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The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ into English
- gallerdude 9y agoI had a class on The Odyssey (and other epics) last year, and for some reason it floored me. A lot of things in this world are merely a knockoff of the original and authentic thing. And for someone hugely into stories, The Odyssey felt like this hugely authentic and original thing. Maybe it's me being pretentious, but it's all there: adventure & homecoming, cunning & humility, love & ignorance. Also, the themes are just melded into the core of the story in a way I haven't seen before. And the writing itself strikes an amazing balance between texture and structure. The Odyssey is on the far side of the bell curve, it's unlike anything I've ever read. And I've only read one translation of it. Definitely going to be checking this one out.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoThe Odyssey seems original because the reason it is famous is that it is one of the oldest written version of stories that were told orally for generations.
- stevenwoo 9y agoI remember reading this in high school and everyone gasped when the dog dies (spoiler alert for ~2500 year old story) yet took all the gory human deaths in the same chapter in stride.
- jasonjei 9y agoEver watch John Wick? The guy goes on a murder rampage for a dead dog (and as an audience member, I find myself oddly rooting for Wick).
- Zircom 9y agoIt's a movie and he's the protagonist, I don't think it's very odd at all for you to root for him...
- emodendroket 9y agoWell, me neither, but it's not like it's a different principle than is at work in the Odyssey.
- humanrebar 9y agoSure, but the dog was also a memento of the recently departed Mrs. Wick, so it wasn't just about puppicide.
- emodendroket 9y agoYes, well, that's the magic of getting to tell the story -- you get to decide which deaths your audience cares about.
- pjc50 9y agoWhich translation did you read? The Chapman translation ( http://www.bartleby.com/111/chapman14.html http://www.bartleby.com/111/chapman14.html ) is famous enough to have inspired Keats to write about it: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first-looking-into-chapmans-homer https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first-lookin...
- richship 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15627133
- gallerdude 9y agoFagles
- slowmovintarget 9y agoThe structure was amazing, all the more so for it being transmitted by oral tradition. Things like Odysseus being "born", pangs and all, seven times before getting home. One of the places he departs from actually translates to "birth". Son mirroring the father. The architecture of the tale was fascinating.
- ubernostrum 9y agoThe structure was amazing, all the more so for it being transmitted by oral tradition. You want to read up on research into oral traditions and primarily-oral societies. Walter Ong is the usual starting point there. Oral traditions aren't just accidentally memorable, or an artifact of people with specially-trained huge memories. Epics like the Iliad and Odyssey, and oral traditions of other societies, are truly impressive technology, though we never think of them that way. In literate societies, especially ones which have been literate for a long time, we think people would just have to rote-memorize this stuff, but really it's built with rhythms and patterns and structures and formulas, and you end up with works that are easy to learn, easy to recite and easy to reconstruct and even error-correct on the fly.
- emodendroket 9y agoWell also it doesn't have to be precisely the same story each time and in fact would often be changed around depending on the audience (emphasizing a local hero, for instance)
- JoeDaDude 9y agoI am reminded me of the tongue-in-cheek comments on the invention of writing made by Plato in the Phaedrus dialogue: "...but his great discovery was the use of letters. .... for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing"
- alphaalpha101 9y agoI've always felt similarly about Lord of the Rings. It feels so authentic and real. Every other similar fantasy novel just reads as if everything in the story was made up for the purpose of telling the story, which of course it was. In LOTR it feels like historical fiction, like Tolkien designed everything about the world down to the finest detail then wrote a story in it without making anything new up.
- gallerdude 9y agoYeah there's some fiction where it seems the world only serves the plot, but LotR feels like it's taking one of infinite potential paths through the world created.
- macintux 9y agoWhat really struck me, upon reading (ok, scanning) the Silmarillion, was the brevity of the mention of everything that happened in LoTR. It drove home the scope of the fictional world that Tolkien created.
- ianamartin 9y agoYou feel that way because that's exactly how it happened. Tolkien was a linguist first and foremost, and he created the languages used in the books for fun. Then he created the worlds and the lore for those places to exist. And only after all of that did he actually write stories set in these worlds and the languages in them. It's genuinely magic to read. And I really don't feel like anyone has matched his authenticity in the fantasy genre. I love C.S. Lewis, but the Chronicles feels very artificial. A new venue to preach his religious motives. Fun, and well done for sure. But not the same. I also love the Steven R. Donaldson series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It's a moral journey just as LoTR and Narnia are, but it's a deeply personal struggle for a guy trying to manage his own mix of character successes and failures, rather than epic characters who each represent one idealized version of a human trait. But as much as I love that series as well, I feel very much like the world was created for the story, and not at all that the world was created simply to create a world, and the story was created for it. Tolkien really did it perfectly. I don't know that he ever intended to do what he did. It could be argued that it's not really correct to call him a master at his (or any) craft because he wasn't trying to do anything like what he did. There's a certain accidental quality to it. Which is perhaps what makes it so compelling.
