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The History of Literature
713 The Odyssey (with Daniel Mendelsohn) | The History of Literature Podcast Tour!
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.
- [00:10]
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Jack Wilson
Hello, I'm not a huge fan of artificial intelligence. I like my intelligence, genuine and natural. Thank you very much. But in this case, I'll make an exception. Google greatest travel story in literature and your robot friend will return Multiple paragraphs about a single work. The Odyssey by Homer A compelling contender for the greatest travel story in literature. It says, and I agree it would be hard to think otherwise. For thousands of years, this story of a man on his way home after the Trojan War has stood for something a journey, a hero's journey home. Only the hero still feels fresh and special, and the journey still full of surprises and fascinating delights. And the home is as complex and layered as our own home. Hero journey home it would be very easy to make any of those three elements into cliches, or to copy the pattern so often with embellishments that we make the original seem like a bit of brown paper instead of a gorgeous garment itself. Instead, it's the original, the Odyssey that feels like the work of a genius, and the copies that feel like paler shades. Somehow this work was not only the first, or maybe I should say one of the earliest we know about, but it was also the richest. In many ways, it isn't just a work of literature, it is literature. And we have a treat for you today. We have our own journey to announce, and then we have an interview with Daniel Mendelsohn translator, scholar, professor and personal purveyor of this book, the Odyssey, that's coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. We're rolling out something new here at the History of Literature podcast. Trying something new that's like me in 1990 or so at the University of Chicago. I've told this story before, or parts of it, but bear with me. It's on my mind again. For 18 years, I lived in a little room. The same little room in the same small house in the same small town in Wisconsin. You think your town was small? I hear people say that. Oh, yeah. I grew up in a small town. There was only 40,000 people. Or, oh, we only had 10,000 people, barely on the map. Well, ha. Ours had fewer than a thousand, luckily. Well, I don't know, might have been just over a thousand. There were two different signs when I was a kid. We couldn't afford to be consistent. If you came in from one direction, it was 1032. He came in the other direction, it was 890. Where were those missing people living? They had not stood up to be counted. Okay, well, luckily, luckily, even in that small town, we were bigger than the town next to ours, so we could lord that over somebody. They only had 700, unfortunately. The town next to us on the other side had a McDonald's, which they could lord over us. And boy, did they. You're not even big enough to have a McDonald's. Who cares? But then we'd secretly go there to eat, practically in disguise, loving the food and the decor, cursing our own town for being so small. One stoplight, and even that thing flashed red. There was no green or yellow on our stoplight. Embarrassing. A flashing red stoplight is. It's essentially a stop sign. It's just a stop sign with a little extra juice. Hey, truckers don't go roaring through this town at 60 miles an hour. You might not notice, but this isn't just the highway. It's not a continuation of the highway. It's our town. And my dad was afraid to fly. There's no shame in that. There's a lot of things that people don't like. Some people don't like the water. Some people don't like snakes. His was heights. So we never did fly. And even so, I loved to travel. Loved to take those summer car trips to the Grand Canyon or Florida or Canada. I love the little boxes of cereal we got to eat when we were packing up our groceries into the station wagon. There would always be a little A Little value pack of boxes of cereal. What a treat to have Count Chocula riding along with us. That's not food we would ever have in the house otherwise, but a little box that you could cut open and pour the milk right into the box and eat your cereal that way. Yes, please. My sister got the Count Chocula because she always picked first, but that left Frankenberry for me. Amazing. And seeing the world living in that difference. These mountains are different. This beach is different. The prairie, the ocean. My goodness, the feeling of being on the road in a car with Neil diamond or Paul Simon or Dolly Parton or whoever blasting out of the AM radio speakers and the four of us traveling in a little capsule like we were in a pod that someone had launched into space. It wouldn't have felt any less exciting to me when I was age 7 and 8 and 9 and 10. So somehow after high school, I made it out of state, the only kid in my class to do it. Half the kids didn't go to college and a quarter went into the military. And the rest of us there was Madison and La Crosse and Eau Claire and Stevens Point and Oshkosh. And somehow I got to Chicago. Had zero idea of what I was doing there, but I knew I had to take a language for a year that was required my two years of high school. Spanish, which I had taken several years earlier, didn't remember enough to place me out of anything. So I said, okay, I'll. I'll bite the bullet and take more Spanish. Well, you can't. Jack Wilson. That's full. Hmm. Okay, well, I said, my grandmother spoke Swiss. Always wanted to learn German. Put me in there. Nope, that's full. Hmm. Okay. Latin, the source language for all of. I'll take Latin. Well, that's full. French, the language of diplomats. Nope, sorry. No room. No room for Jack Wilson at the inn. The French Inn. Sorry. Finally I said, well, okay, what's not full? What language can I take? And they said, italian. Va bene. Except I didn't know those words. I didn't think I knew any of any Italian words that weren't food. So I started Italian. It turns out to be a life raft for me. A spot of sunshine and what was then a very cloudy university. Very dark, gloomy, no light. And my teachers, Ellen and Rebecca, both of whom have been guests on the show, they saved me in that first year. And then I decided to be an English major. Naturally, love for literature, burgeoning. And this. The thread keeps getting pulled further and further. The whole sweater's Unraveling an English major means you have to take two years of a foreign language. So I said, okay, I'll sign up for a second year of Italian. And then I thought, you know what? I took two years of Spanish, and I didn't remember a thing. Not enough to place out of anything. Those two years were a waste. Did it all for nothing. There was nothing left behind in my brain. So I thought, if I'm going to study Italian for two whole years, if I'm going to commit, I might as well go to Italy and really learn the language. Do a junior year abroad. Bologna, here I come. And before I left, I was walking down the street. I was still in Chicago. This is my third quarter of my second year. I was walking down the street, I was talking to a friend, and my friend said, are you excited about going to Italy next year? And I said, oh, yeah, absolutely. But I'm planning it now. But I don't know the first thing about how to go or what to do. I'm kind of nervous. And she said, oh, Italy's great. You'll love it. Of course, she had been there. But to me, it was like saying I was going to go live on the moon. Presumably, they breathed the same air in Italy. Oxygen. But what was it like being somewhere else, somewhere that far from home, traveling there, living there, being there. So I said to my friend, you have to understand, I've never even been on a plane before. And this was on a sidewalk walking toward campus. And two guys were walking ahead of us. And apparently they'd been listening in because one guy turned around and he stalked toward me, and he got right up in my face and he said, hey, Buddy, join the 20th century. The anger on his face. I was ready to take a punch to the face if I had to, although I probably punched him back in those days, I was in the 20th century. Where else was I if not there? The 70s and the 80s were the only world I had ever known. So I. That summer I flew to New York. I saw Mike Palindrome there, by the way, the kid who actually lived in Manhattan, one of the few. A lot of kids said they were from New York. Not a whole lot actually grew up in Manhattan. And then another friend who lived in Manhattan, too, a friend I had just met, an actress with her famous acting parents and her younger brother, who would end up becoming a famous actor himself somehow. This was my traveling partner, this young woman actor. And I just swung by their apartment like it was no big deal because she and I were Taking the same trip together and we had coordinated our flights. We were going to fly over to Bologna together. That was all fun. And then we landed and I was in Italy. And soon enough, thanks to your rail passes, I was in Switzerland and Germany and France, the UK and Spain and Morocco. And by the time I finished with that year, I was hooked. Traveled those European train stations. That's still where I'm the most at home, I think the most excitement I ever feel in those grand structures rising into the open air. Like the. It's like the bars in New Orleans. I went there for Mardi Gras. And you walk into a bar and you walk through a bar and suddenly you're still in the bar. But it feels a little strange. You look around, why does it feel so different in here? And then you look up, there's no roof, it's just the night sky or restaurants in California. You walk in and you think, oh, this feels different. Something about the air, something about the atmosphere feels a little different here. Oh, there's trees inside. Those aren't decorations, those are real trees. You're inside, you're outside. It's a thrill. It feels different on your skin. European train stations have all that. You're inside, you're protected, but the outside beckons. It's calling because you're about to board and those trains are sitting in place. Majestic creatures lined up, snorting steel dragons waiting for their passengers or arriving slowly, coming to rest or taking off with that huff and puff, that great grinding, becoming what's starting out, what's soon going to become a rapid pace. Meanwhile, on the platforms, the people flow in and out, pushing strollers and pulling suitcases, one hand keeping the hat on the head, moving slowly because of the burden or moving fast because of the moment. People grabbing a coffee or a snack or a sandwich on their way, on their way, on their way. We were all on our way where? Somewhere London, Paris, Istanbul, Rome. The trains went everywhere. The tracks were like magic. So I fell in love with that travel experience.
