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Zero to Well-Read
How to Tackle Intimidating Books, with Emily Wilson
00:51:07
It's a dilemma every reader has faced: what do you do when you really want to read a big, intimidating book, but you don't know how to get started?
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- [00:01]
A
This episode of Zero to well Read is sponsored by Thriftbooks.com we have Professor Emily Wilson joining us today to talk about how to get into the classics, how to deal with them, how to read with them, and then how to get more out of them. And on thriftbooks.com you can find the classics you need. You can find Professor Emily Wilson's translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. You could pre order her new book that's coming out September. We talk a little bit about here Crossing the Wine Dark Sea, which with every purchase you get closer to your reading rewards Redemption from Thriftbooks. And if you're picking up a bundle of classics, there's a lot out there used. You could get a lot there. You can get new copies if you prefer that as well. Thanks to Thriftbooks.com for sponsoring this episode of Zero to well Read.
- [00:44]
B
Hey folks, Rebecca here. I have some exciting news to share. Since we launched the show, the number one listener request has been for some kind of book club or community reading experience. We've been thinking about it and talking about what that might look like and how it could be uniquely Zero to well Read. You might have even heard us working through some of the elements of it on a recent mailbag episode. And so today we are delighted to announce the launch of Zero to well Read guided Read alongs. We're starting with the Odyssey for an episode that will land July 7. In the run up, we're going to provide Read along participants with an exclusive mini episode about how to prepare for the read, what to pay attention to, and anything else you need to know before you dive in. You'll also be able to chat with us and other members as you read in a dedicated Patreon chat space. And we'll be in the chat throughout the read, offering prompts, context and conversation as we go. If you want to join, it's easy. Just sign up for an office hours membership on our Patreon. That's patreon.com 02 well read, which gives you access to the read alongs +ad, free early listening to all zero to well read episodes and exclusive access to bonus content. And just do what works for you. We'll suggest a reading schedule and provide some framework, but we're all grownups here, so read when and how it works for you. You can chime in or just hang back and take it all in. We're so excited to get reading with all of you. Thank you for making this first year of Zero to well Read so successful again. You can Join the read alongs@patreon.com 0to well read. We'll talk to you soon.
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A
Welcome to Zero to well Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you read. I am Jeff o'. Neill.
- [02:25]
B
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky. Today we're kicking off Hot Greek Summer and preparing to embark on our first guided read along of the Odyssey by Homer with a conversation about how to approach big, intimidating books and we have an expert here to help us.
- [02:38]
A
Before we get to that, though, you can click the link in the Show Notes to sign up for our free newsletter or to become a member to participate in our guided read alongs including the Odyssey and get early ad freed episodes and bonus content@patreon.com 02 well read a quick reminder as well to rate and review wherever you're listening. You can always email us at zero to well readbookriot.com all right, Rebecca, we're very excited. Who do we get to talk to today?
- [03:07]
B
Yes, we are thrilled to be joined by Emily Wilson. She was the first woman to publish a full translation of the Odyssey into English. She's also the College for women class of 1963 term professor in the Humanities and a professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvan. She's been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and Early modern scholarship, a MacArthur fellow, and a Guggenheim fellow. Her bestselling 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey has achieved canonical status according to the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and basically everyone else, and she followed it with a translation of the Iliad in 2023. Additionally, she's published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, as well as books about tragedy, about Socrates and Seneca. And she serves as an editor of the Norton Anthology of World Liter. And as if that is not enough to have going on, she also has a book coming September 1 called Crossing the Wine Dark Journeys through Ancient Literature. It's a visionary exploration of how translation reshapes our understanding of the ancient world and the present day. Professor Emily Wilson, thanks so much for joining us.
- [04:14]
C
Thank you for that lovely introduction. It's great to be here.
- [04:18]
A
Sometimes when people read experts, we get to talk to experts. From time to time we forget. Professor Wilson, there was a time where you knew nothing of the wine dark sea, you knew nothing of Achilles, you knew nothing of crossing the Mediterranean. Could you talk for a minute as a reader, someone who came to these at one point, you came to these new and I know, for example, that an early production of the Iliad, in which I believe you played Athena, was key to your.
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C
It was the Odyssey.
- [04:45]
A
The Odyssey, okay. Yes. Right.
- [04:46]
C
The Iliad would be too much goro for the primary school.
- [04:50]
A
That would be really gnarly to have an Iliad with a bunch of eight year nine.
- [04:54]
C
Serious. Yes. So my, my elementary school, I grew up in Oxford and I went to the local primary school and the teachers were getting bored of doing a nativity play every year, so they wanted to mix it up and do something more creative. So they did the Odyssey and I got to play Athena. I got to make my own aluminum foil helmet. We got to gouge out the papier mache eye of the headmaster who played Polyphemus. It was really fun. And so that was my first time of realizing there's such a thing as Greek myths and they're really cool and you get to learn about them. And so then I just read lots and lots of kids retellings. I'm too old to have been a Percy Jackson generation. So I read, you know, Roger Lancelin Green and Rosemary Sutcliffe. And then once I got older, eventually I went to a high school where they taught Latin and ancient Greek. And I realized, wow, it's not just the stories. The languages are also super cool. And you can get to, in a way, go on a time machine through language by getting to be immersed yourself in the linguistic, literary and historical world of these weird ancient people.
