What the translator – myself in particular – does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own, but what it is I just don’t know.

I think it was lucky that during most of the work on the Odyssey I lived on Homer’s sea in houses that were, in one case, shaken by the impact of the Mediterranean winter storms on the rocks below.

Homer’s whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Electronic brains may help us to use our heads but will not excuse us from that duty, and as to our hearts-cardiograms cannot diagnose what may be most ill about them, or confirm what may be best. The faithful woman and the versatile brave man, the wakeful intelligence open to inspiration or grace-these are still exemplary for our kind, as they always were and always will be.

Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.

What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.