- [14:29]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Like just as I was falling in.
- [14:31]
Jack Wilson
Love with everything and everyone that year. Falling in love with life itself. And that feeling didn't leave me.
- [14:39]
Emma Wilson
Though.
- [14:39]
Jack Wilson
It is a little strange, isn't it, to say that I felt most at home when I was traveling. Now another story. My younger son was goofy when he was little. He was funny, he made faces, he was sarcastic, he was like a little two year old standup comic. And then he turned three and went to preschool. And his preschool teachers said once when he was about three or so, he's quiet all day. And then when his brother comes to pick him up in the afternoon, he just comes to life. It was a little strange for me as a parent to hear that, that the boy that I knew all day, every day wasn't the same little boy who was going to school. He had a different Persona there. But it was also kind of heartwarming to know that the secret ingredient was his brother, two years older than him. That was the straw that stirred his drink. His brother. He comes to life when he sees his brother. They said, well, I have a straw that stirs my drink, too. It's travel. It's where I feel the most at home. Like I said, that's ironic. But how can that be? How can that be? And does that give home enough credit to say I feel the most at home? Home. What is home? Home is stasis. Home is boring. Home is where you pay the bills. Home is where you drift through life yawning until eventually you just give up. Home is routine. Unwelcome routine. Life, deadening routine. We wait for something to change so we can be ourselves again, so we can come to life. We wait for our beloved older brother to show up the calendar, to finally arrive at the day when we get to start our vacation, to leave home behind. Is that home? Because too long on the road and you miss home. Because home isn't just routine, is it? It's love. It's safety. It's the familiar. It's room to breathe. It's nostalgia. It's a space you've carved out where you feel safe and protected and able to take on problems because you have a solid base to work from, a platform. It's where your loved ones are. It's the people you know best and who know you best. It's coziness, comfort. It's you. It's who you are. My boy came to life when someone showed up. That person was someone from his home. He was always alive at home. That's where he could be who he was. Which brings us to the Odyssey. Oh, wait, no, not yet. Could bring us there. It's a very natural transition, but it's also the place, a natural place for us to make our announcement. We are offering a foray into the world for those of you looking to come to life on a journey. And I will be there. And Emma Wilson, show's producer, will be there, too. And some guests of the podcast, people you've listened to, the experts in literature, are going to be joining us at stops along the way. Emma and I will be on the whole tour traveling around literary England, starting in London, home of Shakespeare and Dickens and Dr. Johnson, my personal hero, and making stops in Oxford, where we'll visit the life of the mind and intellect and writers who pass through there. And then Jane Austen's Bath. Yes, we get to luxuriate just like Jane and all of her wonderful characters. And then we'll head back to London. It's going to be a moderately paced trip, not a whirlwind full of full of time to talk and get to know each other. Full of meals and interesting things and good people to spend time with. And you can join us. We have opened up the itinerary for the first History of Literature podcast tour, which you can find at John Shore's Travel. That's John Shores S H O R S Travel. You scroll down the page for upcoming journeys, look for the one that says England and Jack Wilson and take a look at the itinerary and see if this tour might be for you. It's available now at John Shores Travel. If you want to see your old friend Jack come to life on his journey, this is your chance. And it's your chance to hear from local guides experts about the places that Dickens and Shakespeare and Jane Austen and other great writers lived and wrote and ate and loved and so on, and to do it with a group of fellow history of literature podcast enthusiasts. If that sounds like something you might like, well, we would love to have you join us. The trip is going to be in May of 2026 and our partners at John Shores have done a really nice job of putting together an itinerary with a lot of information and photos and the places we're going to stay and eat and all the things we will do and see. And we will also have a little surprise, a few surprises for you that aren't on the itinerary. We might do some podcasting from there. We'll have some sessions with some distinguished guests. I can't wait. I cannot wait. You can find the itinerary and learn more at John Shores Travel. S H O R S so exciting. I feel like I'm 20 again, joining the 20th century like that guy wanted me to do. He called me buddy. He was helping out a friend. I guess now I'm finally going to be joining the 21st century. 30 years later. 25 years too late. Better late than ever. We are going to have fun with this people. We won't encounter a Cyclops or sirens or sea monsters along the way, probably, but we will have that sense of adventure. I'd like to think as past guests of the podcast turn up and join us for a meal or a shared moment. You can meet them and ask them your questions and we will all be celebrating our passion for books together. And then there's. There's time built in to do your own thing too. If you'd like to rest in the room or, or go out shopping or go for a walk through the city or the landscape or, or see some sites not on our list. So. John Shore's Travel History of Literature podcast tour. Now, I was saying that we were at the point where the Odyssey would flow naturally out of our discussion because I was talking about home. Odysseus, clever Odysseus, Ulysses in the Latin and James Joyce. At one point in this discussion, I kind of screw up and I refer to Odysseus. I call him Ulysses in my conversation with Daniel Mendelssohn. I mean, that's such a Jack Wilson thing to do to screw that up. Here's a guy, here's a man, a scholar I've admired for decades thanks to his New Yorker view of books pieces, and I finally get the chance to talk to him. He's a wonderful person. He's a translator from Greek to English. His life has been the Odyssey. And as we'll hear, he has a very special connection to this work. And of course I jump in and call the main character by his Latin name, Ulysses. I don't know where that came from. I don't know if. I don't know actually if Emma the editor kept that in, but if she did, you'll hear me fumble a correction, my heart sinking like a ship that's been attacked by a one eyed giant or fallen into a giant whirlpool, or both. I'm surprised Mr. Mendelssohn didn't hang up on me on the spot. I'd have deserved it. But no, he handled it very graciously. I'm sure he's used to students screwing things up with enthusiasm. Like the guy in my Studies of Modern Narrative class who asked the professor if he'd ever read Proust. Proust, the professor said. He didn't even answer the question, he just said Proust. So anyway, Odysseus, clever Odysseus. I almost said Ulysses again right there. The power of James Joyce. Maybe that's why so strong. Odysseus, clever Odysseus. He's a different sort of hero, isn't he? He feels more modern than a warrior like Achilles. When's the last time you pulled out your sword and went off to battle. I'm guessing you've never done that. But when's the last time you had to manage a group of people who didn't want to do what you wanted them to do? When's the last time you had to navigate obstacles placed in your path, using your wits to overcome them? When's the last time it seemed like it was taking you forever to get home? Probably recently. For those of you on a daily commute like me, you might be doing it as we speak. Hero journey Home the hero in the Odyssey feels modern. He's a man who must use his wits and guile to overcome obstacles. Journey. The journey here is thrilling. Monsters, fantastical creatures, dynamic situations. And