Ομήρου Οδύσσεια [Homer’s Odyssey]

This is the final version of the epic’s translation by D. N. Maronitis. The work’s long-standing translational wanderings began in 1977 with an early sample, which appeared in the journal Art. Eleven years later, in 1988, the entire fifth rhapsody is recited at the Patras festival. Translation of the work continues uninterrupted from 1990 to 2001, and the journey reaches its end today, with the return to the hometown, Thessaloniki. In the bosom of the university’s Faculty of Philosophy, the work receives a warm welcome in the tasteful one-volume edition published by the Institute of Modern Greek Studies.

The translated text, revised and published in the monotonic system, is presented separately from the original text and the Epilogue. When the object of translation is a foundational work of world literature and its subject a professor with a background in both philology and poetics and with a profound interest in issues related to the Homeric epics, whose theoretical and practical contribution in the field of intralingual translation have been invaluable, then, naturally, interest both in the translation process and in its end result grows and deepens. The translatability of ancient texts, the nature and orientation of translational undertakings, particularly intralingual ones, the preservation of the narrative coherence and rhythm of the original, the effacement of the translator’s intense presence in the text, theoretical dilemmas, some of which fake others real, are all dealt with in practice. The ancient text comes to life.

As the translator notes in his Introduction, “Anyone who has read Odyssey carefully senses the great distance of space and time from its text. Despite that, however, the realization gradually emerges that the poem comes and goes as its travels, that it comes closer and then goes away, smiling sometimes in sympathy and sometimes in irony. And this back and forth results in a peculiar hospitality”.

D. N. Maronitis was one of the leading Greek philologists, professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Modern Greek Studies.