- [06:03]
D
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- [07:21]
B
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C
Marvel Television's Wonder man an eight episode series now streaming on Disney plus a superhero remake.
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B
Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director.
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C
Action Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man
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A
I'm gonna need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers.
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C
I'll never work again if anyone found out.
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B
My lips are sealed.
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C
Marvel Television's Wonder man all eight episodes
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A
now streaming only on Disney PL so was it off to the races from there? Like as soon as you're like, you got the ancient Greek and you've got Latin. Did you do that all through your, you know, for Americans Your undergraduate graduate, did you circle back through it through pre med or something else? Or like how, how quickly did you. Like, this is something I want to make my professional intellectual life about.
- [09:43]
C
I mean, I, I think I always knew this is something I'm passionate about. I didn't know if it was going to be my day job. I mean, I grew up in Oxford and in England and there's the ridiculously narrow British system, which means you need to decide when you're 16 are you go humanities or sciences. And I remember at that stage thinking, maybe I'm going to be a doctor and why do I have to decide right now? But I had to decide right now. And at that stage I also thought classics is where I want to go. Not just because I'm passionate about the literature, the history, the language, but also because within this ridiculously narrow system, this is the only way to get something like a liberal arts education. Because with classics I got to do history and philosophy as well as literature and language, whereas if I'd just done an English degree, it would have been just gonna read some more Shakespeare and Dickens, which I love Shakespeare and Dickens. I was fine with reading Shakespeare and Dickens, but I could do that on the side while also doing these other subjects. I didn't get to do physics, which I still slightly miss. But I wouldn't have been, you know, it wouldn't actually have been, you know, as successful a career. I don't think if I tried to try to be better at ancient Greek than I am at that.
- [10:54]
B
So it's that broader entry into liberal arts that really hooked you about classics?
- [11:00]
C
It's a bit of both. I mean, it's both the excitement of that impossible project of how can you really get your mind around a whole culture. And that's the 19th century dream of Wischenschaft, which was the founding of classical studies of we can just try to use every possible source and get a sense of what even was it like back then. But primarily it wasn't actually that. Primarily it was, I get to read this little line of Homer in ancient Greek and it sounds so cool. That was the first. I mean that was the primary thing as well as Athena goddesses stories. So cool.
- [11:36]
B
Is that the stuff that continues to light you up about it, that stays fascinating about that work and classics?
- [11:42]
C
Yes, I mean primarily. I mean, I sort of try to dress it up as a scholarly thing, but there's a whole emotional and aesthetic element to it as well. And I know that, you know, in academia you're not really supposed to talk about beauty and the stuff you actually really like because it's supposed to be about discovering things. But I really like this stuff. Yes, I love the sound of the language of the Homeric poems and of ancient tragedy. They were really good poets as well as really good storytellers. And that totally still lights me up. Even though I've obviously read these texts hundreds and hundreds of times, I still find it exciting.
- [12:20]
A
So you get to talk to people at all stages of expertise about the Odyssey or the Iliad or Sophocles. If someone's trying to get into it, you know, they've heard of it, maybe they see there's a huge movie coming out or maybe they're, you know, my son was reading the Odyssey as a freshman here in high school and sort of trying to warm up to it. Like, what do you, what, what if anything, can you do to prepare someone for these foreign language, Literally foreign language we're not going to encounter, but a different worldview, as you say, a different poetical, linguistic, philosophical, religious. Like how do you prepare someone to enter into this sort of time travel experience of reading these almost 3,000 year old documents that still speak to us and still feel contemporary, but also feel ancient in their own way? Like, how do you come to someone who's coming to the first time? Like, what do you recommend to them? What do you say to them? How can they get some sort of purchase on the strangeness and beauty that they're going to encounter?
- [13:11]
C
I mean, I think part of it is about just realizing that that dynamic of it's both strange and familiar is really very interesting and exciting. I mean that's part of. Why do we like to read fantasy novels? Where do we like to read sci fi? There's something similar about the idea of the world building of somewhere. That's both. There are recognizable characters who are fully realized as characters. The relationships are really clear. The humanity or the proto human, quasi humanity, even of the deities. The feelings are really clear and yet the way they're manifested, the whole social setup is so different and that combination is fascinating. I mean, I teach Gen ed classes to undergraduates and I think undergraduates who are coming having done a physics major or learned about things that I don't know about. I love also that students can come to these poems bringing different kinds of world, lived experience and different kinds of familiarity and unfamiliarity, different kinds of comparisons, and then discover that these texts are so much less scary than they think. You may think, oh, Homer is going to be so many unpronounceable names. You actually really only need to know a tiny single digits number of characters. Dostoevsky is so much harder in terms of.
- [14:26]
A
Yes, this is true.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And all those names rest, Kolnof, Kaz. They all sound the same in crime.
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C
And impossible to keep three or four different names in here.
- [14:35]
A
That's really tough.
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C
But even so, yes, I love that
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B
you made that connection between this and approaching something like science fiction and fantasy or something that has really elaborate world building. Because I think maybe just because these books, these stories are so old, readers do often have this sense that there is something harder to access about them. But I was surprised when I picked up your translation. I was like, oh, right, it's 500 pages and that includes 100 pages of introductory material. I read 400 page books all the time and I suspect that many people listening to the show do as well. So to situate it inside of that, like you're entering into another world. And this is the thing that we practice as readers all the time. But even within that, do you think there is any specific prep that readers should do before they pick up something like the Odyssey? Should we be reading all of the introduction material or can you just jump right in? What do you recommend?