then we come to home. What is home? Why do we want to get there? We long for Odysseus to make it. But is home still home after 20 years? Is home the place we lived during our childhood? Is that the only place that can be home? Or is it the first place we live when we're married? Is home a state of mind more than anything? What does home mean for Homer? Never really thought about that before. His name has got home right in it. It'd be like if Shakespeare's name was lover or Chekhov's name was Lover. Complex human relationship. Er, home. Er, at least in English. What does home mean for this guy Homer, and for Odysseus? And what does that tell us about the people who've read this work for thousands of years? Or for us here today? What is home for us? Is it always there, a place we can return to, or long to return to? Or does home change as we change? Maybe home is a mirage, a place that shifts something. We can't recover as time goes by, just as we can't recover those days in the car, the windows down because air conditioning was in. Cars was for rich people. Good old Neil diamond blasting out of our speakers. My sister and I debating the cereals we were going to eat. In which order? Maybe home can come to us. Like my older son bringing the comfort of home to the preschool so my younger son could be his best self again, could come alive. Maybe it's a place and must be a certain place. Maybe it's people and can only be certain people. Maybe it's just a few feeling that comes from within. Like me on those trains in Europe, feeling at home there, the details don't matter. It's so easy to say I'm home. It's so hard to define what that means exactly. And the older I get, the more difficult it becomes. Now I feel at home when I'm putting together the podcast. How can that be? And yet, there it is. Maybe I'm overthinking this. Maybe overthinking is where I'm most at home. We have homer lover and overthinker. Let's bring out Daniel Mendelsohn to straighten us out. He'll take us through the Odyssey after this. Sam Foreign this is an ad by BetterHelp. Hey, it's summer, but that can come with a lot of stress, especially for those of us who work. 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- [29:08]
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- [29:37]
Jack Wilson
Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton? And time just stands still.
- [30:08]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Okay. Joining me now is Daniel Mendelsohn, a humanities professor at Bard College and a celebrated author, critic, classicist and translator familiar to readers of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He's here today to discuss his new.
- [30:22]
Jack Wilson
Translation of the Odyssey, published by the University of Chicago Press.
- [30:27]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn, welcome to the History of Literature.
- [30:30]
Emma Wilson
Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.
- [30:33]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Do you Remember the first time you read the Odyssey?
- [30:36]
Emma Wilson
I actually do, very vividly, because I was, I think, in about ninth grade, and my parents were having a cocktail party, and it just so happens that they were friends with the high school English teacher. And I was not yet in high school, but she was chatting me up at a certain point because I snuck downstairs to see what was going on at the cocktail party. And we were talking and I was already a reader, and I was all, you know, already very interested in mythology and ancient Greek history. And she said, well, you need to read the Odyssey because it's the perfect thing for some kid like you to read. And I was a very good boy, and I ran to the library and got it out, and it, you know, it rocked my world.
- [31:26]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah. And as a teacher yourself, you probably know the feeling when you put the right book in the right hands of the right person, how satisfying that can be.
- [31:37]
Emma Wilson
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a. There is that wonderful experience you have as a teacher when. When you see the sort of. The light come on, so to speak, in a. In a student's eyes, when you connect them to the material that will be their thing in life. And I've been lucky enough to have that experience a number of times with students of mine. And I certainly, I think, was that student for a number of my own teachers. But I certainly, that evening took her advice and it did indeed click for me. And the rest, as they say, is history.
- [32:13]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And you.
- [32:15]
Daniel Mendelsohn
You mentioned that the Odyssey is. Is kind of your thing as opposed to the Iliad. And was that from the very beginning? What were your first impressions?
- [32:25]
Emma Wilson
Well, you know, there's a kind of anecdotal kind of joke among classicists, which is. And. But I think it's actually true, you know, which is you tend to be an Iliad person or an Odyssey person. And I mean, not in the sense that if you love the Iliad, you don't also love the Odyssey, but I mean, temperamentally, because they're both so different. Each represents a quite different worldview. Each is very stylistically and ideologically often quite different to the other. So I've always been an Odyssey person and, you know, quite a lot of my own writing, even on non classical subjects, I think is influenced by the Odyssey. You know, the Odyssey is above all a story about a storytelling. You know, there's a kind of meta level to it. Not only Odysseus himself, who of course is a great storyteller, and also a great, fabulous and a great liar. If we can be Honest. But, you know, everyone that he encounters in his far flung adventures turns out to have an interesting story, you know. So the Odyssey is a story that is very interested in both the contents of other people's stories and also the. I want to call it, the mechanics of storytelling. You know, the Odyssey is very alert to people's different storytelling styles and whether people are good at telling stories. And, you know, there are scenes in which people, Crowds of people, are gathered around someone listening to a story, and they'll applaud at the end of the story or react at the end of the story. And since in my own work, I've always very interested in. In sort of narrative, you know, both as a writer and also as a critic, I think I just responded to that quality, that. That element of the Odyssey really, from the get go. Even though probably at the age of nine, I wouldn't have been able to articulate what I'm telling you now. I felt that it was for me because I was. I was already interested in, you know, stories. So I think I'm an Odyssey person. I love teaching the Iliad. I love the Iliad, but I would never. If you paid me a million dollars, which no one is going to do, I would not want to translate the Iliad because I don't feel I have the requisite degree of sympathy for it. I don't feel I own it the way I feel I own the Odyssey, so to speak.
- [35:04]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Right. I was struck as I was reading your new translation, which is fantastic, by the way. We'll talk about that more and the accomplishment that you have, that you've really achieved here. But I was struck when I was reading it this time, how much exposition there is at the beginning. And that struck me as being almost like a storyteller's risk. For example, I could imagine an editor today, if this had come in, coming off the slush pile or something, saying, well, we got to get to Ulysses a lot faster than this Odysseus. It's taking us too long to get there. And it struck me that with an oral storyteller is kind of taking that risk as well. And as I was reading it, thinking about people hearing it, and of course, we know from filmmakers or novelists that isn't the only way to tell a story is to start with the main character. And in fact, it feels almost like a bit of. We're introduced to him slowly and we see him offstage before we see him in person. And it's very effective. But it did strike me as being something that's effective in a kind of unconventional way.
