Saw this quote from her new translation of The Iliad:
Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles,
cause of so much suffering for the Greeks,
that sent many strong souls to Hades,"
Here is the the youtube video showing her reading of that passage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiRGtFsA5HE&ab_channel=BeineckeLibraryatYale
Have cancelled my pre-order.
Sorry for the heading. Should be Emily, not Emyly.
Thanks for posting the link to such a stimulating set of readings and discussion of Homeric and Sophoclean poetry and the art of translation. I hope that the scholarly enthusiasm Wilson brings will inspire many new readers.
I look forward to buying her Iliad when it comes out in paperback and also to seeing whether “superhero” made the Final Cut.
A very entertaining and thought provoking discussion. Thanks.
[I fixed the heading.]
Yesterday I played Wilson’s video for our local Homer translation expert. That is, my 4-year-old. As I’ve mentioned, she caught the Homer bug from a 4th grade play at her sister’s school, and now demands to listen to the Iliad and Odyssey on my phone every day. She has completed Rouse’s translation twice now, finishing up the Odyssey yesterday and embarking on a third listen of the Iliad today, despite my attempt to convince her to listen to anything else instead.
Still, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to play Wilson’s video for her and ask for impressions. And with her thumb in her mouth, she gave a very concentrated listen. After it was done, she told me that “she liked it” but “liked the version on my phone better.” Wilson’s version was less “actual” and had “her personal voice” instead of the “personal voices of the characters”. Also she told me that she was not a fan of the hand gestures. The last criticism I will leave alone, as I don’t think that she knows to make allowances for Zoom, but I’ll take up the first two.
Wilson is less “actual” for me as well, in that she does not draw me into action the same way that Rouse/Fagle/Leaf & Lang & Myers do, not to mention the Greek. Wilson does not have the same level of control over her diction as do these translators. Two of their versions are prose translations, and the third a freer verse style than Wilson’s, but Wilson’s translation sticks close to the stodgy Loeb language, reworking it into blank verse, along with an exciting word choice like “superhero” thrown in here or there. To me, she obviously seems to have the habit of translating a sentence or two at a time, and then looking across the page to the Loeb translation to check her work. An unfortunate habit of many in this day and age, of course. But it ruins any opportunity to speak with one’s own poetic voice. Narrative flow is lost and it becomes less “actual” and more artificial. Exactly what Homer is not.
For the second criticism, I don’t necessarily know exactly what my daughter may have meant by “her personal voice”, but what I noticed from Wilson’s voice in the video, that I hadn’t noticed when reading excerpts on the page, was that Wilson is wholly unsympathetic to the male characters of the Iliad, and mindlessly sympathetic to the female characters of the Iliad. Achilles is voiced like a thug and Athena is a prissy know-it-all. The video makes Wilson come across as someone intending to produce a political act of caricature, not translation.
My daughter, as is appropriate for a pre-schooler, although not for an adult, is very alive to boys vs. girls in everything. But unlike Wilson, she somehow manages to love both Achilles and Athena equally well, perhaps with the exception that it is always “Athena and Hera” that she plays with her sister. Anyway, I’d hate to see Wilson ruin a generation of high schoolers’ appreciation of Homer with her schtick. Happily it’s not like they read what they’re assigned anyway.
I do sometimes wonder how well my daughter actually knows what is going on in the plot of these things. So this morning, when it was time to get out of the car for school, I stopped the audio today at “Then rose Calchas o’ Thestor, most excellent diviner of dreams…,” and asked her what he was going to say next. “He’s going to say that he has to give back Briseis!”
I’ve found the excerpts I’ve read from Wilson’s Odyssey (both the introduction and the translation) surprisingly good, at least compared to her frankly weird media presence - because it seems that she is much more engaged with American culture wars than ancient Greek. And let me add that if I happened to live in Northern America (luckily I don’t), my sympathies would mostly be on her side in said wars (although I much prefer to steer clear altogether). But whatever my political sympathies, I don’t think resorting to ”alternative facts” is a good thing.
