{"id":934033,"date":"2026-07-14T10:08:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/934033\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T10:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:08:20","slug":"emily-wilson-explains-why-the-odyssey-still-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/934033\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Wilson Explains Why The Odyssey Still Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated9 min read<\/p>\n

When Christopher Nolan was asked what captivated him about The Odyssey enough to make a film out of<\/a> the ancient Greek epic, he cited a relatively modern author. \u201cI think it\u2019s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, \u2018Tell me about a complicated man,\u2019 \u201d the filmmaker told Empire magazine<\/a> last November. \u201cThe genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He\u2019s not just a soldier. He\u2019s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of those things could be said of Emily Wilson<\/a> herself. The classics professor from the University of Pennsylvania crafted a new adaptation of Homer\u2019s 12,109-line poem<\/a> in 2017\u2014an effort that required strategy, wiles, cleverness, and inventiveness. Given that adaptation naturally means interpretation, Wilson also became an unwitting soldier in the battles that ensued over how she retold the story.<\/p>\n

But\u2014people were debating and engaging with a text that was thousands of years old. Something there must have resonated, and Wilson was credited with making the old story relevant again.<\/p>\n

She expected that it might sell only a few thousand copies, given how many other English-language adaptations were out there, dating back to George Chapman\u2019s from the early 1600s. But surprisingly, her take on The Odyssey became a blockbuster among booksellers, long before Nolan decided to make his blockbuster for the screen.<\/p>\n

Nolan\u2019s film has only galvanized more sales, although he penned his script based off many interpretations of Homer\u2019s tale, weaving in parts of Virgil\u2019s The Aeneid and Aeschylus\u2019s Agamemnon as well. Wilson told Esquire she has never spoken to Nolan\u2014but she hopes to someday.<\/p>\n

She told us what she\u2019d love to ask him, but it\u2019s clear she has a lot to say about The Odyssey herself and what that long-ago story has to teach us about ourselves right now.<\/p>\n

\"Translated<\/a><\/p>\n

ESQUIRE: One of the things that people praise about your book is that it makes <\/strong>The Odyssey<\/strong> feel accessible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

EMILY WILSON: <\/strong>I have definitely heard many, many versions of that. Their perception was that this was going to be hard. I mean, it is hard once you get deep into analyzing it and thinking it through, but it\u2019s not hard on the level of the sentence, the paragraph, the engagement of the story.<\/p>\n

This was never meant to be rarefied work for scholars. It was mass entertainment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to convey that quality of the original because the Homeric poems are obviously designed for oral performance out loud for audiences, many of whom may have been illiterate. It\u2019s not designed as the kind of poetry that you need to stop and look words up in the footnotes. It\u2019s designed to be propulsive, gripping entertainment with this amazing musicality and rhythm to the language.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favorite part of this story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m constantly just thinking, \u201cWow, this is so good. This is the best bit.\u201d But then the next day I realize, \u201cOh, no, this is the best bit.\u201d So it\u2019s a constant process for me. One of many possible examples is I love the complex depiction of \u201cWhat is a homecoming? What is a nostos, a journey home from war?\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there a part of that element you find particularly beautiful?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The geographical homecoming happens halfway through the poem. Odysseus, of course, has so many recognition scenes and reunion scenes with these characters back on Ithaca. The fact that Athena disguises Ithaca so that it\u2019s covered in fog\u2026 He doesn\u2019t recognize his own homeland when he comes back to it. I find that so moving and also so powerful.<\/p>\n

The boy in me loves book nine, when Odysseus starts telling all of his adventure stories, beginning with the excursion into the cave and the battle with the giant cyclops.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The eye sizzling on the stake. Love that!<\/p>\n

\"2024Roberto Ricciuti\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Emily Wilson, a classics professor from the University of Pennsylvania, was the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English.<\/p>\n

