Bruce Byfield@Prentice Pieces: Querying TBR

In the recent posts about Homer, James Joyce's Ulysses was mentioned. Many said it disrespected Homer. Personally, I can't stand Ulysses because it reads like Joyce can't stop smirking at his own cleverness.

The Trojan War happened? Well, maybe, & I hope so. We have a plausible location for Troy, and a few indications that might refer to a war there. However,we currently lack the hard evidence that proved, for example, that Pontius Pilate existed.

@sentantiq Not even many translators. While I like much about Wilson's translations, for me one of their greatest faults is that she thinks that repeating epithets exactly would bore readers. She doesn't think about their function.

@PrenticePieces I k n o w

neither of them have authors in the traditional sense

@natt941 @sentantiq Not consciously, perhaps. But many follow a tradition of translation littered with euphemism & unwarranted word-choices, & an exaggeratedly grand tone.

@PrenticePieces @sentantiq Every translation is an interpretation but not all translators are equally keen to ensure the reader comes away with a specific interpretation. See for example the Robert Alter quote about explanation that I shared in response to someone else.

Freaking out about lines 24.302-3 is really weird. This guy doesn't understand Homeric Greek. Let me show you why He doesn't pay attention to the pattern of repetitions or the significance of this scene

@erikmbaker Wilson's strongest point is that she avoids the euphemisms and choices unwarranted by the original in many translations. Her notes are also useful. Her weaknesses? She can be prosaic, & varies the epithets that are part of oral poetry. Like other translators, she sometimes nods

Does anyone have any opinions about the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey?

@PastPaulitics You don't have the least idea of what Dibble is saying, do you?

Flint Dibble is an archaeologist who works in Greece at the pleasure of the Greek people. And this is how he treats them and their cultural heritage. This absolute fraud appropriates the Greeks' own culture and then presumes to dispense its glories and credit to "everyone and no one". No, Flint, you worthless, woke wanker, Homer was Greek. He wrote in Greek about Greeks and while we can all enjoy the unique genius of Homer today, that genius isn't yours to dispense its credit to everyone you want to pander to for political reasons. It is the genius of the Greeks. You are not Greek and don't even have the decency to show your hosts the respect they should be able to expect from someone like yourself. Flint Dibble isn't Greek but in character he is indistinguishable from Thersites and Ephialtes.

@MattPrinciple @renegadesilicon Wilson makes a strong case that they do, arguing that there's a strong tradition in English translations of euphemism and word-choices unwarranted by the original Greek.

@renegadesilicon The Lawrence translation is obscure and I doubt many non-specialists are even aware of it. The Fagles and Fitzgerald translations are the major ones, with which it’s appropriate to compare Wilson’s. They do not have equivalent ideological contamination.

If you have problems with Emily Wilson’s translations then you also have big problems with TE Lawrence’s Odyssey translation, too…right? Lawrence’s translation is very enjoyable. He wrote it as free prose. But it’s drastically more political than Wilson’s. It reflects Lawrence’s disdain for the treatment of his Arab friends and for the Homeric bravado as a whole; he thought Homer’s Greeks were a “stunt” and Odysseus a “cold-blooded egoist”. Lawrence was an actual warrior; a real hero that would be elevated as an authority by virtue of his status from many who would be critical of Wilson — but he felt far more hostile to the work than Wilson. What do you do with that? If you find yourself in this category, realise that it’s not a case of you disliking political or artistic translations; you just don’t like *Emily Wilson’s * politics.

@natt941 @sentantiq How does that make Wilson different from any other translator?

@sentantiq He’s not freaking out, he’s criticizing, and while I think he puts it too strongly, this is yet another case where we see Wilson is a pretty heavy handed translator—she has a certain take and gives you a translation that makes it hard not to see things her way.

@DDDrewDaniel I'm reading this translation, and finding it interesting. But I asked the same question. It would be easy to cherry-pick things to object to in this, or any other translation. Mendelsohn criticizes Wilson's poetics, but like her, calls a slave a slave.

Read and enjoyed this recently and I couldn’t help but notice that this new translation didn’t seem to catch any strays during the recent Homer discourse - all the bile and animus was directed squarely at Emily Wilson- why might that be? 🤔

Reading various translations of The Odyssey, I come to two obvious conclusions: First, no translation is perfect or satisfies everyone. Second, cherry pick and you can make any translation sound like an abomination to those who have not read it.