I can’t watch Youtube, because I now have screen time on my iPhone, so I can’t comment on the video. However I found this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/books/review/iliad-translations.html
” Hector is a deeply loving father and husband who makes the choice to leave his family to almost-certain enslavement and death.”
This is yet another perversion of the source material. Hector has no such choice - it is clear that Troy and his family are doomed. The only choice he has is whether to abide by his heroic code and at least try to prevent defeat, or not. Andromakhe does suggest an alternative plan just before the quoted passage, but it is clear that it would never work - it might save Hector’s skin for the day, but it wouldn’t save his family, Troy or even himself in the long rung.
There no doubt that Homer abounds in toxic masculinity, but it seems that Wilson has taken upon herself to denounce it (or just masculinity tout court) even in places where there is none.
Paul
I cant access the nytimes article could you post it please?
It’s difficult of course to respond carefully to one isolated sentence without seeing the context but I dont have a problem with what Wilson says about Hector. Hector is shown enjoying moments of intimacy with his family and in those moments we see something other than the embodiment of Hector as simply an exemplar of a heroic code. This introduces both a relief from the constant fighting and shows us the cost of fulfilling that code. The humanisation of Hector in this way increases for me the emotional intensity and tension. We know what will happen but Hector doesnt.
Your view seems rather reductive. If we believe that Hector has no choice he is a rather 2 dimensional figure. What would be the point of the domestic scene? Simply a literary relaxation device? We believe that Achilles chooses a short glorious life over a long undistinguished one. Surely he understands the cost in choosing glory in just the name way as Hector understands the consequences of living up to his heroic code.
There is a lot one could say about this scene and none of it involves the “perversion of the source material”. The pathos here with touches like the helmet scaring his child is well known. No-one needs to suggest an “alternative plan” to invoke the human cost of what is happening.
One of the great strengths of Homer is that as well as exemplifying heroic conduct it leads us to question it.
I don’t think you got my point, so I’ll try to elaborate.
Apparently it’s necessary to sign in to be able read the article? But I at least can access a limited number of articles without paying anything. I hesitate to copy-paste the whole article, but I’ll give some more context. Wilson compares different translations of Iliad 6. 482-497 to her own. Here’s what she says about her own:
In my own translation of the “Iliad,” I echo the metrical regularity of the original by using unrhyming iambic pentameter. I thought long and hard about the multiple narrative perspectives suggested by the original poem, and its resonant ambiguities; in this passage, for example, I use both “beloved” and “loving” for phile — a word that could suggest either, or both — because the feelings of both the wife and the husband are at stake.
The rhetorically punchy qualities of Hector’s speech seemed essential, as well as Hector’s insistent focus on his own defining identity as a warrior. Hector is a deeply loving father and husband who makes the choice to leave his family to almost-certain enslavement and death.
As I read the Greek, we feel heartbroken for all three members of the family (or for all four, counting the silent nurse) — and all the more so because there is no hint of sentimentality in the language, no softness in Hector’s final words. The emotions are sketched with extraordinary concision: The only explicit feeling is Hector’s pity for Andromache’s tears (eleēse), but a world of other emotions is evoked through gesture.
…With these words,
he gave his son to his beloved wife.
She let him snuggle in her perfumed dress,
and tearfully she smiled. Her husband noticed
and pitied her. He took her by the hand
and said to her,
“Strange woman! Come on now,
you must not be too sad on my account.
No man can send me to the house of Hades
before my time. No man can get away
from destiny, first set for us at birth,
however cowardly or brave he is.
Go home and do the things you have to do.
Work on your loom and spindle and instruct
the slaves to do their household work as well.
War is a task for men — for every man
born here in Troy, but most especially, me.”
When he had finished speaking, glorious Hector
picked up his helmet with its horsehair plume.
His loving wife set off for home, but kept
twisting and turning back to look at him.
More and more tears kept flooding down her face.
