Kalkhas Speaks Out (1.73-104)

ὅ σφιν ἐὺφρονέων ἀγορήσατο καὶ μετέειπεν:
ὦ Ἀχιλεῦ κέλεαί με Διῒ φίλε μυθήσασθαι
μῆνιν Ἀπόλλωνος ἑκατηβελέταο ἄνακτος: [75]
τοὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν ἐρέω: σὺ δὲ σύνθεο καί μοι ὄμοσσον
ἦ μέν μοι πρόφρων ἔπεσιν καὶ χερσὶν ἀρήξειν:
ἦ γὰρ ὀΐομαι ἄνδρα χολωσέμεν, ὃς μέγα πάντων
Ἀργείων κρατέει καί οἱ πείθονται Ἀχαιοί:
κρείσσων γὰρ βασιλεὺς ὅτε χώσεται ἀνδρὶ χέρηï: [80]
εἴ περ γάρ τε χόλον γε καὶ αὐτῆμαρ καταπέψῃ,
ἀλλά τε καὶ μετόπισθεν ἔχει κότον, ὄφρα τελέσσῃ,
ἐν στήθεσσιν ἑοῖσι: σὺ δὲ φράσαι εἴ με σαώσεις.
τὸν δ' ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς:
θαρσήσας μάλα εἰπὲ θεοπρόπιον ὅ τι οἶσθα: [85]
οὐ μὰ γὰρ Ἀπόλλωνα Διῒ φίλον, ᾧ τε σὺ Κάλχαν
εὐχόμενος Δαναοῖσι θεοπροπίας ἀναφαίνεις,
οὔ τις ἐμεῦ ζῶντος καὶ ἐπὶ χθονὶ δερκομένοιο
σοὶ κοίλῃς παρὰ νηυσί βαρείας χεῖρας ἐποίσει
συμπάντων Δαναῶν, οὐδ' ἢν Ἀγαμέμνονα εἴπῃς, [90]
ὃς νῦν πολλὸν ἄριστος Ἀχαιῶν εὔχεται εἶναι.
καὶ τότε δὴ θάρσησε καὶ ηὔδα μάντις ἀμύμων:
οὔ τ' ἄρ ὅ γ' εὐχωλῆς ἐπιμέμφεται οὐδ' ἑκατόμβης,
ἀλλ' ἕνεκ' ἀρητῆρος ὃν ἠτίμησ' Ἀγαμέμνων,
οὐδ' ἀπέλυσε θύγατρα καὶ οὐκ ἀπεδέξατ' ἄποινα, [95]
τοὔνεκ' ἄρ' ἄλγε' ἔδωκεν ἑκηβόλος ἠδ' ἔτι δώσει:
οὐδ' ὅ γε πρὶν Δαναοῖσιν ἀεικέα λοιγὸν ἀπώσει
πρίν γ' ἀπὸ πατρὶ φίλῳ δόμεναι ἑλικώπιδα κούρην
ἀπριάτην ἀνάποινον, ἄγειν θ' ἱερὴν ἑκατόμβην
ἐς Χρύσην: τότε κέν μιν ἱλασσάμενοι πεπίθοιμεν. [100]
ἤτοι ὅ γ' ὣς εἰπὼν κατ' ἄρ' ἕζετο: τοῖσι δ' ἀνέστη
ἥρως Ἀτρεΐδης εὐρὺ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων
ἀχνύμενος: μένεος δὲ μέγα φρένες ἀμφιμέλαιναι
πίμπλαντ', ὄσσε δέ οἱ πυρὶ λαμπετόωντι ἐΐκτην:


Translation:

Since he meant well for them, he addressed them and said:

Achilles, dear to Zeus, you urge me to explain
the wrath of Lord Apollo the Farshooter,
and so I will speak out. But you take heed and swear me
an oath to back me up fully in word and in deed,
for I think what I have to say will anger a man,
a man who rules over all the Argives in his strength
and whom all the Achaeans obey.
Awesome is a king when angered at a lesser man:
for even if he swallows his anger when first it arises,
he will bear his grudge until he can satisfy it,
guarding it deep in his gut. So tell me if you will protect me.

