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elfsWriting about Homer's The Odyssey without devolving into a high-school level book report is a challenge even for the most seasoned writer. Be that as it may, having now finished Emily Wilson's new translation I have to say, I kinda understand why this 2,800 year-old story has lasted as long as it has.
It's not structured the way a modern book is structured, except maybe some avante-garde types. It starts in the middle, with a look at how Odysseus' rivals and his wife are both exploiting loopholes in law and custom, the former to stay in his palace without contribution, the latter avoiding making a decision that would irrevocably place Odysseus in a place of powerlessness, should he be alive. Eventually, it gets around to telling us where Odysseus is, again in the middle of the story, after his first shipwreck, and follows him to civilization, where his host asks him to tell the beginning of the story, from leaving Troy through to the first shipwreck, after which the host gives him a ship to go home and take care of his rivals.
There's a lot more going on here, and Wilson's translation makes reading about it all quite delightful. Lesser gods weild magic wands, for example, and the goddess Athena is constantly messing with Odysseus, both to make his life harder and to make his journey possible. Wilson makes the story accessible in way it never was in high school. In one scene, the sorcereress Calypso says, "Hermes, nice to see you. You don't visit often," to which Hermes says, "Zeus sent me. I wouldn't have come otherwise. You think I wanted to make this journey? You live in the middle of nowehere." And in her translation notes, I sense an honesty in that exchange, a sense that Wilson got it right. You get the feeling that Hermes is peeved to be "far away from the cities with their sweet sacrifices" in the same way some American tourists are peeved to learn there are no Starbucks in Iceland.
Wilson goes both ways with her translation notes. She unflinchingly translates a nasty scene, presented as justice and heroism, in which Odysseus's teenage son orders the men of the palace to round up the twelve slave girls known to be cavorting with and sympathetic to the rivals, and while the men hold the rest in place, slowly strangles each girl to death. On the other hand, she also says that earlier translators, in an effort to make the scene look reasonable to their moral senses, did everything they can to make the girls seem even more wicked and faithless; that is, to justify the boy's misogynistic actions, they wrote about the women with more misogyny than was justified by the text.
Odysseus is pretty much bangin' goddesses left and right here. He sleeps with both Calypso and Circe. Wilson writes that in Homer, it is Penelope's faithfulness to Odysseus that gives Odysseus his strength; as long as his primary line of descent is secure, Odysseus is unstoppable. Odysseus can have sex with goddesses all book long, but Penelope must remain faithful. Strength and prodigy are manly, but faithfulness is feminine.
I learned a lot. I finally read the whole darn story, after all, not the assigned bits we had in fourth form (tenth grade). It's better than that dull exercise made it out to be, and Wilson's translation is a gorgeous, targeted, and sprightly one that deserves a wider audience.
It's not structured the way a modern book is structured, except maybe some avante-garde types. It starts in the middle, with a look at how Odysseus' rivals and his wife are both exploiting loopholes in law and custom, the former to stay in his palace without contribution, the latter avoiding making a decision that would irrevocably place Odysseus in a place of powerlessness, should he be alive. Eventually, it gets around to telling us where Odysseus is, again in the middle of the story, after his first shipwreck, and follows him to civilization, where his host asks him to tell the beginning of the story, from leaving Troy through to the first shipwreck, after which the host gives him a ship to go home and take care of his rivals.
There's a lot more going on here, and Wilson's translation makes reading about it all quite delightful. Lesser gods weild magic wands, for example, and the goddess Athena is constantly messing with Odysseus, both to make his life harder and to make his journey possible. Wilson makes the story accessible in way it never was in high school. In one scene, the sorcereress Calypso says, "Hermes, nice to see you. You don't visit often," to which Hermes says, "Zeus sent me. I wouldn't have come otherwise. You think I wanted to make this journey? You live in the middle of nowehere." And in her translation notes, I sense an honesty in that exchange, a sense that Wilson got it right. You get the feeling that Hermes is peeved to be "far away from the cities with their sweet sacrifices" in the same way some American tourists are peeved to learn there are no Starbucks in Iceland.
Wilson goes both ways with her translation notes. She unflinchingly translates a nasty scene, presented as justice and heroism, in which Odysseus's teenage son orders the men of the palace to round up the twelve slave girls known to be cavorting with and sympathetic to the rivals, and while the men hold the rest in place, slowly strangles each girl to death. On the other hand, she also says that earlier translators, in an effort to make the scene look reasonable to their moral senses, did everything they can to make the girls seem even more wicked and faithless; that is, to justify the boy's misogynistic actions, they wrote about the women with more misogyny than was justified by the text.
Odysseus is pretty much bangin' goddesses left and right here. He sleeps with both Calypso and Circe. Wilson writes that in Homer, it is Penelope's faithfulness to Odysseus that gives Odysseus his strength; as long as his primary line of descent is secure, Odysseus is unstoppable. Odysseus can have sex with goddesses all book long, but Penelope must remain faithful. Strength and prodigy are manly, but faithfulness is feminine.
I learned a lot. I finally read the whole darn story, after all, not the assigned bits we had in fourth form (tenth grade). It's better than that dull exercise made it out to be, and Wilson's translation is a gorgeous, targeted, and sprightly one that deserves a wider audience.
