00:00Joining us now is Emily Wilson, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania
00:04and the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English.
00:07Emily Wilson, thank you so much for being here.
00:09I have a very strange anecdote to share with you, but it's relevant to how big this has become.
00:14I was in Central Park yesterday walking my dumb little dog,
00:17and I overheard two, like, bros in their 20s explaining the plot of the Odyssey to each other.
00:23And I turned around and I said, you know I have Emily Wilson on our show tomorrow.
00:27And he went, what? No way, I've got to watch it.
00:30She's the chick who did the new translation.
00:32So did you ever think at any point when she was in this career,
00:35you would have Central Park Tech Pro name recognition on a random Friday?
00:41So weird. It's so funny.
00:43I mean, I still wake up and think this can't possibly be real.
00:47It's wonderful, though.
00:48I mean, I love that Homer is getting all of this new free press, thanks to Christopher Nolan,
00:53who was an English major, not a classics major,
00:55but he's really put his humanities education to good use.
00:58You brought your brood to see this film, I gather.
01:01I'm curious what you thought of it and how you, as somebody who has been so deeply immersed in this
01:05work,
01:06can you enjoy a film like this?
01:08Are you able to kind of enjoy it as a viewer,
01:10or are you kind of constantly thinking about whether or not it's sticking literally to the text?
01:15I had a lot of fun.
01:16As you say, I took my three kids, my teenagers.
01:19One of them's over 20, but the others are teenagers.
01:21They all had a good time.
01:23I thought it was a fun time at the movies.
01:25I think there are many ways in which the book is better, but I would say that, right?
01:33This is a fun summer movie, and I think it's very entertaining,
01:36and I'm actually really looking forward to many years of discussing with my students
01:40how does the book relate to the film.
01:43I think it's really going to enrich classroom discussions of the Odyssey all around the world.
01:47I mean, it's interesting because there are people who take issue with the movie.
01:52There are people who take issue with your translation.
01:55The book may be better, but it's this big.
01:58I mean, is it good that people, like you said, are at all just showing interest in it?
02:02Does that, do you think, lead to more interest in the classics?
02:05And is controversy maybe a good thing to get people reading these texts?
02:10I think it's wonderful that there's engagement of whatever kind.
02:13I mean, I think it's really clear that this film is bringing both lots and lots of people
02:19back to the physical movie theatres, which is, I think, also a good thing.
02:22But it's also bringing people back to reading big books, the sales of the Odyssey and library
02:28checkouts of the Odyssey, my translation but also other translations, by some order of
02:34magnitude up this summer, which I think is wonderful.
02:36And it's just this new engagement with people who maybe didn't think ancient literature could
02:42be for me, realizing this is a really fun read and really interesting in so many different
02:46ways.
02:46Just to put a number on it, sales are up 1,420% of hardware.
02:52Happy Books of the Odyssey.
02:54Crazy, yes.
02:54Interest and remuneration, I think, come hand in hand, which is great.
02:57Who's knocking on your door at Penn these days?
03:00What does a classics major look like?
03:02What's his or her background?
03:03Who's showing interest in majoring in the classics these days?
03:06You know, it's really very, very diverse.
03:09I mean, it's kids from all different backgrounds.
03:12I mean, I think back in the day, there used to be an idea that if you haven't gone to
03:16the
03:16kind of private school where you do Latin, then there's no hope for you as a classicist.
03:20And that's very much not true anymore.
03:22I mean, there's every possible background, every possible high school, even if you didn't
03:27go to a high school where you read the Odyssey in ninth grade, even if there wasn't Latin
03:31offered at your school, there's so many opportunities at the college level to get into this.
03:36I mean, one common thread that I see, especially in the big myth classes that I teach, is very
03:44often it's kids who've read the Percy Jackson books as children.
03:47My son's very excited about following up with what is different about the Percy Jackson
03:53universe versus the universe that we get in Homer.
03:55And we have those discussions and it's fun.
03:58Do you think that diversity makes for a better, more holistic study of the classics?
04:02I mean, we were mentioned you were the first woman to translate this text.
04:05Talk to us a little bit about what you think your perspective brought to that text as you
04:09looked at the language and search for nuance.
04:11And does, you know, do people from different places, different backgrounds, different ethnicities
04:15bring that to these translations as well?
04:18I think that can be the case.
04:20Yes.
04:21I mean, the first woman headline, I slightly resist the idea that women's work must always
04:28be defined by gender.
04:29And also, of course, for many other female Homerists before me, the Odyssey and the Iliad have been
04:35translated into many other languages by women before me.
04:39I don't think you could pick out of a lineup which translations are by women.
04:42I actually don't think that stands up to any particular scrutiny.
04:46I mean, I would say that, yes, of course, all kinds of background questions can feed into
04:54any interpretive activity, whether it's being a historian, being a journalist, being a translator,
04:59being a literary critic.
05:00The things that you both know as a scholar, as a reader, and also the things you know through
05:05embodied experience are going to feed into your interpretive work in some way or other.
05:10I mean, for me, my background in English poetics, as well as in Greek and Latin poetics,
05:16seems essential to what I'm doing as a translator.
05:19And so far as my primary intervention, as I see it, is to do with using traditional metrical
05:25verse in contrast to the vast majority of modern translators who've used unmetrical free
05:31verse or prose to translate Homer.
05:33And that has nothing to do with gender.
05:35It's about poetics.
05:37Can I ask a dumb question about the way you work?
05:39So there's the Homeric question, of course, who wrote this?
05:42Did he write this?
05:43And the Iliad, et cetera, et cetera.
05:45You know, you mentioned these other translations.
05:47So there's Fagels and Fitzgerald and Mendelssohn, for that matter.
05:50As you're writing this, as you were doing your translation, how much of that was in dialogue
05:55with those translations that you'd read previously?
05:57In other words, were you working principally from the text in ancient Greek, or were you drawing
06:00from at least inspiration from those texts, those translations as well?
06:05Primarily from the Greek.
06:06And I don't actually, in terms of my practice, spend much time looking at other translations
06:11because most of the time, if I'm wrestling with a particular problem about this line is
06:16so beautiful in these particular ways, how can I convey that using completely different
06:20words?
06:21It's not going to help me if I then look and see, oh, he did that.
06:24Now, I can't use that anymore because he already stole that.
06:26So I actually need to spend the time by myself wrestling with it.
06:30I read a lot of commentaries.
06:31I reread the dictionary over and over to try and figure out how else is this word used,
06:36wherever else it's used in ancient Greek.
06:39But it's not really about looking at other translations.
06:42So, of course, while I was starting this project, I was meditating on my experiences,
06:47especially in the classroom, using many different other translations and thinking about what doesn't
06:52get across when I use Bagels or when I use Lattimore.
06:56And primarily, I thought about both Meta and about the vividness, rapidity and the
07:02multivocality of Homer, about how, I mean, I think in some ways this is about how Homer
07:08can work for the screen as well as for the stage in adaptation.
07:11The Odyssey was composed before drama existed, but it has these amazing speeches of characters
07:18who are so fully realized and we fully understand who Penelope is, who Odysseus is.
Comments