From: [log in to unmask]>Viv Kitson

To: [log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]

Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 2:49 PM

Subject: Re: Reality & existence

Erminia - You must admit that, as a male, to be compared with Ulysses is very flattering! I have not seen your "image", but, if having done so, I compared you to Sappho, would you find that flattering? (Can't be bothered going to the bookshelves to find my volume of Sappho, but I do recall that the cover carries the one (?) extant image of her: pen to lips, the Grecian hair style of the time...very attractive!)

 

I did, however, go to the bookshelves to get Homer's "Odyssey" - the Penguin E.V. Rieu translation.(And just a short aside to WA list members here: purchased at Alberts Bookshop, Forrest Place, Perth. God! How long ago was that?). His rendering of the passage you provided seems far more stilted and "old fashioned" than that you provided.

 

I ask this because (although I studied Homer's "Iliad" at university, and have read it since, I can't recall having read the "Odyssey", but probably did read the volume from the bookshelves, contemporaneously with Dante, when I was 15 or 16), if I am to read or re-read the Odyssey, I'd like to do so in a "good", readable translation. Any recommendations Erminia? Others?

 

Cheers,

Viv

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask]>Erminia Passannanti

To: [log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]

Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 9:13 PM

Subject: Re: Reality & existence

Viv,

 

since you seem to be fond of looking like Ulysses, as Bibi rightly pointed out, (many must have visited your web-site, I suppose, after you made it known)here is a nice passage from Homer's Odyssey for you and Bibi to enjoy.

 

EP

 

 

BOOK XXIII Odyssey

But, now, since you have given me accurate proof describing bed, which no other mortal man beside has ever seen, only you and I, and there is one serving woman, Aktor’s daughter, whom my father gave me when I came here, who used to guard the doors for us in our well-built chamber; you persuade my heart, though it has been very stubborn. She spoke, and still more roused in him the passion for weeping. He wept too as he held his lovely wife, whose thoughts were virtuous. And as when the land appears welcome to men who are swimming, after Poseidon has smashed their strong-built ship on the open water, pounding it with the weight of wind and the heavy seas, and only a few escape the gray water landward swimming, with a thick scurf of salt coated upon them, gladly they set foot on the shore, escaping the evil; welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him, she could not let him go from the embrace of her white arms. Now Dawn of the rosy fingers would have dawned on their weeping, not the gray-eyed goddess Athene planned it otherwise. She held the long night back at the outward edge