In her translation of ‘The Odyssey,’ Emily Wilson aimed for ‘a crystalline clarity’

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day – "In her translation of ‘The Odyssey,’ Emily Wilson aimed for ‘a crystalline clarity’"

Date: September 16, 2025
Host: Andrew Limbong
Guest: Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania

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Episode Overview

This episode highlights the groundbreaking translation of Homer's Odyssey by Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate the epic into English. In a conversation with NPR's Lauren Frayer (originally aired in 2018), Wilson discusses her motivations, translation choices, and the relevance of The Odyssey today. The episode features a comparison between well-known translations, insights into the translation process, and reflections on key themes like identity, homecoming, and social hierarchy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Emily Wilson’s First Encounter with The Odyssey

[02:14–02:46]

• Wilson recalls her introduction to The Odyssey as a child, playing Athena in a school play, which involved costumes and papier-mâché masks. She reminisces about the joy of acting as a guide for Odysseus:

  “I had a helmet which I loved wearing, and I got to be Athena and I got to pretend to be guiding Odysseus to blind the cyclops who was played by the headmaster.” (Emily Wilson, 02:23)

Personal Reflection and the Theme of Identity

[02:46–03:27]

• Wilson connects her childhood experience to the epic’s central concern with identity, change, and time:

  “The Odyssey itself is very much interested in whether somebody specifically Odysseus can be the same person over time and space...I definitely thought about that in relation to my own life...” (Emily Wilson, 02:55)

Comparing Translations: Fagles vs. Wilson

[03:27–04:16]

• The podcast presents the opening lines of The Odyssey in both Robert Fagles’s and Wilson’s translation.
• Wilson’s version is marked by its directness and clarity:

  “Tell me about a complicated man, Muse. Tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy...” (Emily Wilson, 03:55)

• Host Lauren Frayer remarks on the accessibility and contemporary feel.

Aim for “Crystalline Clarity”

[04:16–05:28]

• Wilson discusses her deliberate choice of plain, clear, direct English, aiming to reflect the original Greek’s clarity and rhythm—while using iambic pentameter and matching the line count:

  “What I wanted to do was have something of what I see in the original, which is a crystalline clarity...I wanted to have a sense of the muse can speak directly to the people.” (Emily Wilson, 04:31) “My version is iambic pentameter. And it also has a speed which matches the speed of the original...” (Emily Wilson, 05:15)

Handling Repetitive Formulae: Homeric Epithets

[05:28–06:54]

• On rendering famous recurring phrases like “rosy-fingered dawn” and formulaic actions, Wilson sought to communicate both repetition and variation:

  “I wanted readers to have a very clear sense that there is a formulaicness to the storytelling...But I also wanted to be truthful about the fact that we are literate people...So I wanted to include the formulaic elements, but vary them in different ways.” (Emily Wilson, 05:42)

• Regarding Odysseus’s many attributes:

  “Odysseus has multiple different epithets applied to him...he’s many minded, much turning...I bring out the multiplicity by a variety of word choice as well as by the formulaicness of repeating...” (Emily Wilson, 06:37)

Social Themes: Slavery, War, and Social Structures

[06:54–08:18]

• Wilson aimed to make explicit the realities of slavery in the text, choosing accurate terms over euphemisms:

  “Your translation calls a slave a slave, not a maid or a housekeeper…Are you trying to be closest to the original meaning or to how we understand those topics now in modern life?” “...the word slave doesn’t come up [in previous translations]...In the Greek, for instance, the word or demo, it means somebody who’s been subdued or overpowered. And so clearly it suggests slave...most translations completely obscure that...” (Emily Wilson, 07:14) “I wanted people to be able to see what exactly are the social structures in this poem.” (Emily Wilson, 08:05)

Relevance of The Odyssey Today

[08:18–10:10]

• On why The Odyssey matters now, Wilson ties the poem’s themes to contemporary issues of home, identity, exclusion, and belonging:

  “It’s a poem about Nostos, which is the Greek word for homecoming...homecoming also involves reforging all his relationships...So this whole question of whether one person’s belonging means the exclusion of other people or whether we can have an inclusive or an exclusive notion of what a home is, I think that’s a super important question right now, and it’s super important in the poem.” (Emily Wilson, 08:31)

• Wilson reflects on gender, conservatism, poverty, the treatment of foreigners, and domestic violence as themes with modern resonance:

  “I think it’s also a poem which is really interesting about poverty and social hierarchies…And about how we should treat foreigners and those whose cultures are different from ours in a increasingly globalized society...this is a poem whose climax is a huge massacre...in a domestic space. And of course, we’re all thinking right now about domestic massacres as well.” (Emily Wilson, 09:42)

Memorable Moments

• The “a B comparison” of Fagles’s and Wilson’s translations highlights the shift in style and accessibility in Wilson’s approach.
• Wilson’s childlike delight in acting Athena underscores her lifelong connection to the material.
• The conversation repeatedly ties the ancient epic’s questions to modern-day dilemmas around identity, migration, and belonging.