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C
You can jump right in. I mean, it depends what kind of reader you are. I mean, I wrote that long introduction because I was aware that some readers are going to want that. And I don't think the Odyssey is not the kind of text where you're going to not enjoy it. If it's been, quote unquote, spoiled for you. It's not necessarily going to be that you're. I'm not going to spoil it right now. Odysseus does actually get home. It's okay to know that ahead of time. And it's okay to get some orientation in the historical context and in the oral tradition on which this poem is based. If you want that kind of orientation and orientation in the plot and in the historical context and in culture, the introduction does that for you. I mean, I tried to write it in a way that I hope is pretty reader friendly. But I also think it's totally legitimate to just plunge right into the story and ask your own questions along the way and then read the introduction afterwards. You can see whether the kinds of questions you've been asking are addressed by it, or maybe they won't be. And you've got a whole original theory about Homer. It's also cool.
- [16:29]
B
Wonderful. Yeah. I really want to stick on that for our listeners because I know that there are folks who pick up a book like this, and they get intimidated just by seeing scholarly or big introduction material. So folks like, here is your permission, if that's the thing.
- [16:42]
C
Oh, do it later. Totally fine. Do all this.
- [16:44]
B
The professor says it's fine.
- [16:47]
C
So you're not doing this for a class. You're doing this for actual learning, which is even better. You're not trying to get an A here.
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A
So when you do have someone reading the Odyssey or the Iliad or something for the first time or entering in the world of the classical tradition, are there specific kinds of reactions that you've seen? What are the reactions? Like, what do they respond well to? What's more difficult for them to engage with? What are your sort of median expected results for someone who's cracking this open and plunging in for the first time? What kinds of things have you seen?
- [17:19]
C
So, I mean, I wrote my translations to try to make it reader friendly or listener friendly in some of the ways that I think the original poems are, in the sense that they are based on an oral tradition designed for oral performance. They have protodramatic qualities. The characters talk differently, that there's a lot of emoting, which I think is both some ways unfamiliar from a modern Anglophone perspective. The way that, you know, grown men are always sitting down and crying. Like, actually, you can understand why people cry. But it's certainly different from our culture in terms of normalizing weeping for everyone. I would. I mean, I think that in terms of syntax, the Homeric poems are not difficult. So just on the level of syntax structure, there are some translations that I think create a barrier to entry, that it doesn't need to be there because the originals don't have difficult syntax. It's not about, let's do a long sentence that will last multiple verse paragraphs, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, and it lulls you along and leads you on to the next thing, but not in a way where you're going to get totally lost in where was the main verb? So I think part of it is about the translation and about echoing the clarity of the original as well as the rhythmicality of the original. But I also think just orienting yourself in terms of there's this nuclear family. The Odyssey is a story about a son, a father, a mom. That's not hard to understand. It's about a household and how a household is fragmented and how it gets back together. That's a very simple outline of a story. There are ways that the narrative structure, if you come to it thinking this is Very old. So it will be primitive and so it will start at the beginning of time and then go rigidly forward from and then this, and then this, then this. Then you're going to be startled by epic, as Horace says, begins in medias reis. It begins in the middle of the story. And instead of beginning with Odysseus's journey, we have four books about Telemachus, his son, before we even get to Odysseus. What's up with that? It's confusing, but I think you have just time to let yourself go with that and understand that this poem is going to be testing your expectations about how linear or non linear the narrative is. In fact, this narrative goes around in circles just as the hero does and gets disguised as multiple different things just as the hero does. And that. Also, part of what the poem is about is exploring alternative ways to have a home or to have a household. And that we're going to start off with Ithaca, but then also explore through Telemachus, multiple different Greek households, the household of Nestor on Pylos and Menelaus in Sparta before we get to the even weirder households that Odysseus will be encountering while he's shacked up with the various goddesses and encountering the giants along the way. And so just being aware that it's not necessarily going to be maybe simple on the level of syntax and simple on the level of there are family relationships and recognizable human beings and feelings, but also now at Hively, it's actually quite sophisticated and let it be that and roll along with it, which is
- [20:35]
B
really not that different from the way we jump into anything that we're reading. You don't know exactly how a story is going in any novel or any epic poem that you pick up. And so maybe just normalizing that for our listeners of pick this up and let yourself approach it in the way that feels approachable to you. I'm so glad you mentioned listeners as well. Claire Danes narrates the audio edition of your translation and I've listened to a little bit of it. It is wonderful. So, like, folks, pick the format that will work for you. Do you have advice for folks? Obviously, if they're reading the Iliad or the Odyssey, they should pick up your translations. But if they're looking at other big old intimidating books that have been translated dozens or hundreds of times, how can people find the right translation for them? I know we're going to have folks who are hung up on like, but which one is the best? Which one is the right One. And I'm sure you have thoughts about how to parse that.