The original Greek text:
ὣς εἰπὼν ἀλόχοιο φίλης ἐν χερσὶν ἔθηκε
παῖδ᾽ ἑόν: ἣ δ᾽ ἄρα μιν κηώδεϊ δέξατο κόλπῳ
δακρυόεν γελάσασα: πόσις δ᾽ ἐλέησε νοήσας,
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ᾽ ἔφατ᾽ ἔκ τ᾽ ὀνόμαζε:
“δαιμονίη μή μοί τι λίην ἀκαχίζεο θυμῷ:
οὐ γάρ τίς μ᾽ ὑπὲρ αἶσαν ἀνὴρ Ἄϊδι προϊάψει:
μοῖραν δ᾽ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν,
οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται.
ἀλλ᾽ εἰς οἶκον ἰοῦσα τὰ σ᾽ αὐτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε
ἱστόν τ᾽ ἠλακάτην τε, καὶ ἀμφιπόλοισι κέλευε
ἔργον ἐποίχεσθαι: πόλεμος δ᾽ ἄνδρεσσι μελήσει
πᾶσι, μάλιστα δ᾽ ἐμοί, τοὶ Ἰλίῳ ἐγγεγάασιν.”ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας κόρυθ᾽ εἵλετο φαίδιμος Ἕκτωρ
ἵππουριν: ἄλοχος δὲ φίλη οἶκον δὲ βεβήκει
ἐντροπαλιζομένη, θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυ χέουσα.
I didn’t say that at all. I was objecting to Wilson’s (emphasis mine), "Hector is a deeply loving father and husband who makes the choice to leave his family to almost-certain enslavement and death.” The way Wilson sees it, Hector recklessly sacrifices his family to fulfill the heroic code. This is one the great scenes in the Iliad, whose emotional intensity and pathos you rightly invoke. Hector is not Achilles, he is not choosing a short glorious life over a long undistinguished one – he is choosing to fulfill his duty over shirking it, even if it means risking his own life. Unlike Achilles, he isn’t fighting for the kicks, he’s doing it because he has to, as the leader of the army in a besieged city. You say “We know what will happen but Hector doesnt”, but you are wrong, because Hector himself says a few lines earlier (447ff.):
εὖ γὰρ ἐγὼ τόδε οἶδα κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν:
ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ᾽ ἄν ποτ᾽ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο.
Hector knows that his efforts, his bravery and sense of duty are all probably in vain, but still he does what he has to do. Nowhere is it suggested that he might save his family by not going to battle - I don’t know where Wilson got that idea.
Hector lives by the same heroic code as Achilles, but unlike Achilles, there’s nothing reckless about him when he’s fulfilling it.
But none of this matters for Wilson, for whom apparently Man (as opposed to Woman) is a fundamentally destructive being, no exceptions.
I agree. One could argue that it’s the main theme of the whole Iliad, Achilles being the prime example.
But Andromache does (429ff.):
Ἕκτορ ἀτὰρ σύ μοί ἐσσι πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ
ἠδὲ κασίγνητος, σὺ δέ μοι θαλερὸς παρακοίτης:
ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε νῦν ἐλέαιρε καὶ αὐτοῦ μίμν᾽ ἐπὶ πύργῳ,
μὴ παῖδ᾽ ὀρφανικὸν θήῃς χήρην τε γυναῖκα:
λαὸν δὲ στῆσον παρ᾽ ἐρινεόν, ἔνθα μάλιστα
ἀμβατός ἐστι πόλις καὶ ἐπίδρομον ἔπλετο τεῖχος.
τρὶς γὰρ τῇ γ᾽ ἐλθόντες ἐπειρήσανθ᾽ οἱ ἄριστοι
ἀμφ᾽ Αἴαντε δύω καὶ ἀγακλυτὸν Ἰδομενῆα
ἠδ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ Ἀτρεΐδας καὶ Τυδέος ἄλκιμον υἱόν:
ἤ πού τίς σφιν ἔνισπε θεοπροπίων ἐῢ εἰδώς,
ἤ νυ καὶ αὐτῶν θυμὸς ἐποτρύνει καὶ ἀνώγει.
I don’t think there’s any possibility that this could a viable plan. It’s just a loving wife telling her husband “don’t go!” and trying to make an excuse for him. But this plan of Andromache’s is not going to work, it’s not going to save Troy or Hector or his family. Unlike Wilson would have us believe, Hector does not have the choice of making his family escape “almost-certain enslavement and death”; he only has the choice of trying to do something about it, or not.