- [36:25]
Emma Wilson
Yeah, I think that's a great observation. I mean, you know, as you mentioned.
- [36:29]
Listener
Because, you know, as we know, the Odyssey consists of 24 sections or books as we call them. And the first four books of the Odyssey out of 24, Odysseus isn't even present. Homer waits until book five to introduce his main. And so in a certain sense, I think you're right. It's a kind of a daring and risky gesture on the part of the storyteller to hold off giving you the main character. But I would say to counter that a little bit, we keep hearing about him during the first four books. You know, it's really focused on his son Telemachus, who goes on this fact finding mission to find out what happened to his long lost father who's been gone for 20 years. And he sort of nudged into that by Athena, who decides it's time to bring back Odysseus. And so she gets this young man off of his butt and sends him on this mission. But so I think it's actually a very, it may be risky, but it's very satisfying gesture because you keep hearing about Odysseus for four books, people are telling stories about him. You know, Telemachus goes around interviewing his father's old war buddies from the Trojan War. So you, the audience, keep hearing about him. And it's a wonderful way of building up your curiosity and the sort of suspense so that by the time you finally get to book five and the camera, so to speak, sort of zooms in on Odysseus, who's now being held captive on this island by Calypso the nymph, who's in love with him. There's a real sense of drama, I think, that you would not have achieved if you had just started with him, you know, so it's, it's a delaying tactic that I think pays off. But I, I do think you're right. It's a risky gesture. But, you know, he's sort of hanging in the air without being present. And so in a funny way, Homer makes you feel like one of the people of Ithaca. You know, you know, about this guy, you're waiting for him, but he's nowhere to be seen. So I think it's a very cunning narrative gesture, actually.
- [38:56]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah. And you also, you see enough of.
- [38:59]
Jack Wilson
His home that you care about it.
- [39:01]
Daniel Mendelsohn
You care about what's happening with these suitors and with Penelope who's holding them off and with his son. And you totally, you really do the stakes are raised. But when you say that about him coming in in the middle, it reminds me of Orson Welles. And. And in the Third man, where he comes in, you know, halfway through the movie, and they said, did you have concerns about being a movie star but not being in half of the movie? And he said, are you kidding? You know, that's an entrance. They talk about me the whole time.
- [39:31]
Listener
Right, right. Well, that's exactly what he's doing. You know, also, it's a. It's a trick in Italian opera, right. The soprano rarely comes in before the second half of the first act. So it's a way of building up suspense in the audience, and I think it works well. And as you said, what the first four books, which focus on what's going on in Ithaca, as you said, the suitors are pressing Penelope to marry them. She's using all her tricks to keep them at bay. The son is moping around wishing his father would finally come home. He's never even known him. It's a way of establishing the stakes, as you put it, and that I think every Hollywood person would understand. You have to understand what the stakes of this character's return represent in order to make the whole rest of the epic seem worthwhile. You know, and the stakes that are established are that the whole island is falling apart. You know, it's on the verge of collapse. The family, but also the island as a political entity. There are political tensions. So it's a very canny way of starting, I think, and quite effective.
- [40:46]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [40:47]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Now, you've been teaching this for a while, and to a lot of students, do you find that their response surprises you, or do you kind of. Can you kind of predict the moments that they're going to respond to the most? And at this point, are you able to sort of, you know, go into a class knowing, well, today is going to be the day that they say.
- [41:14]
Listener
X or Y, right? Well, to a certain extent. I mean, there are certain episodes that the students. Well, not just the students. I mean, everybody respond to on a first reading that you never forget. For example, the most famous one being after Odysseus has returned home. But he's in disguise, so nobody knows that it's he. And he approaches the palace because, of course, his. His mission is to infiltrate his own palace in disguise and eventually kill all the suitors and reclaim his family. And as he passes by the gates of the palace, his faithful old dog, Argos, whom he had trained when he was just a puppy 20 years earlier and hasn't seen in all that time, somehow recognizes Odysseus even beneath the disguise he's wearing. And he sort of pricks up his ears and you get a little backstory about what a wonderful dog he had been, but now he's been neglected because nobody cares for him anymore. And he pricks up his ears but is so weak that he can't approach Odysseus. And Odysseus can't indicate that he knows who this dog is because of course, he's in disguise and he has to protect his cover. So it's an anguishing and poignant moment. The dog sort of too weak to run up to the master and Odysseus tearing up, but not able to react. And I've had kids literally weep in class when we get to this, when we talk about this passage. And I may say, not only kids, not only students. So that's a fairly predictable one. One thing I've seen over The, I guess, 35 years I've been teaching undergraduates is there is, and this is, I think, a very welcome thing. I think for a long time, you know, the Odyssey was sort of claimed, so to speak, by the male students because the protagonist is a man, the secondary protagonist is his son. A lot of emphasis is on the father son relationship, but. But largely because of the wonderful work of feminist scholars who have over the past 55, 60 years, drawing attention to the various female characters. I think the women in my classes are much more involved in the Odyssey maybe than they were 30 years ago. I think there's a lot more active questioning and participation on the part of my women students. So that's a kind of interesting and welcome shift over the past decades that, that I've noticed. And we talk about Penelope and the wonderful nurse Eurycleia and of course, Circe and Calypso in a much more searching way, I would say, than we used to. So that's a kind of reaction that has shifted just in my own, you know, the course of my own career. And then, you know, you never know with students. They, they often come up with things, you know, out of the mouths of babes, so to speak. You know, they come up with things that, that surprise you. I think a lot more students now feel emboldened not to like Odysseus. You know, they see that he is a problematic character rather than just a straightforward hero in the way they may have been expecting. You know, he has a dark side and a troubling side, which I think they, partly because of their own excellent training as American students, who have grown up with Marvel movies and Batman, they understand about the complexities of dark heroes and they sort of fix on that a lot more than they used to. It's not just an adventure story, which I think a lot, you know, 35 or 50 years ago might have been the more standard response. That's a great kind of reaction.
- [45:18]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah, yeah. It makes the text much more complex and interesting to kind of parse through when you have a, a bit of an anti hero at the heart of it.
- [45:28]
Listener
Absolutely.
- [45:29]
Daniel Mendelsohn
So I was really struck by the experiences that you had with your father when he was one of your students. And you recounted this in An Odyssey, A Father, a Son and an Epic. Could you tell the listeners a little bit about that experience?
