A Singer of Tales

SINCE THE PUBLICATION in 1961 of Robert Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey many have wished for an equally good English version of the Iliad, just as they were hoping in 1960 for an Odyssey to match the Iliad of Richard Lattimore. Fitzgerald admired Lattimore's translation so much that he foresaw "a century or so in which nobody will again try to put the Iliad in English verse." He has since retracted that prediction, saying that his thinking on the Iliad "had not at that point been fully developed."

The development has proceeded by leaps and bounds since then. Fitzgerald read three passages form his new translation of the Iliad to a packed auditorium at the Science Center on Tuesday afternoon. This work is the culmination of eight years of devotion, and when it is published early next year, it is likely to be greeted as enthusiastically as his Odyssey was. The audience at Tuesday's reading, sponsored by the Harvard Advocate, responded keenly to the pitch of his achievement.

When Fitzgerald's Odyssey won immediate acclaim as the finest English translation of Homer's epic, his reputation was already established by two volumes of original and translated poetry, and the definitive translation, in collaboration with Didley Fitts, of several Greek tragedies, including Sophocles' Oedipal trilogy and Euripides' Alcestis. As William Arrowsmith pointed out in his review of Fitzgerald's Odyssey in The Nation, Fitzgerald avoids a mere word-by-word rendering of the original poem. Rather, he totally recasts the Greek into English,...rethinking and reshaping the Greek by turning the thrust and power beneath the words rather than the words themselves."

THIS APPROACH DEMANDS of the translator an extraordinary sensitivity to the feel of the original poetry. To invoke this, Fitzgerald began his reading by delivering the opening verses in Greek, with a warmth that left some of the audience reluctant to turn to English. But, reading the opening passage of his translation, Fitzgerald carried the audience through all the fine dramatic fluctuations of Achilles' initial dispute with Agamemnon.

While maintaining the narrative and dramatic pitch of the poem, Fitzgerald's verse is open to the full beauty of metaphor and resonance of cadence in Homer's poem. At the same time, he preserves the freshness and vitality of the original, and this is perhaps the genius of Fitzgerald's translation.

Fitzgerald's reading was perfectly suited to his poetry. His tone was sufficiently subdued to allow the poetry itself to take the primary place in the listener's attention, but the nobility and passion of the poem were not lost in his expression. The reading was consistently fine, and often very moving.

Coming to a climax at the end of his reading from Book III, Fitzgerald suddenly looked up, slightly dazed, moved by the inspiration of the epic, and seemingly surprised to find himself in the twentieth century. He was welcomed back by the enthusiastic applause of his audience, and clasped his hands over his head in the excitement of victory. Clearly, Fitzgerald is ready for another eight years of labor.