has cited<\/a> Wilson\u2019s work as one of many inspirations for his forthcoming film \u2014 specifically her version of the opening line, \u201cTell me about a complicated man.\u201d I talked to Wilson about the upcoming adaptation, the political controversies surrounding both her work and the movie, and why people get so heated when it comes to The Odyssey.<\/p>\nWhat is the job of a translator of Ancient Greek as you see it?<\/strong>
The English language has never coexisted with Ancient Greek. The Homeric poems have been translated into English and other vernacular languages for only the past 400 years. Translation is a very mysterious thing because my goal is to create something that\u2019s deeply equivalent but uses zero of the same words. Acknowledging the difficulty of that helps you get your head around the fact that there are several responsible ways to do translation. Any kind of text is going to have several elements to it, including the sound of the style, the semantic meaning of the language, and, in the case of a poem like The Odyssey, the meter. Every language, not just ancient to modern, has different syntax and a different natural word order. There were a huge number of macroscopic questions as I started: Am I going to use meter? What kind of register am I going to use?<\/p>\nHow would you describe your style as a translator?<\/strong>
On one level, I want to be a chameleon. I\u2019ve published translations of several different ancient poets as well as the Homeric poems. I don\u2019t want them all to sound the same. There\u2019s a density of literary allusion in the Tragedies of Seneca that isn\u2019t there in the Homeric poems. One of my top priorities was to use traditional meter. There was no such thing as free verse until the late 19th century. The modern norm of using free verse to translate metrical originals is debatable, and I wanted to offer something different. The second big priority was to lean into the fact that this text has multiple points of view. I want that to be audible in the translation.<\/p>\nWhat was your goal in translating The Odyssey and The Iliad?<\/strong>
An editor at Norton wanted a new translation and asked me to consider doing it. I would never have done it on my own, but once I talked to the editor, I reflected on what I have trouble getting across to students in the classroom. Most translations from the 20th and 21st century use free verse, and I can tell students until I\u2019m blue in the face that this is actually a poem, it has rhythm, and if you read it out loud it has a music to it. But then I show them the translation and it creates a weird experience in the classroom where they have to take something on faith rather than experiencing the text. Also, one of the big themes of Homeric scholarship over the past few decades has been the flexibility of the narrative perspectives in the original poems and the subtlety of the narrative shifts. A lot of the translations I\u2019ve used for my students flatten that multivocality.<\/p>\n ![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9f3e39958b08657fbb1507f9a3a84a286d-emilywilson.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n The Odyssey and The Iliad translator Emily Wilson.
\n Photo: Roberto Ricciuti\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a sense reading your translation, especially versus other translations, that it\u2019s more accessible, with simpler language. High-school students could read this without needing to spend time interpreting the text\u2019s direct meaning. Was that an intentional choice?<\/strong>
Yes. It\u2019s not that I think syntactical simplicity is something to aim for in itself. Homeric Greek is not dense language; it has this syntactical clarity. Matthew Arnold, in the 19th century, famously said the qualities of Homer are the plainness, the rapidity, and the nobility. I wanted to evoke those qualities syntactically. If you learn Ancient Greek, you can read Homer in the second year. You definitely can\u2019t read Pindar, but you can read Homer. I want the reading task not to be harder than the original is for someone who\u2019s fluent in the language. I don\u2019t think struggling to figure out where the main verb is in the sentence is interesting work. The poem has other emotional, psychological, scene-setting depths.<\/p>\nThere is something stereotypically masculine about the kind of chest-pumping, overly stylish translations of your predecessors.\u00a0<\/strong>
I\u2019m really skeptical about any gender essentialism on that. Other women have published translations of Homer into Italian and into other languages I can\u2019t read. I\u2019ve read some of the French translation by Anne Dacier from the 17th century, and it\u2019s fairly loquacious. Could you pick the translations of The Odyssey by a woman out of a lineup? Absolutely not. But journalists wanted it to be about that. I get that you\u2019re trying to create a story, but I just don\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\nThere was also a negative response from readers who were angry at your translation. How did you approach that?<\/strong>
It isn\u2019t really about my translation. It\u2019s a stand-in for a whole lot of made-up culture-war things. The people who are getting angry haven\u2019t spent years studying Homeric Greek. There are people who have conspiratorial ideas about how professionals don\u2019t know anything: Here\u2019s this Ivy League professor; she obviously doesn\u2019t know as much as me and I did my own research. That\u2019s one element of the culture war. There\u2019s a lot of anxiety about gender, race, and whiteness tied to the discourse about greatness. I don\u2019t think any of that has anything to do with me, but somehow people have latched on to this. I think it\u2019s because the coverage of my translation, when it came out in 2017, had the word woman in the headline. People get threatened by that.<\/p>\nWhat was it like to find yourself in the middle of the culture war?<\/strong>
