Contra the assertion of the authors here, The Odyssey was not originally written in Iambic Pentameter, and it makes no sense to impose it on the poem. That scheme is from Shakespeare. And the issue with the use of "complicated" isn't a critique about the word being overly negative, it's simply not what polytropos means - it's more akin to tricky and duplicative, which is key to Odysseus's character, and something that the other translations actually manage to capture.
The author notes your point about meter directly in a footnote. And you’re right, “complicated” is not necessarily a negative word. The author raises this point as well. Yet Wilson’s fiercest critics have taken that word to be not only negative, but an attack on masculinity itself. And that is the argument the author rebuts in this post, not whether the word accurately or inaccurately captures Odysseus’s wily character.
All I can say is that reading the opening lines side by side, Wilson’s falls flat.
Nolan’s movie was excellent, however. I do think Freddie DeBoer’s critique of imposing contemporary mores onto Odysseus (basically overlaying PTSD) is correct, and you see this a bit in Wilson replacing “plundered” with “wrecked” in referring to Troy
I just finished the Wilson translation, and I couldn't agree more with the writers of this timely essay. For me, there was a spareness in the telling, and a clarity of purpose in moving the story forward in time and in urgency. I appreciated the introduction, (which weighs in at 89 or so pages), as well as the translator's notes section. She gives context, and takes responsibility, for her approach to the language, and mentions how the translator sort of disappears in the transference of story to a modern reader. (And she defines all of us who are not ancients as "modern"). The very idea that there is a "woke" quality to the characters, is so absurd on its face: the whole world of classical Greeks would be defined as racist, and misogynist by modern standards. It is the world that it is: arbitrated by humans in negotiation with gods, who possess human-like characteristics; a world set in nature, controlled by natural forces, and given meaning and high stakes, through the same things that animate our lives today: love, friendship, hatred, jealousy, violence, conquest, wealth, poverty, loyalty, family, and - this one is the most important one I think : hospitality to the stranger. I am looking forward to seeing the movie on a big screen, and I also look forward to never having to share any space smaller than the entire planet Earth with these dweebs who cannot stop looking to make sure that no one is castrating them with language or ideas. WTF - Bronze this, limp biscuit that, No seed oil this and raw egg (ew) that. Girls - calm down.
Saddened by the absence of any ‘Homer-eroticism’ references when describing Song of Achilles, but no really, this is a great set of takes on both the film and the translation of the Odyssey. In particular it reveals the extent to which affective culture-warring is the contemporary right’s actual Omnicause, any interest in actual history or aesthetic fidelity getting totally subsumed by the compulsive urge to see the phantom face of Woke in everything.
Yup! Highly recommend Jeremiah's piece from earlier in the week if you haven't already read it. He also makes the point that there is nothing particularly "conservative" about the reactionary only right: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-odyssey-proves-the-online-right
The never-ending right wing "intellectual" search for hidden evidence of "wokeness" in everything generated by anyone outside the MAGA cult, leads to a convoluted twisting of cultural reality. I'm guessing the Odyssey itself, and this translation of it, is not an expression of "woke" gender identity, and only a deranged radical masculinist right wing interpretation could lead to such a ridiculous conclusion.
This twisted "literary analysis" reminds me of the old Soviet intellectual tradition that called for elaborate Marxist interpretations of the great works of Russian literature. I have a Soviet edition of Crime and Punishment that begins with a 20-page Marxist exposition of Raskolnikov's mental state as a rebellion against capitalist forces in Russia, and an example of some sort of historic proletariate reactionary victory over the petty bourgeoisie. etc., etc. It is incredibly tedious, as is any attempt to force fit right an ideology onto a piece of literature and its translation that grinds no ideological axes.
