WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Flyover Features: Is This Odyssey Translation a Feminist Masterpiece?

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Emma and Sophia debate claims that Emily Wilson's translation of "The Odyssey" is a feminist reimagining of the classic Western tale.

You're listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Rini, and I'm here with Sophia Mant, and in this show, we are going to be discussing a somewhat controversial translation of Homer's Odyssey. So, can we hear a little bit of this, Sophia? 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. Okay, so this is.

is Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey. When was this published? Rumored to originally be by Homer, the Blind Bard. But anyway, when was this published? Well, it was published in 2018. And then she later translated the Iliad in September, 23. Okay. And I guess what is the controversy that surrounds this translation?

because I know in my case, I've seen this on the internet. I've seen people talking about it. And a lot of them have been making fun of it. And then there are also others who claim it's some sort of feminist translation. So why don't we sort of discuss what the response to this has looked like a little bit? Well, it also depends on who you ask, because some people actually will say it's a great translation. And then other people will say it's just a, horrific rewriting of the Odyssey.

So it's kind of has a lot of controversy both for and against it. So the author Emily Wilson was not the first women to translate The Odyssey, but based on what I'm finding, she actually was the first known women to publish an English translation. So to translate it into English being more specific. It was a little hard-finding information about this. She was born in 1971 in Oxford, England, recently became an American citizen. And she's also taught in the Classical Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania since 2002. And it is interesting because some people complain about the translation being quite woke.

but when she was interviewed with Robert Wood in the Los Angeles Review of Books, she commented that her stylistic choices she made as a translator aren't because she's a woman. It's, you know, and she said even other female translators of Homer have made very different choices from her. So in that sense, I mean, she kind of pushed back a little bit against some of the other media attention she got that were kind of obsessed with the fact that she was a woman and had a lot of attention on that, it seemed, in my opinion, either overly positively or overly negatively. I don't know. It seems, unfortunately, like, less common to see people actually judging the translation of her itself

without ignoring current biases. But what's your opinion on that? Well, so it looks like a lot of the controversy that was sparked by this translation was about the fact that she, is a woman. So while she might not be the first translator of the Odyssey, or the first female translator of the Odyssey, because obviously there are translators in other languages, including I think Italian it was.

Yeah, yeah. There's been more than one who's translated into Italian, so there must be something special about the Italian woman over there. I think the Italian part of Italian curriculum is to read the, The Odyssey in Greek. So, yeah, they're getting a different education over there for sure. Yes. But, yeah, so a lot of people are sort of zeroing in on the fact that she's a woman on both sides of the argument.

And I don't think that she was a big fan of that. No, no. And I mean, I will say, like, whether you really like or really dislike this translation I think one thing you can't argue is that she's objectively very knowledgeable and talented in her field and fully knows Homeric Greek, which I have a lot of respect for, I think is insane. Not all of our listeners probably know this, but both me and Emma are in third semester Greek where we're reading through the New Testament, the Gospel of Mark, and we are nowhere near her translation abilities, and very few people can do that.

Yes. Homeric Greek is very different from Coyne Greek, which is the Greek of the New Testament. It's a feat to have translated the Odyssey at all. And apparently she also wrote the translation of the Odyssey in iambic pentameter, which is therefore limiting herself to the same number of lines as Homer's original, which I would think is impressive for that staying fairly literal,

at least in relation to Homer's original. although I think Latimore still has their mutation as being the translator that's the most literal from the Odyssey and then Fagels is known for kind of including a bit of more freedom and free-flowing English literary whatnot in it yeah yeah so yeah

yeah that's that's the translation and you just heard a tiny little bit of it there at the beginning there's obviously a lot more that we just can't get to in the scope of this show. But we can sort of discuss some of the controversy and some of the articles that have popped up about this translation. Yeah, so some of the reviews are interesting.

And this is from the Wikipedia. There's others that, in my opinion, are overly negative that I think, okay, on one hand, maybe there's problems with this translation, but it also seems like, ironically, despite claiming to just want to appreciate the classics as is, you're making a big deal about the fact that she's a woman and whatnot, like, on criticisms more from some on the right. But it is funny because some on the left, like in a review for NPR, Annalise and Quinn writes that Wilson's project is basically a progressive one to scrape away. all the centuries of verbal and ideological buildup.

And to reveal something fresh and clean. And she also notes, and this is something that has been fairly controversial, is that enslaved characters are referred to as slaves instead of maids or servants, which a lot of people have found controversial because most other translations translate to maid or servant instead of slave. And it's also funny because Madeline Miller was apparently

floored by the introduction. Tell me about a complicated man and how straightforward it was. And I mean, I personally don't enjoy that introduction as much as Latimore's translation as the other one I have read. Although I will say that... Wait, no, that was Wyatt Mason.

Well, that was Wyatt Mason. Who was floored? It was Wyatt Mason. Mason who is floored. But I will say that I've been flipping through this and I actually kind of like the way it seems to read otherwise. So I can't hate on the style of the translation either. I will admit when I first read that opening introduction in the translation, I found it very funny. because it's so straightforward.

It's very straightforward to the point that I think that this translation of the Odyssey is probably good for maybe even a younger audience. Yeah. Which I think partially was her intent. She wanted more everyone to be able to read it. And at least from what I know of Latimore's translation, it's so literal that it's not. the easiest read. This seems more simple to be able to read.