- [45:44]
Listener
Yes. So that was quite a life changing experience, both as my father's son and also as a teacher. So in the spring of, of 2011, the spring semester, my dad, who was then 82, decided for reasons known only to himself maybe, that he wanted to sit in on my freshman Odyssey seminar at Bard. Every now and then at Bard, I teach an intensive seminar to first year students, sort of training them to be close readers of a single text over the course of an entire semester. And I had chosen the Odyssey. And my father, I don't know, honestly, really remember how all this, what his own thinking was, but he just called me one night and asked me what I was teaching and I said, well, I'm doing the Odyssey. And he said, you know, I wouldn't mind sitting in on that clip. So I, you know, and it was a commitment because Bart is in upstate New York. My dad and mom lived on Long island, in the middle of Long Island. So it was, you know, it's like a two and a half hour drive for him every week. The class met once a week for three hours on Friday morning. And over the course of the semester, it, you know, it was a sort of semi comical setup. Right. You know, you're a, you're a middle aged college professor and suddenly you find your grumpy old father is one of your students. And he was indeed grumpy because it very swiftly evolved that he didn't think much of the Odyssey. And he didn't think particularly he didn't think it wasn't the Odyssey. He was very bothered by the character of Odysseus, you know, and as I explain in my memoir, An Odyssey, A Father, A Son and an Epic. You know, my dad was a scientist his whole life. I'm a literature person. So we have very different ways of viewing things he likes to reduce, you know, narratives to a kind of four square equation, whereas I like the. The accidental and the sort of squishy parts of narrative that don't fit any kind of model. So we were sort of at loggerheads from the beginning of the class, you know, on the first. And I had asked him, I said, well, do you want to participate in the seminar discussion? No, no, I'm just going to sit him back. I won't say a word. And on day one, he was off and running, you know, challenging me, arguing that Odysseus was terrible, that he wasn't a hero. I couldn't understand why anyone thought he was a great hero. He lost all his men. He cried a lot, which bothered my father a lot. I remember him telling me one night, he said, I was in the army. Nobody cried. So it was a sort of comical setup at the beginning, but it became very profound, actually, you know, because students, even the most wonderful, earnest, hardworking students in college are very young. So there are certain things about the Odyssey they're not going to be able to understand, except at the intellectual level, not least, what it means to be reunited with people whom you haven't seen for a long time. I mean, the Odyssey is a poem about a man who's trying to get back to his wife and son whom he hasn't seen in 20 years. And these kids are 17 and 18 years old. They can't even envision what it looks like to be separated for an amount of time that's longer than their own lifetime. And my dad was able to bring to the conversation some very poignant moments, I think, because he knew what that was like. And many of the things that the Odyssey is about, not least long marriages, was something he knew about. And when he intervened and spoke about his experiences in that sense, the students were absolutely mesmerized. You could hear a pin drop when he started talking. So it was a remarkable experience. And then when the class was over, we found out about this Mediterranean cruise that the voyages of Odysseus. And we did that. And so it became the year of the Odyssey, and he fell ill and died not long after we got back from Greece. So the book is a kind of account of the strange and remarkable last year of my dad's life, which, in a wonderful and strange way, turned out to be filtered through the Odyssey.
- [50:18]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah. Do you think you see the Odyssey through his eyes, in a sense? Were you able to come to that, or did you never quite bridge that gulf of. He was going to read it one way and you were going to read it a different way.
- [50:31]
Listener
Well, I mean, to a certain extent. I mean, he's right, you know, a lot of what he said about Odysseus is right. I'm a storyteller, you know, I'm a writer. Writers love Odysseus because he is the ultimate and the first great storyteller in the Western tradition.
- [50:47]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah.
- [50:48]
Listener
And certainly in the classical tradition. And so whereas, you know, and he's also a bullshitter, if I can say that. You know, he's.
- [50:59]
Jack Wilson
He.
- [50:59]
Listener
He manipulates his narratives in order to get what he wants. And my father hated that about him because my dad was a four square guy who believed in telling the truth, you know, so to a certain extent I was more receptive to his view, maybe because of his insistence on pointing out Odysseus's real dark flaws. But, you know, it's funny because ultimately, you know, I mentioned before that you're either an Iliad person or an Odyssey person. And, you know, I think it's always important to remind people that interpretations are always going to be different because the interpreter, the reader, is going to be different. And, you know, I was never able to persuade my father of why what I thought is so great about Odysseus, you know, he just couldn't see it. And that's totally fine. You know, it's not about convincing people that your interpretation is right or your feeling about a character is right, because we are all different people. And, you know, the Odyssey is, you know, indisputably a great text. And I don't mean that in the sense of it's better than other texts, but it's great because of its inexhaustible richness as a text. And it has room for all of these responses on the part of the reader and that, you know, everyone can go into it and come out with something different. And that's what's great about it.
- [52:32]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Let me ask you a question, because I am wrestling with this as I'm reading the Odyssey this time. And you maybe have experienced this yourself or have seen other people experiencing it. But when I first read it, I was 19. I was in my first or second year of college, and from age 0 to age 18, I lived in the same room in the same house in the same small town in Wisconsin. And I knew what home was. And when I was 18 or 19 and reading it, I could feel like, oh, this is what it would be like if another 10 or 20 years passes and I was to return there. But as I'M reading it now, now that I haven't lived there for 30 or 35 years. And I don't really know what home is for me. And when I go back to visit my parents house, it's changed so much and it feels like my home has been taken away. And so I can only go back about three or four years. It's like a moving target because home is kind of. And I kind of see it with my kids as well. Like my son said something the other day where I was talking about. Or a few months ago and I was talking about, oh, you know, when you get home from practice, we'll build a fire and we can watch some football downstairs. And he said, oh, that's really nice to come home to. And I thought, he's got home. I've given him this home. But I don't know that this house that I'm living in now is what would be my sort of home to return to. So how do people. I mean, in some ways I feel like I understood the book better when I was 19 because I had such a strong sense of home than I do now, where I'm not sure I can identify with this feeling of being deprived of home and then returning to it because I don't have a home.
- [54:36]
Listener
Well, I think you're touching on one of the greatest things about the Odyssey. And I think your evolving feeling about it is part of what the Odyssey is actually about. So what I mean by that is I think if you sort of went out onto the street and grabbed random people and asked them what the Odyssey was about, even if they don't really know that much about it and have never read it, they kind of have a sense that it's about this guy who's been at war for 20 years and is trying to get home to his wife. That much at least I think people know about the story and that, you know, at a certain level, that's a. That's an irresistible tale, right? Homecoming. Right. It's a very deep seated, a deep seated human thing. The desperation to get back to your place of origin. And I think that's one way into the Odyssey. It's an irresistible story because as we were mentioning before in our discussion of books one through four, you know, the beginning of the Odyssey raises a question of what is this place that he's desperately trying to come back to. And in fact, it turns out, and you know this from book one going on, that it's quite different from the place that he left, not least because he left it there's been no king, there's been no political activity, the social fabric has frayed, the domestic situation is a nightmare. So already at the beginning of the Odyssey, there's a question mark over the term home, right? Which on the one hand is a very emotional word, right? When you think of the difference between house and home, right? One is a very emotional word. And yet it problematizes in exactly the way you are describing the fact that when you have been away for a long time, both you, the you that wants to go back home and the home have to be different from what you left. And the Odyssey is aware of that incredible poignancy about this most basic of human feelings, which is we want a home, it means something to us. And yet, because time passes, the home that you go back to as well as you yourself are never going to be the same. And I think so I think the experience you're having is extremely Odyssean, actually. You know, and. But I think the poem is very self conscious about that. You know, the older I get, I actually think what the Odyssey in a very sophisticated, almost modernistic with a capital M sense is time. You know, what time does to people. And so the phenomenon that you've brought up about home and how what that means and can it mean the same thing all the time? And all of that, which is complicated and emotional is sort of concretized at the end of the poem. So, you know, a lot of people also know that when he finally gets home, he meets his wife again. They haven't seen each other in 20 years. Each of them has been enduring great trials during this time. And they. There's this famous moment where he's been in disguise, right? So she's not sure it's he, she's very cold to him. They have this sort of contest of wits. And that's the other half of the equation is because he has to prove to her. And the climax of the poem in a sense is the secret information that he has that will prove to her that he is really who he says he is, right? So in a certain sense you could get to the Odyssey and say, ah, how great he has proved that he is the same person who left 20 years earlier. On the other hand, how could he be the same person? We know what's happened to him in these 20 years and we also hear what's happened to her now. He's a middle aged guy of 45 instead of a young guy of 25. Say she's a woman approaching middle age too. So the Punchline of the Odyssey turns out to be a sleight of hand. Because when they finally come together, proving that they are the same, we know that they are the same, but also inevitably different. And that, I think, is what the Odyssey is really about. I think it is very sophisticated about a paradoxical phenomenon that we all know as humans, and yet we have to resolve in this magical thinking sort of way. And you were just describing it when you started out asking this question, which is that we simultaneously feel that we are always the same to ourselves. Right. You are always you as you go through life. And yet we at the same time understand that we change radically as we go through our life. And those two strands twine around each other. And the Odyssey is about that. That you. You are the same person who left in some fundamental way, but you can't be the same person when you come home. And I think a lot of the poignancy of the Odyssey resides in that paradox.
