I thought the last completely unnecessary shot of the arrow following their escape from the cave was an adequate representation of Odysseus's hubris triggering Poseidon's wrath.
In 1603, Thomas Kyd looked down from heaven into the Globe theatre and declared, “what utter butchery! Confounded upstart Shakespeare! That’s not the Hamlet I wrote!” To which the unknown Dane skald chimed “and your Christian Hamlet was nothing like the real one!” And so it goes. Every poet a thief.
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal. Bad poets deface and good poets improve - T.S. Eliot.
Preface: I agree with nearly everything stated in this review. The movie is good, the Homer is mid.
A bit of color that I'll add- one of the biggest problems that Wilson's translation presents is with is that many of the moral issues are present within the poem or broader Greek and Roman culture. Rome was sceptical of Ulysses for being deceptive and dishonorable. Dante puts him in hell for being a fraudster. The Trojan Women is incredibly sympathetic to the people he helped take captive.
The problem is that this isn't treated as a moral complexity in the Wilson translation (and by extension Nolan's film,) the thrill of glory being tempered by moments of recognition of the humanity of your enemy. The tragedy of war isn't shown to be the incompatibility of two conflicting goods (represented by the gods). Instead, the glory is stripped away and you are left with a more unidimensional character who is incapable of returning home, because the lack of conflicting imperatives means that on some level he's the bad guy.
My sister and I have been thoroughly discussing this topic, solely based on your thoughts of it. I am deeply sided with you while she doesn't see it the same way. It's been interesting.
I also read the part about Polyphemus calling to Poseidon and I was like "I sure hope there isn't another Odysseus who sacks cities in the world because his head might be on the chopping block." I think one of the reasons they added the Ithaca part is because the commonality of names, it sets him apart from other Odysseus's.
There is a comedy to be written about an ancient Greek named Odysseus who sells sacks city to city, and happens to have a home in Ithaca, and what goes wrong in his life as a result of Poseidon screwing with everyone sharing that name, just in case. Poor Ody never even knows why.
I’m wondering whether the karmic reversals are acknowledged in her revision because that’s where the morality comes in in Homer’s version.
They sack Troy and Odysseus declares victory and says it’s time to go but the men defy his orders and run amok sacking Troy further.
This immoral act brings on karmic punishment later. For each error in judgment there is a karmic reversal; much of early literature carries this trope. Hubris is a strident theme, making the revision utterly pointless!
It sounds like she is oblivious to that, and that leadership is always at risk of bad decisions along with troops who won’t listen like when they open the bag of wind.
Again it sounds like the author of this New Testament version missed the nuances.
Once more, though my comment will again fall on deaf ears.
The idea that a weeping, war-traumatized Odysseus who suffers under the weight of Troy is a modern invention completely overlooks Book 8 of the Odyssey.
When the bard Demodocus sings of the Trojan Horse, Homer explicitly describes Odysseus weeping piteously—comparing his tears to a woman falling over her slain husband as she is dragged into slavery (Odyssey 8.521–531). Homeric heroes were not unfeeling, invincible caricatures; their capacity for grief and trauma over the horrors of war is precisely what gives the epic its timeless human depth.
Blaming Nolan or Wilson for depicting Odysseus's psychological burden ignores what Homer actually wrote in the ancient text.
So what is this culture war you're so desperate to push on us? Why?
I liked the movie, and agree that this moral complexity is present in the original, the problem is that the modern versions actually reduce the moral complexity. In the original you have honor and glory juxtaposed against sorrow and suffering. Wilson does her best to downplay the honor and glory, leave the sorrow and suffering in place, and even introduce an element of shame which was not present in the original. Why? Not because she believes that it is truer to the original Homer, but because she believes it is truer to life. She rejects the Greek view of Kleos and Timé, in favor of her own, and she has every right to do so- but not the right to pass off those ideas as being faithful to the original work by calling her work a translation rather than a re-write.
"Wilson does her best to downplay the honor and glory... because she believes it is truer to life, rejecting the Greek view of Kleos and Timé."
That sounds sophisticated, but it completely misrepresents what Wilson actually did.
Wilson didn't "reject" kleos or timē; she rejected 19th-century Victorian romanticism.
When 18th- and 19th-century translators (like Alexander Pope or Victorian scholars) translated Homer, they inflated the text with grand, ornate, pseudo-biblical jargon to make the heroes fit an idealised, chivalric standard of European aristocracy. That wasn't Homer—that was Victorian gilding.
Homer’s original Greek isn't written in elevated, Latinate pseudo-prose. It is lean, direct, rhythmic, and brutally honest about violence, grief, and social hierarchy.
By matching Homer line-for-line (12,110 lines in Greek, 12,110 lines in English) and using unrhymed iambic pentameter, Wilson didn't "rewrite" the text to impose shame, she stripped away two centuries of ideological makeup to let Homer's actual meter and words speak for themselves.
If stripping away Victorian euphemisms makes kleos look different than it did in a 19th-century schoolbook, that isn't Wilson rewriting Homer. That's just Homer without the polish.
Translating the first line of the Odyssey
This video is relevant as it directly discusses how different classicists—including Emily Wilson—approach translating key Homeric concepts like polytropos from the original Greek text.