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C
I mean, I have many thoughts, but I think the one you'll read is the right one. Right? I mean, it's better to read it in some way or other than not to read it at all. And if you read one translation and you realize halfway through, not sure if I'm getting everything, you can always try a different translation. It's not like with texts that have just came out this year in Romanian or whatever, then maybe there's only one translation option. That's not going to be the case with Virgil or Ovid or Homer. So you have many options. I do think if it's a poem, I personally am very committed to, a poem should be translated as a poem. If it has rhythm in the original, it should have rhythm. It should invite performance out loud. But I know different readers have different preferences. If you want to read a prose translation. That's not what I would do, but it's, you know, you should. Do you. It's fine. Yeah.
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B
Also, like the book gods are not going to descend and it's going to drag you to reader hell, right?
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A
Yeah, they're not going to. Yeah. I was turned off by the classics in high school because we read a prose transition of the prose translation of the Iliad that I found absolutely deadly. I was like, this is not for me. So I think, think if you can go to, say, a used bookstore, for example, and thumb through a few different copies, just see one that speaks to you, which one do you find yourself continuing to read beyond a sampling of it? At the same time, one thing that I always find useful when I'm encountering a new book, a new author, a new literary tradition is sort of tried to understand it in context. Like, what was it, who was writing it, who was listening to it or reading it. I'm glad Rebecca brought up the audiobook because as people may or may not know, these are spoke, these would have been spoken aloud. There was no edition of the Odyssey that you were picking up in the Mediterranean 3,000 years ago or whatever. Can you talk to us a little bit about the scene of performance of these, the best of our understanding, who Homer was, who would mind listening to them. This maybe goes a little bit to the spoiler comment you made a little while ago where this would have not have been a shocking revelation that these characters existed and they had relationships to each other. One of the reasons that N Media Res works is because you kind of know. You would have known who Odysseus was in the broad strokes here at some time. How can we sort of travel back in time to understand what this book, these words would have felt like and what work they would have done in their sort of originary context?
- [23:41]
C
Yeah, I mean the whole idea of the original is quite difficult to reconstruct. For the case of Homer, just the sort of the one minute version of the historical background is there were the Mycenaean, Greek Greeks, Mycenaean civilization fell. Then there were the multiple centuries in which the Greek speaking world had no literacy. And it used to be called the Dark ages in a sort of pejorative way of like, because there's no text, that must mean that they were, you know, plunged into terrible lack of culture. In fact, it was a, it was a time of great cultural formation insofar as it was a time both of the technological innovations like the use of iron, but also the development of these poetic traditions. And storytel about there used to be these great days of heroes which are sort of folk memories of the. Who are much more hierarchical and centralized forms of power than there were in the quote unquote, Dark ages. So poets were developing these oral traditions of storytelling. And then in the 8th century BCE, so the beginning of the archaic period, writing came to the Greek speaking world again, a new form borrowing from the Phoenicians. And then using that new tech of writing, fairly soon afterwards, these monumental written poems came into existence through whatever means much debated. We have a show.
- [24:59]
A
I think it's enough to know that it's debated. Right. Like that's interesting itself.
- [25:02]
C
Yeah, it's interesting itself. Somewhere or other in the eastern part of the Greek speaking world, these two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were created using writing. But as you say, for the following few centuries, rhapsodes who were performers, single person performers, would learn off the whole of the Iliad or sections of the Iliad and perform it as an entertainment thing, as something that could be rhapsode poetry slams of people who gets the prize for the best performance. And also of course as entertainment at a drinking party, but also at a civic or religious festival. The distinction between a civic festival and a religious festival doesn't really operate in antiquity. So it was entertainment of many different kinds, many different contexts. But primarily listening to a rhapsode was how you experienced home in most of antiquity. Though it also, I would argue, existed as a written text. But that's the crib sheet for the rhapsode. It's not that you're primarily going to be going off by yourself to read this text. You're going to show up to listen to the performance of it.
- [26:08]
B
What a wonderful image of like a poetry slam where this is happening. That alone makes this feel more accessible and still relevant and relatable to me. I know that as people dive in, they're going to be wondering, am I getting it? How can I know that I'm getting it? Emily?
- [26:26]
C
I mean, I'm not sure if you. I mean, that's partly why I would recommend reading the introduction if you're having that kind of self doubt. It's not like the kinds of thematic things I trace are things that you're not going to be able to come up with yourself. You're going to figure out. Okay, there's something complicated going on about Telemachus journey towards manhood and how this poem is representing adult masculinity. Okay, there's something complicated going on about how our goddesses and women represented in this poem. As I said, there are ways that this poem is playing with two core cultural ideas, one of which is the journey home of a warrior from war, a nostos. So that's what the Odyssey is tracing the story of this nostos, that's the word from which we get nostalgia. And instead of tracing the relationship of one man's journey home to all of the other people who don't go home, including all of the people who are impacted by the journey home once Odysseus arrives back in Ithaca halfway through the poem. So again, this paradoxical thing of a journey home isn't just a geographical thing. And then the second key concept is xenia, which is impossible to translate, though of course I translate it, which is the word from which we get xenophobia and the sadly less common xenophilia. So a xenophonic is a guest or a stranger or a host. And of course we don't have a word that covers all of those things. And so the noun, the abstract noun, zeniya is usually translated as hospitality or guest friendship. So it's the word for this social structure whereby elite men who are not related to each other can travel to each other's homes, show up and get welcomed into the home, exchange gifts, get sent on their way and. And form this lasting network of friendship. And it's a really important social structure in a world that's before norms of international law, right before you can sort of rely on. I show up in a weird place where nobody knows me. Are they just going to kill me? Or is it just going to be bandits? Or is there A way that I can assume, if they're Greek speakers, that they'll have this idea of Zenia. So the Odyssey is sort of exploring what happens when that goes horribly wrong. What happens if you go to other people's houses and instead of giving you a nice meal, they swallow you up?