- emodendroket 9y agoHonestly it kind of reminds me of Dragon Ball or something like that.
- sn9 9y agoYou may be thinking of Journey to the West, which Dragon Ball was inspired by. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West
- emodendroket 9y agoI wasn't, having never read it. Anyway after the first 13 episodes Dragon Ball had little to do with Journey to the West other than sort of having an analogous cast of characters, most of whom eventually fell out of the spotlight.
- madhadron 9y agoYou might enjoy Ezra Pound's 'ABCs of Reading', which talks about reading the best examples available. The Odyssey and Illiad are certainly that. Also the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Beowulf...but sometimes there are acceptable translations and sometimes there aren't. We are fortunate to have Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf which is always solid and occasionally makes you feel the raven's wings lowering over you. Guy Lee wrote a translation of Ovid's Amores which I unreservedly recommend. Clive James gave us the first translation of the Divine Comedy into English that catches the feel of the original. Urqhardt's Rabelais has been considered the English translation of choice for four hundred years. But other works, like the Aeneid, languish. Fitzgerald's translation, unlike his Odyssey, is flat. CS Lewis translated a couple books fairly well, but I haven't seen the magic of the original in English yet. Oddly, languages with smaller literary output, like Polish, often have better translations because translators are a much bigger deal, and certain translators have status equivalent to celebrity authors.
- macintux 9y agoI figure there'll be a few for whom this is a pleasant surprise, so: if humor, wonderful old-timey music, and a healthy dash of the Odyssey sounds like an interesting combination, "O Brother Where Art Thou" is a great film.
- SeanBoocock 9y agoThis was so refreshing to read as someone who loves the classics and studied Latin in high school. I very much agree with Emily Wilson that translation is an active interpretation of the text, not some mechanical and uncreative process. Look forward to reading her new version; the excerpts in the article are striking.
- slowmovintarget 9y agoMy first reaction was "Harumph" being a fan of Robert Fagles' translation. I sit corrected. I'll be buying a copy of Emily Wilson's too: 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.
- moomin 9y agoYeah, that’s wonderful. If the rest is as good it’s going to be a great read.
- chrismealy 9y agoI thought Fagles was good too but that is just electric.
- scrumper 9y agoI've never read Fagle. Mine is T.E. Lawrence's translation. I love the opening of that, but I think I'll enjoy Wilson's too: O Divine Poesy Goddess-Daughter of Zeus sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men the sport of their customs good or bad while his heart through all the sea-faring ached in an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home Vain hope - for them for his fellows he strove in vain their own witlessness cast them away the fools to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted sun wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return Make the tale live for us in all its many bearings O Muse
- tomcam 9y agoYes. It reads gorgeously.
- benbreen 9y ago
- rlongstaff 9y agoSurprised the article made no mention of the EV Rieu translation published by Penguin Books. I would have thought that was one of the, if not 'the', most well known one.
- Ice_cream_suit 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_Homer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_Homer A list of over 73 translations of the Odyssey into English.
- jhiska 9y agoBut this one was by a woman.
- Simon_says 9y agoHow do you know how the other translators identified?
- snowpanda 9y agoRight, so George Chapman might have been a woman? Identifying doesn't turn a preference into existence.
- Simon_says 9y agoDid anybody bother to ask George if he’s a woman? I don’t know.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoA little bit of statistical reasoning can get you 95% of the way.
- Simon_says 9y agoOn that path lies assuming people's gender.
- GuB-42 9y agoI found it quite surprising actually. Is there something special about the Odyssey that caused it do be only translated by men until now? I think we still see more books written by men but that's something like 2/3, not 99%.
- CalChris 9y agoI always liked Samuel Butler's idea in The Authoress of the Odyssey that the Odyssey was written by a woman. I'm looking forward to Wilson's translation. https://www.kenyonreview.org/2013/09/authoress-odyssey/ https://www.kenyonreview.org/2013/09/authoress-odyssey/ My favorite Iliad is Lattimore. I've tried others (Fagles, Green, Lombardo) and always come back to Lattimore. I remember when I first read it, my prof said we didn't have to read the Catalog of the Ships. I actually love that section now. It's like the opening credits. My favorite Odyssey is Fitzgerald. Fagles is good too. Now if you want a deeply bad translation, a fraud really, Mitchell is the worst. He leaves out chapters. Edward Luttwak ripped it apart. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer-inc https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer-inc
- slowmovintarget 9y ago+1 for Lattimore's Iliad I tried to read Fagles' and kept going back to Lattimore's. For the Odyssey though, Fagles' translation was very good.
- thinkingemote 9y agoI'm going to speak up for Stephen Mitchell's work. I spent a good hour in the bookshop comparing translations and his rang truest, read easiest and sounded more lyical in a way. It wasnt dry and accurate or academic that's for sure but it was in the common tongue. Also his missing chapters were included at the end as appendices and his reasons were given for that inclusion.