I teach English 4 Honors; and while we don’t read Homer, we do teach rhetoric, mood, tone, word choice, etc. I think this essay would be a PERFECT example for my students to read before we read different translations of Beowulf to compare word choice. Would you be okay if I had my students read this essay?
Just got back from seeing it. I'm not sure it's really a modernist problem (only Penelope's brief rant about not being allowed to rule as a woman fits that bill), rather Nolan made an an Odysseus as seen through a Christian moral lens.
Homer's Odysseus would never have been haunted by a poor, innocent, vestal virgin he helped slaughter in Troy. Women were only slightly above property. Enemies were never innocent. Temple virgins were acolytes of an enemy god. The universalist humanitarian lens is an invention of Christianity (and to a lesser extent Judaism.)
However... had Nolan made an Odysseus true to the pagan moral lens, modern audiences would never have cheered for him. So, I guess the best we can hope for is that some small percentage of movie-goers will be interested enough to pick up Fagle, encounter the otherness of the real pagan morality, and be thankful for the God who demonstrated an alternative.
BTW: For another great example of this, read the original 1001 Arabian Nights, especially Ali Baba, to see just how foreign and "other" Muslim/Arabian morality really is.
"Homer never wrote such an Odysseus." Well, in all fairness, he never wrote anything.
And like all historical story telling the narrative changes over time. Mr. Nolan is working in a different medium and in a different time. Grant him some latitude.
I've questioned her on the same. See the many posts Liza has posted on the same topic but, as far as I know, she hasn't responded to any feedback or criticism.
Thanks for your analysis. I figured the modern DEI people would get it wrong. There is no replacing the real book with non contemporary bias. I do not want to see the movie, it will spoil Homer. A true spoiler alert! When will the modern cinema stop putting out trash? They are not heroes and neither is Wilson.
Well. . .picking on a blockbuster mainstream film is picking low-hanging fruit. And while I agree with your assessment, it is much too easy to crap on a modern translation made for a mainstream audience. Modern translators, as you well know, are asked to "localize" and make a story recognizable to a modern audience. This is merely catering to the market. No one--to my knowledge--wants to read an exact translation in clunky translated syntax with concepts that appear foreign to contemporary viewers (excepting of course language students who will opt for a bilingual Harvard Classics). Now, I am like you in that, when I have to resort to a translation, I choose carefully and often compare two different ones. How is your ancient Greek? Mine is non-existent.
Modern publishing demands "new" translations constantly. That these efforts are rarely worth seeking out should be obvious to any serious literature student. It's all marketing.
I am passing on this film and instead rewatched the Coen Brothers Oh Brother Where Art Thou? on the Criterion Collection, which is doing an Odyssey theme. Unfortunately, Godard's La Meprise is not in the mix. . .
Defending a translation based on this argument is just giving any translation a pass. If taken seriously, a "modern translation made for a mainstream audience" might as well just tell a different story entirely, perhaps just making it a story the local audience already knows. The whole point of a good translation is to change the language while retaining the original meaning, not changing the language and the meaning to whatever the translator wants. Rewriting old works to match the author's preferences while claiming to be a translation and not a new story entirely is historical vandalism.
Throwing around terms like "historical vandalism" sounds dramatic, but it requires actual textual evidence.
Where, specifically, in Wilson’s 12,110 lines of ancient Greek translation has she "changed the meaning to whatever she wants"?
Is it translating δμῳαί as "slaves" instead of the 19th-century Victorian softening "housemaids"? Is it keeping Homer’s exact line count? Or is it retaining the exact iambic rhythm of formal English verse?
Accusing a professor of comparative literature of "rewriting old works" based on an outrage screenshot, rather than an actual comparison with Homer's Greek text, isn't a critique of translation theory; it's just fighting a straw man.
I am responding to Bartleby here, who says Lisa's criticisms are not relevant, just little faux pas of the sort that must be inevitably made in translating. What Lisa is actually critiquing here is not little changes but large changes in meaning about how Odysseus acts and feels, changing the character. Changing the character rather dramatically like that while claiming a translation is true to the original is what I am calling historical vandalism, not merely "Greek to English is hard!" translation woes.
Bartleby is taking the position that no changes in a translation are out of bounds or improper; his argument, if taken seriously, means any changes are fine, no better or worse, and still deserves the name translation.
(I would include mistranslating slaves to housemaids in the vandalism category as well, unless the Victorians had a very different definition of housemaid than I believe they did. We should not be repeating their mistakes. I do not think line count or rhythm is as important, but I do think a translator should address that in their Translator's Notes in the preface of the work. A version that specifically targets line count or rhythm at the expense of precise meaning is fine, but it should say that is what it is doing.)
I beg to differ here. As the French expression goes, "Traduire est trahir," and it holds true for virtually all translations (excepting those presented in a dual language format). Butchered translations of the past (the list is by no means complete) include Stuart Gilbert's L'Etranger, which misguided a generation of Camus fans and did--indeed--tell a "different story entirely", the Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter Thomas Mann translations done in Mann's lifetime (with his blessings), specifically Buddenbrooks and Doktor Faustus, as well as so many other English translations from the 40's and 50's. The original English translation of Hesse's Der Steppenwolf was riddled with errors of omission to make the book less salacious.
