Emily Wilson

speaker

468 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 1 Aug

Emily Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Fresh Air · ‘Odyssey’ translator Emily Wilson: Nolan should've hired a screenwriter · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

I mean, I think the movie is doing something in a way very brave by stripping away everything that we expect.

And I certainly feel this way, love about Odysseus in the poem, which is that he's clever and multiple and smart and therefore a fascinating character.

Whereas the movie gives us a...

version of Matt Damon as Odysseus, who is not required to be smart.

Instead, he's just constantly troubled by anxiety about his role in the Trojan horse and the Trojan War.

The Sirens in the archaic and classical Greek tradition are always represented in ancient art as kind of bird characters with women's faces.

And they hint at this idea that there might be divine bird-like creatures who could lure sailors to their doom.

So they're goddesses who have this enchanting song.

And in the Odyssey, they appear in a very, very short episode as

As one of the islands past which Odysseus and his comrades sail, Odysseus blocks his men's ears with wax so that they don't hear the enchanting song and therefore want to go close to the rocks of the Sirens and end up...

as joining the many bones that surround the sirens on their island.

But Odysseus himself is eager to hear their song.

So he has the men tie him to the mast, which is a very memorable scene in the movie.

It's also a very memorable scene in the poem.

And they sing a song that seems to entice him with the possibility of hearing everything that happens anywhere on Earth.

So in a way, they're like being sucked into the Internet.

But they also promise this possibility of learning more and more and more about his own glory because they promise also that they know who he is and they know how glorious he was at Troy.

Yes.

Birds don't have lips.

I discussed that a little bit in the book, that it was interesting to me to realize that the popular tropes about what is a siren have affected modern translation choices such that the pre-19th century translators don't do this move of giving the sirens lips, whereas many of the 20th century translators do that.

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