I think the right-wing troll criticism of Wilson's translation is stupid, but lots of her defenders, including this article, use the existence of those trolls to sidestep some more legitimate reservations about that translation, her decision to use iambic pentameter most of all. The original poem is dactylic hexameter, 17 or 18 syllables per line; iambic pentameter has 10. Combine it with Wilson's decision to keep the same number of lines as the Greek, and she was required, by her own self-imposed constraints, to simply drop words from the poem. Open any other modern translation like Fagles or Mendelsohn or Lattimore and compare it to Wilson; there's just stuff missing from the Wilson. The "rhetorical flourishes" that this article dismisses are often words from the Greek original that Wilson has been forced to drop because they don't fit her meter.
In the introduction to her translation, Wilson justifies this as a worthwhile tradeoff, necessary to reintroduce something that sounds like poetic flow to English speakers. And that's fair enough - it's a legitimate approach to take to translation. I don't doubt that some people could genuinely prefer her translation. But it's equally possible to dislike it without being a misogynist.
actually it's worse than you think. she doesn't just drop some words from the poem, she drops every single word! every word in her "translation" is in english, a language totally unknown to homer.
I suppose this is meant to be an arch response to my comment, demonstrating that my qualms about the Wilson translation are... silly, I guess? But what a strange defense of the Wilson translation. Yes, there will always be things lost in translation, and at times that will take the form of words in the original being dropped in favor of a different construction in the target language that conveys the same idea. But that's not my complaint about Wilson's approach - she, somewhat frequently, simply leaves Greek words untranslated and absent from her translation, because the metrical space into which she's forced herself doesn't have space for them. This often takes the form of the many Homeric rote phrases going untranslated and missing: wine-dark sea, bright-eyed Athena, winged words, etc. It's fair for people to say "who cares? I don't need to be told that Telemachus is wise or thoughtful every time he does something." And those people will probably like the Wilson translation. My only point is, her approach does represent a tradeoff, and it's possible to think she made the wrong call without being a right-wing troll.
Okay. But why are writers at The Argument so concerned with online this and online that? Despite the fact that many people are online more hours a day than we'd deem healthy, these endless online debates tend to exist ONLY online and not in the real world. And most of us would never see them if they weren't turned into articles like this.
Perhaps authors here spend too much time online themselves, and give too much credence to trolls and digital debates, which aren't really debates as much as they are verbal food fights. This article would have been more substantive if it had just focused on the new translation and how it compared to past translations. A passing reference to the intellectually dishonest online criticism would be fine, but framing the entire piece as if online trolls matter is misleading and frustrating, and certainly beneath any discussion of Homer.
[He owns slaves, pillages villages, brutally mutilates his enemies, and repeatedly cheats on his wife.]
I hope the brutal mutilation part doesn't refer to Polyphemus. Guy was eating them! And Odysseus blinds him as part of a scheme to escape, not because he loves blinding people. I don't see how you stick that in the same moral failing category as the rest.
Actually, this is not unusual for the ancient Greeks, who often referred generically to 'a god' or 'the god', or in the singular to the will of the gods (δαίμων). In this passage, though, there was no original reference to a god: Fagles' "by God" is an attempt to translate the emphatic particle δή.
In general I agree regarding Wilson's translation, though I don't think "complicated" sufficiently conveys the meaning of πολύτροπος ('turning much' or 'with many twists/tricks' or 'with many means/ways'). FWIW, the passage for which you compare Fagles' & Wilson's translation, 22.462-4, is as follows:
μὴ μὲν δὴ καθαρῷ θανάτῳ ἀπὸ θῡμὸν ἑλοίμην
τᾱ́ων, αἳ δὴ ἐμῇ κεφαλῇ κατ' ὀνείδεα χεῦαν
μητέρι θ' ἡμετέρῃ, παρά τε μνηστῆρσιν ἴαυον.
or literally:
"I would certainly not take away by a clean death the life/soul
of these women, who piled shame/insults on my head
& on our mother, & slept beside the suitors."
so that Wilson's translation is the more accurate here.