@ThatchEffendi Yeah, right. 🙃

If the Homeric epics are an unironic, unvarnished, unexamined look at the heroism of Achilles and the other Greek heros, then why does Achilles say that he'd rather be a living serf than a king of the dead in The Odyssey? Why does Ajax kill himself using Hector's sword? It's a deeply intellectual work! You don't have to be a Marxist to say things like this, taking it seriously as a work of philosophy is Straussian!

Mendelsohn's Odyssey interests me because it's in hexameters. His footnotes about names add something, & so does his consistent use of epithets. But like Wilson & other translators, he sometimes nods. His verse is sometimes prosaic & he uses modern words like "Nana" and "divvy"

Notice there is no talk of an agenda, feminist or otherwise. If Mendelsohn is typical, it appears that those who say Wilson is universally condemned are hopeful, exaggerating, or plain lying.

How is Emily Wilson's Odyssey regarded by experts? Read Daniel Mendelson's notes in his new translation. He criticizes her poetic choices, (her line length & variation of epithets), but he also follows her lead and talks of slaves, not handmaidens. He differs, respectfully.

@trad_poet I'm scared some showrunner might be rash enough to try.

@PrenticePieces It definitely must be split into key stories - impossible to shoot as a whole film called The Silmarillion.

Just cursory thoughts on a modern writer handling the dialogue and tone of the Silmarillion have me wincing at how utterly cringe it might turn out. Not to mention how they would ‘reimagine’ the grinding tragic trajectory of the actual work. It may be best left alone unless, as you have mentioned, and I paraphrase, a council of true believers is control or had veto over the script. The efforts put into the RoP series is a case in point. Apart from any issue related to faithfulness, it was/is just a cheap looking, terribly put together show with painful dialogue- an example of what could go horribly wrong. I have always thought it might be best handled in collaboration with the Japanese as an epic anime. And if that works basically remake the anime as live action.

@bornposting Oh, thanks. Now I'll be up all night worrying.

the idea of adapting the Silmarillion into a trilogy lol

@SonOfAnchis3s Yes, "complicated" is a poor choice. Wilson defends it on the basis of etymology that most readers miss. But if Wilson is dumped on for being inadequate, so should the choices of most translations. It also needs to be said that this choice has nothing to with a feminist agenda.

Emily Wilson’s mistranslation of polytropos has already been beaten to death but I think there is an important piece of commentary missing. Homer’s usage of polytropos — many-sided, of many turns — as the first epithet describing Odysseus is inseparable from the story in the same way that it’s vital to Père Goriot for Goriot to actually be old. Odysseus’s first singular opponent in the Odyssey is the cyclops: literally one-sided with one eye, who cannot comprehend Odysseus’s trick, who is defeated by being blinded. His one tool is neutralized and he is done, whereas Odysseus ends up, both here and ultimately, victorious. Additionally, an accurate translation is needed because it makes sense of the entire narrative. Each obstacle in the Odyssey tests a different side of Odysseus. Using “complicated” instead of “man of many devices” or even something like “devious” is an egregious inaccuracy. It takes the broad and layered “skilled in all ways of contending,” a description of Odysseus’s nature, and collapses it into a simple psychological diagnosis, both patronizing Odysseus and injuring the artistry behind the myth. Part of what makes Homer the bedrock of Western Civilization and not just a few accidentally received and easily dismissible scrolls is that the stories are coherent at the structural level — meaning narrative, allusions, symbolism, and, notably, word choice. This level of architecture is what we typically expect from more modern authors, meaning that we should treat it as something closer to translating Dante or Don Quixote, rather than as something closer to Livy or Tacitus, where the information takes precedence over the structure. Massacring the classics for a gold star in a university department or for an Oscar should be expected behavior from our intellectual and artistic betters by now. However, expectation should not permit us to condone or accept this sort of dismemberment, where Homer is treated as mere novelty, rather than as the literary and artistic giant that Western Civilization has always known him to be.

@AbigailFalanga A map is a reliable indication of the quality of the work. If a map has unrealistic coastlines random placement of cites and weak names, the odds are that the writing will be sloppy, too.

Maps are cool! Maps are great. Maps are unnecessary, but definitely obsession worthy. And this reminds me that I need to do some map sketching for my WIP 🤔

@tolkienthoughts To judge from the difference between the LOTR and The Hobbit films, it could go either way.

No