Daniel Mendelsohn

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599 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Daniel Mendelsohn’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The History of Literature · 817 The Odyssey - Getting Ready for a Summer Blockbuster | My Last Book with Mary Beard · 16 Jul 2026 podcast

And Zeus finally has to throw a thunderbolt.

At his feet.

You know, to say Vasta enough.

And it's a kind of very artificial

moment, but it's the stamping of the divine foot that ends the action.

But the fact that he has to go that far indicates that Odysseus

was often running on his own.

Without the gods.

So it's a fascinating question and a problem, I think, in the text.

Very interesting to think about.

Well, I in this translation, as in another my uh other my only other translation, which was of the complete works of the modern Greek poet Constantine Kabafi, I I actually think in both cases I'm always interested in the same thing, which is

You know, I'm a scholar of the classics, I'm I'm a classicist, and I'm but I'm also a writer.

And to me, the most important thing in a translation is to try to figure out a way to bring across

Everything that I see that's going on in the Greek

into English.

And

Another thing that I'm very interested in is the formal elements, the stylistic features, and the way the poetry works on the page, which I'm trying to restore.

I think I I kind of run counter to a number of recent translations, which are kind of modernizing in their language and in their style, sort of simplifying.

And you know, the Odyssey is a product of an very archaic culture.

Its values were different, you know, both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

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