I am much more disappointed with Nolan's film, for leaving out much that would have been better kept (the 'Nobody' joke with the Cyclops, Odysseus' meeting with the ghost of Achilles, Aeolus' bag of wind that brought them within sight of Ithaca before its opening blew them away again, Scylla & Charybdis being the lesser evil compared to the Wandering Rocks, the whole Phaeacian episode & especially the part where Odysseus is moved to tears by Demodocus' song of the Trojan War), & for distorting both Odysseus' character (Odysseus is supposed to be traumatized & regretful at the sack of Troy? Odysseus, who himself advised the death of Astyanax, whose first stop after Troy was to sack the city of the Cicones & enslave their women, who boastfully calls himself 'sacker of cities' (πτολιπόρθιος, 9.504)? Also the Lotus part) & the role of the gods & religion generally. I must admit, though, that it equals the original epic in one respect: it is too long to comfortably watch in one sitting.
From what I know of the Wilson translation it doesn’t seem woke. Though I see the connection between not using slurs and a woke approach. (I am not sure I will ever get used to vulgar language being associated with conservatism.)
Where I differ from the author here is I don’t see “complicated man” as a neutral attribute. In fact it feels quite positive and empathic from a contemporary perspective. The alternate interpretation that Odysseus is a cunning man matches up much more with the story.
Oh FFS, the vast majority of Americans can’t read a poem, a novel, a novella or real long form journalism. The Odyssey is so far out of reach. College is supposed to hard not a an activist platform.please.
Thank you for the comparison of translations. The verdict is clear: Wilson, going away. Her iambic pentameter (“true to the original” or not) delivers hypnotic beauty — with stature thrown in.
Hot Homer Summer
Y’all do NOT understand how big it was for Portland to pass this. The new form of city government has not been easy and the fighting is ridiculous.
Contra the assertion of the authors here, The Odyssey was not originally written in Iambic Pentameter, and it makes no sense to impose it on the poem. That scheme is from Shakespeare. And the issue with the use of "complicated" isn't a critique about the word being overly negative, it's simply not what polytropos means - it's more akin to tricky and duplicative, which is key to Odysseus's character, and something that the other translations actually manage to capture.
The author notes your point about meter directly in a footnote. And you’re right, “complicated” is not necessarily a negative word. The author raises this point as well. Yet Wilson’s fiercest critics have taken that word to be not only negative, but an attack on masculinity itself. And that is the argument the author rebuts in this post, not whether the word accurately or inaccurately captures Odysseus’s wily character.
All I can say is that reading the opening lines side by side, Wilson’s falls flat.
Nolan’s movie was excellent, however. I do think Freddie DeBoer’s critique of imposing contemporary mores onto Odysseus (basically overlaying PTSD) is correct, and you see this a bit in Wilson replacing “plundered” with “wrecked” in referring to Troy
homeric dactylic hexameter wouldn't really work in english, because we don't have the same distinction between long and short syllables.
"polytropos" means "many-turning", right?
I just finished the Wilson translation, and I couldn't agree more with the writers of this timely essay. For me, there was a spareness in the telling, and a clarity of purpose in moving the story forward in time and in urgency. I appreciated the introduction, (which weighs in at 89 or so pages), as well as the translator's notes section. She gives context, and takes responsibility, for her approach to the language, and mentions how the translator sort of disappears in the transference of story to a modern reader. (And she defines all of us who are not ancients as "modern"). The very idea that there is a "woke" quality to the characters, is so absurd on its face: the whole world of classical Greeks would be defined as racist, and misogynist by modern standards. It is the world that it is: arbitrated by humans in negotiation with gods, who possess human-like characteristics; a world set in nature, controlled by natural forces, and given meaning and high stakes, through the same things that animate our lives today: love, friendship, hatred, jealousy, violence, conquest, wealth, poverty, loyalty, family, and - this one is the most important one I think : hospitality to the stranger. I am looking forward to seeing the movie on a big screen, and I also look forward to never having to share any space smaller than the entire planet Earth with these dweebs who cannot stop looking to make sure that no one is castrating them with language or ideas. WTF - Bronze this, limp biscuit that, No seed oil this and raw egg (ew) that. Girls - calm down.