- [60:26]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [60:27]
Daniel Mendelsohn
You would be recognizable to your dog, but not to your wife.
- [60:32]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [60:32]
Daniel Mendelsohn
What it says about human beings and the way that we read emotions and the way we read experiences and the change that people can undergo based on the life they have lived, which is different from just the physical or the scent or the things that the dog was able to pick up on.
- [60:50]
Listener
Right. I think the scene with the dog, the sort of point, so to speak, of the scene, is that there is something essential that despite one's exterior, because, remember when he sees a dog, he's been transformed into a decrepit, elderly beggar. He's unrecognizable as the great hero of the Trojan, the dog. That there is some essence that is still recognizable even though we return different from the person who left. The scene with Penelope is very complicated because actually, Homer says there were moments when they finally confront each other where it looked like him, but other moments, he was unrecognizable. You know, he ratchets up the tension because there's something about him that feels familiar. But how could it really be him? You know, so it really works. The paradox, which is the sort of, so to speak, the shifting light in which we see someone after a long. A long time, you know, and there is a whole school of interpretations of the second half of the Odyssey. You know, the part where he comes back home who believe that. That she is somehow in the way that the dog was aware of him, that she, too, shows an unusual interest in this. Ostensibly, this elderly beggar invites him up to her room, you know, does all these things, you wouldn't do with an average person. So there is the possibility that she in this has the same sixth sense that somehow this guy is he, even though it doesn't look anything like him. Look, I always joke with my students, no one understand Odyssey until you go to your 20th high school reunion, right? Because then you know what it's like. People come up to you and they're bald and they're fat and, and they say, oh, we dated or and you think, wait, who is this person? Right? You know, you have to have that experience, right? So this person comes up to you and says, I knew you back when. And you look at that person, you say, that's ridiculous. And that's sort of the position Penelope is in. So both of these things can be true at the same time. You are still the person, but time has changed you. And how do you reconcile that? And that, I think, is what the Odyssey is really about. It's about identity, you know, a very current word in literary criticism in a very profound way.
- [63:24]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Let's take a quick break and then come back with more from Daniel Mendelsohn.
- [63:46]
Listener
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- [63:51]
Jack Wilson
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Listener
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Jack Wilson
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- [65:01]
Daniel Mendelsohn
So Daniel, I wanted to ask you about another concept that I was really struck by as I was going through your translation, and that is the gods. And I, I think in my first reading through this, I kind of read it with, I don't know if I would say that I Viewed it with cynicism or almost like it was comedy. I was sort of reading look at these funny old people in the old days who believed in these gods. And this time when I was reading it, I found that I was taking.
- [65:38]
Jack Wilson
Them much more seriously.
- [65:40]
Daniel Mendelsohn
And I was taking the idea of this as a religious framework much more seriously. And I was kind of thinking, you know, in a lot of ways this makes sense. And I think it's maybe because I've been wrestling with monotheism so much and thinking, well, how can a God who's all knowing and all powerful and all loving permit so many bad things to happen? And as I was reading about the gods, I kind of thought, you know, this is kind of makes a more intuitive sense that there would be just, you know, a God could be having a bad day or, or could have an ax to grind, or could be, you know, motivated by something else. I don't know if, if your students are able to get over that hurdle or. How do you, how do you teach the gods in your class?
- [66:27]
Listener
Well, it's hard, you know, it's hard for many students to sort of grasp a polytheistic pantheon in these works, which are works of literature, of course, as characters. You know, I want to answer your question in a kind of. By coming in from the side, let's call it. So. One of the interesting things since we've been talking about the difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey and the people who embrace them. One of the interesting thing about the Odyssey is that the gods are actually the Olympian gods. You know, the 12 major gods are actually mostly absent from the action in a way that is the opposite almost to the way that they function in the Iliad. Those of your listeners who are familiar with the Iliad will know that the gods play a absolutely concrete role in the action of the poem. They're on the battlefield, they're fighting with their favorite heroes, they're interfering with the goings on in a very hands on way. They show up, they stop people from doing things, they stop their favorite heroes from making mistakes. They fight with each other on the battlefield in full armor. You know, they're really as present as the human characters in the Odyssey, which is a post war epic. And I want to underscore the. The extent to which there is a sort of aura of postness about the Odyssey. One feels from the very start that the grand glory days are coming to an end and the gods have somehow withdrawn. You really feel that in the Odyssey. Now, of course, there are supernatural characters, nymphs and, you know, the winds, the God of the winds and these fabulous monsters, the cyclops, Scylla, Charybdis, it. But the only God who really heavily intervenes in the action, and that's not really until the very end of the poem, until the second half of the poem at least, is Athena, who is the patron goddess of Odysseus. He's the cleverest mortal, she's the cleverest God. She clearly has a fondness for this character. But otherwise they're not around anymore, they've receded. And you really feel that the Odyssey is a kind of mopping up operation in a funny way, that the loose ends of the Trojan War, this is the one lingering loose end that this is. Odysseus is the one hero who still hasn't come home yet. In fact, that's stated very explicitly in the first 30 lines of the poem. Athena approaches Zeus and says, you know, come on, dad, everyone else got home and this poor guy Odysseus still needs to come home. And Zeus says, okay, let's get him home. But otherwise they're not really there. And I think the Odyssey is much more interested in a kind of character that I increasingly think, again, anticipates the modernists in a funny way, which is a lone, quite skeptical, ingenious character sort of let loose in a hostile landscape, having to make his way in a world in which all the old rules have vanished on his own. So, yes, Athena does come in at the end. She helps him, she gives him disguises when he needs to be disguised, blah, blah, blah. But most of the Odyssey, and he. Actually, there's a funny moment at the end of the poem where he reproaches her for not having shown up until now. You know, he says, where were you while I was on the sea, having all these terrible, excruciating adventures? Now you show up. So I'm sort of articulating this in response to your original question because I think the Odyssey is itself again, in a kind of meadow way, interested in just what these gods are for. So it trots them out in a very kind of stylized way at the beginning of the poem, this conversation between Athena and her dad and Zeus says, okay, yes, let's get him home. And they pop up once again and.