Yes! That\u2019s for the kid in me. But I\u2019ll be 50 soon, and the person I am now really loves the quiet, secret conversation with his wife Penelope when Odysseus gets home. She\u2019s waiting for him every day but doesn\u2019t recognize him when he finally arrives. I realized reading your book: He went away, but he actually <\/strong>never<\/strong> comes back. He is a different person then. When I look back at faraway times in my own life, <\/strong>that<\/strong> feels like a different person to me too. It\u2019s the notion of becoming a stranger to yourself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Odyssey is a poem all about time. It\u2019s all about time and memory. That is what Odysseus\u2019 journey back to Ithaca is. It\u2019s not just about changing where he is. It\u2019s also about: Can he be the self he was 20 years ago? I would argue that the poem shows us that going back in time or manipulating time is impossible for almost everyone. And yet if you have an Olympian deity on your side, maybe you can kind of get there.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not a C-minus student with my interpretation, professor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love what you said about your own experience of being very different now from ten years ago or 20 years ago. I certainly feel that before the pandemic I was a different person. Who was I before I had kids? It was a different person. But The Odyssey points out that even within a particular moment of your life, some people can be different in different contexts. Who am I now, talking to you, versus who am I when I\u2019m talking to my dog? I might be a different person.<\/p>\n

We can be different people not just from our old selves but in the present?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Odysseus is absolutely exceptional in his ability to be different for different people in different contexts. One of his superpowers is his multiplicity. He\u2019s able to be someone different when he\u2019s recognized by Eurycleia, the enslaved nurse, versus who he is when he\u2019s recognized by his dog, which was another of my possible top lists of best scenes in The Odyssey\u2014ever.<\/p>\n

Is this why the story has resonated for, what is it, 3,200 years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It depends whether we\u2019re counting from The Odyssey as we have it or the myths, which, for sure, are definitely much older. It\u2019s just so emotionally powerful. We\u2019ve already talked about time, memory, identity, but it\u2019s also about these deep themes of community. Who belongs where? It has the theme of outsiders and insiders\u2014and the responsibilities of hosts and the responsibilities of guests. What it means to be a stranger. All of those I find really moving themes, and The Odyssey is so good on all of it.<\/p>\n

\n

We\u2019re in a time of globalization, of new technologies, of new kinds of movement of peoples from one place to another. It\u2019s not surprising that there\u2019s renewed interest in this poem that was about those things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now the new Christopher Nolan film is on the way. Do you have plans to see it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to see it next week. I\u2019m very excited. Norton, who published my translations of Homer, are doing a screening in New York. So I\u2019m going to go for that. It\u2019s a day or two before it is hitting the cinemas. Many people have already seen it.<\/p>\n

But you have not seen it already, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t yet seen it. I\u2019m counting the days, counting the hours.<\/p>\n

Nolan has cited your book, but from what I gather, you two never had a conversation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve never had a conversation, no. I\u2019d be very glad to talk to him if he wants to give me a call.<\/p>\n

What would you like to talk about if you could?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would be really interested to hear more about his relationship with The Odyssey in terms of how often he\u2019s read it and in what context. I\u2019ll also be interested to watch out for themes that Christopher Nolan has always been interested in. His films are often about time and memory and a man on a quest to get back to a beloved woman. And then there are themes about complicated male heroes who are very often in some kind of rivalry with another man or other men. Themes of technology and cleverness and its discontents. All of those things are Odyssey themes but also Nolan themes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen Nolan reference your opening line about \u201cthe complicated man.\u201d The conclusion to that stanza is \u201cFind the beginning.\u201d What I find interesting about \u201ca complicated man\u201d and \u201cfind the beginning\u201d is the notion of trying get back to when things <\/strong>weren\u2019t<\/strong> so complicated. When things felt simpler.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love that close reading. In some ways, I absolutely see what you\u2019re saying. That search for \u201cWhere can I start this story?\u201d is also an acknowledgment that there are many possible starting points. Therefore it may be difficult or perhaps impossible to recover a simpler time or a simple protagonist. Maybe it\u2019s not there, if you have to search for it like that.<\/p>\n

When you were doing your translation, what were you working from? What are you looking at in terms of original text?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t do a whole reedition of the Greek text because that\u2019s a whole other project. So I worked primarily with the Oxford classical text. I look at other editions occasionally. Standard scholarly editions of the Homeric poems, as for other ancient texts, are based on both medieval manuscripts and also fragments of papyri, which are the earliest evidence about the text. But those are still centuries later than the actual production of the poems.<\/p>\n