Translators generally pitch a publisher. The pitch includes why there is a need for a new translation. Publishers then make a decision, part of which is based on marketability and the reputation of the translator. I don't know why the editors at Norton--a fine US publisher--accepted Wilson's pitch, nor have I read her translation. However, considering the way it was marketed, readability for a modern audience was a major arguing point. Readability and relatability--inevitably-- involve "trahir." Since there are already countless (Countless!!!) English translations of The Odyssey, I'm guessing that Wilson pitched a modern translation in American English that adhered to the oral tradition of Homer and is relatable to the ears of the modern reader; this inevitably involves sacrifices. Those wanting an exact translation and the retaining of Classical values that seem alien to a modern reader are--of course--better served with the bilingual Harvard Classic translation or some of the others over the last three centuries. Lest they otherwise accuse a translator of "historical vandalism." Note: those who make academic choices like this are not apt to shell out $20 for a modern blockbuster film.
My bone of contention is with Ms. Libes choosing such low-hanging fruit for an essay, especially since she doesn't claim to read ancient Greek. Any modern film that claims to faithfully depict the Odyssey is obviously making a false claim. Furthermore, since Ms. Libes also studied Comparative Literature, she should be aware of issues that modern translators face and that cherry-picking a couple of sentences from the translation of an epic oral poem is just an excuse to churn out an attack with the same old theme of American publishers promoting a "woke agenda," which gets old. She did, however, convince me that my decision to skip the film entirely was justified.
Good points on Libes, Bartleby—you are right regarding her cherry-picking sentences to feed the predictable "woke publisher" outrage cycle.
Where I'd push back on your skepticism of modern translation, though, is that Emily Wilson’s work isn't just commercial "localization." What made her edition stand out to classicists was precisely that she stripped away two centuries of Victorian, moralising additions—restoring the original line count, preserving the swift pace of epic oral verse, and facing the unvarnished harshness of Bronze Age slavery head-on rather than softening it into polite housemaids.
She didn't modernise Homer to fit a market pitch; she brought Homer closer to what’s actually in the Greek text. If you ever do decide to dip into a modern translation, it’s worth a look despite Norton's marketing machine.
Thanks. I will get to it one day. My life is the mantra, "So many books, so little time." I appreciate you clarifying. My only previous encounter with Emily Wilson was her 2018 essay on translation in the NYRB, which is quite strong and (unfortunately) firewalled.
PS You could check out my Substack to see that I do try to think my theses through. . .
"I don't know why the editors at Norton accepted Wilson's pitch, nor have I read her translation."
That really says it all, doesn't it?
Dropping traduire c'est trahir, listing Camus, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse, and lecturing on publisher marketing strategy—only to admit right in the middle that you haven't actually read the translation you are critiquing (nor the Greek original) is quintessential salon pontification.
Critiquing a book you haven't read, translated from a language you don't know, to dismiss a film you haven't seen isn't literary analysis. It's just noise.
Um. . .I was addressing the Substack author's essay which callously attacks a modern translation without admitting that all translations are flawed (despite coming from a Comp Lit program) as well as hyperbolic comments to my response calling the translation in question "historic vandalism." These attacks can be addressed without having read the Wilson translation or knowing ancient Greek. Mea culpa for knowing my French and German texts and being able to discuss translation. Mea Culpa for only reading the Penguin Odyssey when I was 23. Despite not having read the Wilson translation, I can see agenda when it is right in front of me. As you yourself mention, the translations Ms. Libes seems to relish have "Victorian smoothing."
What you are describing is an adaptation. Someone takes a famous story, rewrites bits to make it more interesting to themselves and some audience they imagine, and then names it something else. It is not presented as the original, but rather a new thing based on it.
A translation should be the same work, as close to the original meanings as possible. While that is not always perfectly possible due to differences in language or obscurity of meaning, it must be as close as possible. A mistake or error is one thing, but actively changing the meaning while claiming it is the same is vandalism. Taking a book written in English 50 years ago and putting out a new edition with changed content without the author's knowledge while claiming it is the same book is likewise vandalism (and fraud besides.)
You keep bringing up "American English that adhered to the oral tradition of Homer and is relatable to the ears of the modern reader; this inevitably involves sacrifices." as though the sacrifice being made is not changing the entire character of the protagonist. You don't go from Odysseus proud of his defeat of Troy to bemoaning his actions because modern American English doesn't have quite the word or implied feeling from meter that Greek had, you get there because the translator either screwed up in their reading of the original or intentionally changed the meaning. The former means you are a bad translator, the latter a bad human.
Based on what she has said in interviews, and what she wrote in the preface to the book, Wilson gave The Odyssey a modern, leftist-friendly point of view intentionally.
Perhaps, which may be how she pitched the book. Her essay on translation in the 2018 NYRB addresses translation and colonial assumptions. However, she makes the valid point that all translations are biased based on the assumptions and biases of the translator, whomever he [sic] may be. That point is irrefutable and has been addressed recently by J. M. Coetzee and his Spanish translator, Mariana Dimopulis. J.M. Coetzee hardly counts as "woke."
As a translator and interpreter with over a decade of experience in the field, you are correct that all translations bear the biases of their translators, but this is exactly the problem: or responsibility is to recognize and minimize them, not shrug our shoulders muttering c'est la vie. Wilson's critique of other translator's biases does not excuse her own, biases which she seemingly is unbothered by, and even appears to lean into.
