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A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey
- __s 9y agoOn the topic of female gender & the Odyssey, here's a thesis 'Inhuman and Heroic Women: Femininity in the Odyssey and the Arthurian Vulgate' which includes reference to the original Greek text https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4157 https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4157
- cantrip 9y agoYou a found graduate student's college paper with the Odyssey in the title.
- sincerely 9y agoI checked their profile and it's from the university that their town (found on github) is best known for, my guess would be that they have personal experience with the thesis leading them to recommend it.
- _red 9y ago>But many students, scholars, and general readers want even more from this literary character: they want her to fit the ideal of an empowered woman. It is comforting to subscribe to the notion—as Daniel Mendelsohn does in his recently published memoir, “An Odyssey,” and as Robert Fagles does, in his translation of the poem—that the marriage between Odysseus and Penelope is a partnership of intellectual equals, based on true love and a shared outlook on life. Odysseus speaks, in Homer’s poem, of the ideal of like-mindedness (homophrosyne) in marriage. The modern impulse to impose its cultural norms upon the past is deeply upsetting. Its a sign of a frail, unsure, and declining culture.
- pavlov 9y agoIs it any different from any other time? Things that are constant at any generation throughout history: the young always appear selfish and without morals; the past is not treated with enough respect; the overall culture is surely in decline. Athenians under Pericles were convinced of these, as were Romans under Augustus.
- quantumofmalice 9y agoThere is strong historical evidence for civilizational cycles.
- dragonwriter 9y agoPerhaps, but there's not for an association between most of the things people casually refer to as signs of civilization decline and such decline.
- gt_ 9y agoIf chaos is an antonym to civilization, this might be reconsidered.
- gt_ 9y agoThere is, and Greek tragedy itself offers an abundance of them. For anyone curious, look into Euripides’ “The Bacchae”.
- greglindahl 9y agoCycles appear in hindsight, sure. Where's the cycle in foresight if everyone always thinks the young appear selfish and without morals?
- quantumofmalice 9y agoThere is no historical evidence that everyone always thinks the young appear selfish and without morals. Very often the youth have lead moral revivals (or panics, according to tastes.) I don't mean to be unpleasant, but the idea that there has always been an oppositional libertine youth culture of selfishness is a modern canard.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> The modern impulse to impose its cultural norms upon the past is deeply upsetting. It's not a modern impulse, it's pretty much an invariant aspect of culture. Of course, so is the tendency to perceive invariant aspects of culture as both unique to the present culture and signs of decline.
- ryanx435 9y ago> so is the tendency to invariant aspects of culture as ..... What are you trying to say here? Invariant is not a verb, and it's definition of "never changing" doesn't make sense in the way you used it. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/invariant http://www.dictionary.com/browse/invariant
- __s 9y agoI think they meant to say 'consider' before invariant
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y agoYou want the mathematical definition. All cultures judge others according to their own norms, that's essentially the definition of what a culture is: a set of norms and behaviors by which things are judged.
- ACow_Adonis 9y agoYeah, i'll go so far as to correct you there and say its not a sign of declining culture. It IS culture, period. Its arguably even the case that it could be argued to be the sign of a particular kind of ascending culture, since being able to reinterpret the past and spread your own cultural norms could be said to give weight/momentum to a particular culture's propagation...
- danharaj 9y agoShocking. People exist in dialogue with the past.
- djroomba 9y agoWhy so flippant ? The op explained his position pretty well.
- dizzystar 9y agoVery much agree. We may not agree with the past culture, but we should never forget the past or the progress we made. History is cyclic. Humans flip between freedom to oppression, and I think so much of those steps back come from the fact that we are encouraged to forget the mistakes and lifestyles of the past. You see this in communism, various cultural revolutions, and other horrible things, yet certain revisionists wish to look back at those horrifying events with rose-tinted glasses. No, we should be willing to accept and see the truth, for all it's glory and brutality. We can "save" the women of literature, yet ignore the oppression in the modern day woman, ie. the gender-driven infanticide that still exists today. If written words from 3000 years ago offends our sensibilities, what hope to do we, as a culture, have to hold up a guiding light to the rest of the world?
- rectang 9y agoHistory is written by the winners. When those who disfavor women's empowerment are ascendant, they rewrite the past no less violently. Fortunately, in our era those regressive forces are a frail, unsure, and declining culture.
