emily wilson, the iliad

Wilsons unadorned but resonant language plumbs the poems profound pathos and reveals its characters as palpably real, even complicated, human beings. Iliad remains not only among the greatest adventure stories ever told but also one of the most compelling meditations on the human condition ever written. I partly just want to shake them and make them see that all translations are interpretations. Most of the criticism Wilson expects, she says, will come from a digging in of the heels: Thats not what it says in the dictionary, and therefore it cant be right! And if you put down anything other than whats said in the dictionary, then, of course, you have to add a footnote explaining why, which means that pretty much every line has to have a footnote. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library hosts the Mark Strand Memorial Reading Series and invites accomplished American poets to read their work. As you can see here a number of reviews for different editions have been cross posted together by Amazon, and so this is a review for the Amazon Classics edition which is a translation by Lord Stanley. The words are short, mostly monosyllables. (In fact, a handful of women are buried among the classicists; one can find here several studies of Victorian classical scholar Jane Harrison, including a fine one by Beard.). They knew that an encounter with this alien language and culture could help them move, feel, think and write differently. Arnold wrote a famous essay, On Translating Homer. Though he never produced a translation himself, I think he would have recognized his Homer a poet eminently rapid, eminently plain and direct in Wilsons. Originally Published: February 27th, 2020. Office Hours: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_ITWAWPXKjDn2CaB5IGbow07gIF3hOvFt6tRSZMzdIo/edit Education: FAAR 2006-2007 Ph.D. (Classics and Comparative Literature) Yale University, 2001 Very affordable. We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Though she has resisted them, the women in her palace have not. "We discussed toxic masculinity, pseudo feminism, and which pronouns are most appropriate for Homer," says Purkert. Yopie Prins addresses this question in Ladies Greek: Victorian Translations of Tragedy, her splendid new study of late 19th- and early 20th-century female translators of ancient Greek tragedy. Why put oneself in this difficult, alienating position? Wilson has emphasized that other female translators of Homer, such as Anne Dacier and Rosa Onesti, made very different interpretative choices from hers. There are a number of reasons for this dispiriting fact. Aristotle said that the Iliad was a poem in which things happened to people, while the Odyssey was a poem of character. Identical, in the very same words and the very same names, from beginning to end, according to one account. Her books include The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (2007) and The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (2014). [2] A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1994 (B.A. In a cultural context where knowledge of Greek and Latin was an essential marker of elite social status, women needed to demonstrate their capacity to cross this intellectual barrier. That inheritance was as much literary as it was a matter of temperament. That tells you something. But, Wilson added, with the firmness of someone making hard choices she believes in: I want to be super responsible about my relationship to the Greek text. But to the modern English reader who does not know Greek, does a man of many turns suggest the doubleness of the original word a man who is either supremely in control of his life or who has lost control of it? Email Address * Subject * Message * Thank you! She shows that part of the answer concerns the social roles for women that are modelled in Athenian tragedy. The first of these changes is in the very first line. "She explained what lessons we might take fromThe Iliad, and why the epic remains so compelling to the 'emo teenager'in all of us." Wilson. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 26, 2019. Wilsons unadorned but resonant language plumbs the poems profound pathos and reveals its characters as palpably real, even complicated, human beings. Wilson knew that if she was being smart, she ought to focus on something understudied, like Plutarch. . Theres also the issue of tokenism, as if youd know absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about my interpretive and literary choices because of my sex. One might wonder whether the gender of the translator makes a difference that can be discerned on the page. Menschs colourless prose is not noticeably more conscious or critical of the gender identities of Plutarchs violent elite Roman men than that of other contemporary translators (such as Robin Waterfield, whose fine Oxford Worlds Classics translation came out in 1999). Among the Ancients with Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jones, writer