The new film is an adaptation. It is based on a translation that Ms. Libes claims is deeply flawed. She could be correct, but she certainly hasn't proven that since she compares different English translations but does not compare any of the passages quoted to the original. Instead, she uses the author's introduction to infer about her translation choices. Finally, after following Ms. Libes for a couple of months, I find that her main theses drive her works in the same manner that she accuses others of being driven by an agenda. Note: I do find Ms. Libes essays worth a look regardless of this flaw.
You ignore my point that translations are pitched for a variety of reasons and make the categorical assumption that, "A translation should be the same work, as close to the original meanings as possible." My point is that translators always have to pick and choose. Ms. Libes does not address how some translators chose active voice and some passive in the passage with the Cyclops. Are we to disparage a choice of changing the voice from active to passive or vice versa depending on "readability" in American English? Ms. Libes tacitly does this.
Again, I urge readers who care about an exact translation to consult a dual language edition. Or a translator like Lydia Davis--who regrettably mostly translates French--and who provides a glossary and footnotes to better understand Flaubert's world or Proust's world. However, parsing hairs over a translation created to make a work easier and more accessible to a modern American reader is--yet again--picking low hanging fruit, especially when it is used in a mainstream movie, with "mainstream" naturally implying all sorts of nasty compromises to please the average American viewer.
david
PS I would read Wilson's essay on translation in the New York Review of Books, The Pleasures of Translation (May 24, 2018), before continuing to claim she is guilty of "historical vandalism" and is a "bad human." Unfortunately, it is firewalled.
Perhaps you missed the bit about renaming the work something else as being important to adaptation of text to text. You don't rewrite the Odyssey and still call it the Odyssey. You call it "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" or something similar.
You are also making the mistake of conflating adaptation between languages to adaptation between text and film, which are very different things.
Further, you seem to think that why someone asks for a translation changes what a translation is. In fact you are misunderstanding: if the publisher asked Wilson to change the meaning of the text to something else, the publisher was not asking for a translation, they were asking for a rewrite to make the work something else.
If someone asks you to translate say a technical manual for a machine, but oh, change how these systems work and what these buttons do, they are not asking for a translation but for a change in the content. Even if in the normal process of translating loses something, purposefully making large changes in meaning is not translating.
Which is something you keep eliding: these changes are not "to make a work easier and more accessible to a modern American reader", these changes materially change the overall meaning of the story. You keep talking as though these were minor little bits, quibbles in language between "grim" and "dangerous", or which voice is being used for a passage, as opposed to making the difference between the main character being proud of his contributions to the war or being ashamed.
Hmm. . .in suggest you check into the comments by Mike Casey in this thread and look up the essay Emily Wilson wrote on translation in 2018 for the NYRB. Otherwise, you seem to have drunk the Libes Kool Aid and are apt to think that Wilson is some sort of sub-par translator with an agenda. An argument can be made that she is not. Mr. Casey can make that argument better than I can.
It takes a dynamic kind of confidence to declare that modern translation is "all marketing" while simultaneously admitting your own ancient Greek is "non-existent."
Evaluating whether a translation is faithful or merely "market localization" requires actually checking the target English against the source Greek. Emily Wilson’s translation wasn't born out of a marketing pitch, it was born out of rigorous philology aimed at stripping away two centuries of Victorian smoothing.
Enjoy the Coen Brothers rewatch, though—O Brother, Where Art Thou? remains a masterpiece of Homeric adaptation!
Well, this from pitching publishing houses year ago on German>English translation projects and making a stab at being a translator. And I say (or imply) in my replies up front that I never studied Ancient Greek, but dislike comparisons of translations without consulting the source language.
From researching Emily Wilson more fully, based on a NYRB essay on translation in 2018, I agree with you. And while her translation wasn't born out of a marketing pitch, her project was accepted by Norton editors because her style and philosophy are marketable and earned Norton profits. Profits which would never have materialized had the "new" translation been a clunky exact translation rife with the biases of a non-woke" Modern translator.
Thanks for your comment! We basically agree. Unlike other commentors on this thread, you readily admit that all translations have an agenda, even if they be largely unconscious, e.g. "Victorian smoothing."
I am disappointed in how many people whose opinions I value liked this movie. Yes it looks great. I would have cast virtually every major part differently, but most of all it is a woke pomo pacifist take on a martial poem and culture. Nolan/Wilson deconstructed Homer. So instead of being stirred and thoughtful and energized and inspired, we are left kind of shamed and ambivalent. Feh.
"Odysseus’ hubris not only sets the entire epic into motion but is also responsible for the entirety of his sufferings on the way home."
Exactly right. It's Odysseus's egotistical taunt to Polyphemus, and Polyphemus's childlike cry to his father Poseidon, that cause Odysseus so much trouble: Poseidon makes sure Odysseus doesn't have it easy.
Ancient man had little time for anxiety-induced conditions. He was too busy trying to stay alive.
I thought the last completely unnecessary shot of the arrow following their escape from the cave was an adequate representation of Odysseus's hubris triggering Poseidon's wrath.