Thank you for this.
Well put. Hope you enjoy the film!
Saddened by the absence of any ‘Homer-eroticism’ references when describing Song of Achilles, but no really, this is a great set of takes on both the film and the translation of the Odyssey. In particular it reveals the extent to which affective culture-warring is the contemporary right’s actual Omnicause, any interest in actual history or aesthetic fidelity getting totally subsumed by the compulsive urge to see the phantom face of Woke in everything.
Yup! Highly recommend Jeremiah's piece from earlier in the week if you haven't already read it. He also makes the point that there is nothing particularly "conservative" about the reactionary only right: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-odyssey-proves-the-online-right
Yeah! That piece absolutely slapped.
The never-ending right wing "intellectual" search for hidden evidence of "wokeness" in everything generated by anyone outside the MAGA cult, leads to a convoluted twisting of cultural reality. I'm guessing the Odyssey itself, and this translation of it, is not an expression of "woke" gender identity, and only a deranged radical masculinist right wing interpretation could lead to such a ridiculous conclusion.
This twisted "literary analysis" reminds me of the old Soviet intellectual tradition that called for elaborate Marxist interpretations of the great works of Russian literature. I have a Soviet edition of Crime and Punishment that begins with a 20-page Marxist exposition of Raskolnikov's mental state as a rebellion against capitalist forces in Russia, and an example of some sort of historic proletariate reactionary victory over the petty bourgeoisie. etc., etc. It is incredibly tedious, as is any attempt to force fit right an ideology onto a piece of literature and its translation that grinds no ideological axes.
I think the right-wing troll criticism of Wilson's translation is stupid, but lots of her defenders, including this article, use the existence of those trolls to sidestep some more legitimate reservations about that translation, her decision to use iambic pentameter most of all. The original poem is dactylic hexameter, 17 or 18 syllables per line; iambic pentameter has 10. Combine it with Wilson's decision to keep the same number of lines as the Greek, and she was required, by her own self-imposed constraints, to simply drop words from the poem. Open any other modern translation like Fagles or Mendelsohn or Lattimore and compare it to Wilson; there's just stuff missing from the Wilson. The "rhetorical flourishes" that this article dismisses are often words from the Greek original that Wilson has been forced to drop because they don't fit her meter.
In the introduction to her translation, Wilson justifies this as a worthwhile tradeoff, necessary to reintroduce something that sounds like poetic flow to English speakers. And that's fair enough - it's a legitimate approach to take to translation. I don't doubt that some people could genuinely prefer her translation. But it's equally possible to dislike it without being a misogynist.
actually it's worse than you think. she doesn't just drop some words from the poem, she drops every single word! every word in her "translation" is in english, a language totally unknown to homer.
I suppose this is meant to be an arch response to my comment, demonstrating that my qualms about the Wilson translation are... silly, I guess? But what a strange defense of the Wilson translation. Yes, there will always be things lost in translation, and at times that will take the form of words in the original being dropped in favor of a different construction in the target language that conveys the same idea. But that's not my complaint about Wilson's approach - she, somewhat frequently, simply leaves Greek words untranslated and absent from her translation, because the metrical space into which she's forced herself doesn't have space for them. This often takes the form of the many Homeric rote phrases going untranslated and missing: wine-dark sea, bright-eyed Athena, winged words, etc. It's fair for people to say "who cares? I don't need to be told that Telemachus is wise or thoughtful every time he does something." And those people will probably like the Wilson translation. My only point is, her approach does represent a tradeoff, and it's possible to think she made the wrong call without being a right-wing troll.