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A
You become the meal.
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C
Yeah, right. You become the drink, or you be of the entertainment so you can never leave or you get turned into a pig or these different ways of expl. And of course, also the suitors of Penelope are uninvited guests who won't leave. And then Odysseus arrives back in his own home and. And treats the uninvited guests, not very nice, just as these other hosts have treated their uninvited guests, not very kindly. So I think just having a sense of look out for hospitality. Be aware that Zinnia is an important threat in this poem. That might be enough. It's not like you necessarily need to read the whole hundred pages of it. Maybe you just saved yourself a whole however many hours it is.
- [29:33]
B
I mean, we do the homework here.
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A
Yeah, we do the. Well, and that reminds me, something you just said, triggered when we talked about Oedipus Rex in the fall. And one of the things I was trying to again wrestle with, as you say here, is this is a work of politics, sort of proto legal thinking, religious thinking, literary thinking. That's something that those of us who grew up in sort of the post enlightenment world don't really get. Like we saw sort of in the last couple hundred years, science break off, religion break off, philosophy break off, political economy break off. But these were the texts, as far as we understand. Like they sort of did everything at the same time. One thing I've always struggled with is thinking about, say we're at this poetry slam, you know, listening to a rhapsode. Am I believing the story? Do I have some other kind of relationship for it? Am I thinking of them as being instructions? Am I sort of nodding my head the whole time? Or I'm like, whoa, that was weird. I know that's not answerable, but this is one of the questions I was like, how can I get somewhat in the mindset of this work, keep myself, you know, hold my own judgment and abeyance and experience as close as it can be? Echo is bringing my consciousness on later. But, like, that's one, I guess, maybe one reason that's where you could get your liberal education, because to explore text like this, you kind of have to use all the tools in the basket that's where you keep tools. Because I'm a real handyman. I keep my tools in the basket. Yeah, good.
- [30:55]
C
Yeah, I love that. Just to make a little footnote, Oedipus to Anos is not proto legal, because of course, by the time of class there was a very extensive written law code and play is really playing on the legal identity of being a non citizen immigrant in a city. And what does it mean if Oedipus is an immigrant or is not an immigrant? Because in fact, he's the son of the former king. Little does he know. Anyway, that's a little footnote, but this is a really good question, and I think it's. I mean, I constantly try to remind my students that people listening to the Iliad, whether it's in the archaic period or the classical period, were also worshiping Athena. It's not that this is. I mean, we may think, oh, this is myth, it's religion as well. It's not that she's just there as a fantasy narrative device. She's also a divine being. But at the same time, does that mean this is a sacred text in the way that the Torah is or the way the New Testament is? Absolutely not, because that's not how Greek religion worked. I mean, one of the slightly oversimplifying tropes about ancient religion is that it's much more about orthopraxy than orthodoxy. It's not necessarily about, you must believe in this creed and we're gonna burn you alive if you don't. It's, did you show up at the festival and did you do the right things? Did you sacrifice in the right order to the right deities? If you did, yay, great, the deity's gonna be really pleased with you.
- [32:22]
A
Good things will happen, good things will
- [32:24]
C
ensue if you did the right thing. And it doesn't. There were, of course, multiple variations on every single myth, including every single story about every deity. So we know from later sources that there were many alternate versions of how exactly did the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope play out? At what stage did she recognize him? How exactly did the whole bow scheme over the axe heads? There were various different versions of that in later sources, and which may also have been part of the earlier oral tradition. So it's not like somebody would say, oh, you told a variant on that mythical story. That means you are impious. There were laws in classical Athens against impiety, but nobody was going to say Euripides has to drink the hemlock because he made two different versions of Helen. They're two totally different versions of Helen because that's entertainment, that's tragedy. And there's no point in writing a play this year that's the exact same as the play you wrote last year. And there's something similar going on with the Homeric poems that both the Iliad and the Odyssey are taking these very familiar stories, but also creating really interesting wild riffs on the usual stories and packing them into this sort of monumental narrative, which of course is too long to perform all at once, no matter how. Maybe you can just stick it out with the audiobook, but I think in antiquity a rhapsode would be getting what a long night. A lot of wine.
- [33:57]
A
A lot of wine, yeah.
- [33:59]
C
Some people say maybe, maybe they were divided up into three or four nights, which is a possibility. But I actually think one shouldn't be too rigid about it because probably there were multiple different performance contacts. But I hope that's sort of the question of belief is, you know, yes, they worshiped Athena and the other deities and yes, there was also a cult to the heroes of Odysseus on Ithaca. So just getting. I've talked about the deities, but what is a hero? We may have this sort of anachronistic idea that a hero is a guy like Batman or Superman who's all about saving the city. And that's why, you know, relief workers are heroes and nurses are heroes. But that's not what a heros is in Homeric Greek or in Archaic Greek thinking it's an extraordinary person. In fact, in Homeric Greek it just means warrior or man. But it also, the connotations include later in that language the idea that it's a person who's extraordinary and close to the gods. But that isn't about being nice, right?