In 1603, Thomas Kyd looked down from heaven into the Globe theatre and declared, “what utter butchery! Confounded upstart Shakespeare! That’s not the Hamlet I wrote!” To which the unknown Dane skald chimed “and your Christian Hamlet was nothing like the real one!” And so it goes. Every poet a thief.
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal. Bad poets deface and good poets improve - T.S. Eliot.
Preface: I agree with nearly everything stated in this review. The movie is good, the Homer is mid.
A bit of color that I'll add- one of the biggest problems that Wilson's translation presents is with is that many of the moral issues are present within the poem or broader Greek and Roman culture. Rome was sceptical of Ulysses for being deceptive and dishonorable. Dante puts him in hell for being a fraudster. The Trojan Women is incredibly sympathetic to the people he helped take captive.
The problem is that this isn't treated as a moral complexity in the Wilson translation (and by extension Nolan's film,) the thrill of glory being tempered by moments of recognition of the humanity of your enemy. The tragedy of war isn't shown to be the incompatibility of two conflicting goods (represented by the gods). Instead, the glory is stripped away and you are left with a more unidimensional character who is incapable of returning home, because the lack of conflicting imperatives means that on some level he's the bad guy.
My sister and I have been thoroughly discussing this topic, solely based on your thoughts of it. I am deeply sided with you while she doesn't see it the same way. It's been interesting.
I also read the part about Polyphemus calling to Poseidon and I was like "I sure hope there isn't another Odysseus who sacks cities in the world because his head might be on the chopping block." I think one of the reasons they added the Ithaca part is because the commonality of names, it sets him apart from other Odysseus's.
There is a comedy to be written about an ancient Greek named Odysseus who sells sacks city to city, and happens to have a home in Ithaca, and what goes wrong in his life as a result of Poseidon screwing with everyone sharing that name, just in case. Poor Ody never even knows why.
Gene Wilder would have been perfect for that role.
I’m wondering whether the karmic reversals are acknowledged in her revision because that’s where the morality comes in in Homer’s version.
They sack Troy and Odysseus declares victory and says it’s time to go but the men defy his orders and run amok sacking Troy further.
This immoral act brings on karmic punishment later. For each error in judgment there is a karmic reversal; much of early literature carries this trope. Hubris is a strident theme, making the revision utterly pointless!
It sounds like she is oblivious to that, and that leadership is always at risk of bad decisions along with troops who won’t listen like when they open the bag of wind.
Again it sounds like the author of this New Testament version missed the nuances.
Once more, though my comment will again fall on deaf ears.
The idea that a weeping, war-traumatized Odysseus who suffers under the weight of Troy is a modern invention completely overlooks Book 8 of the Odyssey.
When the bard Demodocus sings of the Trojan Horse, Homer explicitly describes Odysseus weeping piteously—comparing his tears to a woman falling over her slain husband as she is dragged into slavery (Odyssey 8.521–531). Homeric heroes were not unfeeling, invincible caricatures; their capacity for grief and trauma over the horrors of war is precisely what gives the epic its timeless human depth.
Blaming Nolan or Wilson for depicting Odysseus's psychological burden ignores what Homer actually wrote in the ancient text.
So what is this culture war you're so desperate to push on us? Why?
I liked the movie, and agree that this moral complexity is present in the original, the problem is that the modern versions actually reduce the moral complexity. In the original you have honor and glory juxtaposed against sorrow and suffering. Wilson does her best to downplay the honor and glory, leave the sorrow and suffering in place, and even introduce an element of shame which was not present in the original. Why? Not because she believes that it is truer to the original Homer, but because she believes it is truer to life. She rejects the Greek view of Kleos and Timé, in favor of her own, and she has every right to do so- but not the right to pass off those ideas as being faithful to the original work by calling her work a translation rather than a re-write.
"Wilson does her best to downplay the honor and glory... because she believes it is truer to life, rejecting the Greek view of Kleos and Timé."
That sounds sophisticated, but it completely misrepresents what Wilson actually did.
Wilson didn't "reject" kleos or timē; she rejected 19th-century Victorian romanticism.
When 18th- and 19th-century translators (like Alexander Pope or Victorian scholars) translated Homer, they inflated the text with grand, ornate, pseudo-biblical jargon to make the heroes fit an idealised, chivalric standard of European aristocracy. That wasn't Homer—that was Victorian gilding.
Homer’s original Greek isn't written in elevated, Latinate pseudo-prose. It is lean, direct, rhythmic, and brutally honest about violence, grief, and social hierarchy.
By matching Homer line-for-line (12,110 lines in Greek, 12,110 lines in English) and using unrhymed iambic pentameter, Wilson didn't "rewrite" the text to impose shame, she stripped away two centuries of ideological makeup to let Homer's actual meter and words speak for themselves.
If stripping away Victorian euphemisms makes kleos look different than it did in a 19th-century schoolbook, that isn't Wilson rewriting Homer. That's just Homer without the polish.
Translating the first line of the Odyssey
This video is relevant as it directly discusses how different classicists—including Emily Wilson—approach translating key Homeric concepts like polytropos from the original Greek text.
https://youtube.com/shorts/tElzSy-1h8g?is=bU66P5JQoARwC872
I teach English 4 Honors; and while we don’t read Homer, we do teach rhetoric, mood, tone, word choice, etc. I think this essay would be a PERFECT example for my students to read before we read different translations of Beowulf to compare word choice. Would you be okay if I had my students read this essay?