- [71:04]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Poseidon will make the seas stormy and so on.
- [71:08]
Listener
Yeah, Poseidon is ticked off at Odysseus, as we later learn, because his son is the cyclops and Odysseus heard him and he pops up every now and then and then and makes, you know, Wrecks Odysseus's ship, makes a storm, you know, but really the focus is on the human, I would say, in a very different way to the Iliad. And so, as I say, I think the Odyssey is asking the same question that you're asking and that you're wondering about what my students ask, which is, what are the gods for? And I don't. I'm not sure I know the answer to that question. But I think the Odyssey problematizes the relationship between gods and mortals in a way that the Iliad really doesn't at all. It's interested in just what the boundary is between the most that a mortal can do and what a God can do. And quite interestingly, there are moments in the Odyssey when Odysseus gets the better of Athena. Yeah. So it's as if, because of his great intellect and his cleverness, which is constantly alluded to throughout the poem, he's the man of many wiles, the man of great inventiveness, you know, the man of many tricks up his sleeve. So the Odyssey is interested in a character who is challenging the boundary or pushing at the boundary between gods and mortals. There's a very funny exchange in book 13 when actually the book in which he gets back to Ithaca and Athena shows up in disguise and there's a little banter between them, and then she reveals who she really is, and she thinks she had fooled him in a previous adventure by showing up in disguise. And he reveals in that conversation that he knew it was Athena all along. So it raises this question, what are the gods for if you have a mortal character who is actually cleverer than the goddess of wisdom? Right, right. So I think it's very interesting. And it's interesting because the. The Odyssey ends with a sort of deus ex machina. Odysseus is fighting a battle, he's been told he shouldn't fight it, and Zeus finally has to throw a thunderbolt at his feet, you know, to say, basta enough. And it's a kind of very artificial moment, but it's the stamping of the divine foot that ends the action. But the fact that he has to go that far indicates that Odysseus was often running on his own without the gods. So it's a fascinating question and a problem, I think, in the text. Very interesting to think about.
- [73:50]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah. And as you say, it does feel very modern. I mean, we are. We kind of have that same relationship ourselves where we're. We maybe think we are one step ahead of the gods or God. More often. And then maybe it's a thunderbolt that reminds us that we're. A little humility might be more in order. So let's talk about your translation. What is it that you were hoping to bring to this new translation of the Odyssey?
- [74:25]
Listener
Well, I. In this translation, as in another. My other. My only other translation, which was of the complete works of the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. I actually think in both cases, I'm always interested in the same thing, which is I'm a scholar of the classics, I'm a classicist, but I'm also a writer. And to me, the most important thing in a translation is to try to figure out a way to bring across everything that I see that's going on in the Greek into English. And another thing that I'm very interested in is the formal elements, the stylistic features and the way the poetry works on the page, which I'm trying to restore. I think I kind of run counter to a number of recent translations which are kind of modernizing in their language and in their style, sort of simplifying. And, you know, the Odyssey is a product of a very archaic culture. Its values were different. You know, both the Iliad and the Odyssey, it's a product of early archaic Greek consciousness. Its values were different in ways that many people listening understand. Right. Their economies based on slave labor, misogynistic and patriarchal women have no rights, no political function. You know, all these things that we know. So they're very different. Although we enjoy the way in which, of course, you know, these texts seem to speak directly to us in ways we understand. But it's always worth remembering that they come from quite different and sometimes quite alien mentality. And that is reflected in stylistic features which are very archaic as well. And I am a great believer because I trust the intelligence of my readers in reproducing those archaic features, which I think a lot of translators want to sort of smooth away, so to speak. And that's certainly one way to do it. I'm not saying there's a right way and a wrong way. But, you know, for example, there's a lot of repetition because these poems evolved as oral products before there was writing. Right. They were repeated through oral performance. And there's a lot of repetition, verbatim repetition. So people know about the epithets, right. When gods or mortals have these adjectives or phrases that keep cropping up whenever they're mentioned. Zeus who gathers the crowds. Athena of the bright owl eyes.
- [77:11]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah.
- [77:12]
Listener
With footed Achilles. You know. You know, the famous ones that have actually entered the English language like Rosy Fingered Dawn. So those are repeated verbatim every time those names come up. And a lot of translators sort of translate them away, sort of find a way to smooth them out or vary them because the written page is different from an oral performance. And that repetition can strike the reader as being strange and artificial. Whereas I think it's so intrinsic a part of Homer's style and gives you a real sense of the kind of archaic cragginess of these wonderful works that I'm interested in reanimating those features for the sake of my audience, because I trust my audience and I think they'll, they understand that these are both, as it were, ideologically and stylistically different from anything that we're used to. And I'd like to emphasize that. So one of the main, I think the main difference between mine and most previous translations is that, you know, Homer's line is very long in Greek. The verse line is an almost 20 syllable long line with a strong six beat pulse in Greek. And most English translations of Greek and Roman classics actually are in what we call iambic pentameter or blank verse. People might remember this from high school. Right. So Homer's line is dum dum dum dum dum dum dum, da da dum, da da dum da da dum dum. That's one line of Homer.
- [79:07]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [79:08]
Listener
And then in English you've got. So I thought it was very important as a kind of way of bringing across Homer's stylistics is to develop an English line that was also very long. Especially since I'm doing a line for line translation which almost nobody does because of the discrepancy I just mentioned. So if I want to reproduce everything I see in a given line of the Greek, I'm going to need a very long English line to do that. So iambic emitter is not going to work. So I developed a long six beat line, not, not perfectly aping the Greek line, which you don't want to do, but sort of giving a sense of the rhythm of the Greek line. And that I think is a big difference. So I would say when you're reading my translation, I like to think that you're in the Homeric mode in the terms of the sound of the line. I'm also trying to reproduce a lot of his subtle stylistic gestures. For example alliteration, which he uses quite a lot. I'm reproducing assonance, which is the repetition of vowel sounds is something I Studied very hard, and I'm trying to bring across the way he breaks the line is something I also looked at very carefully. So I think mine is really trying to give you the experience of what's in the Greek, to a certain extent, more so than many other recent translations, which focus on other things. And that's perfectly fine, you know, but I think people like to feel that there's a really insistent rhythm when they're reading a poem, and I think I give that to them. So I would say the stylistics of Homer are uppermost in my mind when I was translating.
- [81:07]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Well, I will just commend you for that. And also, because I did have a different feeling when I was reading the Odyssey. I noticed it. I felt like I was. You know, I think probably the best way to explain it is what you just did when you gave the length of the line and the rhythm. I felt like it was going to struggle for words here. But because I want to praise something else about it, which is the diction and the tone and the register, that it is plain and it's direct, but it's not overly colloquial or slangy. It is slightly elevated but not so elevated that I felt like, oh, here's somebody trying to impress me with a lot of arcane vocabulary and making this into something that only scholars can really follow and appreciate. So it's.