- [35:03]
A
Not necessarily a role model. An anti hero and hero are sort of bound up in the same thing and sort of modern context. Very much so.
- [35:10]
B
I want to pull on the thread of something that you were saying just a moment ago that these are kind of wild and exciting variations on the stories that were told. And one of the things that you've written about, one of your principles when you're translating is to try to work with and against readers possible expectations. You said if readers may expect this text to be boring or archaic or simple minded and those things aren't true of the original, think through how you can enable them to see something else. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how readers ourselves can be pushing against those expectations? Like if there are folks who want to be the kind of person who has read the Odyssey before they go see the Odyssey. But they're also resisting because it feels like homework in some way. How do they push against that assumption that it's going to be archaic or boring?
- [35:55]
C
Yes. I mean, I think it's a sign of something really weird and prejudiced in us that we have this idea that archaic means something bad. Right. There was an archaic period in ancient Greece. It wasn't necessarily bad. There were human beings there who actually created some really good, both poetic art and other kinds of art. And they had feelings just like other human beings. So why do we have that assumption? I think it's worth pushing back on that. But I already talked about syntax and also about narrative energy, but also just the creativity of the storytelling. There's something exciting if you can sort of realize, wow, this poem is doing weird things with narrative structure. It's not starting where I expect it to. It's not interpreting what a homecoming journey is the way I expect it to. And also the. That I may think depending on what your background is or where you're coming from, you may think, okay, back in the day it was all just about macho guys being macho, which is what you might get if all your only access to the ancient world is that terrible cartoonish movies. 300. Did either of you? Yes.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, it was awful.
- [36:59]
C
Anyway. But the ancient world is actually not like that very much. And the fact that there were these sort of layered relationships and that there are plenty of very interesting female characters or. Or gender fluid characters, depending on what we think Athena's pronouns would be because she mostly manifests as a guy. There are ways it's surprising in terms of. Yes, this comes from a society where women were mostly subject to men. And yet many of the most powerful and fascinating characters aren't men. It comes from a society where it focuses on a elite man. And yet we have these multiple really interesting and well fleshed out characters who are different social identities, including really interesting enslaved characters, interesting animal characters who, you know, we're not going to spoil what happens to the poor dog because that will make people not want every dog anyway.
- [37:52]
B
Yeah, but you also get like that. You have like mermaids, sirens, there's Cyclops, there's like, there are all sorts of like what we would think of as science fiction or fantasy characters and moments here today that this is just a big adventure story.
- [38:06]
C
It's a big adventure. Well, you know, actually I would kind of challenge that characterization. And also the sirens. Sirens are bird ladies. They're not mermaids. And so they're a different kind of temptation from the sexy mermaid thing, which is the 19th century imposition on the idea of the sirens, which gets picked up and where are they all that kind of stuff. They're offering an aesthetic, poetic and cognitive temptation rather than a look at me with my sexy slimy tail kind of clamshell bra. Exactly. The little mermaid kind of thing. But it's also to me, obviously the eight year old me loved the adventure story and also loved the way this is a poem which in a way reflects the experience of being a child. And you're aware there are these older forces scheming, but you can't quite get a grip on it. Here's Poseidon, here's Athena, kind of like mom and dad, but who knows what's going on with them. But then the adult me is actually less interested in that than in this whole second half of the poem, where there's nothing explicitly weak. But then Ithaca is the weirdest place of all. Humans are the weirdest. They're even weirder than goddesses. And the ways that humans relate to each other and the depth with which the Odyssey really digs into social emotional complexity is part of what I think is really surprising. Because if you just come to it with this sort of kids retelling thing, you think it's all going to be about the sirens. The sirens get finished in like 12 lines. It's not all about the sirens. I mean, the sirens are great, but it's mostly about the human relationships.
- [39:40]
B
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- [41:07]
A
Iliad writes similarly too, where you think it's going to be all fighting, fighting, fighting. But my favorite parts are book nine, when Achilles is like having people come to his tent and talk and then Priam coming at the end and crying, you know, and said I've done what no other mortal man has done. On what are your favorite. What scenes do you come back to? I know I think you've written, correct me if wrong, that you're more of an Iliad person, an Odyssey person. You don't have to choose, but your sympathies lie there. Mine do as well. But in the Odyssey, in the Liad, are there scenes that you especially first among equals, maybe to borrow that language, which ones give you sustenance? Which ones do you come back to either in a good way or a splinter in the mind? You can't figure out what's going on or you're still trying to reckon with one, what's happening in those moments?