\"spartanUniversal<\/p>\n

The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan has specifically cited Emily Wilson\u2019s translation of the epic poem as inspiration for his film.<\/p>\n

Where did they come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They were edited by scholars for the first time around the time of the Library of Alexandria, so in the Hellenistic period in the third and second centuries BCE. All modern editions are, in a sense, looking back to the editions that were collated by those scholars in that period.<\/p>\n

The Odyssey<\/strong> was not just recorded in a very different language from English, but it comes from such a long time ago that it\u2019s an entirely different way of thinking. How did you have to adapt your own mindset to create your version of the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously I\u2019ve been working on this poem for many, many years, and working on a translation is a way of trying to address that question, versus trying to study the poems as a scholar, as a critic, as a teacher. Of course, they all overlap with each other. \u2026 Hm, I\u2019m not sure where to start with it.<\/p>\n

Find the beginning, Emily. Find the beginning!<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs.] Find the beginning, okay, yes. It\u2019s about acknowledging the strangeness. You emphasize just how long ago this culture is. As a translator, one of the big things I needed to do was to immerse the reader in this very, very strange world. You can be aware of, wow, this is a world where slavery is completely normalized. Animal sacrifice? Completely normal. Goddesses popping up in the middle of everything? Totally normal. Yet you can have these moments of shock along with the startlingly familiar. Look at the intimacy of the son and the mother having an argument or the man sitting on the beach crying because he\u2019s so homesick.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t this story predate morality? <\/strong>The Odyssey<\/strong> feels like a story from a much more primitive, Darwinian time, where the strong prevail.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would challenge that. The Odyssey is actually really interested in social norms. The Iliad is also. It\u2019s absolutely a time before written laws, of course. And it\u2019s a time before the structures of the city-state, as they evolved a little bit later in Greek history.<\/p>\n

And before religion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a time with very extensive religious practices and religious beliefs. But of course the gods aren\u2019t the guarantors of morality in quite the way as modern Christianity.<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t giving down tablets with commandments, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Laughs.] Yeah, exactly. But The Odyssey is really interested in particular norms and what happens when they\u2019re violated. That\u2019s presented as really, really mattering\u2014and also being of great interest to Zeus.<\/p>\n

read more anthony breznican exclusives<\/p>\n

Are there particular events in society, in culture, in history, that send us back to this narrative? What tends to be happening in the world when people get interested again in <\/strong>The Odyssey<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s been this real interest in The Odyssey and The Iliad throughout the last four centuries of modernity. It\u2019s partly about the way that the world has opened up over the last few centuries, but even more in the 21st century. We\u2019re in a time of globalization, of new technologies, of new kinds of movement of peoples from one place to another. It\u2019s not surprising that there\u2019s renewed interest in this poem that was about those things.<\/p>\n

Was that happening too, back when the story originated thousands of years ago?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The eighth century BCE was preoccupied by those themes. It was a time when Greek speakers were migrating and colonizing in all kinds of places all around the Mediterranean world, beyond the Greek mainland. Our moment of globalization was, in a way, foreshadowed by that time in Archaic Greece.<\/p>\n

Sounds like we look to this story because we still have the same questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Odyssey is really engaged with this question of same and other. Of hospitality. Of the stranger. What does it mean to have multiple identities, multiple different places, and to endure over time\u2014or to change?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"9 min read When Christopher Nolan was asked what captivated him about The Odyssey enough to make a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":934034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,376595,3178,376594,1201,171,3181,311952,2875,259065,376593,365830,277636,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-934033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-collection-anthony-breznican-exclusives","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-d998d9ba-71a8-435d-8e1e-0b99970a79da","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-entertainment","tag-hasproduct-true","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-read_time-10","tag-shorttitle-how-one-woman-conquered-u003ciu003cemthe-odysseyu003c-emu003c-i","tag-sponsored-false","tag-subsection-movies","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116917786225864861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}