NP "Speak, Memory"

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

One more gloss on SM. Just read the NYT review of SL's Odyssey which sez:

"Stanley Lombardo produced one of the most accessible modern translations
of the ''Iliad'' in 1997, one that cut away a lot of the verbosity of more
florid writers, like Richmond Lattimore, who can take two or three lines
to explain the proper nuances of the Greek. Lombardo ditched common
literary conventions and a line-by-line faithfulness in favor of perhaps
the sparest English version of the poem -- one that brings us closer to
the starkness of the original. He has brought his laconic wit and love of
the ribald, as well as his clever use of idiomatic American slang, to his
version of the ''Odyssey.'' His carefully honed syntax gives the narrative
energy and a whirlwind pace. The lines, rhythmic and clipped, have the
tautness and force of Odysseus' bow. 

Take the opening lines of the epic. Nearly every translator sticks to the
traditional Homeric invocation. Lattimore says, ''Tell me, Muse,'' and
Robert Fagles, ''Sing to me of the man, Muse.'' But Lombardo opens with
''Speak, Memory.'' The decision to borrow the title of Vladimir Nabokov's
autobiography is more than a poetic device. It underscores that the
''Odyssey'' is, at its core, about preserving memory."

(SL's take sounds a bit like an _Oh Brother, Where Art Thou_ type of
thing. "Homeric" as Barry Fitzgerald wants to have it in _The Quiet Man_.) 

But still no sufficiently verbatim reference found to s~Z's question.

Heikki