- [41:50]
C
Yes. I mean you already stalled two obvious choices, but that's fine, it's fine, not a problem. So I'm going to try and focus on the Odyssey, which is certainly in my top two out of the Homeric poems. So it's great. I would say that I love the whole sequence when Odysseus comes back physically to ithaca in book 13, the Phaeacians give him the self steering ship. I love the way that it's both so precise about the physical details of how does the boat move through the water while also being so totally non naturalistic as zoom. Self steering ship, who has that in there? You actually don't get that. And I also love that after that Odysseus, who's being zonked out for the whole voyage, wakes up and doesn't recognize his own island and then doesn't recognize his own patron goddess Athena. And she has this whole. You have this whole, I think hilarious dialogue in which she's explaining just how far superior she is at his own superpower, which is being smart and outputting people and disguises. So that's a great one. They're all, I mean, every single. I guess that this is again a very obvious thing to say, but Penelope's dreams are great. And the dreams about the key, the whole complexity that we. I was saying part of what I love about it is the social complexity, also the emotional complexity of how we never fully get to glimpse. What exactly does Penelope think about all these suitors? Is there a part of her that kind of likes them, even though, does she fully want her husband to come back? In the dream sequence, she cries when the geese are killed and the eagle says, don't worry, the suitors are dead. That was the geek. I'm your husband. And then Odysseus in disguise says, don't worry, I can interpret this dream. Odysseus said it was fine. And Penelope says, you know, actually, dreams are kind of confusing. Two gates of dreams. We don't know what this dream meant. So there's a real ambiguity about it, which I think is there's something very powerful about the withholding of an idea that they both think exactly the same, because they don't. I mean, I love that. I mean, this is a final one. I love Nastica. Everyone loves Nastica. Who doesn't love a laundry scene in an epic? Great. I mean, I feel like the later epic poets copied things like the obvious Council of the Gods scenes, but they didn't all get a laundry scene in there. So Homer wins on that. But I also love that it's only when chatting up Nausicaa that Odysseus mentions the ideal of marriage in terms of homo frosune, meaning like mindedness between husband and wife. Doesn't talk about that when he's talking to his actual wife, because maybe they don't have that. Maybe there's something different they have, which is about building up the honor of the household. And that's actually a more difficult and in some ways more painful emotionally in terms of what it costs every member of the household to build up honor, which is going to be costly both in terms of who dies for it and also in terms of who suffers for it.
- [45:01]
A
Yeah, and that's something that reading. One thing we found is that reading any book, it could be 20 years ago, 25 years ago, let alone 2,500 years, they tend to be strangers than the common understanding of them are, they kind of get flattened out in a cultural memory just because there's so many and so on and so forth. It's also fun to sort of, in those moments, and those are wonderful moments, just try to play a game with yourself. Where does the text seem to maybe be pushing against itself? Like, where are their contradictions? Where is there something. You know, dream sequences, as you say, are common. One where something gets slept in, but there's a language. Is there a character that's sort of pushing back against and you may be right or you may be wrong? It's less. It's less interesting to me than just sort of. It lets you do some active reading to say, like, okay, is this consistent? Right. Because most of these things aren't consistent. There are dissonances in them. And that's part of why they survive is because if they were just sort of monolithic, flat, homogenous morality tales, they get them after a while.
- [45:54]
C
They've been boring. It's no fun.
- [45:55]
A
No fun.
- [45:56]
C
And the Odyssey is not boring. And so if people are put by it thinking it's going to be boring, please give it a try or give Claire Danes a listen. And I think you'll find it's actually kind of fun. Yes.
- [46:07]
A
I wanted to ask you about this because this is one thing that most readers of these poems will never have access to is the original language, the Ancient Greek. You say in your own translations that you begin with sound. Give us 60 seconds on what we should know. Like, just what should I have on my index card about Ancient Greek and how it influences how these things are put together that might be useful for me coloring my understanding of the world I'm entering into.
- [46:33]
C
Can I do 60 seconds of ancient Greek? So you can get.
- [46:36]
A
Please, you can do 60 seconds of whatever you would like.
- [46:39]
C
Okay.
- [46:40]
A
61 even.
- [46:41]
C
Okay. Okay. Get ready. Go. Andra moy ennepe musa polutropon hos malapola plankthe. Polon d anthropunit and astia kino and eggnog. So that's the beginning of the Odyssey. And I hope you could hear that it has a rhythm. It's clearly designed for oral performance. It has. So what you were hearing in terms of the rhythm is dactyls. It's called dactylic hexameter. A dactyl is a finger, a dactylos. So it has a long joint and then two shorter joints. Andramoi da da da da da da da da da. It's doing that rhythm all the way through with variations, so you can have two longs substituted. So that's why I'm kind of a little bit stumped posty about. I actually think Homer needs to be translated with traditional poetic meter. I don't think the use of dactylic hexameter in English works. Only one person has tried it. I felt it was interesting, but didn't quite work.
- [48:08]
A
Nice gimmick, but maybe not so much. Yeah. Yes.
- [48:10]
C
That was the Translations by Rodney Merrill, if people want to dip into them. And you can sort of see that he's forced into phrases like Scion of Atreus because you can't do Son of Atreus because it doesn't fit in any case. So that I think is a. So it. To me, to echo the traditional rhythmicality, I needed to use iambic pentameter. So that sense of there's a traditional rhythm to it. It sounds like narrative verse is supposed to sound, or like proto dramatic verse is supposed to sound. And it has a lot of alliteration, it has a lot of assonance, it has these poetic qualities to it while also having relatively straightforward syntax. So it has. If you think in terms of. In a way, it's like. Like a ballad kind of thing, even though people.
- [48:51]
B
Yeah, thank you so much for reading that for us. And hearing you do it reminded me, especially since you mentioned the iamic pentameter that your translations work in. When we've talked about Shakespeare on the show, I've talked about how one of my sort of formative educational experiences was a teacher saying, listen to these on audio as you're reading the text and try to pair them up that way. And it helps you build out the experience more fully. It seems to me that that would be a wonderful way to approach translations of home and these other ancient works as well. To pick up a paperback copy of your translation of the Odyssey and listen to Claire Danes, read it at the same time and feel that rhythm in our bones and be able to picture the stories.