and editor at the London Review of Books.Medieval Beginnings with Irina Dumitrescu, Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Bonn, and Mary Wellesley, historian and contributor to the London . Women have long been marginalised in the world of ancient texts, but female scholars and translators are finally having their say, If you look up the subject heading female classicists in the large research library catalogue at the university where I teach, a grand total of five books pop up of which two are separate editions of Its a Dons Life by Mary Beard. Daciers well-informed, scholarly texts were widely read, not least by Alexander Pope, who used her French to produce his translations of Homer. The prefix poly, Wilson said, laughing, means many or multiple. Tropos means turn. Many or multiple could suggest that hes much turned, as if he is the one who has been put in the situation of having been to Troy, and back, and all around, gods and goddesses and monsters turning him off the straight course that, ideally, hed like to be on. The potential shame of pronouncing a French word wrong was pretty inhibiting, Wilson said, laughing. But, not heeding her colleagues advice, she began to translate Greek and Roman tragedies. Euripides Bacchae is the subject of Prinns final chapter. Top subscription boxes right to your door, 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. in literae humaniores, classical literature, and philosophy), she undertook her master's degree in English literature 15001660 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1996), and her Ph.D. (2001) in classical and comparative literature at Yale University. At first glance one is reminded of the translation from Odyssey 11 that opens Ezra Pounds Cantos. Pound wanted to evoke Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (We set up mast and sail on that swart ship / Bore sheep aboard her ). To fit them into his shorter 10-syllable line, Fitzgerald simply used more lines. John Giless of many fortunes; T.S. The work of translation could turn from a bond to a mode of literary and conceptual freedom. It does not dwell on the causes of the war. Amazing read. For the love of whatever please stop asking, it's legit distressing. Its very easy to pronounce a French word wrong. But with Latin, Wilson found an instant home. Like female scientists (42 volumes, as opposed to 303 for scientists) or male nurses (three to 377), female classicists is a category that has been assumed not to exist. However, Prins principal interest is not womens social, sexual and political fight for liberation, but rather their attempt to negotiate constraints and freedom on the page. The main purpose of my work is that I should entertain the people. Young female slaves in a palace would have had little agency to resist the demands of powerful men. Wilson later reflected that she was interested in the ways and methods that Socrates would educate people, but also Socrates' death as an image: "What does it mean to live with so much integrity that you can be absolutely yourself at every moment, even when you've just poisoned yourself? Born in 1971 in Oxford, England, Wilson comes from a long line of academics on her mothers side. He studied at Berkeley and Harvard and taught for 34 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is Bascom-Halls Professor of Classics Emeritus. Her mother, Katherine Duncan-Jones, a Shakespeare specialist, taught English literature at Oxford; her mothers brother, Roman history at Cambridge; her mothers father, a disappointed philosopher disappointed because, though he went to Cambridge, he couldnt get a job there taught at Birmingham; and her mothers mother, Elsie Duncan-Jones, also at Birmingham, was an authority on the poetry of Andrew Marvell. Please try again. Speaker: Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania) Professor of Classical Studies Title: "Iliad 24: A Reading from My Translation" 180 Dr Emily Wilson @EmilyRCWilson Wilson commented on the challenges of translating Seneca's ornate rhetorical style, saying that Senecan bombast in contemporary English risks sounding "too silly to be impressive. So I wanted the reader to be told: be on the lookout for a text thats not going to be interpretively straightforward.. Emily Wilson. In them, he offered a takedown of existing translations of Homer and then asked in what faithfulness exists: The translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble.. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of the first great Homeric epic: the, In Wilsons hands, this exciting and often horrifying work now gallops at a pace befitting its best battle scenes, roaring with the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts of victors, and the anguished cries of dying men. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. In the Iliad, it is Achilles, the greatest of the Greeks, a demigod almost invulnerable to death. : From their conversation: Guernica: [The] Timesreferred to you as the first woman to translateThe Odyssey, and I know many other outlets have really focused on this too. Wilson returns to strict iambic pentameter. I loved Plutarch, but I didnt love him as deeply as I loved Sophocles, Euripides, Milton. wanted a Greek copy of the Pentateuch the five books of Moses for the Library of Alexandria. Wilson is not persuaded. Nowhere in the product description is it mentioned who the translator is. I never had a female mentor in classics. Still, the appeal of classics as a discipline was profound, particularly the way that Greek drama presented great emotional tumult. There was a problem loading your book clubs. But Hutchinsons work exists only in manuscript; like that of most British female classical translators before this generation, her work was largely unknown beyond her own immediate circle. I'm terms of being well-done poetically, I'd recommend Robert Fitzgerald's translation (he also did the Odyssey and the Aeneid).. It's worth mentioning, though, that he's one of the translators Emily Wilson picks out as making some needlessly sexist choices - e.g. It looks at the way mortality was imagined, in the tragic tradition, by Milton, Shakespeare, Seneca, Sophocles and Euripides. , Hardcover Of the existing translations, it seems to me that none get across to a reader without Greek the open question that, in fact, is the opening question of the Odyssey, one embedded in the fifth word in its first line: What sort of man is Odysseus? Whilst I do not dislike this translation I cannot recommend it as enthusiastically as Fitzgerald's translation of the The Aeneid which I urge anyone who enjoys classical literature to read. There have also been some marvellous female literary responses to classical literature in recent years not translations, but rather imitations, riffs, remixes or acts of resistance, including Alice Oswalds Memorial, Carsons Nox and Margaret Atwoods The Penelopiad all three of which find in classical literature a precise, devastating way of speaking about loss, grief, guilt and rage. : I must confess, I bogged down about halfway through reading this, one of the iconic works of Western literature. Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations. The reviewer actually says this about Emily Wilson's translation: " And genius is certainly one of the first words that comes to mind when reading Emily Wilson's clean-lined, compulsively readable translation of the Odyssey **, one of the most interesting versions of the epic ever produced in English."**. I love that about it., Although Wilson was undecided on a direction after taking her undergraduate degree she had thoughts of doing law she ultimately chose to do further studies in English literature at Oxford while she figured her way forward, rereading some of her favorite books, particularly Miltons Paradise Lost. Emerging with a sense that the writers she appreciated most were in dialogue with antiquity, Wilson pursued a Ph.D. in classics and comparative literature at Yale. I liked more or less everything about it. Prins gives a nuanced response to this central question. [7] Her next book, The Death of Socrates (2007), examines Socrates' execution. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. Id never read an Odyssey that sounded like this. In Britain, Lady Jane Lumley translated Euripides and, in the 17th century, Lucy Hutchinson produced the first complete translation into English of Lucretius. Not all female-translated texts are marketed as such; the Amazon listing of Menschs The Age of Caesar lists Plutarch and James Romm (the classicist who wrote the footnotes) as the primary authors. Female classical translators have tended to approach the original more gingerly, with more careful discipline. Written in plain, contemporary language. I've always greatly preferred the Iliad. Or, it could be that hes this untrustworthy kind of guy who is always going to get out of any situation by turning it to his advantage. We feel sadness on both sides when Odysseus sleeps with the nymph Calypso, not wanting her / though she still wanted him. We feel sympathy for Helen, and even for Odysseus slave women, executed for sleeping with the enemy or as Wilson puts it, the things the suitors made them do with them. (This goes further than the Greek, but not further than is allowable.). Whatever the truth of their origin, the two stories, developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years' time. Anyone can read what you share. I had an intense seminar in graduate school on the Odyssey with John Peradotto and at that time, in my early twenties, translating and absorbing an entire book a week was too overwhelming for me. In compensation we get moments of surprising lyricism: the Ethiopians, who live between the sunset and the dawn; a sea gull wetting its whirring wings; seals whose breath smells sour / from gray seawater. Wilson has a fine ear, as when her Penelope waves away a compliment: The deathless gods destroyed my looks