Just got back from seeing it. I'm not sure it's really a modernist problem (only Penelope's brief rant about not being allowed to rule as a woman fits that bill), rather Nolan made an an Odysseus as seen through a Christian moral lens.
Homer's Odysseus would never have been haunted by a poor, innocent, vestal virgin he helped slaughter in Troy. Women were only slightly above property. Enemies were never innocent. Temple virgins were acolytes of an enemy god. The universalist humanitarian lens is an invention of Christianity (and to a lesser extent Judaism.)
However... had Nolan made an Odysseus true to the pagan moral lens, modern audiences would never have cheered for him. So, I guess the best we can hope for is that some small percentage of movie-goers will be interested enough to pick up Fagle, encounter the otherness of the real pagan morality, and be thankful for the God who demonstrated an alternative.
BTW: For another great example of this, read the original 1001 Arabian Nights, especially Ali Baba, to see just how foreign and "other" Muslim/Arabian morality really is.
Bruv, I’ve nailed it. extraordinary job.
"Homer never wrote such an Odysseus." Well, in all fairness, he never wrote anything.
And like all historical story telling the narrative changes over time. Mr. Nolan is working in a different medium and in a different time. Grant him some latitude.
I've questioned her on the same. See the many posts Liza has posted on the same topic but, as far as I know, she hasn't responded to any feedback or criticism.
Why so many separate posts about the same topic?
Thanks for your analysis. I figured the modern DEI people would get it wrong. There is no replacing the real book with non contemporary bias. I do not want to see the movie, it will spoil Homer. A true spoiler alert! When will the modern cinema stop putting out trash? They are not heroes and neither is Wilson.
Well. . .picking on a blockbuster mainstream film is picking low-hanging fruit. And while I agree with your assessment, it is much too easy to crap on a modern translation made for a mainstream audience. Modern translators, as you well know, are asked to "localize" and make a story recognizable to a modern audience. This is merely catering to the market. No one--to my knowledge--wants to read an exact translation in clunky translated syntax with concepts that appear foreign to contemporary viewers (excepting of course language students who will opt for a bilingual Harvard Classics). Now, I am like you in that, when I have to resort to a translation, I choose carefully and often compare two different ones. How is your ancient Greek? Mine is non-existent.
Modern publishing demands "new" translations constantly. That these efforts are rarely worth seeking out should be obvious to any serious literature student. It's all marketing.
I am passing on this film and instead rewatched the Coen Brothers Oh Brother Where Art Thou? on the Criterion Collection, which is doing an Odyssey theme. Unfortunately, Godard's La Meprise is not in the mix. . .
Defending a translation based on this argument is just giving any translation a pass. If taken seriously, a "modern translation made for a mainstream audience" might as well just tell a different story entirely, perhaps just making it a story the local audience already knows. The whole point of a good translation is to change the language while retaining the original meaning, not changing the language and the meaning to whatever the translator wants. Rewriting old works to match the author's preferences while claiming to be a translation and not a new story entirely is historical vandalism.
Throwing around terms like "historical vandalism" sounds dramatic, but it requires actual textual evidence.
Where, specifically, in Wilson’s 12,110 lines of ancient Greek translation has she "changed the meaning to whatever she wants"?
Is it translating δμῳαί as "slaves" instead of the 19th-century Victorian softening "housemaids"? Is it keeping Homer’s exact line count? Or is it retaining the exact iambic rhythm of formal English verse?
Accusing a professor of comparative literature of "rewriting old works" based on an outrage screenshot, rather than an actual comparison with Homer's Greek text, isn't a critique of translation theory; it's just fighting a straw man.
I am responding to Bartleby here, who says Lisa's criticisms are not relevant, just little faux pas of the sort that must be inevitably made in translating. What Lisa is actually critiquing here is not little changes but large changes in meaning about how Odysseus acts and feels, changing the character. Changing the character rather dramatically like that while claiming a translation is true to the original is what I am calling historical vandalism, not merely "Greek to English is hard!" translation woes.
Bartleby is taking the position that no changes in a translation are out of bounds or improper; his argument, if taken seriously, means any changes are fine, no better or worse, and still deserves the name translation.
(I would include mistranslating slaves to housemaids in the vandalism category as well, unless the Victorians had a very different definition of housemaid than I believe they did. We should not be repeating their mistakes. I do not think line count or rhythm is as important, but I do think a translator should address that in their Translator's Notes in the preface of the work. A version that specifically targets line count or rhythm at the expense of precise meaning is fine, but it should say that is what it is doing.)
Thanks! That is what I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to say, mostly cause I never studied ancient Greek.
I beg to differ here. As the French expression goes, "Traduire est trahir," and it holds true for virtually all translations (excepting those presented in a dual language format). Butchered translations of the past (the list is by no means complete) include Stuart Gilbert's L'Etranger, which misguided a generation of Camus fans and did--indeed--tell a "different story entirely", the Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter Thomas Mann translations done in Mann's lifetime (with his blessings), specifically Buddenbrooks and Doktor Faustus, as well as so many other English translations from the 40's and 50's. The original English translation of Hesse's Der Steppenwolf was riddled with errors of omission to make the book less salacious.