- [49:32]
C
That's a great idea. I've also heard of people, and I always get happy when I hear about it, of people doing little book clubs where they read it out loud together, which I think in a way is even more authentic. Right. You're having an in real life experience with others experiencing it out loud, and you guys get to ham it up and you get to put on voices and super fun.
- [49:51]
B
We actually got an email from a listener last week who said that she and some of her friends are doing that this summer, reading it aloud together in the run up to the movie. So if you're listening to this right now, you're doing it right, doing the right things.
- [50:02]
C
Yes, do that.
- [50:04]
A
Speaking of the movie. So the Odyssey's coming to theaters. It's a big deal, at least in the West. Like, we're excited for. A lot of people are excited for it. This is your home water, so to speak. I'm sure it's exciting. Also, maybe some trepidation, like what do you. What is your expectation of people? How are we going forget about whether the movie is good or not to the second, like, what do you think people are going to experience? Or what are you hoping people get out of, like having a reason to turn to the Odyssey and Homer again?
- [50:29]
C
I mean, I basically just feel excited that, you know, it's going to turn more people back to the original ip, which is great. It's wonderful. You know, I mean, of course there's already. Even though there's only, you know, a couple of two minute trailers, there's already online discourse with everyone who has been so many opinions about a movie they haven't seen. A little bit exhausting. And I know that it will continue to be a little bit exhausting in the level of keyboard warriors. But I also just think, you know, you can put that aside and out of your mind and celebrate the fact that so many people are going to be engaged with this really rich, interesting story. It seems like it has a great cast. I'm sure no one would do interesting things with it. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fun.
- [51:12]
B
And Nolan has said he's referring to your translation in his work, so that has to be thrilling.
- [51:17]
C
It's very exciting. I did, I did not get a, you know, screenwriting credit or anything.
- [51:22]
A
Yeah, you didn't.
- [51:22]
C
Yeah.
- [51:23]
A
Okay.
- [51:23]
C
Yeah, okay. And I know he read the Fagels as well, or at least he looks like Fagels as well. I think. I think. I'm not sure. Maybe I feel like he has.
- [51:30]
B
We were delighted to see that name check happen for you.
- [51:32]
A
So we're going to get a big budget odyssey. If you could snap your fingers, we're going to get you out on this. Just. This is a fan screen question. You could snap your fingers and there's an equally huge production of some other story from the ancient world. And you, Professor Emily Wilson, got. Got the green light. The green light was for you to pull the. That's how lights work. You pull on things. Right.
- [51:53]
C
Okay.
- [51:54]
A
Is there a story that you'd like to see done differently that's never been done? Do you want to do the Aeneid? Like, where do you want to go? Do you want to do some Ovid? Like you can go anywhere you want? What would you, as a fan, as a scholar, as a person who spent your life. Do you love to see a full throated theatrical version of.
- [52:12]
C
I think the Aeneid is a great choice because, I mean, actually Troy was not really a movie about the Iliad. I would like a better movie, actually, based on the Iliad. That might be my top choice. But I would also love to see an Aeneid. I think it's really, in a way, startling that there hasn't been one. I think it's maybe quite a difficult poem to imagine putting into cinema, but I think it could work really well, especially now that, you know, CGI is getting so good. So you could do the various shipwrecks, which would have to be very convincing, but I think you could do them in a compelling way, in a way that you maybe couldn't have done 15 years ago. So I'd love to see an Aeneid. I feel like there's been a lot of Ovid reception, including theatrical and musical. And of course, there's been. The Aeneid has been continuously read and riffed on in a whole lot of different ways, but not so much in the movies. And think it would be nice to see Aeneas and see how does the famously Nebuchy protagonist translate to the big screen.
- [53:13]
B
Well, let's hope Hollywood's listening.
- [53:15]
A
Yeah.
- [53:16]
C
Didn't really advertise Aeneas or the Aeneid very well, but it's actually a good poem and really interesting in terms of the ways that its sort of themes about community and about migration and immigration really are both. Both, of course, resonating with the Imperial Roman period, but also with our own era, just as the Odyssey is also resonating with our own era in terms of globalization and migration.
- [53:39]
A
We'll get you out on this. You have a book coming out in the fall, September. Can you talk a little about what people can expect from that book? I'm very much looking forward to it, though I don't really. It's essays, right? It's my understanding it's essays. What should we expect in that?
- [53:51]
C
It's a short book of essays. You can explain. Expect some pugnacious takes on various things. The whole cluster of things that it's about is primarily about reception and translation of ancient literature. So it's both a sort of Classical Studies 101 and Translation Studies 101 kind of book, which includes some stuff you may have always wanted to know but were afraid to ask about Ancient Greek and Roman, especially poetry. But I do a bit of prose as well. And then also, what are the gaps and what are the connections between the ancient and modern worlds?
- [54:29]
A
So, yeah, so you've had hot Greek summer. Everyone out there, you've seen the Odyssey, you've blasted on some takes, you've read your Odyssey and Iliad. You're ready for okay, now I'm really going to get into it so you can check out Crossing the Wine Dark sea that's out September 1st. Professor Emily Wilson, thank you so much. A delight and a joy to get to talk to you for a little bit.
- [54:46]
C
It's really fun. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
- [54:59]
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