It\u2019s very weird. There\u2019s a whole new resurgence of the culture war with the Christopher Nolan movie coming up. I thought it had all died down. I try to remind myself quite regularly that it has nothing to do with me because I genuinely believe it\u2019s this strange cultural phenomenon. After I published the Odyssey translation, it was both celebrated in quite simplistic ways as a work of girl power and it also faced backlash. I thought, Maybe this is actually useful as I engage with this epic poem that is so much about shame, blame, glory, celebrity, eternal fame, and the vulnerabilities of fame that can be generated by other people\u2019s discourse. So I sort of tried to translate it into helping me imaginatively as I was thinking through how the Iliad\u2019s version of celebrity is similar and different to the very fraught culture wars of today. At least I\u2019m not getting speared in the eyeball. That\u2019s great.<\/p>\nWith Nolan\u2019s movie coming up, I was wondering what you see as the relationship between translation and adaptation?<\/strong>
There can be gray areas. Anne Carson sometimes does translations that are closer to an adaptation than a straight translation. I know Christopher Nolan read several translations, including mine, and it probably contributed to the movie.<\/p>\nHe specifically cited your opening line, \u201cTell me about a complicated man,\u201d as a reference point for him. What do you think drew him to your opener?<\/strong>
It\u2019s evoking the ambivalence of a narrator\u2019s perspective on the protagonist and what kind of poem this will be. It\u2019s not going to be straightforward, and it\u2019s going to be interesting for that very reason. You\u2019re not going to get bored because this is a character who will be constantly transforming himself just as the narrative of the poem will be constantly transforming itself.<\/p>\nWhat was your response when you heard the movie was happening?<\/strong>
It\u2019s wonderful because it means there are going to be both more general readers and potentially more students who will be excited about Ancient Greek literature. I hope some of them will sign up for Ancient Greek, where the enrollments are always borderline in trouble.<\/p>\nDid that happen after the release of Troy in 2004?<\/strong>
There was a jump. Not so much with the Ancient Greek classes, but the big gen-ed classes, like Intro to Greek or Roman Myth, definitely see an enrollment spike. I honestly didn\u2019t love Troy, but the special effects and Brad Pitt in a skirt were fun. This is going to be the same kind of thing. It\u2019s going to have lots of interesting things to discuss, and it will get new audiences engaged with the IP.<\/p>\nDid Nolan reach out to you to discuss the story?<\/strong>
No, he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\nIs there anything you feel protective of or worried about with the story?\u00a0<\/strong>
It\u2019s not my story. People can do whatever they like with it. The Odyssey has been reinvented more times than you can count already. In a way, Nolan is in the long tradition of Homer being dramatically adapted for the stage. Euripides\u2019 Helen is a really weird riff on the Odyssey and Iliad where Helen never went to Troy at all. Nolan\u2019s not going to do that.<\/p>\nHave you followed the online discourse about the film so far?<\/strong>
It\u2019s made-up controversy. Nobody\u2019s seen this movie. It\u2019s just the usual triggers about race and gender, and I just find it very tedious.<\/p>\nHas this reignited the controversies surrounding you and your translation?<\/strong>
I added a \u201cmisogynistic trolling\u201d button to my website! Most of the time, I can avoid it by avoiding social media and it\u2019s fine. But I get the occasional email.<\/p>\nSome people were mad at Tom Holland\u2019s Telemachus saying \u201cdad\u201d in the trailer because it seems so modern. What\u2019s your take on that?<\/strong>
The movie is be composed in English, which is not actually the same language as Greek. It\u2019s also, as we can tell already from the trailers, not composed in metrical poetry. That\u2019s okay. I actually think it\u2019s quite rare for a Hollywood movie to use pentameter in the script. There are several words for \u201cfather\u201d in Greek, and there are intimate words, like t\u00e1ta, which is equivalent to daddy. It exists. Telemachus doesn\u2019t address Odysseus by the intimate word for father. He does use that word for the enslaved father figure. Nolan is making a different choice than the Homeric narrator makes in terms of who Telemachus has that bond with.<\/p>\nNolan has also double cast Lupita N\u2019yongo as both Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, which people are angry about in a baseline racist way. What do you think of the dual casting?<\/strong>
They\u2019re sisters who are counterparts to their cousin Penelope. We have this trio of elite women who are the representatives of what an elite wife could be like in the absence of her husband during war. Does she just stay immobilized in the household like Penelope? Does she invite a lover to her bed like Clytemnestra? Or does she go off with her lover like Helen? The poem is presenting Helen and Clytemnestra who parallel both each other and, in a mirror image way, Penelope in her marriage to Odysseus. Of course, Clytemnestra is offstage in The Odyssey. She\u2019s referred to, but we don\u2019t ever get a big scene beyond Agamemnon\u2019s version of his death and complaining about what his wife did to him.<\/p>\nElliot Page also stars in the movie, in a part that\u2019s still unclear. Of course, right-wing critics are mad that a trans person is in the movie. Is there precedence for transness in Greek myth?<\/strong>