Translators generally pitch a publisher. The pitch includes why there is a need for a new translation. Publishers then make a decision, part of which is based on marketability and the reputation of the translator. I don't know why the editors at Norton--a fine US publisher--accepted Wilson's pitch, nor have I read her translation. However, considering the way it was marketed, readability for a modern audience was a major arguing point. Readability and relatability--inevitably-- involve "trahir." Since there are already countless (Countless!!!) English translations of The Odyssey, I'm guessing that Wilson pitched a modern translation in American English that adhered to the oral tradition of Homer and is relatable to the ears of the modern reader; this inevitably involves sacrifices. Those wanting an exact translation and the retaining of Classical values that seem alien to a modern reader are--of course--better served with the bilingual Harvard Classic translation or some of the others over the last three centuries. Lest they otherwise accuse a translator of "historical vandalism." Note: those who make academic choices like this are not apt to shell out $20 for a modern blockbuster film.
My bone of contention is with Ms. Libes choosing such low-hanging fruit for an essay, especially since she doesn't claim to read ancient Greek. Any modern film that claims to faithfully depict the Odyssey is obviously making a false claim. Furthermore, since Ms. Libes also studied Comparative Literature, she should be aware of issues that modern translators face and that cherry-picking a couple of sentences from the translation of an epic oral poem is just an excuse to churn out an attack with the same old theme of American publishers promoting a "woke agenda," which gets old. She did, however, convince me that my decision to skip the film entirely was justified.
David, a.k.a Bartleby, the Sailor
Good points on Libes, Bartleby—you are right regarding her cherry-picking sentences to feed the predictable "woke publisher" outrage cycle.
Where I'd push back on your skepticism of modern translation, though, is that Emily Wilson’s work isn't just commercial "localization." What made her edition stand out to classicists was precisely that she stripped away two centuries of Victorian, moralising additions—restoring the original line count, preserving the swift pace of epic oral verse, and facing the unvarnished harshness of Bronze Age slavery head-on rather than softening it into polite housemaids.
She didn't modernise Homer to fit a market pitch; she brought Homer closer to what’s actually in the Greek text. If you ever do decide to dip into a modern translation, it’s worth a look despite Norton's marketing machine.
Thanks. I will get to it one day. My life is the mantra, "So many books, so little time." I appreciate you clarifying. My only previous encounter with Emily Wilson was her 2018 essay on translation in the NYRB, which is quite strong and (unfortunately) firewalled.
PS You could check out my Substack to see that I do try to think my theses through. . .
"I don't know why the editors at Norton accepted Wilson's pitch, nor have I read her translation."
That really says it all, doesn't it?
Dropping traduire c'est trahir, listing Camus, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse, and lecturing on publisher marketing strategy—only to admit right in the middle that you haven't actually read the translation you are critiquing (nor the Greek original) is quintessential salon pontification.
Critiquing a book you haven't read, translated from a language you don't know, to dismiss a film you haven't seen isn't literary analysis. It's just noise.
Um. . .I was addressing the Substack author's essay which callously attacks a modern translation without admitting that all translations are flawed (despite coming from a Comp Lit program) as well as hyperbolic comments to my response calling the translation in question "historic vandalism." These attacks can be addressed without having read the Wilson translation or knowing ancient Greek. Mea culpa for knowing my French and German texts and being able to discuss translation. Mea Culpa for only reading the Penguin Odyssey when I was 23. Despite not having read the Wilson translation, I can see agenda when it is right in front of me. As you yourself mention, the translations Ms. Libes seems to relish have "Victorian smoothing."
Publishers do promote a woke agenda. It's that which has got old, not the theme of attacking it. In fact, the more attacks, the better.
What you are describing is an adaptation. Someone takes a famous story, rewrites bits to make it more interesting to themselves and some audience they imagine, and then names it something else. It is not presented as the original, but rather a new thing based on it.
A translation should be the same work, as close to the original meanings as possible. While that is not always perfectly possible due to differences in language or obscurity of meaning, it must be as close as possible. A mistake or error is one thing, but actively changing the meaning while claiming it is the same is vandalism. Taking a book written in English 50 years ago and putting out a new edition with changed content without the author's knowledge while claiming it is the same book is likewise vandalism (and fraud besides.)
You keep bringing up "American English that adhered to the oral tradition of Homer and is relatable to the ears of the modern reader; this inevitably involves sacrifices." as though the sacrifice being made is not changing the entire character of the protagonist. You don't go from Odysseus proud of his defeat of Troy to bemoaning his actions because modern American English doesn't have quite the word or implied feeling from meter that Greek had, you get there because the translator either screwed up in their reading of the original or intentionally changed the meaning. The former means you are a bad translator, the latter a bad human.
Based on what she has said in interviews, and what she wrote in the preface to the book, Wilson gave The Odyssey a modern, leftist-friendly point of view intentionally.
Perhaps, which may be how she pitched the book. Her essay on translation in the 2018 NYRB addresses translation and colonial assumptions. However, she makes the valid point that all translations are biased based on the assumptions and biases of the translator, whomever he [sic] may be. That point is irrefutable and has been addressed recently by J. M. Coetzee and his Spanish translator, Mariana Dimopulis. J.M. Coetzee hardly counts as "woke."
