In The Sea issue, published in the summer of 2013, Lapham’s Quarterly excerpted Book XII of Robert Fagles’ 1996 translation of The Odyssey. Having descended into the realm of the dead and returned to the realm of the living, Odysseus now must resist the song of the sirens and transit a narrow strait menaced by two opposing perils: toward one shore, Scylla, a monstrous sea creature; toward the other, a voracious whirlpool, Charybdis. In his new translation, Daniel Mendelsohn favors phonetic and Hellenic spellings of Greek names. Here, in the same passage from Book XII that the Quarterly excerpted twelve years ago, Odysseus and his men sail between Skylla and Kharybdis. Fagles, like other translators, favored the iambic pentameter of blank verse. Mendelsohn admires the Fagles translation, but in his own, he sought to approximate the dactylic hexameter of the original Greek. “My reader is reading in English,” he explains. “And I want that person to be rolling along those languorous surf-like lines because it is a poem about the sea. And I do think that Homer’s rhythm is in some sense recreating a kind of surf-like rhythm. It’s like the surf crashing, waves one after one hitting the shore.”
In the meantime, the stoutly built ship swiftly arrived at the island
Of the Sirens, for an easy wind was pushing us along.
Then all of a sudden the wind died down and a calm descended,
Windless, while some Power lulled the swells to sleep.
My comrades then got to their feet and furled the sails of the ship,
Which they stowed in the sleek-hulled ship. And then they took their seats
By the oars, foaming the water with those well-smoothed lengths of pine.
At that point, I took the sharp bronze and sliced into a huge round of wax,
Cutting it up into pieces which I kneaded with my sturdy hands.
Soon enough the wax grew warm, compelled by that powerful pressure
And by the rays of Helios, the Lord Hyperion.
Then, one by one, I stopped up my comrades’ ears.
They tied me fast on the ship, binding my hands and my feet
As I stood upon the mast-frame and then roping me to the mast.
Then they sat there, row by row, and whipped up the iron-gray brine.
Once we had gotten as far as the sound of a shout will reach
We pressed on swiftly—but the Sirens noticed the sea-swift ship
As it sprinted alongside them. They struck up their sonorous song:
“O Odysseus, rich in praise, great glory of the Achaeans,
Come hither now, halt your ship and hear the sound of our voice!
For no one has ever rowed past us aboard his black-hulled ship
Before he’s heard the voice from our lips with its honeyed harmonies.
But once he has taken his pleasure, he returns knowing so much more.
For well we know all the hardships that there, in Troy’s sprawling plains,
Both the Argives and the Trojans endured through the will of the gods.
And we know whatever happens on the earth, which nourishes all.”
So they spoke as they poured forth their lovely voice. My heart
Was eager to listen to them and, motioning with my brows,
I ordered my comrades to free me. But they fell to and kept on rowing.
Perimêdes then stood up with Eurýlokhos, and both straightaway
Bound me with even more rope as they tied me up more tightly.
But once we’d rowed all the way past them and weren’t able any longer
To hear the sound of the Sirens’ voices, hear their song,
My comrades always so faithful, quickly took out the wax
I had used to stop up their ears, and released me from my bonds.
Now once we had left the island behind us, straightaway saw
Smoke and a giant wave and heard the sound of crashing.
The men were struck with terror and the oars few out of their hands,
All of them splashing loudly in the current. The ship stopped moving
On the spot, since the men could no longer ply their tapered oars.
I paced up and down the ship, urging my comrades on,
Cajoling them, approaching each of the men in turn:
“Friends, there’s no kind of disaster in which we have not been schooled,
And the one that’s upon us now is hardly worse than when Cyclops
Used violence and brute force to pen us up in his smooth-hollowed cave.
But even from that place—thanks to my courage, my schemes, and my wits—
We escaped. And these woes, too, I suspect, we’ll remember one day.
Now then, do just as I say and let’s all of us fall into line.
You all must use your oars to whip up the deep-breaking surf
As you sit there at your benches, in the hope that somehow Zeus
Might grant that we escape the disaster now before us.
Now for your orders, steersman: be sure to take them to heart,
Since you are the one who’s got the rudder of our sleek-hulled ship.
Give the smoke and the waves a wide berth, keeping the ship well away,
And instead hold hard by the cliff so she won’t veer to the other side
Without your noticing it and drive us all to our ruin.”
My words. And they swiftly obeyed all that I had said.
Of Skylla I breathed not a word—a scourge we could not get around—
Since I feared that my companions, terrified, would abandon
Their seats at the rowing benches and huddle together below.
It was then that the harrowing orders that Circe had given me
Flew out of my head—for she’d ordered me not to arm myself.
Yet I donned my glorious armor and took two long lances,
Grasping them in both hands, and then went up on deck
By the prow—the place, I reckoned, where Skylla would come into view
As she sat there on her rock, a torment for my comrades.
But I could not catch sight of her and soon my eyes grew tired
As I carefully peered all around, there by the misty rock.
We sailed up the narrow strait, wailing all the way:
Skylla on one side, on the other unearthly Kharybdis,
Gulping the sea’s salt water all the way down—a horror.
Whenever she’d vomit it up it was just like a seething cauldron
That bubbles up to the brim when it’s set on a roaring fire,
While the spray rained down on the cliffs on either side.
But when once again she began to suck down the sea’s salt water
Her innards would be revealed, seething; all round the cliff
She would bellow horribly while down there at the bottom
The earth would show through, dark with sand. Green terror seized hold of them.
While we were looking over at her, terrified of destruction,
Skylla darted out; and from our sleek-hulled ship
Snatched up six of my men, the finest for force and brute strength.
As I scanned the swift-running ship for my crewmen, I could already
Glimpse their legs and hands dangling high in the air
As they were being hoisted aloft—crying out, calling
My name for the very last time, agony in their hearts.
Just as when a fisherman sits on an outcrop and tosses
Tidbits to snare the small fry, then uses a very long pole
To plunge the horn of a field-dwelling ox into the ocean,
Then yanks the fish that he’s caught, still writhing, onto shore—
That’s how those men kept writhing as they were hoisted toward the cliffs.
There, just inside her cave, she devoured them as they shrieked,
Stretching their arms toward me in their horrifying death-throes—
By far the most heart-rending sight that these eyes of mine ever saw
During all of my ordeals as I quested over the seas.
From The Odyssey, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn. Copyright © 2025 by Daniel Mendelsohn. Published by The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.