Richard Carroll on Nostr: Good review of Emily Wilson’s translations of Homer. It’s from last year, but ...
Good review of Emily Wilson’s translations of Homer. It’s from last year, but these books still get enough attention that it’s worth reading, and the author does a good job explaining what, exactly, the problems are with Wilson’s translation choices.
The internet is littered with admiring—and sometimes perceptive—articles claiming that Wilson’s Odyssey contextualizes it “within our current political climate” or “engages the characters’ moral ambiguity in a more critical way.” Wilson herself has been quoted as saying that she is “making visible the cracks in the patriarchal fantasy.” Maybe so. But it’s impossible to simultaneously hold that Wilson’s translation critiques patriarchy, and that she has rendered the text faithfully, without violating the law of noncontradiction. What did Homer know of the contemporary political climate or the “patriarchal fantasy”? Wilson’s work can, and probably does, successfully advance a radical undertaking of erasing the old myths and writing new ones. This wouldn’t necessarily be ignoble if the process weren’t being obfuscated, but there is something brutal about taking a classic work, rewriting it against its own grain, and then passing it off as true to the original. The scene of the victorious Achilles tying his main opponent Hector’s dead body to the back of his chariot and driving around and around the camp comes to mind.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/emily-wilson-s-sack-of-homer/
The internet is littered with admiring—and sometimes perceptive—articles claiming that Wilson’s Odyssey contextualizes it “within our current political climate” or “engages the characters’ moral ambiguity in a more critical way.” Wilson herself has been quoted as saying that she is “making visible the cracks in the patriarchal fantasy.” Maybe so. But it’s impossible to simultaneously hold that Wilson’s translation critiques patriarchy, and that she has rendered the text faithfully, without violating the law of noncontradiction. What did Homer know of the contemporary political climate or the “patriarchal fantasy”? Wilson’s work can, and probably does, successfully advance a radical undertaking of erasing the old myths and writing new ones. This wouldn’t necessarily be ignoble if the process weren’t being obfuscated, but there is something brutal about taking a classic work, rewriting it against its own grain, and then passing it off as true to the original. The scene of the victorious Achilles tying his main opponent Hector’s dead body to the back of his chariot and driving around and around the camp comes to mind.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/emily-wilson-s-sack-of-homer/