About the Translation

Readers may wonder exactly what is creative about this “creatively translated” English version of the Iliad, and how it differs from other available translations of the same poem.  While the processes of creativity involve an element of inspiration that resists precise analysis, my translation followed a basic procedure that is easy to explain:  to begin with I read the Greek poem with care and imagination⸺that is to say I visualized the scenes the narrator describes, conceptualized the characters and situations, heard the voices of the speakers, and understood their feelings and the points they were making.  Then in translating a given passage I expressed the given scene in English verses of my own composition.  In short, the procedure was Greek poetry into meaning, and then meaning into English poetry, not Greek language into English language as translation is commonly understood to occur.

                A simple example will illustrate the basic method and how its results differ from those of most other translations of the Iliad that I know of.  In the Greek of the Iliad the name Achilles, in the nominative case, is often modified by the phrase podas okys.  A student at the elementary level who sought the meaning of this phrase by consulting a lexicon would find that okys signifies swift and podas signifies feet, so that the whole phrase amounts to “Achilles swift with respect to feet.”  And most translators of the Iliad into English do render the phrase as “swift-footed Achilles” or in very similar words.  However, translators who use such expressions, while they cannot be accused of infidelity to Homer’s Greek, clearly have not even tried to visualize what the Greek phrase means in the Iliad.  Did Homer visualize Achilles running a race with his swift feet?  Delivering an urgent message?  Fleeing the enemy?  Obviously, the poet depicts none of these situations, but there is one image of Achilles and his swift feet that he does depict vividly, repeatedly, and with thematic significance, namely, Achilles pursuing an opponent on the battlefield to kill him.  So when I read the Iliad in Greek, that is what I visualize when I read the phrase podas okys Akhilleus. And I evoke that image in English by the phrase Achilles the swift pursuer, which besides its stylistic merit is ultimately more faithful to the poem as a whole than ”swift-footed” and its lexically accurate but poetically inert variants.

                For a bolder illustration of my creativity as translator I turn to a passage at the conclusion of Iliad Book I. As sun sets and night descends on Olympus the gods retire to their beds. Homer describes Zeus getting into bed and beginning to fall asleep.  He then concludes the book with the half-verse para de khrysothronos Here, which a beginner with a lexicon would translate “and Hera of the golden throne was beside him.”  And most translators render the phrase in very similar words.  Now as an accurate rendering of the Greek words these translations are unobjectionable. But they risk a serious misunderstanding of the scene described, as indeed the Greek itself does, if read merely accurately and without imagination and understanding.  Taken in isolation, the concluding half-verse depicts only an ordinary traditional wife compliantly taking her traditional place beside her husband in the conjugal bed.  But to anyone who has actually been following the story, nothing could be further from the case, since Zeus and Hera have recently engaged in just the latest of a continuing series of marital quarrels, complete with insinuations, accusations, and threats.  In one of his most memorable portraits the poet depicts Hera as obsessively resentful of her autocratic, bullying husband, who is a patriarch if ever there was one.   So there can be no doubt that, if Homer’s Hera must lie down in bed beside Zeus, she does so seething with inner rage.  Of Homer’s poetry here one may say that it is understated and leaves a lot to the imagination.   

                So when I, reading the poem with understanding and imagination, visualized this scene, I saw Hera in bed beside Zeus, as the poet says she was⸺but not until she felt herself safe from any possible conjugal pleasantries or even a civil exchange with her detested spouse. I expressed the scene I visualized in these English verses:

Hera waited
until she thought she heard him start to snore,
then quietly slipped herself under the sheet beside him.

Like Homer’s description, mine leaves something to the imagination; but less than Homer’s does.

                My final example comes from the Embassy scene in Iliad Book IX. Odysseus has just relayed Agamemnon’s offer to Achilles and pleaded with him to rejoin the battle.  As Achilles begins his reply he addresses Odysseus in the vocative case as polymekhan’ Odysseu. Consulting his lexicon the elementary student finds that polymekhanos is a compound adjective whose two elements are polys, meaning “many,” and mekhane, meaning “a means of getting something done,” i.e. a device or plan.  English translations of this passage are a little more varied than those of the passages just discussed, but they have in common a strong tendency to remain close to the Greek syntax by rendering polymekhan(os) either through an adjective (“resourceful”)  or a short modifying phrase (“of many strategems,” “great tactician”).  As usual these renderings are acceptably accurate, but also as usual they do not imagine the scene vividly.  Now in this case, since polymekhan(os) occurs in the directly uttered speech of a character, conceptualizing its significance in the passage encompasses two dimensions, the trait that it attributes to Odysseus and the voice and purpose of the character (Achilles) who is speaking the word to Odysseus himself. As I visualized the scene and heard Achilles’ voice, this is the translation of polymekhan(os) that came to me:

“I know you as a man who doesn’t quit,
and tries a thousand schemes to reach his goal.”

Both as description and dramatic speech, this is much more lively than a modifying phrase.

In general the emotional power of the Iliad derives from two primary sources:  the high stakes and corresponding drama in every scene, and the direct vividness of Homeric expression.  Stylistic techniques such as alliteration, rhythm, phrasing and enjambement furnish emphasis rather than embellishment. So an English translation that aims for the feel of Homeric poetry must convey meaning in effective English that is capable of moving modern readers more or less as Homer’s poem moved the ancients; or at least it should make the attempt. Now where features of the Homeric style are adaptable to English verse for purposes of emphasis, their skilful deployment may contribute to the desired effect; but efforts to preserve information about Homer’s actual Greek language, including syntax and the line-for-line correspondence that some translators favor, are likely to exact a steep price in diminished vividness and power. My translation does selectively adapt some features of Homeric style to English verse, but it eschews any fidelity to Homer’s Greek language that does not contribute to the translation’s impact as poetry in English. I’d like to think that’s how Homer would have wanted it.

Bruce Heiden