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Selected Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On translating for clarity:

  “What I wanted to do was have something of what I see in the original, which is a crystalline clarity...”
  (Emily Wilson, 04:31)

• On formulaic repetition in Homer:

  “I wanted readers to have a very clear sense that there is a formulaicness to the storytelling...But I also wanted to be truthful about the fact that we are literate people. We're not actually living in a pre literate society. So when we encounter exact repetition as opposed to partial repetition, we tend to zone out and think that's a cliché.”
  (Emily Wilson, 05:42)

• On rendering the realities of slavery:

  “In the Greek...the word or demo, it means somebody who’s been subdued or overpowered. And so clearly it suggests slave...most translations completely obscure that by making them housekeepers, servants of different kinds. So I wanted people to be able to see what exactly are the social structures in this poem.”
  (Emily Wilson, 07:14)

• On the relevance of homecoming:

  “Odysseus comes home...But he isn’t. The nostos isn’t complete. He isn’t yet home. There’s still another 12 books to go. Because homecoming also involves reforging all his relationships...So this whole question of whether one person’s belonging means the exclusion of other people or whether we can have an inclusive or an exclusive notion of what a home is, I think that’s a super important question right now, and it’s super important in the poem.”
  (Emily Wilson, 08:31)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• [02:14] Emily Wilson’s childhood connection to The Odyssey
• [03:27] Reading & contrasting opening lines (Fagles vs. Wilson)
• [04:31] Discussion of translation philosophy (“crystalline clarity”)
• [05:42] Handling Homeric epithets and formulaic repetition
• [07:14] On translating “slavery” and exposing social structures
• [08:31] Thematic relevance of the epic in modern times

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Tone & Style

The conversation is accessible, thoughtful, and scholarly while remaining lively and engaging. Wilson is reflective, precise, and keen to connect ancient text to modern readers' realities. The tone balances respect for classical tradition with an insistence on contemporary clarity and relevance.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Today in our Back to School series, we're going to talk about the Odyssey. Unfortunately, we do not have an interview with Homer in our archives, but we did talk to Emily Wilson in 2018 when she became the first woman to translate the epic poem into English. Since then, the translation has become a hot button topic. If you follow the drama going along in classics departments and in this interview with NPR's Lauren Frayer, they they do an a B comparison with Wilson's version and a previous translation. And Wilson says what she was going for above accessibility was clarity. That's after the break.

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[D]

Of the Man Muse, the man of twists and turns. Remember reading those lines in high school? It's the Odyssey. And nearly three millennia on, there are hundreds of translations of Homer's epic, but only now do we have a translation into English done by a woman. Her name is Emily Wilson. She's a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and she joins us now from the studios of our member station whyy. Welcome, Emily.

[E]

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for your hospitality.

[D]

How did you first encounter the Odyssey? I read that you played Athena in a childhood play.

[E]

Yes, I did.

[D]

Tell us about that.

[E]

It was a lovely experience. So when I was a shy, unhappy 8 year old in a new school, and the new school was wonderful because they put on a production of the Odyssey for eight year olds which involved a lot of costumes, papier mache masks. I had a helmet which I loved wearing, and I got to be Athena and I got to pretend to be guiding Odysseus to blind the cyclops who was played by the headmaster.

[D]

So when you started working on this project, did your mind go back to that eight year old girl in a toga in the classroom?

[E]

I think the Odyssey itself is very much interested in whether somebody specifically Odysseus can be the same person over time and space. Whether the Odysseus that was in Ithaca 20 years before can be the same Odysseus who's back in Ithaca 20 years later. So I definitely thought about that in relation to my own life and also in relation to how the poem is figuring time and how identity might either change or not change when you're in a different place with different people and you're 20 or 40 years older.

[D]

Let's go to the text. In case our listeners didn't do well in their high school tests or simply don't remember, the plot of the Odyssey is actually right there in the first stanza. Here's what I read in high school. It's the Robert Fagel's translation. Sing to me of the man, Muse. The man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy and Emily. I wonder if, in contrast, you could read the first lines of your version there.

[E]

Sure. So this is my version. Book one. The Boy and the Goddess. Tell me about a complicated man, Muse. Tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home.

