Booklist Review
Here might be the modern translation to push all others aside. Not since Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Gospels has an ancient text so suddenly come alive, though for very different reasons. Lattimore always adhered closely to a literal rendering, and proved again how effective this could be, even in his translations of Homer. But Mandelbaum takes a different tack: his aim is to translate as if Homer were English, and the great epic here fairly clangs with alliteration, slant rhyme, and the tautness of good English poetry. Remarkably, the oral nature of the original telling is recovered without losing a sense of great classical beauty. And to top it all off, the whole is beautiful presented, with a few choice works of art and lovely large print. An absolutely gorgeous volume no one should be without. ~--Stuart Whitwell
Choice Review
Mandelbaum deservedly won a National Book Award for his Aeneid of Virgil (CH, Oct'72). Now he presents an astute Homeric Odyssey lavishly produced with wide margins, 12 murky engravings, an "Afterword," descriptive glossary, and helpful book and verse numbers. Translation of this oral-epic headwater of European letters requires energy--and restrained ingenuity. Will readers tolerate exact formulaic repetitions of heroic epithets (22 "rosy-fingered Dawn's" in Greek), whole verses, and type-scenes? Which, if any, English diction conveys the Homeric bards' never-spoken stylized "art idiom"? Does one adjust gritty "digressions" (on the scar, the bow, the swain Eumaeus) that deviously retard the plot? Can the ancient music's melody, metric, and rhythm be transported into an electronic epoch's English? Mandelbaum sees with fresh eyes and speaks contemporary poetry, a five-beat iambic line, sometimes vaguely and distractingly rhymed, with vernacular, rarely stilted diction. He hugs fixed phrases more than Robert Fitzgerald (1961); less accurate than Richmond Lattimore (CH, Mar'68), he yet snares more delight from Greek poetry. This clarity earns his Odyssey welcome on any academic bookshelf. -D. Lateiner, Ohio Wesleyan University
Library Journal Review
While Mandelbaum and the University of California Press are to be commended for attempting this new translation of The Odyssey , those of Robert Fitzgerald (Doubleday, 1963) and Richard Lattimore (Harper & Row, 1968) still remain the versions of choice for serious students who don't know Greek. Mandelbaum's poetry is fluent but lacks the feeling for the original that he brought to his fine translations of Virgil ( The Aeneid of Virgil , Bantam, 1976) and Dante ( The Divine Comedy: The Inferno , Bantam, 1982). There is a looseness in the translation that often misses the intricacy and interconnection of The Odyssey as a whole. Illustrated with engravings, this is essentially a coffee-table book.-- T.L. Cooksey, Arm strong State Coll., Savannah, Ga. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