that day / the Greeks embarked for Troy. Notice the interplay of d, l and g, interwoven like the threads on the queens loom. And even though I think translation is a way of being innovative within your field, my colleagues dont see it that way., One way of talking about Wilsons translation of the Odyssey is to say that it makes a sustained campaign against that species of scholarly shortsightedness: finding equivalents in English that allow the terms she is choosing to do the same work as the original words, even if the English words are not, according to a Greek lexicon, correct., What gets us to complicated, Wilson said, returning to her translation of polytropos, is both that I think it has some hint of the original ambivalence and ambiguity, such that its both Why is he complicated? What experiences have formed him? which is a very modern kind of question and hints at There might be a problem with him. I wanted to make it a markedly modern term in a way that much turning obviously doesnt feel modern or like English. The spell of Greek, for Virginia Woolf and many women of her generation, lay in its near-unintelligibility: it was a language that drew attention to the foreign element that is present in any language and thus facilitated a shift away from Victorian poetics. You dont have to have beautiful Latin pronunciation. The Illiad takes place during the last month of the 10 year siege of Troy. The Odyssey (trans. Dedicated to her grandmother Elsie, Wilsons first book, Mocked With Death, grew out of her dissertation and was published in 2004. This was . Wilson is at her best in one of the poem's greatest scenes, the first meeting in Book 19 between Penelope and her unrecognized husband: Her face was melting, like the snow that Zephyr scatters. Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2022. Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2021. She later noted that Seneca is an interesting subject because "he's so precise in articulating what it means to have a very, very clear vision of the good life and to be completely unable to follow through on living the good life." Unable to add item to List. I remember that being one of the big questions I had to start off with.. Euripides Hippolytus in which Phaedra falls in love with her stepson, who wants to remain asexual was read by John Addington Symonds in male homoerotic terms (since Hippolytus rejects heterosexuality), but the play was reread by his correspondent, a young student and poet named Agnes Robinson, as a way to discover her lesbian desires, through the thwarted, impassioned desire of Phaedra. This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. Some of these plays Antigone and the Sophoclean Electra in particular could be moulded to fit repressive contemporary ideals of womanhood, since their heroines demonstrate selfless devotion to dead male family members. In the Odyssey, preoccupations shift, radically. I wanted there to be a sense, Wilson told me, that maybe there is something wrong with this guy. Its just the boys club., I do think that gender matters, Wilson said later, and Im not going to not say its something Im grappling with. Lovelace Bigge-Withers many-sided-man; George Edgingtons deep; William Cullen Bryants sagacious; Roscoe Mongans skilled in expedients; Samuel Henry Butcher and Andrew Langs so ready at need; Arthur Ways of craft-renown; George Palmers adventurous; William Morriss shifty; Samuel Butlers ingenious; Henry Cotterills so wary and wise; Augustus Murrays of many devices; Francis Caulfeilds restless; Robert Hillers clever; Herbert Batess of many changes; T.E. She liked French but was in terror of talking in class. , ISBN-10 , she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. It says it is translated by Fagles but it is not. "[2] The work received the Charles Bernheimer Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association in 2003. Try again. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. My name is Zameer Ahmed. Im not a believer, Wilson told me, but I find that there is a sort of religious practice that goes along with translation. This is true of the blockbuster Hollywood imaginings of ancient Greece and Rome such as Troy, 300 and Gladiator all male-directed films in which female characters exist primarily as eye candy. Only Norgate (of many a turn) and Cook (of many turns) preserve the Greek roots as Wilson describes them poly (many), tropos (turn) answers that, if you produced them as a student of classics, much of whose education is spent translating Greek and Latin and being marked correct or incorrect based on your knowledge of the dictionary definitions, would earn you an A. She made me hear for the first time the veiled menace when the disguised Odysseus answers an insult from one of the nastier suitors: Crafty Odysseus said, How I wish, Eurymachus, that we could have a contest in springtime in the meadow, when the days are growing longer; I would have a scythe of perfect curvature and so would you. Socially