Wine-Dark Sea

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Eiserner Steg (Iron Footbridge)
Mainkai
Frankfurt, October 2002

“πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον ἐπ’ ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους”
(While sailing over the wine-dark sea to men of strange speech)
Homer, Odyssey, I, v. 183

“Robert Fitzgerald, the American translator of Homer, noted in an interview that the literal translation of the phrase is ‘wine-faced sea.’ Still, he uses ‘wine-dark sea.’ As a romantic expression, he said, it ‘can't be improved on.’ Years ago, Mr. Fitzgerald recalled, he had an intimation of what the minstrels and Homer might have had in mind. He was on a ship coming out of the Corinth Canal into the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea. ‘The contrast of the bare arid baked land against the sea,’ Mr. Fitzgerald said, ‘gave the sea such a richness of hue that I felt as though we were sailing through a bowl of dye. The depth of hue of the water was like the depth of hue of a good red wine. So I associate the expression with the richness of hue rather than a specific color. I've been content with that as my personal interpretation.’” (Homer's Sea: Wine Dark?, The New York Times)