- justin66 9y agoYou might find this interview with Fagles (who was acquainted with Fitzgerald, it turns out) as interesting as I did: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/930/robert-fagles-the-art-of-translation-no-2-robert-fagles https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/930/robert-fagles-...
- jrumbut 9y agoLattimore's Illiad is incredible, it leaves some of those confusing words and phrases in (famously, the numerous characters who speak "winged words") and it reminds you this is the product of a civilization that isn't yours, who had very different values yet remain very human.
- joeyo 9y agoI'm a fan of Lombardo's: Speak, Memory – Of the cunning hero The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy's sacred heights. Speak Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men home But could not save them, hard as he tried – The fools – destroyed by their own recklessness When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, And that god snuffed out their day of return. Of these things, Speak, Immortal One, And tell the tale once more in our time. His Iliad is excellent too.
- twoodfin 9y agoSeconded on Lombardo. I picked it up 17 years ago after seeing him on CSPAN discussing his translation with a panel including Christopher Hitchens. Thankfully still available: https://www.c-span.org/video/?160063-1/discussion-homers-odyssey https://www.c-span.org/video/?160063-1/discussion-homers-ody...
- DogestFogey 9y agoAlternative .onion link for those using the Tor Browser Bundle https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2017/11/02/magazine/the-first-woman-to-translate-the-odyssey-into-english.html https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2017/11/02/magazine/the-f...
- emodendroket 9y agoI recently read Fagles' translations of the big three (Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid), and the Odyssey is by far the most fun of all of them. They're all masterpieces but it's the one I most enjoyed reading.
- CalChris 9y agoWell, the first (Odysseyian) half of the Aeneid is a LOT of fun. In fact, the second (Iliadic) half after Dido dies is often skipped. To me, it's kind of like Romeo and Juliet; after Mercutio dies it's just a bunch of teen age yammering. Well, Aeneas just isn't that interesting (he's stoic!) and Dido is (or was). And then Turnus is no Hector. Fact is Vergil died without completing it. He wasn't happy with it and wanted it burned. Augustus, who had heard chapters read and who was its sponsor, countermanded that order. He had it edited but it wasn't Vergil's hand. It's OK to be a little disappointed with the result. BTW, Stanford iTunesU has a quite good 5 lecture podcast on the Aeneid by Susanna Braund. She knows everything.
- emodendroket 9y agoI liked the Aeneid a lot and wouldn't write off the second half. But they can't all be my favorite.
- bandrami 9y agoI find it difficult to believe that is true
- mirimir 9y ago> Wilson, whose own translation appears this week, has produced the first English rendering of the poem by a woman. Well, it goes without saying that it's the first that the author was aware of. However, given that the author admittedly doesn't know Greek, it rather seems that he lacks standing to make such a claim. Maybe Dr. Wilson told him, and he didn't want to quote her. I'd have qualified the statement, or provided a source, but then that's just how I am.
- emodendroket 9y agoWhat? You don't need to know Greek to figure out what authors have published an English translation of the Odyssey.
- mirimir 9y agoWhat, with Google? My point is that someone who doesn't know Greek likely doesn't know the field well enough. To know, for example, whether some woman decades ago translated the Odyssey into English. As part of an unfinished thesis, with an obscure adviser.
- emodendroket 9y agoProbably a more specialized tool than Google. But OK, sure, maybe a hermit wrote a complete translation of the Iliad and never showed it to anyone.
- gaius 9y agoLikewise. 2000 years ago in Roman Britain I am certain many people did it and some of them would have been women.
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- bambax 9y ago> I struggled with this because there are those classicists. I partly just want to shake them and make them see that all translations are interpretations. What is a translation, that's the heart of the matter. Many people argue that translation is simply impossible, because the meaning of a text depends on its connexions to a whole cultural world, and if you take that text out of its cultural background and put it in another one, then it simply doesn't work anymore. It's like a transplant, but more complicated; if you do a heart transplant, at least all hearts are similar and connect to arteries in the same way; a translation is like trying to transplant an organ across species. For instance, it seems most readers of classic Russian literature are of this opinion -- no other language renders Russian novels appropriately. (I don't read Russian so I wouldn't know.) And yet, transplants do work. To pursue the transplant metaphor, they work when the organ performs the same function in the new organism as it did in the original one. So I don't think the translator's work is simply to "interpret" the source, if that word means "to understand deeply and then reproduce with one's own personality and artistic biais". The task of the translator is to produce a text for a new audience, that produces an effect to that audience, as close as possible as the original text on the original audience. There's this retired English teacher who translated the first book of the Harry Potter series in ancient Greek; it's different of course, since there are no native ancient Greek speakers left, and so his "audience" is unclear; but the description of the challenges he faced makes for a great and fun read: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/harry_potter.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/harry_potter.htm
- jccalhoun 9y agoThis is a really interesting story and quite timely with some videogame fans complaining about choices made in translating Japanese videogames to English.