Okay. But why are writers at The Argument so concerned with online this and online that? Despite the fact that many people are online more hours a day than we'd deem healthy, these endless online debates tend to exist ONLY online and not in the real world. And most of us would never see them if they weren't turned into articles like this.
Perhaps authors here spend too much time online themselves, and give too much credence to trolls and digital debates, which aren't really debates as much as they are verbal food fights. This article would have been more substantive if it had just focused on the new translation and how it compared to past translations. A passing reference to the intellectually dishonest online criticism would be fine, but framing the entire piece as if online trolls matter is misleading and frustrating, and certainly beneath any discussion of Homer.
Maybe instead of “The Verdict” this column should be called “Pwning The Argument”
[He owns slaves, pillages villages, brutally mutilates his enemies, and repeatedly cheats on his wife.]
I hope the brutal mutilation part doesn't refer to Polyphemus. Guy was eating them! And Odysseus blinds him as part of a scheme to escape, not because he loves blinding people. I don't see how you stick that in the same moral failing category as the rest.
The monotheism in the Fagles quote about the suitors leaps out at me--"by God!"? Which god?
Actually, this is not unusual for the ancient Greeks, who often referred generically to 'a god' or 'the god', or in the singular to the will of the gods (δαίμων). In this passage, though, there was no original reference to a god: Fagles' "by God" is an attempt to translate the emphatic particle δή.
In general I agree regarding Wilson's translation, though I don't think "complicated" sufficiently conveys the meaning of πολύτροπος ('turning much' or 'with many twists/tricks' or 'with many means/ways'). FWIW, the passage for which you compare Fagles' & Wilson's translation, 22.462-4, is as follows:
μὴ μὲν δὴ καθαρῷ θανάτῳ ἀπὸ θῡμὸν ἑλοίμην
τᾱ́ων, αἳ δὴ ἐμῇ κεφαλῇ κατ' ὀνείδεα χεῦαν
μητέρι θ' ἡμετέρῃ, παρά τε μνηστῆρσιν ἴαυον.
or literally:
"I would certainly not take away by a clean death the life/soul
of these women, who piled shame/insults on my head
& on our mother, & slept beside the suitors."
so that Wilson's translation is the more accurate here.
I am much more disappointed with Nolan's film, for leaving out much that would have been better kept (the 'Nobody' joke with the Cyclops, Odysseus' meeting with the ghost of Achilles, Aeolus' bag of wind that brought them within sight of Ithaca before its opening blew them away again, Scylla & Charybdis being the lesser evil compared to the Wandering Rocks, the whole Phaeacian episode & especially the part where Odysseus is moved to tears by Demodocus' song of the Trojan War), & for distorting both Odysseus' character (Odysseus is supposed to be traumatized & regretful at the sack of Troy? Odysseus, who himself advised the death of Astyanax, whose first stop after Troy was to sack the city of the Cicones & enslave their women, who boastfully calls himself 'sacker of cities' (πτολιπόρθιος, 9.504)? Also the Lotus part) & the role of the gods & religion generally. I must admit, though, that it equals the original epic in one respect: it is too long to comfortably watch in one sitting.
From what I know of the Wilson translation it doesn’t seem woke. Though I see the connection between not using slurs and a woke approach. (I am not sure I will ever get used to vulgar language being associated with conservatism.)
Where I differ from the author here is I don’t see “complicated man” as a neutral attribute. In fact it feels quite positive and empathic from a contemporary perspective. The alternate interpretation that Odysseus is a cunning man matches up much more with the story.
I am not sure where he is being complicated.
Oh FFS, the vast majority of Americans can’t read a poem, a novel, a novella or real long form journalism. The Odyssey is so far out of reach. College is supposed to hard not a an activist platform.please.
Thank you for the comparison of translations. The verdict is clear: Wilson, going away. Her iambic pentameter (“true to the original” or not) delivers hypnotic beauty — with stature thrown in.
Well...obviously. Or non white men.