There’s much disagreement over what can make for a good translation.
For me, the use of the word ‘cataclysmic’ struck me as entirely inappropriate here because it is typically used for describing destructive events in nature. Nature is impersonal. Human emotions are not at all impesonal. I grant that it may be unfair to judge her translation on such a small sample but given that there are already so many good translations available I see little need to waste time or money on one that starts with such an egregious tone deaf use of language.
As far as the culture war stuff: there has been way too much hype over the fact that she is a woman. However, Emily has criticized that hype and pointed out there there are other good translations written by men & women. I don’t think it fair to judge her work on the basis of that hype.
archive.today often has NYT articles captured.
His firm tone could suggest brash confidence and/or a man steeling himself for a heartbreaking choice to prioritize his own honor over the lives and freedom of everyone he loves — a choice that becomes possible only when presented as no choice at all. (Wilson)
The speech is made harsher by the very misleading translation of δαιμονίη as “Strange woman!” and obscuring the “we all have our own work” balance of the Greek. And the future μελήσει, to me, would seem to particularize πόλεμος. “But the battle will be a concern for all the men born at Troy, me especially.”
…Hector’s insistent focus on his own defining identity as a warrior. (Wilson)
“Own defining identity” is exactly what Homer’s people didn’t have. Modern characters in the literate age are internally motivated and identify. Homeric characters are externally motivated and exist. And Homer is relentlessly sympathetic to every one of them. Not communicating that sympathy is a serious fault.
Everything in this discussion seems to be Wilson’s own words, both the video and the NYT article. I don’t believe the “hype” argument can really apply.
Since English is not my native language, it’s very difficult for me to capture the exact nuances of a word like ‘cataclysmic’. So I really can’t be a judge of that sort of thing, and I can’t be a judge of the “poetic qualities” of the translation either. But I think that in instances where it’s not some much a question of fine nuances of English I can be a judge, and I think that in several places that I’ve sampled Wilson has actually succeeded pretty well. (One example here http://discourse.textkit.com/t/odyssey-reading-group-book-6-lines-262-294/16940/13)
As far as the culture war stuff goes, I think she is herself instrumental (at least to a point) in creating what you call hype. Fundamentally I think that she wants to make her audience aware of the “dark side” of the Homeric epics - slavery, sexual violence, toxic masculinity, which is certainly a valid point of view. There comes to mind a passage where Nestor basically incites the Achaeans to gang rape Trojan women (Il. 2.354ff.):
τὼ μή τις πρὶν ἐπειγέσθω οἶκον δὲ νέεσθαι
πρίν τινα πὰρ Τρώων ἀλόχῳ κατακοιμηθῆναι,
τίσασθαι δ᾽ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε.
(If anyone has access to Wilson’s book, I’d love to know how she handles this one)
But I feel that her treatment of these problematic issues is mostly a lost opportunity. We’ve had a lot of discussion about the way she translates the word αμφιπολος in the Odyssey, which is a euphemism for slave. The Odyssey poet has a recurrent tendency to downplay slavery by using euphemisms like this, but Wilson, despite her keen interest on issues of power relationships, doesn’t address the question why “Homer” doesn’t call a slave slave; instead, she is just content to de-euphemise. More generally, I feel that she is more interested about being polemical rather than truly analytical about these things. Perhaps that works better on Twitter, I don’t know.
Strange woman/man is a pretty standard translation for δαιμονιη/δαιμονιος - whether it’s good or not, it’s difficult to fault Wilson for that. What would be better?
It’s a common formula of address between husbands and wives (and others) in Homer, and has a polite distancing/softening effect, not an amplifying effect, wherever it attaches.
The Cunliffe entry gets this softening aspect completely backwards, imo, while the LSJ does much better.
Among the quoted authors from the article, I see Chapman’s “dear wife”. Pope takes it positively, though does not translate literally with “my soul’s better part”. Butler, “my own wife”. Fagles, “dear one”.