- skadamou 9y agoIf you thought this was interesting, you might also like Margret Atwood's "The Penelopiad" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17645.The_Penelopiad https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17645.The_Penelopiad
- CalChris 9y ago> her twelve hanged maids Yes, Penelope's maids come to a bad end. I think a lot of critics misread this as misogyny on Homer's part. However, it is meant to be balanced with the death of the suitors and also Odysseus' shipmates, leaving only the marriage at the end.
- skadamou 9y agoHmm, that's an interesting take I had not considered before. I can totally see where our modern sense of sexuality/morality could get in the way of some of Homer's subtler themes.
- jimmywanger 9y agoThis is ridiculous. The word "Odyssey" means journey. The way the author conflates it with sexism and privilege seems like she's just trolling for clicks. It's a story about a man trying to get home, and a woman staying faithful in the face of uncertainty. Anything else is reading too much into it. Just like if you're not yet confirmed dead in a war, your parents keep your room the way it was. (EDIT: re: keeping the way it was, they'll come by and vacuum and dust once in a while.)
- skadamou 9y agoI have to respectfully disagree. I thought the author offered a thoughtful take on how sexuality and privilege is presented in the Odyssey. I can see where you could possibly criticize her for interpreting these themes through a modern/liberal lens but at least she backs up her analysis with Homer’s original Greek text. I hardly find this article click-baity.
- pvg 9y agoIt's a story about a man trying to get home, and a woman staying faithful in the face of uncertainty. Anything else is reading too much into it. That's the story as summarized in a potential entry for a 'most trite message board comment' competition of some sort. The actual story is another story. Either that or people have been doing it wrong and reading too much into it for a couple of thousand years.
- jimmywanger 9y agohttps://www.goodreads.com/quotes/57886-all-great-literature-is-one-of-two-stories-a-man https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/57886-all-great-literature-... You wanna argue with Tolstoy? I might refer you to TVtropes. All stories are the same eventually.
- pvg 9y agoOh, it's a URL battle now. Sure, I'll take it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/06/two-plots/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/06/two-plots/
- microcolonel 9y agoI had figured I might have been misled by euphemisms in translations of Odyssey, it did seem uncharacteristic of the period in time (even coming from possibly the most progressive society of the time). It's important to seek the truth before attempting to change it, and I'm glad Emily can separate her clear desire to inhabit a different world from (what I see as) the duty to accurately present the work. If I need a translation of the Odyssey for myself or someone else, I guess I'll be getting a copy of this one.
- DrScump 9y agoRelated: last month's NY Times article about Wilson: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624881
- DoreenMichele 9y agoI wonder if Ms. Emily Wilson has ever spent time as a full-time wife and homemaker. It does not sound to me like she has. I have. I spent two decades at it. I often find the way modern working women portray the traditional female role completely dismissive and scathing, like it is all downside. I did not experience it as all down side. I spent a lot of years trying to comprehend how to play the feminine role in an empowered way, to stop seeing myself as simply a victim. The gist of what I came to understand can be summed up in the negotiating trope "The first person to name a number loses." Emotional labor is a hot buzz word currently that seems to be the fashionable new way to say that doing women's work makes you a chump, a victim. But I think it is more complicated than that. I don't like this trend that I see where modern women translate the stories of traditional women and are as derisive of the woman's role as men are, if not more so. The female slaves were executed, but so we're many men. This write up implies that the death of women has a unique horror to it that we need not feel over the more prosaic deaths of men. At the time The Odyssey was written, life was generally harder than it is now. This was true for both men and women, rich and poor. Death was pretty common. It was not inherently more wonderful to be an executed male than an executed female.
- aestetix 9y agoI think this is spot on. I probably won't read Wilson's translation -- I recently read Fagles', and am not keen to re-read for sake of a new translation, although might be interested in a comparison of translation differences. But you are correct that Greek society was very, very different from "modern" society in many ways. I was debating going into the ways it is different, but it seems that the political climate is too toxic, so I will instead link to a fantastic lecture series on the Odyssey that I personally found enlightening: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/odyssey-of-homer.html https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/odyssey-of-homer.htm...
- greglindahl 9y agoHuh. I have never seen anyone use "emotional labor" to mean what you say it means. I agree that it's a lot more complicated than what you say it means.