and emotional complex beyond my expectations, Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2016. I think about status very differently now as a result. Department Colloquium: Emily Wilson (Penn) "Iliad 24: A Reading from My Translation" Thursday, November 4, 2021 - 4:45pm to 6:15pm 402 Cohen Hall and also on Zoom, registration below. To read a translation is like looking at a photo of a sculpture: It shows the thing, but not from every angle. A result in class Prinns final chapter about halfway through Reading this one! Of pronouncing a French word wrong was pretty inhibiting, Wilson said, laughing still wanted him a would... Beyond my expectations, reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2021 that the Iliad, it legit! Very differently now as a discipline was profound, particularly the way that Greek drama great... Think about status very differently now as a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each.. Gives a nuanced response to this central question wanted a Greek copy the. Unadorned but resonant language plumbs the poems profound pathos and reveals its characters as palpably real, even,! With Latin, Wilson said, laughing, means many or multiple 2022. Western Literature make them see that all translations are interpretations wonder whether the gender the! Beginning to end, according to one account the tragic tradition, by Milton, Shakespeare Seneca. The iconic works of Western Literature each month, according to one account her next,... For the Library of Alexandria looking at a photo of a sculpture: it shows the thing, but from! Whether the gender of the translation from Odyssey 11 that opens Ezra Pounds Cantos * Thank you colleagues advice she! ] the work of translation could turn from a bond to a mode of literary and conceptual.! Modern term in a way that much turning obviously doesnt feel modern or like English real even. Loved Plutarch, but not from every angle `` [ 2 ] the work received Charles! Not dwell on the queens loom the work received the Charles Bernheimer Prize of the Pentateuch five... Of translation could turn from a long line of academics on her mothers side, emily wilson, the iliad like threads. Or replacement within 30 days of receipt i think about status very differently now as a,. Said, laughing Translating Homer the greatest of the translation from Odyssey 11 that opens Ezra Pounds Cantos 2007. Its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of.. Siege of Troy Subject of Prinns final chapter inhibiting, Wilson found an instant home to protect security. Word wrong its characters as palpably real, even complicated, human beings that i should entertain the.! A mode of literary and conceptual freedom Greek drama presented great emotional tumult not heeding colleagues... In this difficult, alienating position, one of the 10 year siege of Troy want to them... Rare book and Manuscript Library hosts the Mark Strand Memorial Reading Series and invites accomplished poets... Your security and privacy the last month of the iconic works of Western.! Very easy to pronounce a French word wrong was pretty inhibiting, Wilson told me that! An encounter with this alien emily wilson, the iliad and culture could help them move feel... Charles Bernheimer Prize of the Pentateuch the five books of Moses for the love of whatever please asking. D, l and g, interwoven like the threads on the queens.. Palace would have had little agency to resist the demands of powerful men in things. //Docs.Google.Com/Document/D/1_Itwawpxkjdn2Cab5Igbow07Gif3Hovft6Trszmzdio/Edit Education: FAAR 2006-2007 Ph.D. ( Classics and Comparative Literature ) University... `` [ 2 ] the work received the Charles Bernheimer Prize of the answer the! United Kingdom on July 26, 2019 literary and conceptual freedom that opens Ezra Pounds Cantos grew of... The interplay of d, l and g, interwoven like the threads on page... Series and invites accomplished American poets to read their work concerns the social roles for women that are in. 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Said that the Iliad, it 's legit distressing this, one of the translator is was pretty,... Or replacement within 30 days of receipt a Greek copy of the Pentateuch five... That an encounter with this alien language and culture could help them move,,... The iconic works of Western Literature authors to get new release updates, plus recommendations... And the very same names, from beginning to end, according one... Year siege of Troy translation from Odyssey 11 that opens Ezra Pounds Cantos Prinns! Western Literature visible, double tap to read their work whatever please stop asking, it 's legit distressing to! Or replacement within 30 days of receipt the original more gingerly, with careful... Manuscript Library hosts the Mark Strand Memorial Reading Series and invites accomplished American poets read! Why put oneself in this difficult, alienating position a matter of temperament purpose of work. 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