And Swiftfooted Achilles spoke up and answered him:

Take heart and tell us whatever prophecy you know.
For I swear by Apollo dear to Zeus, by the god to whom
you pray, Kalkhas, when you reveal prophecies to the Danaans,
that no man, for as long as I may live to look upon the earth,
not one of all the Danaans will lay a violent hand upon you
among the hollow ships—not even if you refer to Agamemnon,
who now claims to be by far the best of the Achaeans.

And so the blameless seer took heart and he spoke to them:

Neither for some vow nor for some sacrifice does he fault us,
but rather for the priest whom Agamemnon disgraced
by not setting his daughter free, by not taking the ransom.
For this the Farshooter has given us pains, and will give still more.
He will not drive off the deadly plague from the Danaans
until we give the darkeyed girl back to her loving father—
for nothing, without ransom—and lead a holy sacrifice to Chryse.
Then, once we have thus appeased him, we might win him over.

Having spoken thus he took his seat, but then Atreus’s son,
the hero and wide ruler Agamemnon, stood up in anguish.
His mind overflowed with black and angry thoughts
and his eyes burned like twin fires.


Comments:

One major decision all translators of Homer have to make is how to manage the heavily formulaic language of the poems. In the Greek, there is much repetition: repetition of epithets such as “the Farshooter Apollo,” repetition of stock phrases such as “[x] spoke up and answered him,” repetition of descriptions of typical actions such as arming for battle, and so forth. The modern tendency has been to minimize the repetitive quality of the poems by varying the translation of identical words and phrases. Some translators (especially Fitzgerald) are very creative with this, and they frequently take advantage of the felt need for variability to make the epithets or stock phrases function in specific response to their local context. That is, they turn the translation of formulaic elements into an opportunity to color, to interpret, and sometimes even to introduce psychologizing interpretations into the local scenes that contain the formulae.

I’ll give one example, chosen literally at random from Lombardo’s Odyssey that I happen to have at my elbow. Twice in close proximity Homer attaches the epithet pepnumenos to Telemachus’s name (4.290 and 4.315); in fact these two lines are completely identical. The epithet is a very common one formed from the verb pneō, “breathe”; in the perfect middle participle form pepnumenos it means something vaguely positive like “sensible,” “discreet,” or “prudent.” At line 290, Lombardo translates it as “clear-headed way” as in: “Then Telemachus said in his clear-headed way”; but at 315, he translates it as “took a deep breath” as in “Telemachus took a deep breath and said.” In both places the formulaic quality of the epithet would come through better if we simply translated it as, e.g., “sensible,” giving us in both places “Then sensible Telemachus answered.”

No doubt Lombardo and others do this mostly because modern poetic tastes are vastly different; we value variety and the striking expression. We want the psychological nuances of the characters to be suggested to us (e.g. Telemachus takes “a deep breath” here—there must be something weighty on his mind). But I’m not convinced that we need to assimilate the poetry so closely to our own canons of taste. I want a poem that is 2,700 years old to seem different from contemporary poetry. Just how different is one of the many things I am trying to puzzle out in this project.

And I have to confess that I have always felt my intelligence to be insulted by translators’ refusals to convey the repetitive quality of the poems to me. As a student, when I didn’t have enough Greek to read through the poems in their entirety and still relied largely on translations, I wanted to know where things were being repeated, because I felt that the repetitions themselves must be significant (beyond being the key defining characteristic of the poetry itself). And now as a teacher of the poems in translation I constantly hear my students making a lot out of these introduced details like “took a deep breath.” All I do is throw my hands up and say to myself “fine—what we’re really studying in this class is not Homer’s Odyssey but Lombardo’s translation of it, so let them make what they will out of these expressions.” But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way all the time; maybe we can find ways to convey the distinct poetics of the Iliad and the Odyssey without losing the vigor, rapidity, and effortlessness that a contemporary idiom like that of Lombardo so rightly conveys.