Versions that I have access to online and on my shelf: Lang, Leaf and Myers gives “dear my lord” (Andromache to Hector) and “dear one” (this use). Rouse uses “my dearest” and “my wife” for the two. Murray & Wyatt in the Loeb use “my husband” and “dear wife”.
According LfgrE (and as I’ve come to interprete the word myself) δαιμονιος is used when the person addressed acts in a way that seems surprising, unreasonable or exaggerated to the speaker. ”Reaktion … auf ein für den Sprenchenden unbegreifl. (unvernünft., übertriebenes …) Verhalten”. The article is in German and almost every word is abridged so I’m not going to summarize it in full. The original meaning is ”under the influence of a δαίμων, i.e. basically ”possessed (by a daimon)”.
I think all the translators you are quoting get it wrong. But it’s no surprise that it’s so common between husbands and wives, who in my experience often find each other’s doings incomprehensible. Perhaps we might render it by ”What the…”?
I only quoted translations because you mentioned “a pretty standard translation”, and the “standard translation” seems in fact the opposite. But I much prefer going to the Greek cites. Here are a few.
θάμβησέν τ’ ἄρ’ ἔπειτα ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἔκ τ’ ὀνόμαζε·
δαιμονίη, τί με ταῦτα λιλαίεαι ἠπεροπεύειν;
This is somewhat adversarial speech, but also polite and to a goddess. I suggest that the term distances the statement and keeps the reproach from becoming bitter. And notice that θάμβησέν. The scholia often suggest θαυμάσιε and μακάριε for general synonyms to δαιμόνιε, neither of which are taken especially literally in address.
A bit after the book 6 passage we’ve been looking at, Hector to Paris.
τὸν πρότερος προσέειπεν Ἀλέξανδρος θεοειδής·
ἠθεῖ’ ἦ μάλα δή σε καὶ ἐσσύμενον κατερύκω
δηθύνων, οὐδ’ ἦλθον ἐναίσιμον ὡς ἐκέλευες;
Τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ·
δαιμόνι’ οὐκ ἄν τίς τοι ἀνὴρ ὃς ἐναίσιμος εἴη
ἔργον ἀτιμήσειε μάχης, ἐπεὶ ἄλκιμός ἐσσι·
ἀλλὰ ἑκὼν μεθιεῖς τε καὶ οὐκ ἐθέλεις· τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν κῆρ
ἄχνυται ἐν θυμῷ, ὅθ’ ὑπὲρ σέθεν αἴσχε’ ἀκούω
πρὸς Τρώων, οἳ ἔχουσι πολὺν πόνον εἵνεκα σεῖο.
This is gentle and merely contradicts Paris’s self-reproach. The δαιμόνιε is not calling him strange or crazy, but instead lightens the statement.
Here, everyone has decided that it’s time to think about home, and nothing separates Odysseus in the situation:
ὣς ἔφαθ’, ἡμῖν δ’ αὖτ’ ἐπεπείθετο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ.
ἔνθα μὲν ἤματα πάντα τελεσφόρον εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν
ἥμεθα δαινύμενοι κρέα τ’ ἄσπετα καὶ μέθυ ἡδύ·
ἀλλ’ ὅτε δή ῥ’ ἐνιαυτὸς ἔην, περὶ δ’ ἔτραπον ὧραι
μηνῶν φθινόντων, περὶ δ’ ἤματα μακρὰ τελέσθη,
καὶ τότε μ’ ἐκκαλέσαντες ἔφαν ἐρίηρες ἑταῖροι·
δαιμόνι’, ἤδη νῦν μιμνήσκεο πατρίδος αἴης,
To call this a reaction to an unreasonable or exaggerated action, seems, well, like an unreasonable or exaggerated statement.
I have a few more (ψ166, 174, 264, ξ443) but look at the end of the Iliad:
ἐς δ’ ἄλοχον Ἑκάβην ἐκαλέσσατο φώνησέν τε·
δαιμονίη Διόθεν μοι Ὀλύμπιος ἄγγελος ἦλθε
λύσασθαι φίλον υἱὸν ἰόντ’ ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν,
δῶρα δ’ Ἀχιλλῆϊ φερέμεν τά κε θυμὸν ἰήνῃ.
