At your side, sire, I think I bent the bow well, too.
Are not our hands now slaked and satisfied with murder?” 165
The eyebrows of his ruthless parent scowled in storm:
“My son, on shores and islands far away still smoke
luxurious palaces, still groan their slaughtered kings;
our people have grown haughty, wars have smudged their hearts,
they rage to cut down man’s most venerated peaks; 170
I see the scales of fate now tottering in the balance.”
But raising his eyes boldly, the brave youth replied:
“If I were king I’d sit beneath our plane tree’s shade
and listen like a father to all my people’s cares,
dispensing bread and freedom justly to all men; 175
I mean to follow in the path of our old kings.”
His father laughed and his eyes flashed. “My son,” he mocked,
“those follow old kings best who leave them far behind.”
The young man, struck with fright, stepped back and thought: “This man
is like the cruel male hare that kills its newborn sons. 180
O Gods, I’d seize him if I dared, bind both his hands,