As a translator and interpreter with over a decade of experience in the field, you are correct that all translations bear the biases of their translators, but this is exactly the problem: or responsibility is to recognize and minimize them, not shrug our shoulders muttering c'est la vie. Wilson's critique of other translator's biases does not excuse her own, biases which she seemingly is unbothered by, and even appears to lean into.
The new film is an adaptation. It is based on a translation that Ms. Libes claims is deeply flawed. She could be correct, but she certainly hasn't proven that since she compares different English translations but does not compare any of the passages quoted to the original. Instead, she uses the author's introduction to infer about her translation choices. Finally, after following Ms. Libes for a couple of months, I find that her main theses drive her works in the same manner that she accuses others of being driven by an agenda. Note: I do find Ms. Libes essays worth a look regardless of this flaw.
You ignore my point that translations are pitched for a variety of reasons and make the categorical assumption that, "A translation should be the same work, as close to the original meanings as possible." My point is that translators always have to pick and choose. Ms. Libes does not address how some translators chose active voice and some passive in the passage with the Cyclops. Are we to disparage a choice of changing the voice from active to passive or vice versa depending on "readability" in American English? Ms. Libes tacitly does this.
Again, I urge readers who care about an exact translation to consult a dual language edition. Or a translator like Lydia Davis--who regrettably mostly translates French--and who provides a glossary and footnotes to better understand Flaubert's world or Proust's world. However, parsing hairs over a translation created to make a work easier and more accessible to a modern American reader is--yet again--picking low hanging fruit, especially when it is used in a mainstream movie, with "mainstream" naturally implying all sorts of nasty compromises to please the average American viewer.
david
PS I would read Wilson's essay on translation in the New York Review of Books, The Pleasures of Translation (May 24, 2018), before continuing to claim she is guilty of "historical vandalism" and is a "bad human." Unfortunately, it is firewalled.
Perhaps you missed the bit about renaming the work something else as being important to adaptation of text to text. You don't rewrite the Odyssey and still call it the Odyssey. You call it "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" or something similar.
You are also making the mistake of conflating adaptation between languages to adaptation between text and film, which are very different things.
Further, you seem to think that why someone asks for a translation changes what a translation is. In fact you are misunderstanding: if the publisher asked Wilson to change the meaning of the text to something else, the publisher was not asking for a translation, they were asking for a rewrite to make the work something else.
If someone asks you to translate say a technical manual for a machine, but oh, change how these systems work and what these buttons do, they are not asking for a translation but for a change in the content. Even if in the normal process of translating loses something, purposefully making large changes in meaning is not translating.
Which is something you keep eliding: these changes are not "to make a work easier and more accessible to a modern American reader", these changes materially change the overall meaning of the story. You keep talking as though these were minor little bits, quibbles in language between "grim" and "dangerous", or which voice is being used for a passage, as opposed to making the difference between the main character being proud of his contributions to the war or being ashamed.
Hmm. . .in suggest you check into the comments by Mike Casey in this thread and look up the essay Emily Wilson wrote on translation in 2018 for the NYRB. Otherwise, you seem to have drunk the Libes Kool Aid and are apt to think that Wilson is some sort of sub-par translator with an agenda. An argument can be made that she is not. Mr. Casey can make that argument better than I can.
It takes a dynamic kind of confidence to declare that modern translation is "all marketing" while simultaneously admitting your own ancient Greek is "non-existent."
Evaluating whether a translation is faithful or merely "market localization" requires actually checking the target English against the source Greek. Emily Wilson’s translation wasn't born out of a marketing pitch, it was born out of rigorous philology aimed at stripping away two centuries of Victorian smoothing.
Enjoy the Coen Brothers rewatch, though—O Brother, Where Art Thou? remains a masterpiece of Homeric adaptation!
Well, this from pitching publishing houses year ago on German>English translation projects and making a stab at being a translator. And I say (or imply) in my replies up front that I never studied Ancient Greek, but dislike comparisons of translations without consulting the source language.
From researching Emily Wilson more fully, based on a NYRB essay on translation in 2018, I agree with you. And while her translation wasn't born out of a marketing pitch, her project was accepted by Norton editors because her style and philosophy are marketable and earned Norton profits. Profits which would never have materialized had the "new" translation been a clunky exact translation rife with the biases of a non-woke" Modern translator.
Thanks for your comment! We basically agree. Unlike other commentors on this thread, you readily admit that all translations have an agenda, even if they be largely unconscious, e.g. "Victorian smoothing."
I am disappointed in how many people whose opinions I value liked this movie. Yes it looks great. I would have cast virtually every major part differently, but most of all it is a woke pomo pacifist take on a martial poem and culture. Nolan/Wilson deconstructed Homer. So instead of being stirred and thoughtful and energized and inspired, we are left kind of shamed and ambivalent. Feh.
"Odysseus’ hubris not only sets the entire epic into motion but is also responsible for the entirety of his sufferings on the way home."
Exactly right. It's Odysseus's egotistical taunt to Polyphemus, and Polyphemus's childlike cry to his father Poseidon, that cause Odysseus so much trouble: Poseidon makes sure Odysseus doesn't have it easy.
Ancient man had little time for anxiety-induced conditions. He was too busy trying to stay alive.