There is no sort of reaction of any sort here. This is pure tenderness and politeness.
The easiest case to make, I think, and I’m backed up by many readers, is that this is a polite word reserved for delicate situations. Emotional speech with a marriage partner. Speaking to a stranger, where it means something like “good sir”. It is distancing language, and as the scholia say, works very similarly to how θαυμάσιε is so often deployed by Plato.
I find it fascinating how we all have different associations for words. Until you had mentioned this association with nature it is not one that particularly occurred to me. Presumably the word that Wilson was translating was “οὐλόμενος” as in “μῆνιν…οὐλομένην”: “cataclysmic wrath”. Apart from the pleasing rhythm of the word it seems to me a good choice in that κατακλυσμός refers to a flood and is used figuratively to mean destruction. A flood overwhelms and sweeps all before it in much the same way as Achilles’ anger does in the Iliad. I think your association of ‘cataclysmic’ with nature is actually highly pertinent here. Achilles’ anger has an elemental quality and might be thought of (along with Achilles himself) as a “force of nature”. Achilles could not contain his anger and everybody suffered as a result.
Although you disliked the use of “cataclysmic” I think that your observation has in fact opened a deeper way for me to understand the opening lines.
As Wilson says there are lots of good versions of the Iliad and she is not seeking to replace them. I think any new transaction has a hard job to gain a foothold so we should give it a chance and perhaps not rush to swift adverse judgement.
Wilson, like most translators, doesn’t really translate οὐλομένη μῆνις. The word is the middle of ὄλλυμι, but “cataclysmic” or “destroying” or “destructive” would be like the active. The middle is more like a curse: we might say “damned” or “accursed” or “bloody”.
A scholium gives “ὡς ἐπὶ ἰδίοις δὲ ἀλγῶν δυσφημεῖ αὐτήν”. As if Homer swears at it feeling a private pain.
I rather dropped out of this discussion because I felt there might be a language problem (borne of my poor explanation of what I was trying to say) between us concerning whether Hector (or Indeed any go the other heroes) has any “choice”. Of course if he is going to live up to his heroic code he has no choice and things will unfold as they do. But if every time we read the Iliad we thought, well we know what is going to happen its all preordained, (whether Zeus’ plan or not), I feel that reduces the poem to a rather mechanistic level. For me there has to be an element of genuine choice.
If we can imagine that Hector could choose not to be Hector or Achilles, Achilles and that events turn out the way they do because of real choices they make, that rather raises the stakes.
The point I was trying to make about choice is that I see the heroes as human and full of agency. I can imagine a situation in which they make choices which are not those of the Iliad we read. This possibility makes their characters more real and full of tension.
I am returning to this because Emily Wilson appeared on the BBC “start the week” programme a week ago. at about 5 mins in the discussion touches on this point, that maybe this time we read the Iliad things turn out differently. Patroclus does not fight Hector or Hector somehow escapes. This possibility invests my reading with some urgency and hope which I feel the characters share. Achilles knows he is going to die but perhaps part of him wishes for something else.
You can listen to the programme here https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r18n
I found it very interesting. As a bonus one can hear Mary Beard on her new book about Emperors.
But I really do think that there’s a fundamental difference between Hector and Achilles. Hector is the more mature of the two by far, and this all the more surprising, because from the Greek point of view, he is the Enemy. By the end of the Iliad, Achilles does reach a maturity of sorts when he decides to return Hector’s corpse to Priam (and indeed this is one of the main themes of the work), but Hector is a responsible character right from the start. What would happen to Troy, if Hector didn’t lead its army to battle? In a city under siege, that certainly wouldn’t save his family from “almost-certain enslavement and death”, as Wilson seems to imply. I’d argue that Paris’ rather unheroic, even irresponsible behavior just before this passage is a foil to Hector, just like Achilles is but in other ways.
But thanks for the tip, I think I’ll listen to that if go out for a bike ride to the countryside tomorrow.