Yes, it's sort of the best of both worlds. It's not too literal that it's impossible, but it's also clear enough. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Hello, Hillsdale. This is Sophia Mant with co-host Emma Vrini, and you're listening to Flyover Features

on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. So, Sophia, I think we should sort of get into the controversy and some of the articles that have been written about this translation. So we have here a Vox article. That's Vox from Vox.com, so V-O-X. And the headline is historically men translated the Odyssey. Here's what happened when a woman took the job. So this is by Anna North, and it was published in November 2017. This article sort of zeroes in on her gender, which is something I know Wilson wasn't, you know, the biggest fan of.

I don't know if she necessarily responded directly to this article, but I think this article, I would argue, is doing something that she does not endorse. So this article sort of gives us an idea of the social justice issues at hand in response to this translation of The Odyssey. And I will say it also talks about some decisions Wilson made with the translation that me and Emma might argue against or question a little bit. but we can get into that later. But yeah, it's, it, it mentions how it's written in plain contemporary language and how her translation lays bare some of the inequalities between characters that other translations have avoided. And it offers a new way of thinking about the, about it in the context of gender and power

relationships today. So, interesting. Yes. So this article especially puts a sort of modern spin on interpretation of Homer's Odyssey. And it also sort of implies that it's the job of a translator to confront social justice issues in their translation, modern social justice issues in their translation. Which I think, I think it is. I mean, this work is over 2,000 years old. If you want to confront problems today, maybe you could look to.

see how people long ago thought of them, but I don't think changing ancient texts that maybe the foundational ways they understood society and culture, I don't see how changing them is a good way to usher in certain beliefs that you'd want to be represented or changed today. It seems a bit of an insidious way, actually, of doing it, I think. I think that ancient works should be respected as they are. And the other thing is this is supposed to be a very literal translation. So I don't I don't know how you can sort of reconcile those two things, it being a literal translation and then also confronting social justice issues at the same time. Yeah.

That makes sense. Because then it's not a literal translation. It's a more interpretive one. And I also think it's funny because in my personal opinion, the author misinterprets the character. the character of Penelope, who is Odysseus' wife, because in the line they say some feminist readings of the Odyssey have tried to cast as heroic in her own way, sometimes by comparing her to Odysseus. But the thing is, is that I would argue in reading Latimore's translation, which is considered the most literal translation on the market, she seems to be the most heroic character,

perhaps even more so than Odysseus. And yes, I agree. It's true Odysseus isn't necessarily fair or good to her when he sleeps with goddesses, and it's true that the text doesn't necessarily seem to indicate that this is an immoral act. But Penelope, I think, shows far greater strength of character, and this is seen in looking at a very literal reading of the text.

So I think that to say that, to not see the, how Penelope is heroic is to misread the Odyssey. Yes, and I think there was something else really funny about the way Penelope was translated. Yes, since she's a weaver, it describes her hands as muscular. I'm trying to figure out weird. Yes, her muscular firm hand picked up the ivory handle of the key, which is fine. If you're a weaver, if you're working with your hands or knitting or anything like that, obviously you're going to have muscular hands. It was in traditional translations never rendered that way.

But I think it's interesting that she chooses to do that here. And it kind of makes sense. I guess the problem is when you say that you're fighting misogyny. And this is actually a quote of hers. Part of fighting misogyny in the current world is having a really clear sense. of what the structures of thought and the structures of society are that have enabled androcentrism in different cultures, including our own. So, I don't know, do you think that the traditional men's translators decision to render this

sort of thing differently and not say muscular or not say thick or instead say something like steady hand? Do you think that that is an example of misogyny or just a, choice of a translator. I don't think from my knowledge, but I'll admit I am not a classicist. Like most of the male translator's decisions were meant to be sexist. I just think they were literally translating the Odyssey, which has elements you could definitely say are questionable in regards to how women are portrayed. I mean, in one hand, the goddess Athena leads Odysseus and she's very powerful and intelligent. But it's also true that Odysseus is unfaithful to

his wife, who's always Penelope, who is always loyal to him, and that's not portrayed as bad within the text. So, I mean, you could say maybe, but it's like, well, the text itself is kind of interesting in its portrayal of women. But I will say the author at the end says that her translation isn't a feminist version of the Odyssey. It is a version of the Odyssey that lays bare the morals of its time and place and invites us to consider how different they are from our own and how similar, but... I think that that's great, honestly. I like that.

I could do without the whole fighting misogyny thing, but I think that's one of... That should be one of the goals of a translation is to make it clear what the morals of a certain time were instead of trying to, you know, cover that up. Yeah, and I guess that's the one thing that I do have a little bit of a problem with

when it comes to other works or other people's perspectives is that there's a problem I have when people want to change the classical canon or the books we read that are maybe from a different time and place and so tend to on average have different values maybe than we do because you're going to be more divorced from your culture or origin story if you're not familiar with maybe how people saw things back then and maybe were they actually better in some ways how they viewed the world or

or different you know and that's that's I think a good thing and I think a good example of this is how the philosopher Aristotle I have a professor who really likes a lot of what he says but then Aristotle also supported natural slavery and I mean I don't think that means that you should never pay attention to anything Aristotle says, but I don't agree with the concept of slavery, but that doesn't mean you should either censor or maybe reject everything a thinker said if they have questionable views on one area, I think. Well, beyond, that's more than questionable, but you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And that's what I like about the end of this article here, which basically says that this translation lays bare the morals of its

time and place. So that's sort of an invitation for the reader to maybe judge or better yet not judge and just sort of see the way things were. And it also says, invites us to consider how different they are from our own and how similar. And I think that's a good place to leave off. And maybe keep the social justice out of it and just sort of judge this text as it truly is, if that makes sense. That's all we have time for today. You've been listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

I'm Emma Rini, and I'm here with Sophie Mans. Bye. Bye.