The Odyssey is not a historical document. But within the world of Greek myth, transness exists. I think it\u2019s unlikely that Elliot Page is Tiresias because he\u2019s too young, but Tiresias in the world of myth encountered two snakes copulating and got turned from a man into a woman and then encountered the same snakes and got turned back again. His prophetic abilities and insight into the divine are partly from having experienced both life as a woman and life as a man.<\/p>\nWhy do you think people feel such ownership of The Odyssey?<\/strong>
I find it quite baffling. It\u2019s people who don\u2019t care about the poem, yet when it comes to this culture-war internet discourse, they perform anger about it and a protectiveness of it. It has to do with an idea of a totally stable notion of greatness and masculinity: My identity as a man taps into this tradition, and the tradition has always been this way, and my imagined idea about ancient literature confirms that. Anything that challenges that interpretation of what ancient history is threatens their identity in terms of their gender and racial identities.<\/p>\nIn your forthcoming book, you talk about your translation of the story of the Sirens, whom previous translators have sexualized but whom you don\u2019t. You made an interjection into the world of translation. Is that a fair summation?<\/strong>
I only realized after my translation was published how many previous translators had done what I see as an interjection: Giving the Sirens these luscious, plump lips from which they sing as if they\u2019re mermaids as opposed to the scary bird mouths that will devour you with this song that\u2019s about the desire to know everything. I\u2019m actually not interjecting; I\u2019m pushing back against an interjection. It\u2019s similar with the language of \u201csluts\u201d or \u201cwhores,\u201d which is often used in other translations when Telemachus hangs the 12 women who have served the suitors and then chops the limbs off the one enslaved man. The original doesn\u2019t use derogatory language during that scene, but quite a lot of translators put it in to make sense of the scene from a modern perspective. This ancient poem isn\u2019t interested in scolding women for their sexuality, but in the establishment of honor in the elite household.<\/p>\nLooking at those two changes, it seems to me that your translation has a feminist function, whether it\u2019s intentional or not.<\/strong>
I think the bar should be higher for feminist translation. There are people whose project that is.<\/p>\nHow would you describe the work of pushing back against those kinds of misogynist interjections found in other translations?<\/strong>
It is not anti-feminist, but that\u2019s a different thing. There are translators who just translate women authors as a deliberate feminist move. That\u2019s a very different thing.<\/p>\nI\u2019m curious about what it would look like to make a feminist version of The Odyssey. It seems that could be a helpful framework to have ahead of Nolan\u2019s movie.<\/strong>
I\u2019ve been watching a lot of Nolan movies in preparation for all of this, and it seems to me that we don\u2019t know what the script\u2019s going to be like. If it\u2019s the usual Nolan plot of \u201cA guy is on a quest far from home and struggling to get back to an objectified female character,\u201d then I\u2019m not sure I see that plot as inherently particularly feminist. But who knows? Maybe he\u2019s going to do some different version of that. It would be useful to think about Madeline Miller\u2019s novel Circe. It takes a single episode from The Odyssey and makes the minor female goddess character, Circe, the primary character in the whole thing. That novel is a feminist retelling of The Odyssey because it\u2019s blowing up the original plot. The Odyssey itself is not a female-centered story. Despite having some amazing female actors, I don\u2019t think Nolan\u2019s going to do a female-centered story, either.<\/p>\nNolan\u2019s movies are often perceived as having problems with female characters being flat compared with the male characters. Do you see that?<\/strong>
Totally. Yes, I do see that.<\/p>\nAre there female characters you\u2019re particularly interested in seeing how he adapts?<\/strong>
I\u2019m interested in the degree to which Odysseus and Penelope\u2019s heteronormative marriage at the center of the narrative is presented as idealized from both partners\u2019 perspectives. It seems to me that, in the original poem, we\u2019re shown how difficult it is for Penelope to be in the elite wife position. We get this amazing sequence at the end of Book 19 where she tells\u00a0her disguised husband a story of how she dreamed there were geese in the yard and an eagle swooped down and killed her geese, and in the dream she was crying. The eagle explains, \u201cActually, I\u2019m Odysseus. I came back and killed all the suitors. Yay, great.\u201d Odysseus then mansplains the dream and says, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be fine.\u201d She says, \u201cBut dreams don\u2019t all come true. Maybe it\u2019s more ambivalent than you\u2019re saying.\u201d It seems to me that passage invites us to think the killing of the suitors isn\u2019t a great thing for Penelope. He establishes glory, but the marriage bed means something different for both of them. She repeatedly says this bed and my face are marked by my tears. The poem is subtle about the fact that Penelope is quite unhappy, including when he comes back. I\u2019m not sure if Nolan\u2019s going to present it as if they\u2019re back together, so \u2026 great for both of them!<\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n
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