E. V. Rieu

Emile Victor Rieu CBE (10 February 1887 – 11 May 1972) was a British classicist, publisher, poet and translator. He initiated the Penguin Classics series of books in 1946 and edited it for twenty years.

Quotes

• In form they are epic poems; but it will perhaps make their content clearer to the modern reader if I describe the Iliad as a tragedy and the Odyssey as a novel. It is in the Iliad that we hear for the first time the authentic voice of the Tragic Muse, while the Odyssey, with its well-knit plot, its psychological interest and its interplay of character, is the true ancestor of the long line of novels that have followed it. And though it is the first, I am not sure that it is not still the best. Let the new reader decide tor himself.
  • Introduction to The Odyssey (Hammondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1946), p. viii

Translations

The Odyssey (1946)

• The hero of the tale which I beg the Muse to help me tell is the resourceful man who roamed the wide world after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. He saw the cities of many peoples and he learnt their ways. He suffered many hardships on the high seas in his struggles to preserve his life and bring his comrades home. Вut he failed to save those comrades, in spite of all his efforts. It was their own sin that brought them to their doom, for in their folly they devoured the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, and the god saw to it that they should never return. This is the tale I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, godless, at whatever point you will.
  • Book 1, line 1

• Telemachus...was sitting disconsolate among the Suitors, dreaming of how his noble father might come back from out of the blue, drive all these gallants pell-mell from the house, and so regain his royal honours and reign over his own once more.
  • Book 1

• No sooner had the tender Dawn shown her roses in the East, than the Cyclops lit up the fire and milked his splendid ewes, all in their proper older, putting her young to each.
  • Book 9

• Look at the lovely clothing you allow to lie about neglected, although you may soon be married and stand in need of beautiful clothes, not only to wear yourself but to provide for your bridegroom’s party. It’s this kind of thing that gives a girl a good name in the town, besides pleasing her father and her mother. Let us go and do some washing together the first thing in the morning.
  • Book 6 (Athene to Nausicaa)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on E. V. Rieu on Wikipedia