- [82:08]
Listener
It.
- [82:08]
Daniel Mendelsohn
It just was a wonderful feeling when I started reading it and got through the first. You know, after eight or ten lines, I thought, this is. It feels muscular. It feels like there's. There's something rhythmic here. But it is also very readable.
- [82:24]
Listener
Well, that's. I mean, thank you. I mean, that's wonderful to hear. You know, two days before publication date I'm very happy to hear that somebody thinks it worked. I will say this, and I'm glad you mentioned it, which is. Diction is very important, and I think people need to understand because so many recent translations have modernized, you know, the language. So it just feels like, you know, reading the newspaper. It's just the ordinary, everyday language. It's very important, I think, for people to understand that Homer never sounded that way to a Greek person. Homer's language was not. It's very important people understand the language. The Greek of the Ilia and the Odyssey is a purely artificial literary language that no one ever spoke. It developed over centuries purely through these oral recitations. There are many different layers of Greek in Homeric Greek vocabulary and syntax from different periods in the evolution of Greek side by side. There are different dialects, words from different dialects of Greek. So the whole thing is a, a concoction that no one ever spoke. So, you know, one could argue that if you're, if you're celebrating a translation because it sounds just like everyday English, you could say, well, it therefore is nothing like Homer, which never sounded like everyday Greek to anyone, even in Homer's own time. Right. It was a poetic language. I always use the example of it. So you mentioned the fact that there needs to be a slight elevation or. I don't even think it's about high versus low. I think just a sense that it's not totally ordinary. And so I always use the example of phrases from the King James Bible feel to a modern day English speaker.
- [84:23]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Yeah.
- [84:23]
Listener
In other words, it's strange, right? You would never talk that way in ordering of hamburger in a restaurant. But it's familiar. At the same time, it has great authority. It's something you're used to. It's poetic, but you know it, but you would never speak it. And that sort of paradox, I think is something you want to convey. I, I do think you're doing a disservice by simplifying the language of the translation because Homer always felt a little strange to like Joe or Jane, Greek in the year 450 BCE, say Periclean Athens. When they heard Homer, it wasn't the language they were speaking to each other. So I'm trying to give a slight sense of that. Every now and then I'll use a slightly stiff word order or a slightly archaic word. Not all the time by any means, but just so every now and then, as I put it in my translator's note, you feel what I call the starch in the collar. You feel a little bit like this is not ordinary because it wasn't ordinary. And I think, because as I mentioned, my priority is what I'll call stylistics. I feel the reader should feel that and I actually think we'll appreciate that. You know, the Homeric language and the Homeric meter were the august language and meters reserved only for epic poetry. It was the Rolls Royce of poetic representation, not your little Kia that you drive to the supermarket and it should feel like that.
- [86:09]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Well, and that's how I felt when I was reading it. I felt like, you know, sometimes translations, you, you appreciate what they're trying to do in reach a wider audience or make it go down easier. But it also feels a little bit like, oh, you're maybe going a little too far in trying to bend this to meet me where what I appreciated about yours was I felt like I had to sit up a little straighter in my chair and oh, I've got to be at the top of my game as a reader in order to take this in. And this is going to elevate me because I'm going to spend time reading this. Where I'm on this I'm at, you know, it's calling forth all my powers.
- [86:52]
Listener
Right. I think. And that's what I say. You know, before when I said, I, oh, in all of my reading, I always trust the intelligence of the reader. I don't believe in patronizing the reader. I think readers want the experience if they're picking up a 3,000 year old poem, you know, they want the experience of being immersed in this slightly strange world. But as you said, and I want to underscore this as well, it was also very important to have plainness. The language I use is very plain. It's not, it's not, you know, anyone reading the first 10 lines will see that right away. It's, it's not fancy, it's not poetic. So it was a hard balance to strike, you know, between. Because that's the famous paradox about Homer, which is that he is simultaneously very poetic, but his language is plain. The way he thinks is plain. There's nothing pretentious, there's nothing fancy about it at all. So balancing those two things, the stiffness in the collar but also plain spokenness, was something I had to work really hard in trying to sort of hammer out a kind of English that would work. So if you thought that I'm happy.
- [88:11]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Well, the University of Chicago Press notes that they published Richard Lattimore's translation of the Iliad in 1961. And as they note, it has been one of the most popular and respected versions of the work. And yet they never published a companion translation of the Odyssey until now. And I read that and I thought, oh, no pressure, Daniel.
- [88:34]
Listener
Yeah, it was a little daunting, I have to say. But, you know, it's funny because they approached me about taking the project on only a few months after I had published my memoir about reading the Odyssey with my dad. And so it was still very much in my head. And that's why I took it on, you know, slightly, you know, dazzled. But I thought, right now it's a good time to start this because I've been thinking so hard about the Odyssey for this other book for such a long time. But it was. I knew who Chicago was. Chicago has the most prestigious series of classics translations there are translations of Greek tragedy or the standard English translation. I use them myself when I teach Greek tragedy. And so it was a little bit intimidating. I won't pretend that I wasn't. And because of Latimore, which has rightly become, and I know you'll agree with me, a classic in its own right, you know, it's one of those translations that has become a classic, like the Scott Moncrief translation of Proust, you know, for its own language. It was both intimidating, but Latimore's Iliad gave me the clue about what I should do because Latimore also has a craggy long line, much longer than any other translation. And I thought, okay, you can do this. And it's also very plain spoken. He does this sort of archaic diction much more than I do. But I thought, okay, there's a hint in this somewhere about a way you can do this. So I'm not trying to match his translation, but I certainly wanted to step up to it if at all possible.
- [90:21]
Daniel Mendelsohn
Well, I think we're going to see this book side by side with Lattimore's for at least 60 years. Daniel Mendelsohn, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [90:32]
Listener
Thank you so much. It's been so great chatting with you.
- [90:39]
Jack Wilson
Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. Wasn't that great? My thanks to Daniel Mendelsohn for joining me. Wow. David Medina and Daniel Mendelsohn back to back Monday and Thursday. Where else can you get a podcasting week like the one the History of Literature podcast just delivered? Well, I'll tell you where Good podcasting week coming up. The week will be in May of 2026 and you will have a full immersion in sights and sounds and tastes and sensations of literary England, London, Oxford and Bath. We'll be on some of those trains, people, and we'll be on walks in the city, in the countryside and we would love to have you be part of this experience. That's going to going to be our way of surviving bad news and hard times this year. Make some in person connections only connect, as EM Forster said. We'll be in his stomping grounds, by the way, connecting. Will we be stomping? No. Connecting, yes, or stomping. If the impulse seizes you, don't worry, London can take it. That's John Shors Travel. For more information, John Shors S H O R S I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll See you next time.
- [92:11]
Zibby Owens
Hi, this is Zibby Owens, host of Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know. Get insider insights and connect with guests like Grammy Award winning singer Alicia Keys, critically acclaimed author Judy Blume and Academy Award winning screenwriter John Irving. Every single day with Totally Booked, you aren't just listening, you're part of the story. So don't miss out. Follow Totally Booked with Zibby on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now.
- [93:01]
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