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Sep. 19th, 2018 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhThe Odyssey, translation by Emily Wilson. Everyone knows what the Odyssey is, right? I'm not going to bother to review it as a story, just this edition. It got a lot of buzz when it came out last year, as the first complete English-language translation by a woman. I was vaguely interested, and thought I might get around to reading it sometime or other, but wasn't in any particular hurry. And then I happened to read an article that quoted Wilson's opening lines, and I was hooked:
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
Wilson's style is simple and unadorned; she doesn't go for rhymes or intricate clauses, but does use iambic pentameter, which gives the whole poem the sense that it's meant to be read aloud. Which, of course, it is. In a lot of translations, it's easy to get caught up in the language itself, its poetry or flowery metaphors; this is very much not the case here. Wilson's version is easy and quick to read, and even drops in occasional bluntly modern terms (I think "canapés" is the one that stood out the most to me). I loved it. She also includes a long introduction (80 pages) dealing with matters like gender, slavery, and gods within the story, or, outside of the text, who composed The Odyssey, when and in what circumstances.
I can't recommend this translation enough, but why should you listen to me? Listen to Wilson's words instead:
This made him want to cry. He held his love,
his faithful wife, and wept. As welcome as
the land to swimmers, when Poseidon wrecks
their ship at sea and breaks it with great waves
and driving winds; a few escape the sea
and reach the shore, their skin all caked with brine.
Grateful to be alive, they crawl to land.
So glad she was to see her own dear husband,
and her white arms would not let go his neck.
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
Wilson's style is simple and unadorned; she doesn't go for rhymes or intricate clauses, but does use iambic pentameter, which gives the whole poem the sense that it's meant to be read aloud. Which, of course, it is. In a lot of translations, it's easy to get caught up in the language itself, its poetry or flowery metaphors; this is very much not the case here. Wilson's version is easy and quick to read, and even drops in occasional bluntly modern terms (I think "canapés" is the one that stood out the most to me). I loved it. She also includes a long introduction (80 pages) dealing with matters like gender, slavery, and gods within the story, or, outside of the text, who composed The Odyssey, when and in what circumstances.
I can't recommend this translation enough, but why should you listen to me? Listen to Wilson's words instead:
This made him want to cry. He held his love,
his faithful wife, and wept. As welcome as
the land to swimmers, when Poseidon wrecks
their ship at sea and breaks it with great waves
and driving winds; a few escape the sea
and reach the shore, their skin all caked with brine.
Grateful to be alive, they crawl to land.
So glad she was to see her own dear husband,
and her white arms would not let go his neck.
