“Untranslated and Untranslatable”? A Sonic Study of Pope’s Odyssey

Abstract

Literary critics and translators alike have widely criticized Alexander Pope’s 1725 translation of The Odyssey for Pope’s non-Homeric poetic embellishments. Nevertheless, the translation has remained popular among poets for the ways in which Pope’s verse preserves the linguistic sensuousness of Homer’s Greek epic. This article contends that Pope achieves that preservation through a translation not of Homer’s verses denotatively but instead by a translation of Homer’s letters, their sounds, and the affective poetic qualities Pope discerned within them. Focusing on three vignettes from Pope’s Odyssey, I explore correspondences between Pope’s sonic constructions and Homer’s; through those correspondences, I examine Pope’s practices of Greek reading and translation as I also challenge the notion that Pope’s Odyssey is a product overdetermined by the literary proclivities of its translator. Ultimately, this argument reveals that Pope’s translation of The Odyssey is far more faithful to the original poem than generally imagined. Moreover, it argues for a critical return to Pope’s rarely treated translation when considering both the limits and possibilities of Homeric translation.