[1] The subject of the verb ‘went’ is we, and Odysseus is the speaker.
[4] Keel is the ship and breakers are the waves. They are ready to move.
[5] Godly refers to Neptune, the god of the sea.
[6] They erect the mast and stretch the sail over it.
[7] Dirty and overworked.
[8] They carried sheep onto the deck of the ship for sacrifice.
[10] They had wept a lot.
[13] Since the wind is bowing the sails are bellying.
[14] Craft refers to the wind, thus Odysseus is saying that the wind was Circe’s deed.
[15] The goddess with decorated hair.
[16] In the middle of the ship.
[17] Tiller is the lever that the captain uses to steer the ship. The wind is blowing
at such a scale that it is controlling the ship itself (jammed the tiller).
[19] The sun is not shining as if sleeping (slumber).
[21] Kimmerian: (another spelling is Cimmerian; Pound has most probably used
the spelling of Divus’s (explained below) translation of Greek Myth. The country of
Cimmerian is located near the river Lethe and Odysseus has to pass this land to
enter the underworld. There, no sun shines, and no sound excluding Lethe (the
river of forgetfulness) is heard.
[22] The country is covered with dense mist, hence there is no sunlight.
[23] The sun’s rays cannot enter the thick mist.
[24] There is also no starry sky at night.
[26] The ocean is flowing backwards as if it does not dare get any closer.
[27] As was foretold by Circe, the witch who had told Odysseus that he should seek guidance from Tiresias in the underworld.
[28] They, Odysseus’s comrades, were performing the religious rites.
[29] Two of Odysseus’s comrades who are performing the rites.
[30] Odysseus takes the hid sword from his heap.
[31] He digs a whole. Ell-square is about 45 inches and pitkin is a small pit.
[32] The ritual done to pay one’s respect to a dead person.
[35] The mixture of water and flour. The ritual goes like this: first they pour
honey and wine, then wine and finally water and flour.
[36] He prayed a lot for the dead.
[37] Sterile bulls. The bulls are sterilized by humans to become fat and thus be
suitable for sacrificed.
[38] Pyre means burned. He means that he would burn meat for Tiresias and
present him many gifts.
[39] He is promising to sacrifice his best sheep for Tiresias, and present many
gifts to him after he reaches Ithaca his homeland. One criticism says that
sacrificing the ‘black and a bell-sheep’ signifies Tiresias’s leadership because a
black and bell-sheep usually stands at the head of the herd.
[40] The blood of the sheep pouring in the ditch.
[41] Erebus is a place in the underworld where the dead pass as soon as they die.
Here the smell of the blood has aroused the dead out of their place.
[42] Since dead the souls look pale (cadaverous).
[43] The young brides who have died.
[44] The people who have died at an old age; as a result they have suffered a lot
during their life.
[45] The ones who have recently died thus still have tears on their faces.
[47] The ones who have died in a war when hit by a bronze spear. Since they
have died with a lance, their head is deformed (mauled) as the result of being
struck by it.
[48] The weapons taken as loots in the war. Notice the word ‘spoil’ which
indicates the loss and damages the enemy has caused them.
[49] Bloody (Anglo-Saxon word)
[50] Weapons. Their weapons are still stained with blood since they have
recently died.
[51] The souls of dead people swerving around them.
[52] Since he was surrounded by the dead, he is frightened and hence looks pale.
[53] The souls are crying for more sheep to be sacrificed.
[54] The bronze device by which the sheep were slaughtered.
[55] Pluto is the god of the underworld and Proserpine (check sp) the goddess of
the underworld is his wife. Odysseus is asking for help from them after he pours
the holy oil (ointment).
[56] Take the sword out of its sheath.
[57] Odysseus sits down to protect the blood from being consumed by the
zombies who are moving violently.
[58] The blood is meant to be drunk by Tiresias.
[59] Elpenor’s dead body is left on the earth without receiving burial service. He
as one of Odysseus’s comrades who fell off the roof of Circe’s house because
he was drunk.
[60] No one wept for him.
[61] Not place in the burial room.
[62] The others left Circe’s place because they had more important jobs to do.
[63] How did you come to this land? Odysseus, who is surprised, is asking the
question.
[64] Did you come on foot?
[65] Coming faster than the other seamen (Odysseus’s party) who were equipped
with a ship and other stuff.
[68] Hearth; (here) home.
[69] Most probably something like a column.
[71] Elpenor’s soul left for the underworld. Avernus is the underworld’s gate.
[72] Elpenor is asking (bids) Odysseus to remember him.
[73] Pile my weapons on each other.
[74] Bury me near the sea.
[75] Write on my tombstone.
[76] A man with no penny to his name.
[77] The one who will be famous in the future. Pound might have meant himself.
