'Odyssey' translator Emily Wilson on her book of essays 'Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea'
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Hey, it's MPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Emily Wilson's new essay collection, Crossing the Wine Dark Sea, touches on a lot how comedy was used in ancient Greece, the popularization of the Stoics, the proliferation of the classics as a field of study. Oh, uh, and this little poem called The Odyssey. She talks to MPR's Joel Rhodes about how she thinks through poetry and translation, and the big movie that made the classics cool. Cool in a big way. That's up ahead.
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The Odyssey, that ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, has been having a moment. Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film reimagining of the familiar tale racked up more than half a billion dollars domestically. But perhaps one of the most interesting conversations about the poem is happening off the silver screen. Emily Wilson is a celebrity classicist whose translations of the Odyssey and Iliad are extraordinarily popular and in some circles controversial. She's outspoken about the role of classic works in modern society, as she writes in her new book of essays. essay's Crossing the Wine Dark Sea. Emily Wilson, welcome to All Things Considered. Thank you so much for having me. So this summer you found yourself at the center of the discourse around the Odyssey in a somewhat surprising way.
You said very publicly that you are not a fan of Nolan's film. I want to know, was this all an elaborate ruse to get even more people talking about ancient poems?
I mean, I love it that people are talking about ancient poems. I wish that more people were reading ancient poems rather than clicking on clickbaity silliness, which is what I think most of the discourse is. Um but if it's bringing people to read and to engage with culture and engage with history, I love it.
Do you have any regrets uh about how this all played out?
No, I have a sense of you know, the gods are always more powerful than mere mortals. I'm a mere mortal. I have no way to tell what any of the words th that I speak that are feathered things on the breath of air, how will they be received and how will my claos be dispersed to the winds? I have no way to control any of that.
All right, let's talk about your new book, Crossing the Wine Dark Sea. It's a series of essays reflecting on translation, on classic writing, and the modern world. You write at one point Quote, it is a waste of everyone's time if a retranslation takes more or less the same approach as one or more existing published translations, unquote. Uh in short, if you don't have something new to say, don't don't don't say anything. Tell me why why you uh why'd you write that?
Because it does seem to me that there are a huge number of available translations of the same canonical Greek and Roman texts, far more Greek and Roman texts than of other ancient literature, which are retranslated endlessly, and some of those retranslations are very different from each other and it's fascinating to examine and look at the differences, whether or not you can read the original
So you have your own very famous translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad, and I gather you have selected a portion of your own translations that you want to read aloud for us. What are you gonna read?
So I thought that in honor of Sir Christopher Nolan I would read the most extensive passage from Homer about the Trojan horse, which is a simile uh about how the Trojans bring the horse into the city, and Odysseus is listening to this story and has a strange reaction to it.
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