[D]

You're a much better dramatist than I am. I hum it up, you read it better. This is plain contemporary language. This is not intimidating for the layperson. Can you explain how you translated those opening lines of the Odyssey?

[E]

So, I mean, I spent many, many, many days and hours and weeks rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. I didn't sort of instantly have the muse speak to me how I should translate it. So I went through many different ways of doing it. But what I wanted to do was have something of what I see in the original, which is a crystalline clarity, even though some of the words are difficult vocabulary would have been difficult vocabulary for a classical or 5th century Greek. The syntax is very, very clear and it's so I felt that I didn't want to use an English, which would have an unclear kind of syntax. I wanted to have a sense of the muse can speak directly to the people. And I felt that. But combined with that, I wanted to have a sense of artifice because, I mean, I hope that the listeners can hear. My version is iambic pentameter. And it also has a speed which matches the speed of the original because I use the same number of lines as the original.

[D]

One thing that people might remember from the text are called Homeric epithets. Wine, dark sea, rosy fingered, dawn. How did you approach these sort of beloved parts of the Odyssey?

[E]

I wanted readers to have a very clear sense that there is a formulaicness to the storytelling, that when the dawn comes, she's always going to have rosy or floral fingers. There's going to be a repeated way that when somebody gets dressed or when somebody eats a meal, it's always going to happen in the same sort of way. But I also wanted to be truthful about the fact that we are literate people. We're not actually living in a pre literate society. So when we encounter exact repetition as opposed to partial repetition, we tend to zone out and think that's a cliche. Coming up, I'm going to skip. So I wanted to include the formulaic elements, but vary them in different ways. So for instance, Odysseus has multiple different epithets applied to him. He's both polytlas, polymechanos, polybntis. That he's many minded, much turning of many stratagems, much daring, much enduring. All these things to do with muchness. And I deal with them in different ways in each instance. So I bring out the multiplicity by a variety of word choice as well as by the formulaicness of repeating. There's going to be something attached to him every time his name comes up.

[D]

There are themes in the Odyssey, slavery, war, marriage, that we read differently now than centuries ago. Your translation calls a slave a slave, not a maid or a housekeeper. Are you trying to be closest to the original meaning or to how we understand those topics now in modern life?

[E]

I want my readers, or Homer's readers, who are also my readers, to have an awareness of the. The interesting relationship between now and then in. In reading this text. So, I mean, you say slavery is a theme in the Odyssey. I honestly don't think any reader of Robert Fagel's translation would say that because the word slave doesn't come up, it's not gone because it was never there in his translation. In the Greek, for instance, the word or demo, it means somebody who's been subdued or overpowered. And so clearly it suggests slave. And the characters who are labeled in that way, at least two of them have narratives about how did they come to be here, which makes it very clear they've been trafficked and sold as slaves. Most translations completely obscure that by making them housekeepers, servants of different kinds. So I wanted people to be able to see what exactly are the social structures in this poem? And then whether or not you want to say, does the poem have the same attitude to those social structures that we have?

[D]

Why do you think we should reread or read for the first time the Odyssey now? Is there something particularly relevant about this man's journey at this moment? Something about, I don't know, searching to find your home and what that means?

[E]

Yes, I think the sense that this is a poem about identity and belonging and also about Odysseus choice to. So it's a poem about Nostos, which is the Greek word for homecoming. And I think the poem is sort of smart about making homecoming a question rather than a predetermined. We know what home is, we know what it is to be in your own place and to be yourself. Odysseus comes home to geographically, to Ithaca, halfway through the poem. But he isn't. The nostos isn't complete. He isn't yet home. There's still another 12 books to go. Because homecoming also involves reforging all his relationships with all the people who matter and also killing the people who he figures as having taken over his proper place. So this whole question of whether one person's belonging means the exclusion of other people or whether we can have an inclusive or an exclusive notion of what a home is, I think that's a super important question right now, and it's super important in the poem. And then just beyond that, the things we've talked about in terms of social roles, gender, different kinds of conservatism, and about whether we should be looking to be the same as we always were, where the Odysseus is. I think it's also a poem which is really interesting about poverty and social hierarchies, not even beyond slavery, but. And about how we should treat foreigners and those whose cultures are different from ours in a increasingly globalized society. And I guess one final thing is just this is a poem whose climax is a huge massacre with a special kind of weapon in a domestic space. And of course, we're all thinking right now about domestic massacres as well.

[D]

You've just given us the Year in Review in News as well as a 3,000 year old epic poem. Emily Wilson, Classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the first woman to translate Homer's Odyssey into English. Thank you so much for being with us.

[B]

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