[78] Set my oar in a vertical situation. In the original version of Homer, Elpenor
asks Odysseus to burn his oar and weapons.
[79] The oar that he used to move among his fellows while traveling on a ship.
This part repeats Beowulf the oldest epic which was brought to England by
Germanic tribes and written down after the conversion to Christianity.
[81] He drives his mother from himself so that Tiresias drink the blood first.
[82] Tiresias was the prophet of Thebes, which was the cultural city and the
center of power. It moved from Athens and then to Sparta and finally to Thebes.
[84] They had met once on earth.
[86] Meaning the underworld.
[87] The blood. Fosse is a ditch through which the blood runs to the pit kin.
[88] So that he answers Odysseus’s question.
[89] After drinking his is full and able to talk.
[90] Tiresias is foretelling that Odysseys will come back home despite Neptune’s
hindrances.
[92] Pond (most probably) breaks the course of the poem by referring us to the
fact that he is translating from the Italian text that was translated by Andrea Divus.
A publishing house (from Latin version of Odysseus.
[93] Andrea Divus is the name of the person who has translated Homer yet
surprisingly enough his name is almost erased from of history.
[94] A publishing house (officina) of Wecheli in 1538.
[95] Creatures with a horrifying sound. Actually they have to pass through the
Sirens and go back to Circe after setting off for the journey towards home.
[96] Veneration to Aphrodite. Following the ancient style of witting, Pond is
finishing his poem by paying respect to a god or goddess.
[97] Dartuna Cretenus is another person who had translated Homer and called it
‘Homeric Hymn.’ Actually the Latin lines are from this book.
[98] Aphrodite with the golden crown.
[99] Latin, castles of Cypress is the area of your reign Aphrodite.
[100] Resembling the color of copper. Odysseus is referring to her decorations.
[102] The golden bough belonged according to some critics to Hermes and
according to other critics it belongs to Aphrodite and still to some others it
belonged to both. Argicidia means the killer of Greeks. The golden bough is an
important piece in Greek mythology.
[103] Pond is referring us to the coming cantos.
ANALYSIS
Like his break from his native society because of their lack of appreciation of his literary sense and art generally, Pound showed this deviation as a modern man from
the traditional poetry in his canto I. Canto I is apparently a compressed translation of
Homer’s Odysseus but as it draws to the end, we notice Pound’s sharp editing of the
original account, and adding some parts regarding the source of his translation. Moreover, some differences in the plot of the story and some spelling alternatives are
quite observable. I am going to mention those deviations regarding the ending, and
some changes in the plot of the story in comparison to the original version and other
English translations of the poem which show Pound’s deliberate turning away from
the traditional and contemporary style in poetry.
As we read the part when Odysseus meets his mother for the second time—the first
time we are told that he ‘beats her off’—the poem stops as if Pound breaks off the
story and starts again with Odysseus’s sailing to the Sirens and so forth. The break,
actually a groove, is the embodiment of his deviation from the old version of the
story. From the beginning, Pound sets off by building the story but he suddenly cracks
the building; the element of the crack being “Lie quiet Divus. I mean Andreas Divus, /
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.” As I mentioned earlier, he reminds us that
he is translating the poem from another translation, and we had better pay attention to
the language he is using: “I mean” which differs from the old language he has used up
to this point. Nevertheless, we have no other way but to regard this version of
Odysseus as uniquely Poundian: he starts the story, breaks it in the middle, adds two
lines of his own and finally as the finishing touch ends the poem by venerating
Aphrodite, a part which is itself another translation of Homer in a book called
“Homeric Hymn”. This way of finishing a poem, by venerating a god or goddess, is
also traditional.
Concerning the changes in the plot the first noticeable turn is the part when Odysseus
meets Elpenor. In the original version, Elpenor asks Odysseus to burn his weapons
but in Pound’s version he asks his weapons to be heaped on each other. The reason
might be the fact that if he burns the weapons he actually destroys them but if he
piles Elpenor’s battle implements up he would make a pyramid of potential power.
Elpenor also asks him to write on his tombstone “and with a name to come.” Pound
might have his own future in mind believing that he would be even more famous in
the future ,‘with a name yet to come,’ the whole notion might go with the heaping of
devices: Pound has crafted a modern style in poetry that he believed has the
potentiality to gather publicity.
But why did he choose Odysseus to start his cantos with? It might be because it is an
old and great piece of work almost a forerunner in literature. Pound started with Homer
most probably to suggest that even though he is breaking with the past he is going to
set off on his great mission of writing cantos and generally developing modern poetry
with the intellectual poetic Odysseus. Yet it is not mere Homer; it is Poundian Homer.
This fact is quite observable in the changes he makes to the original version and
especially when Elpenor asks Odysseus to heap up his arms I could not help but
remember Pound’s future with ‘a name yet to come.’
Maryam Akbari